late.'
'Too late,' I repeated, wondering how James entered into this.
Martha said, 'You see…'
'I'll tell it,' George interrupted. 'I want to make sure it's told right.'
Martha gave him a dirty look.
'I had this great idea for a dot-com company and was able to raise some venture capital to get started. Originally, Martha and I were the only employees. Then we started growing…'
'But we were still losing money,' Martha said.
'Yes, but that's normal for a young, rapidly growing company. We planned to have the initial public offering to raise more capital. When the stock market tanked we put it off, expecting the market to come back.'
'But we were bleeding money too fast,' Martha said, 'and needed more right away. Suddenly we were pariahs. Our venture capitalist wouldn't give us any more money; he said it was too risky.'
'To make a painful story shorter,' George said, 'we came to James, who we had heard of through friends, and told him our situation. He offered us a deal: we could gamble for an infusion of capital. If we won he would put money into the company in return for stock. If we lost he would get the stock anyway but wouldn't put in any money.
'It sounds one-sided,' Arrow said.
'That's James' adult version of The Game,' I said.
'We were desperate,' Martha said, 'and we took it. We played roulette…'
'And you lost,' I said, picturing the situation. 'But if the company goes out of business, what good is the stock to James?'
'He has no intention of letting the company go out of business,' George said. 'He has offered us two more deals: the first is to gamble again for another cash infusion. Of course, if we lose again he gets most of our remaining stock. Then he'll put money into the company and try to save it. The second alternative is to sell him practically all our stock at a bargain-basement price. He made the same offer to our venture capitalist for his stock.'
'The diabolical part,' Martha said, 'is that the offer becomes worth less each week-so the longer we delay in making a decision, the worse off we are.'
'If your problems are so bad that nobody but James will help you,' Arrow said, 'then there must be a substantial risk that you will go out of business-and that James will lose his investment.'
'But James makes it up in volume,' I said, suddenly understanding the big picture. 'If he invests in ten small, high-tech companies, even if only one makes it, his return on that one will be enough to pay for the nine losers many times over.'
'You should go to work for James' Martha said, ironically. 'You obviously have the kind of mind he's looking for.'
'He offered me a job.'
Arrow kicked me under the table and I almost yelled out loud.
She asked, 'What are you going to do?' in a sympathetic voice.
'That's why we're here tonight,' Martha said. 'George thinks he has a system for beating roulette. He wants to practice.'
She made 'system' sound like a dirty word.
'Is everybody who comes here in the same boat?' Arrow asked.
'Pretty much,' Martha said. 'If they're not gambling for their lives already, they're thinking about it.'
'Do you know the odds against winning at roulette?' I asked George, trying to sound more empathetic.
'I do,' George said, 'but what choice do I have? We could take James' piddly offer to buy most of our stock. He would still employ us to run the company-on a salary, of course. Then, if we succeed he makes billions while we make chicken-feed.'
'Or we can lose at roulette,' Martha said, 'and hand him the stock for nothing.'
'But using my system we might win,' George said, 'and then we'd get to keep a substantial amount of stock.'
George had polished off three drinks during our conversation so I already knew one probable flaw in his system. I said, 'Explain your system to me.'
'I play only red or black, even odds. Forget the long shots. I start with what I call my basic bet. If I win I keep my winnings and keep betting my basic bet as long as I keep winning.'
'And if you lose?'
I double my bet. Then, when I win it cancels out my loss.'
'What if you lose five times in a row? Do you keep doubling your bet each time?'
'Yes.'
'At that point you would be betting 32 times your basic bet.'
'Something like that.'
'What happens if you lose enough times in a row so that you don't have enough money left to double your bet?'
George squirmed in his chair. 'If I make my basic bet low enough it should never happen.'
'In statistics,' I said, lecturing like a professor, 'anything that can happen will happen eventually. And if you make your basic bet too low it will take you forever to win the amount of money James has decreed you need to be a winner, even if you get lucky. The other problem with your system is that the odds aren't even on red and black. The zero and double-zero on the roulette wheel make them less than even.'
George stared at the table and said nothing. Had I been too hard on him? I was trying to save him what money he had left.
'Thank you,' Martha told me. 'Maybe he'll listen to you. He won't listen to me.'
Arrow had been unnaturally quiet during this discussion. Now she said, 'I think you should listen to Karl. He knows what he's talking about.'
George and Martha left soon after that. Hopefully, they wouldn't be back.
Art had the cashier issue us some 'fun' chips and Arrow and I played blackjack, side by side. I coached her on the basics and she about broke even while I counted the cards and amassed a large pile of chips. It's easy when you're playing for the hell of it.
At some point Art asked me to move the car to let some people out and I was able to park it on the street.
After we tired of blackjack we wandered around the room, betting a few chips at the craps table and the roulette wheel. I started watching the other players. I noticed that there were two kinds of chips, the fun chips, like the ones we were using and the serious chips, for those who had some kind of a bet going with James.
The people betting the serious chips were themselves much more serious than the others because they were possibly betting their companies. It occurred to me that some of these sessions might go on for a number of nights while the bettors tried to increase their winnings sufficiently to, in effect, win their bet with James, or until they lost their stake.
This was borne out when I saw one couple take a pile of serious chips to the cashier and get a receipt for them. I was sure they would be back tomorrow. I glanced at my watch; it was close to eleven.
'I'm starting to drag,' Arrow said. 'When you get up at five, 11 p.m. isn't on your clock.'
I was tired too. 'There's one small problem,' I said. 'We don't have a place to stay.' We hadn't done anything about it before, thinking we would take a night flight back to LA. Now it was too late.
We approached Art, hoping he could help us find a hotel.
'We have a spare bedroom here that isn't being used tonight,' Art said. 'We could let you sleep there.'
'One?' I asked.
'One,' he said, looking from one of us to the other, with just a hint of a leer.
'How many beds?' I asked.
'Two double beds.'
