"Kissing the Blue"
A new short story concerning a father and son - and some shiny quartz balls...
Kissing the blue
From the semi-gloom of the players’ balcony, the harsh strip-lighting makes the baize glow unnaturally green as if leaking radiation. The coloured balls, reflecting that same light in small distorted rectangles on their surfaces, roll across the cloth, bounce gently from the cushions, brush against each other with self-satisfied kisses. And three figures, all dressed in black, prowl around the table. Two of them are the gladiators taking irregular turns to assault the white ball; the third, keeping score in a monotone and unbiased fashion, rescues non-red balls from the six pockets until there are no reds left on the table at which point they give up and surrender the coloured ones too.
Kai watches as his father scouts the position, working out angles, trying to predict the future, before he stills himself then bends to the shot. A glancing blow on a red, the white retreating to the foot of the table to rest against the cushion.
Safety. Kai breathes out.
It is the first time his father has reached the quarter finals of a major tournament in a long while. For a period after Jackie’s death he attacked frames of snooker with a passion, as if they had been responsible for his losing her, as if slamming the quartz balls against the leather backs of the pockets was exercising some kind of revenge. To that point Jim McAllister — or Mack to both his friends and the rest of the world — had a reputation for precise and considered play, an approach which had seen a gradual rise into the world’s top fifty. He had been anticipating breaking into the top twenty when drunk boy-racers sped through some red lights on the ring road, killing themselves and Jackie along with them. Kai had just turned twenty-four; Mack twenty-one more. In addition to stealing Jackie away, it seemed the accident killed Mack’s career too. It took him less than eighteen months to crash out of the top fifty, then the top hundred; he hardly practiced; even turning up for qualifying tournaments was a chore. By then he was entering them with the assumption that he wasn’t going to get through anyway, washed-up at forty-eight.
And now here he is; not quite a triple crown event — but not far off — battling against Shaun Adams, the surprise World Champion from a few years before. “I know I’m not supposed to win,” he’d said to Kai in the dressing room, “but as I’m not supposed to be here anyway, what’s there to lose?”
They had shaken hands. That was recent too.
Mack wasn’t supposed to win in the previous two rounds either, nor in the final of the earlier qualifying event when he managed to trounce a young up-and-coming Chinese star six-one. Looking down on him now — preparing to hold his breath one more time — Kai knows he has had a part to play in this resurgence.
“Jaime’s pregnant.” He had taken Mack to the pub specifically to break the news.
“That’s brilliant, son; just brilliant.” That had seen the first handshake. “When’s she due?”
“Around June, give or take.”
“Boy or girl? Do you know?”
“We don’t. We’ve talked about it, but I think we’d prefer not to know.”
There had been a pause.
“Your mum wanted a girl — but you knew that didn’t you?”
Kai nodded, then let the silence build before reaffirming: “You’re going to be a granddad.”
Mack stared into what was left of his pint for at least half a minute, then lifted it from the table, downed what was left, pushed the empty glass away from him.
“Better get back to business then,” he said.
The next morning he was back in the club, practicing.
The first frame had been a scrappy affair. Adams, the more nervous of the two, making a few uncharacteristic errors which allowed Mack to get over the line on the pink. He had glanced up to the balcony. Even though he was unsure how clearly his father could see him, Kai gave him a thumbs-up. Then Adams found his range, won the next four on the spin, which left him needing just one more to make it to the semis and send Mack packing.
“Look at it this way,” Mack had said earlier as they made their way into the venue, “I’ve made more money this week than I have in the last two years. That’s got to stand for something.”
It was one of Mack’s favourite phrases — ‘it’s got to stand for something’ — and one Kai had grown-up hearing on a regular basis. He smiles to himself even as his father’s latest attempt at a safety shot comes up a little short, opening the door for Adams should he choose to risk a long red.
Mack had used the phrase when Kai announced he wanted to go to university, and then again just a little later when he informed both his parents that he had hooked up with Jaime and was very happy. And well before all that, as Mack gradually climbed the world rankings, an additional step up on the ladder had been met with “that’s got to stand for something”. Kai isn’t sure whether or not his father has worked out exactly what Jackie’s death stood for, if anything. Perhaps he is still processing it.
