Jason took the phone back and studied the pictures. Ashlynn was dressed much more casually than for their date. “So she woke up early in the morning to take a selfie.”

“There’s a geolocation tag on those pictures, which places her in the dorms at CSUF, the men’s dorms. My tech people confirmed it. If we look at the picture’s lower mid right corner, we see an award for San Joaquin Valley All-Conference Team. The room is Brace Covington’s. Why is she there at 1:17 a.m.?”

Jason’s mind reeled, and he sank back onto his recliner. He’d just spent $103.73 on that bitch. All she had to do was say, “Sorry, Jason, you’re not alpha enough for me. Sorry, Jason, but as a teacher you just don’t earn enough money.” Instead, she made a point of seeing how much money she could drain from him.

“You think she was too traumatized by her last bad relationship to screw Brace Covington, repeatedly?” Grandpa had the look on his face of a doctor breaking the news to his patient that she has stage-four cancer.

“But Brace is broke, right? As a college player, he can’t receive any money.”

“It’s about excitement,” Grandpa countered. “Plus, what happens to Brace’s income if he goes pro?”

“But she can’t know that,” Jason observed.

“True, which is why she’s plate spinning.” Upon seeing his grandson’s puzzled look, Grandpa explained. “You’ve seen the circus performer who has a dozen plates spinning on sticks. Every now and then he has to go back and spin one of the plates to keep it going. When she dated you, Ashlynn got a plate spinning. She’ll tell Brace that you’ve proposed to her, and tells Brace that if he won’t commit to marriage, she’ll have no choice but to marry you. Suppose she ‘accidentally’ gets pregnant by Brace. She tries to get him to marry her, especially if he’s about to get signed.”

“But what if Brace says no?”

“She keeps the child, and collects money, to the tune of $10,000 a month. Child support awards like that are common.”

“Child support?” Jason felt enraged. “In a year, that’s three times my salary.” Jason guzzled his beer.

“Or, if he doesn’t get signed, and she gets desperate, she comes onto you—she’s got your plate spinning. The two of you have sex, and she ‘accidentally’ gets pregnant, only now she agrees to marry you. Many guys will marry her, never knowing the child isn’t theirs. Never knowing there was a Brace in the picture, never imagining that they are married to her only because she got desperate and figured she couldn’t do any better.”

Jason sank back into his recliner, and felt that the Keystone lite he just drank might have been 180-proof Everclear. He hadn’t been shaken like this since he’d realized that his grandfather wasn’t a clueless old fart, and that The Midas Game was real. Jason didn’t know which was worse: being taken like a sucker for a hundred-and-three dollars, or his willingness to ignore the obvious truth, that there was no chemistry between him and Ashlynn, not even for a second.

“Okay,” Jason sighed, “so Ashlynn isn’t the one.”

Jason was startled by the sound of his grandfather’s glass slipping out of his hand and onto the carpet. Jason was always surprised by his grandfather, and never the other way around.

“The one?” his grandpa asked, and his face looked pale.

“Yeah, the one I want to marry,” Jason replied. Getting up from his recliner, he asked the old man, “Can I get you another drink?”

“Yeah, only make this one on the rocks.” Jason’s grandfather massaged the back of his neck, as though it were sore. “I didn’t want to do it, but tonight we run the marriage scenarios.”

* * *

Jason took back every unflattering comment he had ever made against his grandfather and his game. His grandfather was a frickin’ genius, and The Midas Game was the greatest invention in the history of mankind. Maybe his judgment was colored, because he had just had the sexual experience of a lifetime with the voluptuous redhead from the diner. She lay next to him, with her brilliant red hair splayed over the pillow, and her huge freckled breasts sitting atop her pale chest. Her inner thighs were milky white and a muff like fine copper wire glistened at her delta. Jason decided that if he had to, he would crawl on his hands and knees over broken bottles to play this game.

Jason knew several things. Her name was Vilma; that he and the redhead from the diner had been dating for several months, that it was the greatest sex of his life; and that he had a decent-paying job and a car.

The redhead leaned over and gazed at Jason with her green eyes. “Jason, I’m pregnant.”

Jason was in a state of bliss, so he was slow to grasp what she had just said. “What? I thought you said you were on the pill.”

“Don’t be silly,” she replied with a laugh. “The birth control pill hasn’t been invented yet—that’s not until the sixties.”

“Then why did you tell me you were on the pill?” Jason asked in alarm.

“I meant diet pill.” The redhead turned onto her side to look at him, accentuating one wide hip.

“But you knew I would think you meant the birth control pill,” Jason protested.

“Are you going to do the right thing?” Vilma asked, and lay a freckled hand onto his chest.

“Which is?” Jason wondered how he managed to get a girl pregnant in a video game.

“Marry me.”

* * *

Jason’s grandfather was so full of shit. The Midas Game rocked, and he was having mind-blowing sex on a regular basis, but what was the old codger’s nonsense about not getting married? That was the greatest part of the whole game! Hell, Jason would have paid thousands of dollars for the game, but he was fortunate to be a beta tester and get to play for free. He and Vilma, the curvaceous redhead, were married and had sex all the time, including on the kitchen table, the bathroom floor, or out in the car parked beside the lake. Jason thought that his grandfather was just a victim of the Embittered Old Man Syndrome, in which an old coot hits a certain age and starts yelling at kids, “Get off of my lawn!” and is constantly bitching either because he has constipation, or diarrhea, or gout, which poisons the old curmudgeon’s world view, coupled with his bitterness at losing his youth.

