The Game

told myself that it was crossing a journalistic line: If she didn’t like the piece I was writing (which was quite possible), I didn’t want her to go on record saying I had written a bad article because she hadn’t phoned back.
    “Just call her,” Mystery constantly prodded me. “What do you have to lose? Tell her, ‘Can you not look like Britney Spears? We’re going to do some crazy shit, and we can’t get caught. We’re going to wear wigs, climb up to the Hollywood sign, and touch it for good luck.’”
    “If I had met her socially, fine. But this is a work assignment.”
    “You’re playing the game at another level now. When the article is finished, it isn’t an assignment anymore. So call her.”
    But I couldn’t do it. If it had been Dalene Kurtis, the Playmate of the Year, I would have called her back in a second. I had no fear of women like that anymore. I felt worthy. I’d proven that over and over since meeting her. But Britney Spears?
    One’s self-esteem can only grow so much in a year and a half.

AND DO YOU THINK THAT LOVE ITSELF ,
L IVING IN SUCH AN UGLY HOUSE ,
C AN PROSPER LONG ?

    —E DNA S T . V INCENT M ILLAY ,
“And do you think that love itself”

It took just one woman to bring Project Hollywood down.
    By all appearances, Katya was a standard-issue party girl. She liked to drink, dance, have sex, and get high, not necessarily in that order. But Katya—perhaps out of innocence, perhaps out of revenge, perhaps out of true love—would outgame every PUA in the house. All those years of study, all those memorized routines and learned patterns of behavior, all those New Rock platform boots were no match for a woman scorned.
    When I returned from New York, Mystery had a workshop scheduled in Los Angeles. He was charging fifteen hundred dollars now—and people were paying. He had five students, guaranteeing a healthy profit for a weekend of talking and sarging. Katya’s was just one of several numbers he had collected while demonstrating his game during the workshop. He’d met her at a Hollywood bar called Star Shoes. She was very drunk at the time, and quite possibly high.
    Monday was telephone day at Project Hollywood. Everyone called the numbers they’d collected the previous weekend to see which leads were hot and which had staled. When Mystery made his calls, the only person who picked up the phone was Katya. If Katya hadn’t been home and another one of Mystery’s numbers had answered instead, all our lives would have been different.
    Despite our supposed skill, mating is largely a game of chance. Women are at different places in their lives when we meet them. They may be looking for a boyfriend, a one-night stand, a husband, or a revenge fuck. Or they may be looking for nothing at all, because they’re in a happy relationship or recovering from an emotionally destructive one.
    Katya was probably looking for a place to live.
    When Mystery called, Katya couldn’t remember having met him. Nonetheless, after a half hour of talk (or comfort-building, as Mystery put it), she agreed to come over.
    “Dress casual,” Mystery told her. “I’ll only be able to hang out for an hour or two.”
    Using words like “casual” and “hang out,” and the time constraint, were all part of a strategy to make the visit a low-pressure event. It’s a much better way to get someone to commit to time with a stranger than AFC-style dinner dating, which can be a painful, drawn-out affair that involves two people who may have nothing in common stuck together for an entire night of awkward conversation.
    Katya arrived that evening wearing a pink sweatsuit and dragging along a scrappy little terrier named Lily. Both Katya and Lily instantly made themselves at home. The former collapsed into the pillow pit and the latter took a shit on the carpet.
    Mystery popped out of his room in jeans, a long-sleeved black T-shirt, and his hair in a ponytail. “I’m just going to hook my computer up to the projector and show you some movies I made,” he told her.
    “No worries, no troubles,” Katya replied in an upbeat Russian accent. She had a button nose that wiggled, puffy cheeks that flared, and blonde hair that bounced to maximize her cuteness.
    Mystery dimmed the lights and showed her our home movies. They were becoming a popular routine around the house because they allowed us to convey positive qualities about ourselves and our friends without even talking. After movie time, Mystery and