Rules of the Game (50 page)

“Warming up.”

Drive 2.3 miles to James Beach bar, hand valet keys, smile, enter, pretend to be normal. Girls everywhere, drinking, laughing, each one unique and growing ever more intoxicated by the sudden smell of macadamia nuts in the room.

Two women who appear to be in their twenties walk away from the bar. Must start talking or I'll be stuck in my head all night. I feel Kevin's hand on my back pushing me toward them. I should package Kevin's hand and sell it to men who are too scared to approach women.

“Have you met my friend Kevin?” I ask. “He's in the world's only all-Jewish Christian rock band.”

“A what?” asks one of the girls. Model tall, stringy blonde hair, sand-dollar complexion, white jacket with rainbow buttons. Seems like the kind of girl you'd meet at one of those bookstores that sell incense at the cash register.

“He's in a band,” I repeat.

“So am I,” she says. She is friendly and kind of sweet. I didn't expect her to take me seriously. I suppose rainbow buttons are a sign of tolerance.

Her friend has a tight white tube top, compact frame, long black hair, angular face. The kind of girl you'd meet in the sales office of a gym.

I need to start going to the gym again. And eating healthier. And flossing every night. I'm losing it all.

“Is that peanut butter on your watch?” Bookgirl asks, touching my hand.

“Don't manhandle it. It's vintage Soviet military peanut butter. Worth a fortune.”

As Kevin and I talk to Bookgirl and Gymgirl, we automatically pair off. Why do I bother to write? This is so much more fun.

“You have one life to live.” I hear myself telling Bookgirl. The words are not mine. They belong to Joseph Campbell, dead professor of mythology. “Marx teaches us to blame society for our frailties, Freud teaches us to blame our parents, and astrology teaches us to blame the universe.” The fog has lifted. It's funny how quickly it comes back. I constantly forget that people tend to be polite, unless they think you want something from them, which, of course, we do. “But the only place to look for blame is if you didn't have the guts to bring out your full self, if you didn't act on your desires, if you didn't take advantage of what was in front of you and live the life that was your potential.”

There are tears in her eyes. Thank you, Joseph Campbell. I take her hand in mine and she squeezes it warmly. Forgot to clip my nails. Have to add that to the list. I keep a list in my head of things I need to add to the list in my pocket.

“That's just what I needed to hear,” she says, and takes another sip of beer, “because I'm three months pregnant, and I'm just asking a lot of questions right now.”

For some reason, I am not fazed by this. I look at Gymgirl. Kevin is massaging her shoulders and whispering in her ear. I make out the words “anal sex.”

Bookgirl tells me she lives with her boyfriend and loves him very much. She tells me her friend is married and has two children and loves them very much.

The night is dark.

I was introduced to Prince once in a bar, and he asked me what I did. I told him I wrote books. He asked what they were about, and I said they were about the dark side. “Why the dark side?” he asked.

“Because it's more interesting,” I told him.

“But the light side can be interesting, too,” he admonished.

I wish Prince were here right now. He would see that he was wrong. Every adventure to be had in this room is on the dark side. The people on the light side are asleep right now. And they are dreaming about the dark side. Because the more you try to repress the dark side, the stronger it gets, until it finds its own way to the surface. I sleep well. I dream of angels and sponge cakes and panda bears. I don't see the dark side until I open my eyes. And, tonight, it seems the dark side is going to be a pregnant New Age Amazonian who lives with her loving boyfriend.

“Will you take us to our car?” Gymgirl asks when the bar closes. “We don't like walking alone late at night.”

“That will cost extra,” Kevin tells them. They don't laugh. “Just wait a sec while we find our friends.”

Of course, we have no friends here. This is Kevin's way of getting me alone to make a plan. And that is great. Because I enjoy plans.

“Okay,” I conspire with him. “Let's tell them that our friends left without us, and we need a ride home.”

“Love it. What about your car?”

“We'll just leave it with the valet and pick it up tomorrow.”

The girls agree to take us home without hesitation. A simple plan can make all the difference between going home with company and going home alone.

We're walking down the street now, arm in arm. We are saving them from criminals. They are saving us from taxicab drivers. It's a fair trade.

“Wow, it's funny how we paired off into couples,” Bookgirl says. My head reaches her shoulders. And if she doesn't care, I don't care.

Their car is a BMW convertible, which indicates that they surely could have afforded the valet. Maybe they also had a plan.

Bookgirl wants to play me her music. This concerns me, but it also allows me to proceed with stage two of our plan.

“This sounds great,” I tell her. It is sappy and makes me want to punch butterflies. “But it's too windy to hear your lyrics. Just bring it upstairs and we can play it where it's more quiet.”

She agrees.

Women are not stupid: She knows what she's just agreed to. We park and walk arm-in-arm to my front door. Infidelity is in the air. It is dark and smells like macadamia nuts.

I reach into my pocket to grab the keys.

They are not there.

I double-check my pockets, as if everything's just fine. Give myself a full-body pat down. I feel the potential of the evening begin to dissipate.

The girls are looking at me suspiciously now. All the doubts that liquor and smooth talk held back are creeping to the surface of their minds with each passing second. They know something is up.

Okay. No need to panic. Obviously, I must have my keys because I drove to the club. Otherwise …

Fuck. I'm an idiot. I valeted the car. So the valet still has my keys. And I'm locked out.

In the blink of an eye, I develop a plan. There's always a plan.

