The Game

that?” Herbal asked. There was no anger or resentment in his voice; only the red rings around his eyes betrayed the emotion he felt.
    “It’s the rule of bros before hos,” Roadking said.
    “No,” Mystery said. “I’d like to agree, but sometimes it’s hos before bros.”
    Herbal cracked a smile for the first time that afternoon: He and Mystery actually saw eye to eye on something.
    Strip away the community bond and the seduction business interests that united us, and what was left? Six guys chasing after a limited subset of available women. Wars have been fought, world leaders shot, and tragedies wrought by males claiming territorial rights over the opposite sex. Perhaps we’d just been too blind to see that Project Hollywood was doomed from the start by the very pursuit that had brought it together.
    After three hours of go-nowhere debate—during which Papa, oddly, didn’t speak once—we asked Mystery and Herbal to give us some privacy to talk amongst ourselves and come to a house decision.
    They both agreed to accept whatever we decided.
    When we entered Papa’s room, there was a flurry of activity. Several figures darted into his bathroom and shut the door. I hadn’t seen his room in nearly a month. The carpet was barely visible beneath six convertible black foam chairs that had been unfolded into beds. On top of each was a pillow and bedding.
    Where were the people who slept here? Who were they?
    We folded the beds back into chairs, sat down, and prepared to reach a conclusion. That was when Papa spoke for the first time.
    “I will not live in the same house as that guy,” he said.
    “Who?” I asked.
    “Mystery!”
    Papa’s hands trembled from either hatred or nervousness. He was a difficult person to read. He hadn’t been sarging in months, and much of the progress he’d made after working so hard to improve himself had disappeared. He was the same blank, introverted shell I had first met in Toronto. His passion was no longer pickup; it was Real Social Dynamics. Instead of going to seminars on meeting women, he spent most of his time flying around the country to marketing and business seminars.
    “Mystery disrupts my workshops,” Papa continued. His voice was distant and monotone, echoing from somewhere deep inside his head. “He damages the house. And I’m worried he’s going to harm me.”
    “What are you talking about? He wouldn’t do anything to you.”
    “I have nightmares that Mystery is coming into my room with a knife. I’m getting locks put on my doors because I’m scared he’ll break in.”
    “That’s ridiculous,” I said. “He’s not going to hurt you. That’s your own issue: You need to learn how to deal with aggression and confrontation rather than just avoiding everyone and trying to kick them out of the house.”
    But no matter what I said to dissuade Papa, he kept repeating the same sentence—“I will not live in the same house as that guy”—in a robotic voice, as if he’d been programmed to say it.
    “Have you ever stopped to think,” Playboy finally asked me, “that the only reason you’re defending Mystery is because he’s your friend?”
    Perhaps Playboy was right. I was giving Mystery special-circumstances treatment, because he had brought me into the community and because the house had been his idea. None of us would have been here without him. But he had screwed up. He had made his bed. I needed to consider what was best for the house.
    “But,” I said. “I’d still like to find a way to solve this without anyone having to leave the house.”
    “We’ll trust whatever you decide,” Papa said. “You’re the house leader. Everyone looks up to you.”
    I found it strange that Papa, who was so adamant about having Mystery leave, was putting the decision in my hands. For the next two and a half hours, we discussed possible compromises. The more we talked about it, the more complex the dilemma seemed. There was no solution that was going to satisfy everyone:
    Papa wouldn’t live in the house with Mystery.
    Mystery wouldn’t live in the house with Katya.
    And Herbal wouldn’t live in the house without Katya.
    Someone had to go.
    “All the problems in this house can be traced back to one source,” Playboy said firmly, “and that source is Mystery.”
    I looked at Xaneus. “Do you agree with Playboy and Papa?” I asked him.
    “I do,” he said. He too seemed to speak from somewhere deep in his skull, as if he weren’t really