The Game

Don’t approach a woman with a sexual come-on. Learn about her first and let her earn the right to be hit on.
    “An amateur hits on a woman right away,” he decreed as he rose to leave the hotel. “A pro waits eight to ten minutes.”
    Armed with our negs, group theory, and camouflage openers, we were ready to hit the clubs.

We piled into the limo and drove to the Standard Lounge, a velvet-ropeguarded hotel hotspot. It was here that Mystery shattered my model of reality. Limits I had once imposed on human interaction were extended far beyond what I ever thought possible. The man was a machine.
    The Standard was dead when we walked in. We were too early. There were just two groups of people in the room: a couple near the entrance and two couples in the corner.
    I was ready to leave. But then I saw Mystery approach the people in the corner. They were sitting on opposite couches across a glass table. The men were on one side. One of them was Scott Baio, the actor best known for playing Chachi on Happy Days. Across from him were two women, a brunette and a bleached blonde who looked like she’d stepped out of the pages of Maxim. Her cut-off white T-shirt was suspended so high into the air by fake breasts that the bottom of it just hovered, flapping in the air above a belly tightened by fastidious exercise. This woman was Baio’s date. She was also, I gathered, Mystery’s target.
    His intentions were clear because he wasn’t talking to her. Instead, he had his back turned to her and was showing something to Scott Baio and his friend, a well-dressed, well-tanned thirty-something who looked as if he smelled strongly of aftershave. I moved in closer.
    “Be careful with that,” Baio was saying. “It cost forty-thousand dollars.”
    Mystery had Baio’s watch in his hands. He placed it carefully on the table. “Now watch this,” he commanded. “I tense my stomach muscles, increasing the flow of oxygen to my brain, and…”
    As Mystery waved his hands over the watch, the second hand stopped ticking. He waited fifteen seconds, then waved his hands again, and slowly the watch sputtered back to life—along with Baio’s heart. Mystery’s audience of four burst into applause.
    “Do something else!” the blonde pleaded.
    Mystery brushed her off with a neg. “Wow, she’s so demanding,” he said, turning to Baio. “Is she always like this?”
    We were witnessing group theory in action. The more Mystery performed for the guys, the more the blonde clamored for attention. And every time, he pushed her away and continued talking with his two new friends.
    “I don’t usually go out,” Baio was telling Mystery. “I’m over it, and I’m too old.”
    After a few more minutes, Mystery finally acknowledged the blonde. He held his arms out. She placed her hands in his, and he began giving her a psychic reading. He was employing a technique I’d heard about called cold reading: the art of telling people truisms about themselves without any prior knowledge of their personality or background. In the field, all knowledge—however esoteric—is power.
    With each accurate sentence Mystery spoke, the blonde’s jaw dropped further open, until she started asking him about his job and his psychic abilities. Every response Mystery gave was intended to accentuate his youth and enthusiasm for the good life Baio said he had outgrown.
    “I feel so old,” Mystery said, baiting her.
    “How old are you?” she asked.
    “Twenty-seven.”
    “That’s not old. That’s perfect.”
    He was in.
    Mystery called me over and whispered in my ear. He wanted me to talk to Baio and his friend, to keep them occupied while he hit on the girl. This was my first experience as a wing—a term Mystery had taken from Top Gun, along with words like target and obstacle.
    I struggled to make small talk with them. But Baio, looking nervously at Mystery and his date, cut me off. “Tell me this is all an illusion,” he said, “and he’s not actually stealing my girlfriend.”
    Ten long minutes later, Mystery stood up, put his arm around me, and we left the club. Outside, he pulled a cocktail napkin from his jacket pocket. It contained her phone number. “Did you get a good look at her?” Mystery asked. “That is what I’m in the game for. Everything I’ve learned I used tonight. It’s all led up to this moment. And it worked.” He beamed with selfsatisfaction. “How’s that for a demonstration?”
    That was all it took. Stealing a girl