Vilma stepped out of the shower, brushing her lustrous wet red hair back from her soft shoulders, and her full breasts bounced with each step of her freckled thighs. Her fat breasts glistened with moisture, and her soft wide nipples begged to be sucked.

“I could do this forever,” Jason thought and shook his head. “Don’t get married, ha!”

* * *

The combination of cry and scream was ear-shattering, causing Jason to jump and spill his beer.

“Don’t just sit there. He needs to have his diaper changed. And when were you going to get some more diapers, anyway?”

Jason turned to study the woman, who looked vaguely familiar. “Who are you?”

“How many beers is that?” she replied. “I’m Vilma, your wife.”

Jason looked at the woman, who had gained at least fifty pounds, and lost the shapely curves she once had. She now resembled the Pillsbury dough boy, only with red hair and freckles. “Do we still have sex?”

“Of course, we had sex just last month.” She got up and moved with ponderous steps to the kitchen, and Jason noted that she was as wide at the waist and thighs as she was at the hips. “We need some formula, too.”

“Can’t you breast feed? Jason asked. “Your tits are big enough for triplets.”

“Don’t be silly; I don’t want my breasts to sag.”

“Why not?” Jason thought. “Everything else is sagging.” Jason knelt down and struggled to change the dirty diaper, which stank horribly, and he nearly retched. “Safety pins?”

“Disposable diapers haven’t been invented yet,” Vilma yelled from the kitchen. “You’ll need to flush the cloth diaper in the toilet—just hold onto it so it gets rinsed off, and don’t let go or it will clog up the toilet. Joey has a checkup coming up—that’s fifteen dollars.”

“Who’s Joey?” Jason yelled as he looked for a place to set the two-inch safety pins.

“Your son. Did you get hit on the head?” Vilma came back from the kitchen, shaking a bottle. She tested a drop on the tip of her elbow.

“Wait, where is all this money coming from? Aren’t you working at the diner?” Jason looked at his wife, and realized that most people change gradually, but he had suddenly jumped forward several years into the game, so that the contrast between the voluptuous woman he’d dated and the fat, sloppy woman he was married to, was shocking, having occurred in an instant.

“No, I’m a housewife taking care of our son,” she replied. “Oh, and Raviscioni’s didn’t want to extend me credit today for groceries, so you need to take things up a notch.”

Jason decided he would approach his boss and see if he could get some extra hours on the weekend. Looking down at his watch, he saw that his situation was pretty much unchanged. In a couple of years he’d shaved off several thousands of dollars in debt, but he still owed more than twenty-two thousand dollars, more than half his annual salary.

* * *

“I need money for school supplies and school clothes,” Vilma announced. She looked even heavier and more shapeless than last time, when was it—three years ago in game time? Jason supposed that marriage was all about love and commitment, but he was frustrated because he was working extra hard to support a wife who was a far cry from the beauty he’d dated. Plus, this was a video game, and guys played video games because they were full of explosive action and hot chicks, or even better, explosive action with hot chicks. Nobody wanted a video game for deep conversations or, even worse, every humdrum and soul-killing task of raising a family: going to work, working, coming home, paying bills, mowing the lawn, fixing the kitchen sink.

“The toilet’s backed up,” Vilma announced, explaining the stench he smelled. “The plumber needs twenty dollars.”

“Twenty dollars?” Jason was incredulous. “The doctor was only fifteen.” That’s always the way it was in the house. Some new bill or bills appeared, and it was Jason’s job to find a way to pay for everything.

“The doctor wasn’t making a house call, which the plumber is.” Vilma waddled into the living room, and ‘waddled’ was not an exaggeration. The woman had a gut that hung down as low as her crotch. What kind of lame videogame was this? Why couldn’t there be a curvaceous blonde in a thong bikini running through the casino with a flamethrower? Or a slender Asian beauty in a tight-fitting wetsuit coming out of the ocean with a speargun and a martini?

Joey was now walking, and the fact that the boy needed school supplies gave Jason a feeling of hope.

“Dear, I was just thinking,” Jason began, “that if Joey is going to school, then you could go back to work at the diner, at least for the morning shift.”

Jason started calculating, and of course that was every guy’s thinking, that with two incomes, everything would be cheaper once he got married. Now that Joey was going to school, there was no reason Vilma couldn’t go back to work and help him to pay some of the bills, and relieve some of the enormous stress he was under.

“I can’t,” Vilma responded.

“Can’t?” Jason was nonplussed.

“I’m pregnant,” Vilma said, placing her hands on her bloated belly, and if she were eight months pregnant, Jason wouldn’t have been able to tell.

“I thought you said you were on the IUD,” Jason countered, and felt himself becoming angry.

“Yes, only not an intrauterine device, but an Incontinent Urinary Diaper,” Vilma explained. “Ever since the baby I’ve gotten a little loose and tend to have accidents.”

“Yeah, like getting pregnant again,” Jason thought. Then he reflected on all those expenses he’d finally managed to get through, buying formula, diapers, vaccinations and checkups, clothes, and so on, until the kid was independent enough to be able to go to school. Jason was looking at another five years of work until this second baby could go to school. It looked like he was going to have to work the night shift, which was brutal, but the pay was better. “Dammit! How could this get any worse?”

Jason was about to find out.