The House Always Wins

It’s still dark when I sit up in bed, disoriented from a bad dream. Then it descends on me. What awaits me downstairs is worse.

The familiar tightness clutches at my belly as I find Greg in our living room. He paces and talks to himself, wearing the same bathrobe he’s been in for three days. The five o’clock shadow I used to think was sexy is now an unkempt mess. I don’t know when he’s brushed his hair.

“Hey,” I say softly.

He doesn’t turn from the TV screen, which is all fuzz and snow.

Since Greg got laid off, he spends hours trying to win points for health care, for groceries and the thing he lives for: random prizes. He almost never earns enough points because he gets sucked into the “double down” option. Like my grandfather’s stories of Las Vegas, the house always wins.

When Greg’s not gaming, he’s watching the only other station: State News. Logging so many hours also earns points, but it soon became way too slow for Greg.

“Do you know what’s wrong with this thing?” He turns with the remote in his hand.

Once, he was the man who held my hand through a painful miscarriage. Now he’s a lost child.

“Hey.” I gently take it from him and place it on the table. “Let me get you some coffee. We’ll come back to that.”

“Okay, but just for a minute.” He laughs and runs his hands through his hair. “Must be a glitch or something.”

He follows me to the kitchen, and I set up our shiny steel coffee machine. We don’t talk about the fact that there are three lined up, side by side. In a cupboard below are four more of the exact same; we don’t talk about that, either. Ditto for the six in the garage, still in their original boxes.

Both of our phones sound off. I glance at mine: another attempted escape. Enemies of the State found and shot at the border. Names I don’t recognize.

“I hate those fucking alerts,” he mutters and picks up his coffee. The pretty froth disintegrates before it reaches his lips.

“Greg,” I begin. A full-on body shiver runs through me.

Maybe it’s like ripping off a band aid; I’ve got to do it quick.

“I’ve unsubscribed.” I did it by phone, last night before I went to sleep.

He blinks at me. His mouth opens but nothing comes out. Finally, he says, “You can’t unsubscribe.”

“Then how come I did?”

“Of course you can unsubscribe, Jill, they just don’t like you to. It’s not recommended.”

“Yeah, so what? This is no way to live, Greg.”

“Oh my God!” He runs into the living room and grabs the remote, pointing and clicking at the empty screen.

“No!” He falls back into the chair and covers his face. “What have you done?”

“Listen to me.”

He sits up but then hugs himself and rocks back and forth. “Oh no oh no oh no.”

“It’ll be okay.”

He jumps up and screams inches from my face. “How will it be okay, Jill? Huh? HOW!?” Now he grabs the remote and starts punching buttons again, all the while pacing the room.

He stops. “Maybe we can, uh, I don’t know, call and say it was a mistake.”

“Greg, this is getting way out of hand, don’t you think? When was the last time you went outside? Jesus, when was the last time you showered?”

“You don’t get it. I don’t know why you don’t get it.” He throws his hands in the air. “I just need to get our accounts squared away. And then I can give this up. Remember? Remember, when I used to only play a little before bed? Huh? You used to play, too.”

“Just look at our credit card bills, Greg. We spend more on ‘extra time mode’ than we do groceries.”

“What about all the government service points I’ve stacked up? That was mostly me.” He runs his hands through his curls, leaving his hair standing on end. He looks like he’s been through shock therapy.

“Yeah, so I won’t have to pay for our vehicle plates for five years, but we don’t go anywhere.”

“How about the luxury bed I won? You love that thing.”

“Honey.” I take his hand. “There are two main functions for a bed, and we don’t do either together anymore.”

I mentally rewind the endless infomercials about government services and how playing simulated games will earn points. Points get you things. But you have to spend hours trying to win them. Health services, but no will to go outside or do anything but play for prizes and “double down” prizes. Fresh vegetables and fruit at the local grocery, but always the same ones. How much celery can two people eat?

But the random prizes, like little hits of cocaine, are Greg’s favourites. Last Wednesday, he was a kid at Christmas waiting for the big brown truck to pull up. When they delivered his package, he ran into the house. “Jill! It came!”

