The Game

was gone, we inspected the damage. There were cigarette burns in Herbal’s bedspread, and the wall behind the door was destroyed from the constant slamming. There were slicks of unidentifiable liquid on the floor, candles still burning, and clothing flung over every light fixture.
    In the kitchen, the refrigerator and cabinet doors all hung open. Two peanut butter jars and a jelly jar sat on the counter top, with their caps scattered on the floor. Globs of peanut butter dripped from the counter, the cabinets, and the refrigerator shelves. Rather than open bags of bread using the twist tie on the end, she had torn the tops of the plastic bags open like an animal. She didn’t give a fuck. She was hungry; she ate. It was another quality that pickup artists admired: She could go caveman.
    When Courtney returned from court, she sat with the house’s cabal ofpickup artists and planned her appearance that evening on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Mystery and Herbal taught her about concepts like social proof, and NLP ideas like framing. She needed to be reframed. The current frame everyone saw her through was that of a crazy woman. But having lived with her for two weeks, we knew she was just going through a bad period. She was eccentric, but not crazy. In fact, she was incredibly smart. She understood and internalized every concept they taught her.
    “So my new frame, then, is that I’m a damsel in distress,” she said.
    That evening, she shone on The Tonight Show. Unlike during her tabloid-headline-making Letterman appearance, she was composed and well-behaved on camera—and her performance with her all-female band, the Chelsea, was a reminder that she wasn’t just a celebrity, she was a rock star.
    I had driven to the show in Katya’s car with Herbal, Mystery, Katya, and Kara, a girl I’d met in a bar a couple of days before. After the show, we went upstairs to Courtney’s dressing room, where she was sitting on a stool surrounded by the Chelsea. I was stunned by her guitarist: She was a tall, gorgeous bleached-blonde rock-and-roller oozing attitude. Why couldn’t I ever find girls like that in the clubs?
    “Can I stay in your room for two more weeks?” Courtney asked Herbal.
    “Sure,” he replied. Herbal never had a problem with anything or anyone. While Mystery had been moping in his room, he was out helping Katya keep her brother entertained.
    “It may be a month,” Courtney called after us as we left the room.
    In the parking lot, Mystery climbed into the driver’s side of Katya’s car. He hadn’t spoken a word to her all day. She sat in the passenger seat and slipped a dance mix by Carl Cox into the CD player. Her musical taste was confined to house and techno; Mystery listened almost exclusively to Tool, Pearl Jam, and Live. That should have been a warning sign.
    As we pulled out of the parking lot, Mystery’s phone rang. He turned the music off to answer it.
    Katya reached over and turned the music on quietly.
    Mystery angrily turned it off again.
    And so it went: on, off, on, off—each twist of the knob with more venom than the last until, finally, Mystery slammed on the brakes, screamed “fuck you,” and jumped out of the car.
    He stood in the middle of Ventura Boulevard blocking traffic, with hisright arm thrust out and a middle finger in the air, directly in line with Katya’s face.
    Katya crawled into the driver’s seat and drove to the intersection, then turned around to fetch Mystery, who had started walking along the sidewalk. When she pulled up next to him, he stopped, shot her a scornful look, crossed his arms into the fuck-you position, and then continued walking.
    She drove off without him. She wasn’t angry; she was just disappointed by his childishness.
    That night, Mystery didn’t return home. I called him several times, but he didn’t answer. When I woke up the next morning, he still hadn’t returned. Every time I dialed his number, the call went straight to voice mail. I began to worry.
    A few hours later, there was a knock on the door. I answered it, expecting Mystery, but found Courtney’s driver standing there instead. One of Courtney’s many talents was the ability to turn anyone within a hundredyard radius into a personal assistant. Seduction students visiting the house for the first time found themselves running to Tokyopop for a manga book Courtney was in, picking up bedding from her corporate apartment, or sending e-mails to the financial expert Suze