“My turn,
this question is for Randy. Your agent helped you get established when you were
a struggling actor. Now a large agency wants to sign you. Do you dump your
agent?”
Randy is a fairly handsome man and looks as if he could have possibly have been an actor.
He looks up at Shelly and knows that if he doesn’t answer this question
truthfully she is going to challenge him. He figures she wants him to answer
yes and he notices that she is close to getting rid of her cards.
“No I
wouldn’t.”
“Liar, I
challenge.”
“Alright,
let’s hear it.”
“When you
were working for the car dealership, the one that gave you the first job after
your wreck when no one else would, you immediately quit working there when
Borden offered you your old job back. How loyal were to them? Not at all that I
remember.”
“Yeah, but Borden offered me a lot more
money, Annie and I wanted to get married and since she had a son I needed to
earn more so I could support her and Ian.”
“You just
proved my point dummy. I didn’t say you didn’t have a reason. I said that you
would quit.”
“Okay
everyone let’s vote on it.” Jack just wanted to get the game moving again.
“1-2-3 vote!”
“And the
winner is Shelly. Give Randy your answer card and let’s move on to Annie’s
turn.” Jack is quite gregarious and is also handsome in a somewhat subtle
manner.
"You accidentally damage a car in a
parking lot. Do you leave a note with your name and phone number?" Annie
has directed her question to Randy also.
"It depends on if there were any witnesses."
“Unfortunately I believe you, it’s only
illegal if you get caught, right?”
“Pretty much, so how did you think I would
answer?”
“I figured you would say no, but you would
have to admit it you got caught so I lose this one. It’s not that you have any
morals though.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you always think you are
superior to everyone else.”
“Alright you guys cool it. If you are
going to fight we should quit playing.”
“That’s just fine with me.” Annie gets up
from the table and leaves the room.
“I told you that this game is a good way
piss people off.” Shelly says to Jack as Randy gets up from the table also and
walks to the bedroom where Annie went to. Shelly noticed that Randy’s bad leg
was really bothering him from the way he was limping.
Annie and
Shelly are both attractive blondes, Annie is taller slightly more slender and
Shelly has a bit more of voluptuous body type; it is very easy to see the
similarities they share as sisters. They are only three years apart in age,
with Shelly being the oldest. Annie is
wearing a very short skirt and a skimpy top and Shelly is dressed in jeans and
a tight fitting tee shirt, they are both quite attractive.
“I knew that Annie and Randy were having
problems but I thought they could manage to play a civil card game. Obviously I
was wrong.”
“This isn’t exactly a normal card game. I
have seen lots of people get mad when they are accused of being a closet cheat
or a thief. If you read the box it does call the game ‘a moral dilemma game’,
you don’t think that might be a red flag or something?”
“Never mind the cards!” Jack yells down
the hall that Randy and Annie disappeared down, “Get back in here and let’s
party!” He looks at Shelly, “I am a little bummed though, I have the card that
lets me make up my own question and I was looking forward to using it.”
“What question did you want to make up? It wasn’t
one that would piss anyone off was it?”
“I hadn’t gotten that far, but they all
seem to do that, I guess it is probably better that I didn’t get to use it now
that you mention it.”
Randy walks back into the kitchen and he
has a mirror in his hand, it has lines of cocaine on it and he hands to Jack.
“Here, have a line. Let’s get back to our
party before I have to go to work.”
“Where’s my sister?” Shelly asks Randy
after she snorted her line.
“She’s still in the bedroom but she said she was coming back out here.”
Shelly handed the mirror to Jack. “Here,
take this. I’ll go get her.” She went back to the bedroom and left Randy and
Jack at the kitchen table doing lines.
Annie was sitting on the bed crying.
“Are you alright?”
“Yes, it’s just that Randy always thinks
he is right about everything”
“That’s why we call him Mr. Perfect.”
Shelly said referencing the nickname her and her sister call Randy, behind his
back of course, because he really did think he was always right.
“I am getting tired of his selling coke to
his friends and then him leaving me to entertain them when he goes to work. Then
he gets mad because he says I flirt too much, but that’s what he and his
friends want me to do. I don’t understand.” She starts to cry.
Shelly doesn’t like the way Annie flirts
either but she does blame Randy for leaving Annie at the house after drinking
and doing drugs all night and expecting nothing to happen. It seems to Shelly
that Randy is setting Annie up to fail. Annie has always been insecure and needs
to be reassured that she is cute and that is just what Randy’s friends are more
than willing to do for her when Randy leaves them alone with booze and the cocaine that he had become
addicted to after the horrible car wreck he was in before he met Annie.
Three years before this Randy had just
gotten out of the army and was on top of the world. He was good looking, single
and had saved a lot of money and to top it off when he got back from Germany his
friend Jack’s father had hired him on at one of the biggest corporations in the
country. Everything was going his way.
One evening Randy was on his way home from
an afternoon of skiing and boating at a popular hot spot in his brand new Alfa
Romeo with his beautiful fiancé. All of a sudden a man in a pickup truck crossed
over the center line and in an instant Randy’s fiancé was dead and one of
Randy’s legs was wrapped around his body and broken in pieces. The driver of
the pickup truck was drunk, had no insurance and barely had a scratch from the
wreck.
One year later Shelly drove up to Fall
Creek Reservoir with Annie and Annie’s two year old son Ian on a hot afternoon
to go swimming with some friends of theirs. They ran into lots of people they
hadn’t seen for a long time and one of them was a young man Shelly had met four
years before when he was home on leave from the army and a mutual friend of
theirs brought him to a party she had thrown for Halloween. He had hit on her
but she was already dating another man, but she did remember what a gentleman
he had been and if it had been another time and another place something
different might have happened.
While driving home in the car that
afternoon Annie told Shelly about a nice guy she had met at the lake, he was in
a full body cast after having been in a horrible car wreck the year before and
they were rebuilding his leg with pins and metal plates. She told Shelly that
he had just gotten out of the army when he got in the car wreck that he was
still recovering from.
Thus began the soon to be tumultuous
relationship of Annie and Randy and within a year they were married and had a
son of their own to add to the son Annie already had.
Back to the party, Annie and Shelly were talking
in the bedroom after Randy and Annie had gotten in the fight while they were playing
the game called “Scruples”.
“I know, but sometimes you do get a little
carried away with your flirting, but usually Randy doesn’t mind. Why don’t you
come back to the kitchen and party with Jack and I. Randy will be going to work
in another half an hour and you won’t see him again until tomorrow.”
“You’re right. Let’s go back to the
kitchen.”
Annie and Shelly join Randy and Jack at
the kitchen table. Shelly notices that the guys have put the game away. Good
thing she thought. Randy offers the mirror with a line of coke on it to Annie
and she takes it and sits down at the table.
“I have to get ready to go to work, why
don’t you guys stick around awhile and party with Annie.”
“No problem, thanks man!” Jack remarks.
Shelly was thinking that there hadn’t ever
been any doubt that he was planning on staying there. She was about ready to go
home but she didn’t want to leave Annie there by herself to party with Jack,
too much temptation for her little sister. She had spent most of her life looking
out for her little sister and she wasn’t about to stop on this night. She
stayed until Jack went home and then went home as well; one less evening for
Annie and Randy to fight about, and one less “screw up” for her sister. There
were a lot of Scruples on the line but Shelly knew that the game they had played
this evening was the last thing that needed to be considered.
