Page 48 of The Plus Ones

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He keeps pointing at the book and signals for her to keep guessing.

“It’s a movie that’s based on a book? Harry Potter!”

Everyone in the hotel lobby is quietly laughing.

“Give me more clues, oh my God!”

Matt just ignores Bernie while he draws another perfect rectangle on the board. Meanwhile, there’s fifteen seconds left on the timer.

“It’s another piece of paper. Draw faster!”

The rectangle slowly becomes an upright box. Matt draws a perfect circle on it and points to it.

“It’s a ball in a box. It’s—a milk carton?”

Matt signals to her to keep going and keeps pointing at the circle.

“It’s—it’s a carton—a carton of orange juice!”

“Yes!” He draws little dots beside the orange and then points to the orange.

“Orange juice—fruit flies. Pulp?Pulp Fiction!”

“Time!” the resort manager calls out just as Matt jumps up and punches the air and then high-fives his wife, picks her up, and twirls her around. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him this animated, and also—holy shit—how did they do that? They were a total disaster, and then all of a sudden—bam. It’s like they were reading each other’s minds or Matt just knew that she’d get it eventually.

I exchange a look with Roxy. We’re up after Chase and Aimee, who are up after these guys, but Matt and Bernie get to keep going and switching off until they blow it. We’ve been watching other couples play Couples Pictionary for the past half an hour—or Couples Win, Lose, or Draw, as Don and Debbie prefer to call it. They’re the oldest couple here, and they went five rounds to win ten points before failing when Don couldn’t figure outTaxi Driver. They nearly got into a brawl over it.

It’s fun, but there’s an undercurrent of real competitiveness because the prize is a free couples massage, and who wouldn’t want that?

Bernie thoroughly erases the upright dry erase board, stretches her fingers, and cracks her neck before reaching into the box to pull out an index card with a movie title on it. She looks very excited, narrows her eyes at her husband, and then says, “Got it!” The big timer gets reset to a one-minute countdown, and Bernie starts to draw…or paint. She’s holding the marker like a paintbrush and doing big strokes and shading.

Matt’s just leaning back in the sofa and grinning at his wife, waiting for her to complete her masterpiece. “It’s a mountain.”

“Yes!” She signals for him to keep guessing.

“Cold Mountain.”

She shakes her head and continues drawing something in front of the mountain.

“Brokeback Mountain.”

She shakes her head.

“Cliffhanger.”

She shakes her head and quickly draws what is clearly a woman with her arms outstretched. She points to the woman and then to the mountain and then draws circles and arrows around the woman.

“It’s a woman and a mountain.”

She smiles and signals for him to keep going but then adds more details to the woman and the mountain. She is a professional painter, so she takes this part of the game very seriously. Meanwhile, all of her friends are laughing at her. She keeps drawing circles around the smiling woman.

“A mountain woman?Misery.”

She shakes her head and glares at him.

“Are you sure it’s notCold Mountain?”

“Time!”