.././.\\.\//./

Zandra repeats the three-card monte game on the TV tray. The stakes may be lower, but they don't feel any different to her.

Chad swallows a mouthful of chewed chip paste and says, "M'kay, so, the odds are always one in three of guessing right, right? Or two in three?"

Zandra overturns the cards so that they're face down. She scoots them around on the TV tray to mix up their order.

"Forget the odds, child. Clear your mind. Tune into something deeper than numbers," Zandra says. She looks directly at Bexley. "You know you have the power inside of you. Use it. Show me where the black seven is, child."

Bexley closes her eyes in meditation. When she opens them, she points at the middle of the three cards.

As good a guess as any. That'll do.

Zandra flips over the card on the left. It's a red seven. Bexley grins.

"Now, child, this is where you must reach even deeper, because now you must decide if you'll switch your selection," Zandra says, waving her lit cigarette over the TV tray like a magician's wand. "Don't search for or expect an answer. Search for the truth. Feel the truth. Feel for the same universal groove of reality that causes the wind to blow or the leaves to fall or an arrow to fly after it's released from a bow or a knife to cut. The underlying way of things. The underlying truth of things."

Is that enough woo-woo fairy dust or do I need to sprinkle it on even thicker?

Bexley takes a moment to bathe in the bullshit. Then, finally, she says, "I switch."

Excellent choice.

"Let's make sure I have this correct. First, you chose the middle card as the black seven. Now, you're saying the card on the right is the black seven, and the card in the middle is not, correct?" Zandra says.

"Correct."

Zandra turns the remaining two cards over. The black seven is on the right. Bexley's switch worked. It's enough to get Chad to put down the chips.

Bexley is flabbergasted. "Am I...am I...a...am I a...psy..."

"Are you a psychic? Oh, child, we're all psychics," Zandra says. "It's just that some people know it and others don't."

And those who actually know it are savants. Marilyn vos Savant, to be specific, although that'd be one hell of a name for a psychic.

Had Zandra the time or inclination, she would've explained to Bexley how Marilyn vos Savant relates to the three cards on the TV tray.

I don't, but maybe you do.

Born in 1946, Marilyn vos Savant is known as one of the smartest people to have ever lived. She landed in the Guinness Book of World Record for possessing the highest IQ on record. Among her other achievements is the counterintuitive way she solved the "Monty Hall Problem," named after the game show host.

Like a game of three-card monte, the Monty Hall Problem involves a contestant on a game show choosing one of three doors. Behind two doors are goats, and behind one door is a new car. The contestant wins the car if they can choose the door it's hiding behind.

At the outset, the contestant has a one in three chance of guessing the door with the car. That seems easy enough, but there's a twist. After the contestant makes their guess, the host of the game show opens one of the doors the contestant did not select, revealing a goat. The host then asks the contestant whether they'd now like to stick with their original guess or to switch doors. This is question at the heart of the Monty Hall Problem.

The answer, as vos Savant determined, is to always switch. Doing so doubles the odds of guessing the door with the car correctly—from a one in three chance to a two in three chance.

If this doesn't sound right, everyone from schoolkids to PhDs thought so, too. However, as vos Savant and Zandra both know, the math works out.

The contestant's first guess has a one in three chance of being correct. Those odds don't change after the first door is opened to show the goat, because the guess was made with the least amount of information. However, the odds of the "switch" door get better after the first door is opened, because there is one less possible chance to be wrong.

In other words, the odds change based on the amount of information present when a guess is made. Even if it seems counterintuitive, it's easy enough to test if someone has three doors, a car, and some spare goats. Or, absent those, three playing cards.

If it took someone with record-breaking IQ to figure this out, it's well enough for Zandra to assume Chad and Bexley aren't aware of the Monty Hall Problem. They are, however, aware of psychic powers.

And it's not like the supernatural hasn't been used to fill in knowledge gaps before. Easiest trick in the book.

Bexley points at the space between her eyebrows and says, "I can feel my third eye opening."

"Of course you can, child," Zandra says. "Now you have to learn how to see."

Chad hums a bastardized version of Amazing Grace while Bexley sets the cards up again.

