Ted Kosmatka - The Games

Vidonia tried not to think about the large man to her left, and she decided instead to veer the conversation into less risky territory. For a while, she had some success with both.

She brought up Olympics past, and for a while they laughed about the scandals that lived there. The Y-chromosome women, the Chinese swimmers with their paddle feet—an abnormality the Chinese had tried to pass off as natural birth defects, in all four swimmers. Looking back, it was all so funny now. Just as the gladiator event disallowed any human DNA, the rest of the Olympic events disallowed any manipulation of the contestants at all. With the level of sophistication achieved in the tests today, it was simply impossible to get away with stuff like that, so nobody tried anymore. Instead, they channeled all their energies of manipulation into the one event where it was legally sanctioned.

When the waiter came with the next round of drinks, he set a fourth, smaller shot of cloudy liquid on the table. “Who’s driving tonight, folks?”

Ben and Silas looked at each other, nodded.

“One,” Silas said.

“Two,” Ben said.

“Three.” Silas threw rock. Ben, paper. “I guess I am,” Silas said grudgingly, looking over at the waiter.

“Then this is for you,” the waiter said, and slid the small, milky glass of D-hy toward Silas. “After you drink it, give yourself five minutes before you drive.”

“Yeah, I know the drill.”

Vidonia hated the taste of D-hy, but she had to admit that it had cut down on the number of drunk driving accidents in the three years or so that it had been out. Bars were required to give it out free to at least one member of a drinking party, unless the people could prove they didn’t intend to drive home.

When the waiter walked away, Ben jerked the discussion back around. “So what did Baskov have to say in the limo?”

“Nothing interesting,” Silas said. His eyes turned to a young woman walking purposefully toward them.

The woman stopped at their table and looked between Silas and Ben. She had a clip screen in her hand and appeared somewhat out of place in her blue-and-brown business uniform. “Is one of you Ben Wells?”

Ben’s back straightened, and he suddenly sat four inches higher. “That’s me.”

“Great.” The woman’s expression loosened in relief, and she slapped an envelope down on the table in front of him. “I’ve been trying to track you for the last three weeks, but you never used your card.”

“What’s this about?”

“Sir, if you’ll just sign here”—she held the clip screen out to him, indicating with a finger where to scratch his name—“I’ll leave the package with you and be on my way.”

He ignored her and reached for the yellow envelope.

“Sir.”

Ben tore the end off.

“Sir, you’ll need to sign this first.”

He slid the contents of the envelope onto the table. “Ninety-eight thousand,” he said, holding up the check. “It’s a start. A good start.”

“Sir, you need to sign for that.” She pushed the clip screen on him.

“No.”

The young woman looked confused. “You must—”

“Must what?” His voice raised. “If I sign that, then I give up rights to go after her for the other part she owes me, right? I know how she’s trying to work this. This was my money to begin with, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let her keep the other half just because she’s paying this back.”

The young woman glanced around nervously at the people who were beginning to stare. “Sir, you can take that up with a lawyer. This isn’t the place. I’m just supposed to get you to sign receivership, that’s all.”

“Receivership of payment, right? But this isn’t payment. This is just her returning what she owes. She’s trying to pass this off as payment for a car, right? But it’s my car and my money. No.”

“Sir, I have to warn you—”

“Warn me?” Ben stood up, suddenly a tower of indignant anger. His stool teetered backward and clattered to the floor. Around them, the nearby tables had gone silent, though the rest of the club was as noisy as ever. “Two years ago I came home early to surprise her. Well, I surprised her, all right. And the guy behind her. That was my warning. That was the first hint I had that things were different between us. Don’t talk to me about warnings until you walk in on something like that.”

The woman’s face flushed red. Her mouth opened. No words came out, so she closed it with a snap.

The anger seeped from Ben’s face. “There is no point in arguing.” Ben’s voice was soft and measured again. “Let’s play a game, shall we? The game is called Who Gets the Money? Your part of the game is simple. You call your boss and explain what happened—some asshole took the check and refused to sign for it. Your boss then calls the bank to try and cancel this check as quickly as he can. Someone at the bank then has to block the check on the computer system.

“My part of the game is also simple. I try and get to the bank and cash the check as quickly as I can. Keeping in mind that possession is still nine-tenths of the law, my ex can sue me if she wants the money back. That sounds fair, doesn’t it?”

The woman stared at him.

Ben turned to Silas. “Well, how about you? Does that sound fair?”

“Sounds fair to me,” Silas said.

“Okay, then that’s the game,” Ben said. “Starting now.”

The young woman hesitated for another moment, looking at the faces fixed on her from the circlet of interest that had gathered around their table. Then she started moving all at once, snatching the phone from her thigh pocket and flipping the screen open.

“No, no, no.” Ben shook his finger at her gently. He pointed to a sign hanging on the wall.

No calls allowed in restaurant

Her mouth tightened, and she snapped the phone shut. Gripping the clip screen tightly in her hand, she turned on her heels and angled off through the crush of people without saying goodbye.

Ben turned back to face the table. “Well, I’m sorry, but it seems that something has come up. I’m going to have to rush off. But the drinks were on me; I seem to have come into a bit of money.”

Ben picked up the glass of D-hy, gulped it down with a grimace, then turned and quickly followed the young woman toward the door.

When he was gone, Silas turned to Vidonia. “Care to take odds that he’ll make it?”

“I couldn’t even guess who’s got the better chance.”

“I’d give it even money,” Silas said. “But chances are he’ll just give the check back, anyway, come Monday.”

“He seemed pretty set on keeping it.”

“When a couple spends two years divorcing, maybe they don’t really want to get divorced.”

Vidonia shot him a skeptical look.

“They do this. Breaking up can be easy; they’re making it hard. Back and forth, every few months.”

They sat, sipping their drinks.

“It looks like it’s just you and me now,” Vidonia said, not quite sure why she liked the idea. “Do you want to get out of here?”

“Sure,” Silas said.

Vidonia lost their tie-breaking round of rock, scissors, paper, and when the waiter brought another shot of D-hy, she drank it down like a good sport.

Five minutes later, as she climbed behind the wheel of Silas’s sports car, she turned to him, saying, “It’s been a while since I’ve driven a pure combustor. My car is technically a hybrid, but it drives like a fuel cell.”

“Don’t worry about it. Just go easy on the accelerator; you’ll be fine.”

She turned the key, and the engine shook to life. A thrill shot through her as she put the transmission into reverse and backed the car out. As she turned left onto the boulevard, she goosed the pedal and her head jerked back against the headrest.