player.”
Rick walked behind the chair. A moment later, he walked back into view and handed the note, folded into eighths, to Ethan.
“Guess the number,” Rick said.
“Forty-nine.”
Rick’s face was expressionless. Ethan suddenly felt positively sick to his stomach. How could he have been so stupid? Of course it was a trick! People in Vegas didn’t give you a 99% chance to win ten thousand dollars!
“Open it,” said Rick.
Ethan unfolded the note. He had to use both hands for this, so if he saw the number 49 on there, he’d try to quickly unfasten the straps before Rick could make it to the button.
The number was forty-two.
“It’s a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy reference,” said Rick. “I almost did a Clerks reference and wrote down thirty-seven, or a ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic reference and went with twenty-seven. What thought process went into forty-nine?”
“Not much,” Ethan admitted. “I just didn’t think you’d pick forty-nine.”
“And you were correct.” Rick reached over and unfastened the straps. Ethan quickly moved his arm, as if Rick might suddenly change his mind and push the button.
Had he really won? When was the scam going to reveal itself? It couldn’t possibly be this easy. Rick was going to tell him that it was actually ten thousand dollars off the cost of a timeshare condominium.
“Do you want the envelopes of cash, or an electronic deposit?”
Ethan didn’t trust himself with ten thousand dollars in cash. He might end up right where he’d started. Or where he still was—this whole thing was so surreal that he couldn’t quite process that he might have actually won the money. “Let’s go with electronic.”
“Do you have your banking information handy?”
“Can you use PayPal?”
“The service fee will come out of your payment.”
“That’s all right.”
Rick called for Mindy again. Ethan gave her his e-mail address and she left.
“So would you really have pressed the button if I lost?” Ethan asked.
“Yes.”
“You would’ve just sent me on my way with a shattered arm?”
Rick chuckled. “No. You would have received private treatment. People tend to ask questions when they see somebody staggering down the sidewalk shrieking in pain.”
“Good treatment?”
“Not the best doctor, not the worst.”
Ethan’s phone vibrated. A new e-mail from PayPal notifying him that $9709.70 had been deposited into his account.
The e-mail had to be fake. It would be very easy to generate a phony PayPal notification.
He opened the PayPal app on his phone.
It wasn’t a lie. The money was there. The game was real.
He just stared at his phone in a state of shock. His problem was solved. He wouldn’t have to beg for Jenny’s forgiveness. Ethan had envisioned a scenario where he literally threw himself down at her feet, sobbing, blubbering, promising that he’d do anything to make it better. His children would be watching, mortified by the sight of their father reduced to his lowest state.
Not anymore.
“Based on your expression, I’d say that the payment came through,” said Rick.
Ethan nodded. “Thank you. This saved my life.”
“I’m glad you enjoyed the first round of the game.”
“There won’t be a second round. I just crawled out of this hole and I’m not doing to dig another one. You said I could quit whenever I wanted.”
“That is absolutely true. It’s also true that me telling you about the second round does not obligate you to participate. If it doesn’t sound appealing, tell me no, and we’ll send you on your way.”
“Fine,” said Ethan. “What’s Round Two?”
“The same basic game, but for fifty thousand dollars.”
Okay, Rick had his attention. That was as much as Ethan made in a year. “What am I risking?”
“That’s also the same. I’ll strap your arm down and press the button if you lose. Essentially, the only change for Round Two is that you now have a 90% chance of winning.”
Ethan said nothing.
“I don’t know your financial situation,” Rick admitted, “but I’m guessing that fifty thousand dollars is a pretty significant prize.”
“You could say that.”
“But there’s a one in ten chance that you’ll receive, as you described it, ‘a horrific arm-breaking.’ Still a pretty small chance. The odds are greatly in your favor. But when it comes to shattering the bones in your arm, a 10% chance is quite a bit different from a 1% chance. You now have sixty seconds to decide.”
Damn. Fifty grand?
That could go straight into a college fund for Tim and Patrick. They were still eight and ten years away from that, so Ethan and Jenny weren’t stressing over it quite yet, but it would be incredible to have that money there, waiting