No, we can't be having that. You got your hits. Let's leave it that way.

Zandra scoops up the cards and puts them back into the pack before Bexley can give three-card monte another shot.

Although Zandra's application of the Monty Hall Problem worked well this time around, the odds were never concretely in her favor. A two in three chance of winning because of the switch doesn't cancel out all the other ways to lose.

Best not to let Bexley think too long about that.

They smoke cigarettes, watch the glowing splinters in the TV screen, and come up with some homemade Zener cards for Bexley to practice her "powers" on with Chad. Unlike three-card monte, the point of a Zener card game is to guess a shape printed on a card out of view. At one point, psychologists used them to test psychics. Now they're used in movies about the supernatural, and to separate marks from money.

Zener cards were a best seller at Sneak Peek. They'd come in packs of 25. That's five each of five symbols: a star, a square, a circle, a plus sign, and some squiggles. Couldn't keep them in stock. Clients would buy them after readings.

I, of course, knew better. Why use five easy-to-remember symbols for a psychic test? You've got a 20 percent chance of guessing the correct symbol on the first try. Why not 25 hard-to-remember symbols? Or 50?

The answer, obviously, is that people will pay for the thrill of discovering their "psychic abilities," so it's better to keep the odds within reach. Difficult psychic assessments hurt sales. So, total bullshit.

There is, however, something that isn't bullshit that's been on my mind lately.

"Those speakers in your cousin's car, Chad—how low can they go?" Zandra says.

Chad finishes revealing the DIY Zener card to Bexley. She got it right. He lights her a fresh cigarette to celebrate and says to Zandra, "How low? What do you mean?"

Zandra flicks a cigarette butt onto the floor. "Has it ever gone so low that you couldn't hear it anymore?"

Chad rubs his chin in thought, because it's his understanding that's what people do when they think.

"Remember that one song? From last summer?" Bexley says, prodding Chad.

Chad snaps his fingers. "Oh, yeah. That was crazy. We were riding around with Ray, and he puts on this track called, 'Secret Smells of the Meat Industry.' It's by his old band, Food-Grade Ham. So, like, it's got this bass drop in this one part, and it goes so low. Like, really low."

Zandra groans.

Food-Grade Ham? What the fuck kind of music is that? I'm going to have to listen to It now, aren't I?

"Go on," Zandra says.

"Yeah, yeah, it gets really low and shakes the whole car, and then all of a sudden you can't hear it," Chad says.

"But you can feel it. That was the weird part," Bexley says.

Excellent.

"Do you suppose Ray keeps a copy of this track in his car?" Zandra says, unsure of how people listen to music in cars these days. Tech culture isn't her strong suit. Neither is having a valid driver's license.

"If he does, it's on a CD. Remember those?" Chad says.

I remember cassette tapes, child.

Sure enough, Ray kept Food-Grade Ham's debut CD in a sleeve strapped to the visor over the driver's seat, as the three find out after they head to the car. Chad slips the disc into the CD player built into the dash and skips to Secret Smells of the Meat Industry. Zandra, sitting in the backseat, isn't sure whether to plug her ears or hang onto the oh-shit handles.

The music confirms that Ray found his calling in reiki and drug dealing. Food-Grade Ham sounds like thrash metal dipped in nacho cheese.

"Ready? Here it comes," Chad says over the clanking and cross-eyed crooning of Food-Grade Ham.

The bass drop kicks in, rattling the car. With the speakers in the trunk so close to her in the backseat, it feels like Zandra's receiving CPR through her spine. Then, suddenly, the music stops, but the song keeps playing. Just as Chad described, the sound is gone, but the tremors from the bass remain.

"This is perfect," Zandra says after her heart skips back into beat and the song ends.

"Perfect for what?" Bexley says.

"Can you isolate just that part and repeat it? Put it on a loop?" Zandra says.

"I can figure it out. Why?"

Because human ears can't hear below 20 hertz, and something special happens at 18.98 hertz.

"Figure it out before tonight. We're going back to the cul-de-sac house, and Food-Grade Ham is coming with us," Zandra says.