I am in Indianapolis. It is a city that fascinates me, always has. Because both of its professional sports franchises play indoors, I have never known much about its geography. The simple truth is that there isn’t much to know. Moreover, this metropolis was founded in the middle of a state that is actually flatter than Kansas, yet it is lined with gorgeous and tall hardwoods. The city lies atop a river that is hardly noteworthy, and yet the place carries a name that would imply that it is in fact the far-east flagship city-state outpost of the Greek Empire. Strange.
It doesn’t stop there. I am in the city for a couple nights with a new friend, who just so happened to make me a less-than-spectacular Americano a few days ago. But she insists she was off her game, and besides, coffee isn’t really her game at all. Billiards is her game. She is a professional, and that’s why we’re here. Though she hasn’t begun playing as seriously as she would like, she has already been on ESPN a time or two. She can clean a table in as much time as it takes me to actually clean a table. She sits at dinner and ponders what she would do with an extraordinarily bad leave.
It’s all sort of like Rounders, only with pool. We enter a bar, enter a backroom she just so happens to know the password for, and she begins to clean house and win big on old Russian men and vagabond mafia, while I make obnoxious jokes and hit on their girlfriends. I’ve been carrying her equipment, which is an especially lowly part for me to have to play. So to make things more interesting, I’ve trained her to say Oh no, Coach doesn’t play here, when people ask about me and my presence. In the meantime, I learn more about pool than people like you and I would ever otherwise know.
The truth is, of course, that she doesn’t play the mafia, and ESPN doesn’t play her (though they probably will someday). The only time our lives have been at risk is when I stared down some frat guy’s girlfriend. And so long as I’m disclosing the reality of it all, I may as well mention that the foes my new friend is regularly destroying are just frat guys like the one mentioned above, in sports bars like the ones back home. But it’s an adventure all the same, especially for me. Seeing frat guys lose – one after another, to a young woman that continually looks towards me, for the coach’s approving nod – is a dream come true. A reckoning for the ages.