He ripped it open to find a football. We stared at it and then each other. We don’t play football.

“Hey,” he said. “We can give it to Braeden next Christmas. One less present we have to buy.”

I nodded and tried to smile.

He always trades in what he’s got for what’s behind door number two. From the archival TV we used to be allowed to watch, when there used to be “game shows,” I remember the comical look on the contestant’s face when he gave up the new furniture for a donkey wearing a flowered hat.

Was that funny two centuries ago?

Now Greg storms around the house, waving his arms and ranting incoherently, the toddler I never had.

“You know I can just sign up again.” He holds his hands up. “Anytime.”

I shrug. “And I can unsubscribe.”

“I can change the password.”

“But my name’s on the account too. I can say ‘forgot my password.’ Is this really a game you want to play?”

He gets in my face. His eyes dart back and forth, trying to sort out his next move. I flash to him standing on a busy sidewalk with a sign that says “Spare change.”

He pauses and stares at our terrazzo flooring. I remember picking out tile with him. I remember reading books and discussing movies with him. I remember life before mind control.

He almost sounds reasonable when he says, “What can I do to get you to sign us up again?”

Negotiating with a guy who’s standing on a ledge. How to talk him down. How to get him to accept help.

But oh, he knows me so well. He reads me.

“Just this one last time, I swear. I’ll do one more month of earning points and then we’ll—” He looks around the room as if the answers are etched on the walls. “We’ll make a schedule, one I can stick to. That’s fair, right?” He waits, studying my face. I used to love that he was such an intent listener. Now I feel like a bug on a wall.

“Take a walk with me,” I say. “Get some fresh air.”

He nods and takes a quick gulp of coffee. “And then we’ll sign up again.”

He runs upstairs to shower and change. I pace the floor and then laugh at myself.

“How did we get here?” I ask the empty room.

I think about my cousin Dixon and the party he and his wife threw last month.

He’d led me away from the crowd. “Come with me, Cuz, let me refresh your drink.” As he poured, he leaned in and whispered, “Sarah and I are getting out. Shh. Nobody knows.”

What crazy-ass plan was this now, I wondered as I took the glass of Zinfandel.

“I’m serious,” he said. "I know a guy who can take out the chip and replace it with a whole new identity.” He pointed at his wrist. “But nobody knows.” He looked over my shoulder at Greg. “And you especially can’t tell him. Promise me.”

“I promise.”

“How’s he doing anyway? Still logging in at all hours?”

“It’s worse than ever.”

He lowered his voice. “We’re going to Canada. You could come with.”

I didn’t ask if ‘you’ was singular.

“Listen, never mind for right now. Come out in the garden and I’ll give you this guy’s info. You can think about it. And if you need money, I can help.”

When he slipped me the card, I turned it over in my hand. Paper. Couldn’t be traced if I ate it.

I touched Dixon’s arm. “Do they, you know, reprogram people?”

He bit his lip. “Yes, but first you have to get there.”

He looked over my shoulder again and I turned to see Greg pacing, glued to his phone. Oh God, he was muttering to himself.

“Jill, he wouldn’t make it two blocks without getting himself—and you—busted.”

Now Greg brings me back to the present as he bounds down the stairs, thinking, no doubt, that his joining me for fresh air will placate me.

A dull sadness washes over me. I can’t tell him about Dixon. I can’t tell him about the card in the bottom of my underwear drawer. I can’t tell him that I’ve been thinking so hard about starting a new life, in Canada, without him that it’s taken on a vivid, and in its own way real, narrative. I’d work at a newspaper. I’d make friends. I’d care about the colour of my walls. I’d get a cat.

Our former life, by comparison, takes on a blurry, surreal quality. Like scrolling through your phone and finding an old picture with a background you can’t quite place.

He takes our front porch steps two at a time.

I feel like I’m driving a puppy out into the woods and leaving him there.

I can’t stay here. I know that. But how can I leave him? He’s sick. He needs help.

What about that reprogramming thing? If I could just get him over the border.

We walk three blocks but then he stops and is looking at me. I have no idea what he just said.

