Bola Blanca

Rick and Danny stood at opposite ends of the pool table. The pair of fivers on the table’s edge were a small bet, for them, but they took the competition seriously. Rick lined up a difficult shot on the seven. “Have you ever thought about your purpose in life, Dan-o?” he asks.

“Sometimes, Rick,” Danny admitted. “Sometimes, I aspire to be a cheesy superhero.”

Rick pulled back to shoot, and in the startling moment that followed, a police siren pealed from just outside the pool hall, and Rick lost control on his follow-through. The cue ball bounced violently off the felt and smacked Danny upon the forehead, knocking him out cold.

Rick shouted, “Oh, geez! Are you okay?” Fortunately, Danny was only unconscious for a few seconds. When Danny stood up, he said “I feel… different.” He flexed a bulging bicep. Upon his bald head, a triangle of the sort one uses to set up a billiards match now encompassed the welt left by the ball’s impact, framing it by the exact edges.

Danny asked, “What’s the Spanish translation for ‘cue ball?’” Rick quickly Googled up the answer: “Bola Blanca.”

“You can call me that from now on. Set up a trick shot. Not on the table, but elsewhere.”

“You’re no good at trick shots.”

“Just do it.”

Rick set his beer bottle on the corner of a nearby four-seat booth. Danny pulled back his cue and sent the white ball flying. It bounced, precisely shattered the glass of a signed Billy Joel portrait on the wall, and then hit the bottle squarely on the neck.

“Rick, I suddenly have a double craving: to fight crime, and for the best Mexican food we can find in Milwaukee.”