Finding the Groove

The days following the tournament settled into a new, demanding rhythm for Kaizer. The initial euphoria of victory faded, replaced by the steady, grinding reality of balancing his multiple lives. He was a high school sophomore navigating classes that felt simultaneously trivial and necessary for maintaining his cover. He was a part-time employee at a suburban pool hall, wiping tables and racking balls for minimum wage. He was a clandestine accountant's assistant, deciphering faded invoices for his stern father. And underpinning it all, he was the ghost of Kaizer Saint, relentlessly pursuing the resurrection of his game, one practice drill, one calculated shot at a time.

His evenings became a predictable cycle. Get home from Rack 'em Up (on Tuesdays and Thursdays) or straight from school (Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays). Endure dinner, carefully navigating conversations with his parents, offering curated, edited versions of his day. Then, retreat to the dining room table, now his designated workstation, to tackle the latest box from the Henderson Realty disaster zone alongside his father.

The accounting work, surprisingly, became less of a chore and more of a… neutral zone. Tom Saint, while still inherently skeptical and prone to critical oversight, seemed to have accepted Kaizer's competence at the tasks assigned. He'd explain the requirements for a new set of files – cross-referencing property tax payments, reconciling petty cash slips – with professional clarity, treating Kaizer less like a wayward son and more like a somewhat capable, if temporary, junior clerk.

"Make sure these property tax stubs match the disbursement dates in the main ledger, Kaizer," Tom instructed on Wednesday evening, pointing to a particularly daunting stack of oddly sized papers. "Henderson lumped three different properties together here, the idiot. Separate them by address first, then cross-reference."

"Got it, Dad," Kaizer replied, already mentally organizing the workflow. "Separate by property, then sort by date, then match to ledger entries. Flag any missing stubs or date mismatches."

Tom nodded, a hint of grudging approval in the gesture. "Exactly. And double-check the amounts. Henderson seems to transpose numbers when he's rushed." He returned to his own complex reconciliation task, leaving Kaizer to his meticulous sorting.

The silence as they worked side-by-side felt different now – less fraught with unspoken disapproval, more like the quiet concentration of two people engaged in demanding, detail-oriented tasks. Kaizer found a rhythm, categorizing, comparing, flagging. His mind, honed by decades of calculating angles and percentages under pressure, adapted easily to the logic of debits and credits, invoices and statements.

Occasionally, Tom would ask a question, breaking the silence. "That… cue stick you won with," he inquired one evening, seemingly out of the blue, not looking up from his ledger. "The one you bought. Was it expensive?"

Kaizer froze for a beat, surprised by the direct question about the cue he'd acquired before winning the prize money. He chose his words carefully. "Uh, yeah, Dad. A bit. Used some money I'd saved up." He mentally added 'from high-stakes garage games and mowing lawns' but kept that part silent. "It's a decent one. Makes a difference."

Tom just grunted. "Everything costs money. Especially quality tools. Remember that." He didn't pursue the source of the savings further, perhaps content with the 'responsible purchase' narrative Kaizer was projecting. The conversation drifted back to work. The fragile truce held. Kaizer kept earning his five dollars an hour, meticulously tracking his time, steadily rebuilding the savings he'd spent on the cue itself.

School remained a necessary performance. He floated through classes, doing just enough to avoid unwanted attention from teachers. He aced tests he barely studied for, relying on the bedrock of knowledge from his first pass through high school decades ago. His primary social challenge remained Mark Jessop.

Since their awkward conversation outside Rack 'em Up on Saturday, and Kaizer's deflective BBS reply, Mark seemed to have retreated to a position of wary neutrality. He no longer asked probing questions about pool or online aliases. He engaged Kaizer in conversations about their usual shared interests – movies, games, comics – but there was an underlying restraint, a subtle carefulness that hadn't been there before.

"Saw 'Pulp Fiction' again this weekend," Mark commented as they sat eating lunch on Wednesday. "Still holds up. You seen it yet?"

"Nah, not yet," Kaizer replied, trying to recall if the movie had even been released by this point in 1995 of his original timeline. (It had, he realized). "Heard it's good though. Maybe I'll rent it." (Video rentals – another quaint relic of the era).

"You should," Mark said. "It's… different. Nonlinear." He started describing a scene, and Kaizer forced himself to listen, to engage, to act like a normal teenager interested in movies, even as his mind was calculating the optimal three-rail path for the cue ball after pocketing the five. Maintaining the friendship felt important, a link to normalcy, but the effort required to sustain the facade alongside everything else was immense. He hoped Mark's suspicions would eventually fade, replaced by acceptance of Kaizer's inexplicable "pool phase," but he wasn't counting on it.

His true focus, the gravitational center of his week, remained Thursday afternoon: his next shift at Rack 'em Up and the potential for practice. He arrived promptly at 3 PM again, greeting Mel with a nod and immediately getting to work on the assigned tasks – wiping tables, checking chalk, sweeping the perpetually dusty floor near the entrance.

He worked with determined efficiency, acutely aware of the clock. He needed to finish his duties quickly, cleanly, to maximize any potential lull before the league players started arriving in force around 5:00 or 5:30. Table 6, in the back corner, sat invitingly empty, a silent promise.