“I left my keys upstairs,” I tell the girls. “But it's no problem. I'm just going to climb up to the balcony. I always do this.”

I never do this.

“What floor do you live on?” Gymgirl asks. Good question.

“The third. Just wait right there. I'll be back in a second.”

I run to the side of the building and look up. This is possible. It's just a puzzle. And every puzzle has a solution.

Gotta think quickly. I'm losing them.

I believe I can make it. No problem. If I fall, I die.

The girls follow me and look up the side of the building doubtfully. “I'm getting kind of tired,” Bookgirl says. “I should probably go home.”

I suppose this makes sense. After all, she is pregnant. And I really should not be having sex with her.

“This'll only take a second,” I tell her. “Just wait at the front door, and I'll be right there to let you in. Don't worry about it.”

It is time to save the night.

I climb onto the first-floor railing. It's loose and shakes beneath my feet. I did not plan on this. Have to move fast.

Grab the bottom of the second-floor balcony and pull myself up. Forearms shaking. Shouldn't have stopped going to the gym. Kick my legs over. A little winded. Take a short break here with the rear of my Levi's premium boot-cut jeans hanging in the air.

Okay, just have to pull my upper body up now. Quietly. If I wake anyone, they may call the police. Or shoot me.

On the second floor now. Everything is under control. Just repeat, and I'll be on my balcony and home, having sex with this girl and her embryo.

I stretch and grab the base of my balcony railing, then hoist myself up and kick my legs onto the ledge. I am almost home. Just need to pull my body up so my jeans aren't hanging in the air.

There is a slight problem. I can't move. My tie-belt is caught on something. Can't see it from this position. Probably a nail.

Must use brute force. I pull hard on the balcony railing. Forearms getting tired. Now the railing is bending toward me. This is not good.

They really make strong ties in London.

Think, Neil. Think. You're smarter than this nail.

There is a hotel across the street. Maybe I can signal to someone in the window. But what would they do? Probably just call the fire department and make a big scene.

Need to retrace my steps. Unclimb the building.

I lower myself back to the second floor and the tie slips off a rusty nail that probably once held a planter.

Standing on the second-floor balcony, I remove the tie-belt and stuff it in my pocket. The jeans slip halfway down my ass. Won't be able to climb with pants falling off. Need to remove them.

I take off my boots, step out of my Levi's premium boot-cut jeans, lean over the edge of the railing, and toss them up to my balcony.

They plummet to the pavement below.

When I look down to see if the jeans survived, I notice headlights in the street. It's a convertible. The girls are leaving. The night is ruined. I knew I should have stayed in and written. Why do I let Kevin talk me into these things?

“It's okay,” Kevin yells, as I'm putting my boots back on. “The married girl is coming back.”

He is talking way too loud. He's going to wake the whole neighborhood.

“I think we can double-team her,” he shouts.

“Shh,” I admonish him.

A light inside the apartment I'm standing outside flips on. And I'm on their balcony in boxer shorts and one boot.

There is only one way to save the situation. I race to the railing, climb on top of it, then spring onto my balcony. It all happens so fast, and in such a panic, that I don't even know how I did it. I may have just proven the theory of evolution. Surely, if I can access the climbing genes of my ancient monkey ancestors, I can live without technology for that book idea.

What a horrible night. And my room is a mess. Clothes are everywhere. My heart is hammering. Gotta remember to get my boot off the downstairs balcony later.

And pick up my jeans from the street.

And retrieve my keys and car from 2.3 miles away.

Have to add all this to my list. But first I absolutely must check my e-mail. Something important could have arrived that I may need to deal with. The glow of the computer screen and grinding of the hard drive soothes my nerves. This is where I belong. It's a jungle out there.

Kristen is coming to town and wants to stay with me. Magnus wants me to meet some Norwegian rappers. And Stephen Lynch wants me to send clips of an article I wrote about him.

I have a book due in two weeks. I can't possibly do any of these things. So I write and tell Kristen I'm working on a book, but she can stay as long as she
understands that I need to write. I tell Magnus that I'm working on a book, but I can meet them really quickly for dinner, since I need to eat anyway. And I tell Stephen Lynch that I'm too busy to send his clips right now.

Clip my nails. Must add that to my list right now before I forget again.

The buzzer. Who could that be at this hour?

“What the fuck are you doing up there?”

“I'll be right down.”

Kevin is sitting in front of my building. He is not happy with me. I'm probably not the kind of friend he'd call if his car broke down.

“Take that ribbon off your neck,” he snaps. “You look ridiculous.”

We wait and wait and wait. Gymgirl returns, then tells us she's tired and wants to go home. And I'm okay with that. After all, she is married. And we really should not be having group sex with her.

Sometimes mistakes happen for a reason. I need to write my book anyway. It's due in fourteen days. Actually, thirteen days now.

And a book is a lot of work. It requires a massive amount of organization and planning. Fortunately, these are things I'm good at.

I am writing this in case anything bad happens.

If I disappear, please come looking for me.

Just remember the name Ali Raj. He's a magician, but he may have an illegal sideline. He's supposedly friends with the prime minister's son. And on the off chance that I'm breaking some taboo here, I want you to know what happened.

I love the game. And I believe I may be an addict. It's changed my life in ways I never thought possible. In high school and college, my friends came back from winter and spring breaks talking about their vacation hookups. I never got anything on vacation but a sunburn and a refrigerator magnet. I was never able to just relax and have fun. I was too busy worrying about what everyone else thought of me.