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“I can tell I’m going to love this. How do I know what the new rules are?”
“I’ll tell you.”
“How do I know you’re telling the truth?”
“That’s the beauty of the Infinite Game. Lying doesn’t matter. With the rules changing every move, the lie I tell you now could be the truth that lets you win later. And I have some other good news for you.”
“They’re muzzling you before we play?”
“If you win tonight, I’ll tell you everything you want to know about the Qomrama.”
I know he wants me to bring up Allegra’s clinic and how he hurt me by going through a friend. I won’t give him the satisfaction. Nothing that’s already happened can be fixed. Concentrate on today and hope the fucker keeps his word when I beat him.
“There’s still time to forget this shit.”
Mason looks over the boards.
“You’re being boring. Do it again and I’ll hurt another one of your friends. Now play.”
The longer I look at the board, the less sense it makes. It’s hypnotic. Like heat dancing off the asphalt in the desert. I get woozy staring at the twisted thing and soon I don’t care about saving the world. I want to leave. I don’t want to be in this room with this lunatic. I can’t breathe. I can’t think straight. The harder I try to understand the board, the dizzier I feel. Finally, I have to look away. And Mason sees all of it. All my weakness and doubt. Nothing I can do about it now. Hell, maybe feeling sick is part of the Infinite Game too. Maybe if I throw up on the board I’ll get a free turn.
We start with thirteen pieces in the middle. Mason tosses a coin and I call it.
“Heads.”
It’s tails.
“You lose,” he says. “You have to move seven pieces around the board to win. I only have to move six.”
Naturally. I was losing before I walked in the room.
“One more thing. After each move we say . . .” He pronounces a Hellion word. It literally means “power to you,” but is really a sarcastic version of “good luck.” Something you say when you want to see someone face-plant.
Head games within head games.
Mason makes the first move. He closes his eyes and picks up a few Go stones.
Three black and two white.
“Three times two,” he says. “I move six.”
There’s a three-inch-tall metal Empire State Building with the game pieces. He moves it six spaces along a piece of a Candy Land board. Then he growls, “Power to you.”
It’s my turn. I reach for the Go stones. He shakes his head.
“The rules change, remember? Try spinning the wheel.”
I spin a flat plastic wheel from another game. It’s numbered one to twelve. I get a seven.
Mason says, “Good. The number of your players and it’s a prime. Move two of your pieces, splitting the seven. Four and three. Five and two. Six and one. You get the idea.”
I move two pieces.
“What’s the magic word?” he says.
I stare at him for a minute. Then remember. I bark a Hellion “power to you.” He grins and throws a set of poker dice. He gets a full house and moves the Scottie dog from a Monopoly set in the opposite direction of the Empire State.
How do I describe the next few hours? It’s not a game. It’s some kind of stoner Dadaist performance art. The rules shift and turn back on themselves, sometimes in the middle of a move. Mason spins a dreidel. Rolls one of the dice. Or two. Or all of them at once. He moves three of his pieces, all in different directions across the board, always careful to follow the move with “power to you” because sometimes if you forget, you have to start over and I might blow my brains out if this goes on much longer.