Around 4:00 PM, having completed Mel's initial list and finding the hall still relatively quiet – just a couple of regulars practicing and two kids aimlessly batting balls around near the front – Kaizer approached the counter.

Mel looked up from polishing the same spot on the counter he'd been working on Tuesday.

"Finished the list, Mel," Kaizer reported. "Anything else need doing right now?"

Mel surveyed the room, his gaze lingering for a moment on the empty Table 6. He grunted. "Looks okay for now. Keep an eye on the front. Don't disappear." It wasn't explicit permission, but it wasn't a denial either.

Kaizer took it as his cue. "Got it." He walked calmly, deliberately, back to retrieve his backpack and the McDermott. He assembled the cue, the smooth action feeling more familiar each time. He walked over to Table 6, racked the balls tightly, his heart beating a little faster with anticipation.

He started with fundamentals again, determined to build consistency. Stop shots, follow shots, draw shots. He focused on the feedback from the cue, the subtle vibrations, the way the cue ball reacted to different speeds and spins on this particular table's felt. He worked on controlling the distance of his draw, the angle of his follow. He forced himself to stay disciplined, resisting the urge to attempt flashy low-percentage shots just because he could. Consistency first. Precision always.

After thirty minutes of pure fundamentals, he moved on to pattern drills. Setting up simple three-ball sequences, focusing on getting perfect shape not just for the next ball, but for the one after that. Thinking two, three, four shots ahead. He practiced leaving the cue ball in tiny target zones, sometimes placing a piece of chalk on the felt and trying to make the cue ball stop exactly on it after pocketing the object ball. Sometimes he succeeded, the cue ball obeying perfectly. Other times he'd be inches off – a miss that might not matter against Spike, but would be fatal against Jesse Riley.

He ran nine-ball racks against himself, focusing on breaking effectively and choosing the highest percentage path through the balls, even if it meant playing safe occasionally. He practiced his safety game, working on tucking the cue ball behind blockers, freezing it to rails, controlling the speed to leave awkward distances for his imaginary opponent. He knew from the match against Jesse that top-level play often hinged on superior defensive strategy.

He became completely absorbed, the outside world fading away again. The rhythmic clack-thump of the balls became his meditation. He felt the connection between his sixty-three-year-old mind and his fifteen-year-old body strengthening, the decades of experience flowing more smoothly through the conduit of the McDermott cue. He still felt rusty, still made mistakes a fraction more often than his prime self would have tolerated, but the feel was returning. The deep, intuitive understanding of the game, the almost subconscious ability to see the angles and predict the rolls – it was reawakening.

He was so focused on a complex bank shot drill, trying to master the subtle english needed to alter the rebound angle off the cushion, that he didn't notice Mel walk quietly up behind him until the owner grunted.

Kaizer jumped slightly, immediately straightening up, expecting a reprimand for practicing too long or neglecting some unseen duty.

Mel just watched him for a moment, his expression unreadable as usual. He glanced down at the balls Kaizer had set up for the bank drill. "Trying the cross-side bank with outside spin?" Mel asked, his voice surprisingly neutral.

Kaizer blinked, surprised Mel recognized the specific drill. "Uh, yeah," he admitted. "Trying to get the feel for how much the spin changes the angle off this cushion."

Mel nodded slowly. "Table six rail is a hair deader than the others," he stated matter-of-factly. "Absorbs more spin. Gotta compensate. Aim slightly thinner on the object ball than you think, or add a touch more speed." He paused, then pointed with his chin towards the cue ball's position. "And from that angle, careful you don't double-kiss it coming back across."

Kaizer stared at Mel, then back at the table, processing the unexpected advice. Mel was right. The dead cushion explained the inconsistent results he'd been getting. And the double-kiss danger from that specific angle was real if he didn't control the speed perfectly. The old counterman, who rarely seemed to play anymore, still possessed a deep, practical understanding of the game's nuances.

"Thanks, Mel," Kaizer said, genuinely grateful for the insight. "Appreciate the tip."

Mel just grunted again. "League guys are starting to show," he said, nodding towards the front where more players were filtering in. "Better start thinking about wiping down tables one through four again." He turned and walked back towards the counter without another word.

Kaizer looked at the clock. Almost 5:45 PM. He'd gotten nearly an hour and a half of solid, uninterrupted practice. Far more than he'd expected. And a valuable piece of table-specific knowledge from Mel himself. He quickly gathered the balls, racked them tightly on Table 6, and put the McDermott back in its case, storing it behind the counter again.

He spent the rest of his shift (Mel kept him until almost seven because league night ran late) diligently wiping tables, providing racks, staying busy. But internally, he felt energized, optimistic. The practice session had been incredibly productive. He felt closer to his old form, more confident with the McDermott, more prepared for future challenges.

Walking home later that night, the cool air feeling refreshing after the stuffy pool hall, Kaizer felt a sense of genuine accomplishment. He'd put in the hours – sorting invoices, cleaning tables – and earned his reward: money in his pocket (another twelve or thirteen dollars from Mel tonight, bringing his total cash over $110), and precious time on the felt. The grind felt less like a burden now, and more like… progress. Purposeful steps on a long, challenging, but ultimately rewarding path back to himself.