If Only It Were True

by Marc Levy

“Every moment is for ever.” Lauren decided to tell him a story – a game, that would distract him, she said. She told him to imagine he’d won a contest. The prize was that every morning, a bank would open an account in his name containing 86,400 dollars. There were only two rules: “The first rule is that everything you fail to spend is taken from you that night. You can’t cheat, you can’t switch the unspent money to another account: you can only spend it. But when you wake next morning, and every morning after that, the bank opens a new account for you, always eighty-six thousand four hundred dollars, for the day. Rule number two is, the bank can break off the game without warning. It can tell you at any time that it’s over, that it’s closing the account and there won’t be another one. Now, what would you do?” Arthur wasn’t sure he understood. “It’s very simple: every morning when you wake up, they give you eighty-six thousand four hundred dollars, on the sole condition that you spend it in one day. If you don’t spend it all by the time you go to bed, you lose whatever you didn’t spend. But this game—this windfall—can stop at any moment, understand? So my question is, what would you do if you were handed a prize like that?” He didn’t have to think long to answer. He’d spend every dollar on pleasure and on gifts for the people he loved. He’d find a way to use up every cent offered by this magic bank to bring happiness into his life and the lives of everyone around him. “And ...