The Snooker Club in Little Egypt closed long ago, the smoke-filled world of my early childhood. It was a place of wonders, where a boy first learned to swear, to cheat at cards, to consider and debate the great mysteries of the opposite sex. The present quiet is eerie, ghostly. And yet late at night, when they turn off the juke box in the bar next door, my friends and I can hear, through the ancient walls, the clicking of billiard balls. What's going on over there? Who's shooting pool in a joint they shut down years ago?