Driving Doctor Mayhem

[21] Drunk Eight Ball

"One more vodka, please, thank you," Doc called to the friendly bartender who'd greeted us, then to me, "Stop doing poorly, Banksy. It's inconvenient."

"I swear, I'm trying," I sighed, squinting one eye as I lined up the pool cue with the ball.

"Try harder," he replied flatly, "or we'll owe these fine gentlemen--" he paused to motion around the pool table at the motley crew of stinky old men that was the Mayors entourage with his empty glass, "an incredible amount of money." The barhop handed him his drink.

Drawing a deep breath, I hit the cue ball clumsily, which caused the eight ball to get knocked into a hole in an unfortunate turn of events. "Oops."

Collodi, who was, at this point irrevocably hammered, broke into a sloppy chuckle, slurring, "Hah! I told you--didn't I tell him? I told you, uh, Doctor Mayhem! Nobody beats me at pool. Never, never."

"Hand over the pool stick, squirt," Mustache Man mumbled, snatching it out of my hands.

"That's a pool cue," I fired back, which caused the group to burst out laughing.

Doc raised a hand to quiet them down, announcing in his most important voice, "I have a proposition, gentlemen: double or nothing. Winner takes all--" he reached into his wallet, pulling out a wad of bills, "five hundred dollars."

Seeing that much money out in the open twisted my gut with this terrible longing, and it wasn't even mine; I couldn't begin to imagine how Doc felt about it. Increasingly filled with the urge to grab the stack and shoot out the door, I consoled myself the best I could repeating in my head, Stick to the plan; stick to the plan; stick to the plan, Banksy.

The plan in motion was not an original one, but successful thus far. Doc drank water, pretending it was vodka. Unaware of this, the Mayor kept up pace, except with real vodka, obviously. We would pretend to suck, and then when Collodi was feeling absolutely no pain, we'd stop sucking, and start being our mediocre selves.

In Doc's words, 'You're terrible, but if he's too drunk to see straight, he might be more terrible.'

The Mayor reacted just the way Doc said he would, slamming a huge stack on the felt and shouting, "Chump change! One thousand!"

We exchanged a glance, and Doc grinned, taking a sip of the water-vodka. "You have a deal, Collodi. We're stripes. Now, if you would be so kind as to hand the pool cue back to my associate--"

"Yeah, whatever."

The table was set back up, and I lined the pool cue up with the cue ball--I've discovered redundant titles are one of the staples of pool--rearing back just enough to sink the striped eleven ball on my first go, something that I had fallen miserably short of during the whole first game. At the sight, Mustache Man gasped a little.

The rest of the evening went downhill very quickly, and right on schedule.