“I’m sorry, Greg. I just sort of zoned out.”

He smiles. “That’s okay.”

You could almost believe he’s the same guy I’ve known and loved for so long.

“Have we walked far enough?” he says, already turning back.

When we return and climb the steps to our porch, I think about the psych experiments they used to do with drug addicts. The discriminative stimulus, the object or setting that

immediately triggers a knee jerk response of past behaviour, is our house. He steps into the living room and motor memory takes over. His hand reaches for the remote before he even registers.

“Oh, shit.” He turns to me with a sheepish grin. “We can resubscribe now, right?”

He reactivates his subscription by phone and three hours later and two extra credit card payments, he’s back in business.

Ten minutes in, I hear the familiar jingle and the gamer voice actor. “Super double down!”

“Yes!” Greg says, from his chair.

As I head into the kitchen, another alert chimes off. I can’t help myself. I have to look. Names I don’t recognize. Thank God, not Dixon and Sarah.

They leave in three days. I have an open invitation. One contact takes care of everything, the chip replacement, phony name and a brand-new life in the great white north.

I just have to make that call.

The last time I saw my cousin on the street, he wouldn’t let me tell him if I was in or out.

He kissed my cheek. “Less said the better.”

I didn’t know anyway, still don’t.

“Here,” he said, slipping a plastic pouch into my pocket. “Just in case.”

In three days, they’ll be free. If they can make it, maybe I can too.

What about Greg?

I peek into the living room; he does a happy dance. On the TV set, cartoon fireworks blast out, telling him all about his prize package.

###

I’m ready. If I tell myself this enough, can I make it come true?

Greg surprises me at bedtime by showering and slipping in beside me. He touches my leg, married-speak for sex.

He presses his lips to mine. This time his body is the discriminative stimulus and I respond to it, maybe our last time.

He knows something. He’s going to turn me in. I imagine the points he’ll earn for that.

A better scenario: he’s sorry. He just wants things to go back to normal and we are a couple who hasn’t made love in a very long time.

Either way, this is goodbye sex.

###

He won’t hear me pull my suitcase out of the closet at first light. That phrase, “first light,” pleases me. It suggests that more will surely follow.

I brush my teeth with the door closed and then I remember. I don’t have to be quiet; he’s not waking up.

I could make all the noise I want, but instead I sit on the edge of our bed for a few minutes. This is really happening. I turn to look at his still face. Is this how I will remember him?

I force myself up. My luggage is packed to the brim. I have to sit on it in order for it to close.

I shake my hands out. Stop it. Everything will be alright. I keep it going, this running mantra I will take with me until I reach my destination.

The phone blares. Shit. I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment but then I have to look. Not Dixon. Not Sarah. I realize I stopped breathing for a few seconds.

I turn my phone off and look down at him one last time. He’s a sleeping angel. None of this is his fault.

“Not yours, either,” I say to myself.

I kiss his lips. I could cry. We could’ve been happy. We were happy, before government-controlled gaming.

Regret. Something else I will take with me even after I find freedom.

I step out of the house under the watchful eye of a robin who bounces along the grass. He lands on a worm and eats it whole.

###

The train passes through the tunnel and when we emerge into the sunlight, I sigh. A lady across the aisle smiles at me.

I glance at my watch: 9:30. Work will call my house. Am I not coming in? Am I sick?

Greg might pick up, if the sedative has worn off, but he’ll be fuzzy.

Later he will answer the authorities honestly: he didn’t know anything about my escape plan. He’ll tell them everything. A shot of sodium pentathol will confirm his story.

I hope they’ll reward him with lots of points.

I step off the platform and find a man holding a sign with my new name.

He hands me a grey purse filled with cards, papers, a phone, even snacks. “Welcome to Canada, Laura.”

I thank him, then follow a small group down the cement walkway to the next queue. A few stop to cast one last look at the border crossing. Are they also leaving someone behind? Will they tell themselves they had to, that they had no choice?

Will that still work for them at 2 a.m.?

I spot a wildflower that has somehow poked its way through a crack in the concrete.

I keep walking.