I was trying to think of a nickname for her, you know, because she seemed like that sort of person. The kind you give nicknames to.
I rattled off names in my head as balls began to sink into pockets. Opening break, 1, 3 and 4 go in. I tentatively dub her The Man-Eater. She follows up with a bank shot, sinking the 2 and putting her in striking distance of the 5, which is pocketed into the corner without so much as an afterthought. I take notice of her movements, fluid and measured, as she quietly maneuvers around the table. Almost like a life-sized version of a spider -- a Black Widow. I briefly recall having been stung by a black widow (a much smaller one), when I was 13, and how it hurt, how grotesquely bulbous I had become, and how much I hated the hospital. Black Widow's fingers tap against her lips as she deliberates between the 5 and 7. A moment's reprieve. I glance into those opal eyes, briefly, and I think I imagine they aren't really eyes but holes, dark pits carved into that impossibly statuesque face where countless brave, honorable and good men have fallen and never returned. And beyond them I can almost hear the gears of their destruction and mine; spinning, turning, adjusting with cold, robotic efficiency as she mentally traces the swiftest route to my humiliation. She glides towards the north end of the table, settles behind the 5, too far for a conventional shot but she doesn't care, she doesnt need a bridge, she spears the ball one-handed like a javelin before sending the 7 over the side pocket like a man over a cliff, already regretting suicide. A pause is taken; she deftly chalks her tip while looking strangely solemn. Perhaps it wasn't meant to end this soon. She takes position behind the 8, breathes, cocks her firing arm back like the hammer of a pistol, and then...stops. She stops. I stop. The whole room stops. She looks back at me, like Tom Cruise in The Color of Money, and smiles. I can count her teeth, and they are many, I begin to feel my head being slowly devoured in the jaws of The Praying Mantis. The 8-ball plops unceremoniously into the corner pocket as my beer arrives on a dirty coaster. I finish it in one go and do not tip the bartender.
Mantis comes over and I raise my empty bottle to her. "Good game," I say.
"How tall are you?" she asks.
I am momentarily bewildered. I get up off the stool, mustering my remaining reserves of cool and collectedness. I feel my feet plant firmly against the floor. My shoulders ease back, my chest puffs out, and my eyes rest level with her breasts. I look up.
"Five, FIVE!"
"You're pretty cute for a little man."
"Thank you. Likewise. I mean except for the part about being little. Or a man, I hope."