Adams, down on his next shot, is clearly going to take the red on. As he feathers his cue for an unusually long time, Kai is convinced he is going to miss. Absentmindedly he crosses his fingers. The white ball travels up the table smacks the target red toward the corner pocket where it rattles in the jaws but stays out. Adams’ shoulders slump. He hasn’t left anything easy for Mack, but clearly feels he has let a chance slip. Kai watches his father as he approaches the table again, applies chalk to his cue-tip, checks the angle between the missed red and the pocket. It’s pot-able, but not easy. The early-career Mack would have played safe at this point — and the gung-ho post-Jackie Mack tried to slam the thing in. As his father addresses the white, Kai is unsure which version is now staring down the length of the table.
With the white on its way, Kai knows he is going for the shot — but is doing so with some restraint. The red heads to the pocket, just fails to drop, then bounces clear to roll along the top cushion with just enough momentum to fall into the opposite corner. The white is perfectly aligned on the black. A fluke.
Kai imagines the voice in his father’s head: “well, that’s got to stand for something.”
And it does. A sublime clearance of one-hundred-and-five follows. Mack, re-energised, brings all his traditional verve to the next frame where, after a brief exchange, he rattles up another century. Although four-three up and with two frames to play, Adams looks as if he is on the ropes. Mack glances up to the balcony; Kai offers his thumbs again. Two frames left, and Mack needs to win them both.
Kai wonders whether the fluke in the sixth frame really might portend to something. What does it mean that it took a stroke of luck to re-energise his father’s challenge, to prevent him from losing the match five-one? Fate is never far away — at least that’s Kai’s belief. Where Mack looks for messages after an event, Kai is seeking reasons to justify them. His meeting Jaime was Fate in action: the accidental coming together in the supermarket, then two days later their coincidental arrival at the café where they ended up sitting talking together for two hours… Maybe both men might argue that meeting was ‘meant to be’, even if looking at it through opposite ends of the same telescope. Or were they, in their own different ways, just searching for reasons, explanations? Has Kai inherited from his father some need to be able to explain why shit happens? Or is wanting certainty just how everyone was made? And if that is the case, have either of them yet rationalised Jackie’s death?
Not having thought about his mother for a while, Kai watches the referee re-set the balls for the eighth frame — Adams still four-three up — and tries to force himself to interrogate Fate once again; not about his mother’s death, but to see if he can divine what happens next in the match. His is a pursuit predicated on looking forward as opposed to his father’s looking back. Kai seeks signs: in the way Mack is perched on the edge of his chair, waiting to pounce, to take the break-off shot; and also in the way Adams sits still, eyes closed, head slightly bowed. Is there a clue in how the referee intones “Frame eight, Jim McAllister to break”? Kai wants there to be one — and he wants it to be positive. When his father bends to address the cue ball, Kai wants the next thrust of Mack’s cue to be filled with magic, a salve for all the pain the older man has endured over the previous three years; he wants that elegantly tapered strand of ash to perform more like a wand than a snooker cue; he wants to be back on the balcony tomorrow, cheering his father on in the semi-final — not for his own sake, but for Mack’s.
The white, sent on its way, clips the edge of the triangle of reds just where it is supposed to — but then bounces from the cushion with a little less side than needed and spins away at the wrong angle, the consequence of which is that it kisses the blue on the way back down the table. And stops two feet short of where it should have.
Before Kai has a chance to curse Fate, Adams is up from his chair; he walks around the table like a man who has found a life-raft in a choppy sea. Mack, back in his chair, stares accusingly at the table. Kai’s eyes are fixed on his opponent, wishing for a mistake, pleading for Fate to do his father one more good turn.
Adams slams a red into a corner pocket and ends up perfectly placed on the blue. With what feels like unseemly haste, the balls then begin to disappear. Mack never takes another shot, remains glued to his chair until he has to stand and congratulate his opponent.
Looking up to the balcony, he is too far away to see that his son is in tears.
I love your writing! So detailed and compelling.