Position Night

Position night¹. An opportunity for all teams to advance or cement their place in the standings. My team, in second, was playing the first place team. That group had a familiar face: our old fifth team member, Mimi - the girl next door - was now part of the opposition. She was going to play Mike, and as sweet as Mimi is, I was hoping Mike would kick her ass.

That didn't happen. Mimi came out firing, and Mike - recently upped to a five handicap and just back from a trip to India - was blitzed 5-1.

Jen was playing a girl Alex and I had dubbed Jessica Alba II. During our second season, we'd heard of a girl who played Wednesday nights who looked like Jessica Alba, only "better". While she definitely wasn't superior to the original Alba, the resemblance was enough for the nickname to stick.

She attracted a lot of attention. One night, a particularly tall admirer stared at Alba II while she played on one of the front tables. He was grinning like an idiot. After a few minutes, he asked the houseman who the celebrity was. I wonder, was he disappointed to learn she - outside of Amsterdam Billiard Club -wasn't famous?

Jen, a looker herself, took on Alba II² on one of the front tables. I finished my match early, and came back to the bar to get a beer and watch. I walked over to talk to Chris and my opponent, Landrew, while watching Jen and Alba II play.

Chris was telling Landrew how the internet has killed gambling in the pool world, when all of a sudden I heard my name called from the bar.

"Hey Kris, you enjoying that view?"

It was Damien, one of the housemen, off tonight. Beer in hand, he was goading me about ogling Jen and Alba II. I smirked, then realized that because of one of the wood-paneled  columns that dots Amsterdam, Damien couldn't see Chris and Landrew from his perspective at the bar. Panning from the left, he saw me(beer in hand, smiling), the column, then the table with the two dueling vixens. An easy mistake.

Jen lost some close games, but the final score was 7-2 for The Invisible Woman. From the games I'd seen, they seemed evenly matched, the games just didn't go Jen's way that night.

Alex, playing once again the slowest player on the opposing team, won 7-5, snapping a losing streak. Combined with my 7-3 win, we finished just under .500 for the night.

Checking the standings the next day, I was happy to see we'd only dropped to third. Mimi's new team, despite winning, had dropped to second. Apparently the former third-place team had thrashed the fourth-place team. Still, in our first meeting, her team had come out on top - something she reminded me, real friendly like, as we had drinks afterward.

At the end of March, though, my team will have a chance at revenge. And we'll get it.

¹It's very hard to resist a dirty joke here.
²Or as some call her, Ellaina.