Enter, Exit
By: Matthew Querzoli
Tags: Short Story, Birth, Pool, Death, Fiction

Enter, Exit

At the Paddington pub, there existed only one cue for the pool table. The other three had gone missing in a variety of devilishly creative ways: one had been cracked over the head of an unruly patron by his on-and-off girlfriend (off that particular night), another had been broken into even pieces and attempted to be flushed down a toilet, and the other had disappeared up the dress of a tall, pregnant, backpacking Swede.

So, the obstetrician and the funeral director had to share.

They both had a tinge of inner-city elitism about them. Their clothes were tasteful, exuding expense. Both wore tan chinos and a button-up shirt, sleeves rolled up to their elbows. They drank craft beer intermixed with the odd Old Fashioned. Well-groomed facial hair adorned their cheeks and jawlines, though both would have shaved it off at the first hint of complaint from their wives. Or mothers.

In fact, they reeked of the affluent East.

Abandoned by work colleagues, the two had headed for the empty pool table at the same time.

“Up for a game?” the funeral director proposed rhetorically.

“Pub rules?” asked the obstetrician.

“Suits the setting,” said the funeral director, who knew all about the importance of a good setting.

“Gaz,” said the obstetrician, offering his hand.

“Murray,” said the funeral director, taking it.

“Winner buys?” suggested Gaz.

“You’re on,” said Murray, already nursing a pint of pale ale from some backwash local brewery.

Gaz spilled the coins and Murray grabbed the rack to set up the balls. Gaz slid the white ball smoothly across the red baize and offered the cue to Murray.

“All yours, mate,” said Murray. He knew his history with first breaks.

Gaz shrugged and moved to the end of the table. At the bar — a behemoth of stone and mosaic tiles — a group of women groaned unanimously after a round of tequila shots. The Polynesian bouncer barely glanced at them, resuming his thousand-yard stare at a group of Indian punters waiting for a horse to jump on the television.

The break was crisp and clean. The balls whizzed off around the table, well and truly in disarray. No balls were potted in the end, and Gaz passed the cue over.

Conversation sparked.

“So whaddaya do when you’re not playing pool, Murray?” said Gaz.

“I own and operate a funeral home,” said Murray, breathing down the glossy wooden neck of the cue. Murray had always played like that; the cue directly under his chin, a habit picked up from watching his father. He took a punt on an easy small into the right pocket, top cushion. He potted it easily. “Yourself?” he asked.

“I’m an obstetrician,” said Gaz.

Murray, who was into irony as well as being vaguely superstitious, even after years at the home, began to chuckle. His second shot went wind, and the cue back to Gaz.

“So is this some divine, contrived meeting is it?” said Murray. “People start with you and end with me?”

“Something like that,” said Gaz, whose shot went wide.

They fell into a rhythm; both were average pool players, and pissed, so potted balls were rare. On the occasion one did get one in, the other would quickly catch up, their concentration suddenly honed by the concern of losing. They went round for round at the bar, too. The group of girls left soon after the Polynesian bouncer had kicked out a few twenty-one-year-olds hunched over some lines on a phone in a bathroom stall. The Indians won, lost, won twice, and then put it all on a horse running out of France, and tossed away a week’s pay. The pub, though not empty, was slowly becoming a shell of its earlier hours. It was losing its charm just as the floor was getting more sticky.

“Let me ask you this,” said Gaz, who’d returned with a round of scotches, with two balls each left before the black. Although the play hadn’t improved, the game was now tinged with a seriousness it was bereft of before. “We come into this world covered in blood and vernix. That’s how we enter. But you and your crew do the opposite upon exit. You clean the body, dress it up well, let people stare at it one last time, and then place it in a pit or incinerate it for display on a mantelpiece somewhere. Don’t you think it’s unnatural?”

“Think about that a lot, do you Gaz?” asked Murray.

“Well, hasn’t it ever occurred to you?”

Murray shrugged, and potted a ball. “Occasionally I’ve questioned it, yes,” he said. His next shot went off the table. The bouncer glared at the ball as it rolled past him on the ground, as if personally affronted.

Gaz retrieved the white for his shot. “And?” he pressed.

“It’s all for everyone else. Families, friends — they’d prefer to see their dearly departed leave cleanly,” said Murray. “You don’t think people would prefer a cleaner birth too? If they had the choice, you don’t think people would choose their children to be born already swaddled in clothes and fast asleep?”

“Agreed,” said Gaz. He potted the two he’d been slowly chipping toward the centre holes for the last five rounds.

“Alright, so we make it unnatural because that’s the preference. To be removed from that natural part of life that is death, because in grief, death is unnatural,” said Murray. He thought that made sense, even through his drunken haze.

Gaz held off his reply he finished his scotch and the game.

When he did so, Murray shook his hand and they both grabbed their jackets. Though he’d lost, Murray didn’t offer to buy the round. He could sense the mood; he knew all about sensing moods.

“Well, whatever the case, I reckon all that we are are highly-paid facilitators,” said Gaz.

Murray nodded knowingly. “First and last,” he said.

“Nice to meet you, Murray,” said Gaz.

“You too, Gaz,” said Murray.

The bouncer nodded at the pair of them as they exited the pub and entered the night.