Season 20, Episode 10 The Book of Luke, Vol. 2
In the wake of PB’s departure, only one person would go home.
The network still wanted a final five for the finale—and the Trial’s sole victor would determine who was eliminated.
Our names were painted over the holes at the top of each table maze.
The winner would choose who went home by sinking their ball in that respective player’s hole.
Naturally, I had one target. No matter how many loaded looks my husband and I had shared over the last fifteen minutes, I couldn’t let him stay past tonight, for reasons far bigger than the game.
This was my last chance to remove Barnes; otherwise I’d never be able to tell Erika all I’d concealed, the story I now understood was even more hers than mine.
As Zara directed a sulking Ecklund to omit any “ball/hole” puns he’d prepared, insisting they’d play poorly given what just transpired with PB, I evaluated my table maze.
We were forbidden from testing the handles to get a sense of its weight and shifts, but I could at least eyeball a path from Grand Cayman to Queenstown, twenty seasons of wreckage simplified to a pristine ten-by-three diorama.
Imogen had barely acknowledged me since the fallout, deferring it all with “later, gotta concentrate,” but Erika at least asked if I needed anything from crafty. I shook my head, and she tentatively touched my arm. “Try to focus on the Trial. PB will get past it.”
I could hardly meet her eyes, knowing what I’d have to tell her soon, my reckoning drawing nearer with each passing minute. Would she get past it? Even her capacity for grace and compassion had to have its limits…
Erika’s face darkened as we both noticed Barnes approaching. “I’ll be back,” she said.
Barnes came beside me, shaking his head. “She always bolts from me, huh?”
“Can you blame her?”
“Well, she somehow doesn’t seem to have any issues with you.”
“Meaning what?” I asked, my hackles rising.
“Nothing. Forget it,” he said quickly. “I was just coming to see how you were.”
“The sound of your voice isn’t improving anything, so please leave me alone.”
He exhaled, eyes narrowing. “Okay, there’s plenty you can pin on me, but whatever just happened with PB is most definitely not my fault. That was all you.”
Rage brewed through my whole body, but I couldn’t melt down before the elimination. “I’m walking away.”
He cornered me against the table maze nonetheless, his voice an intense whisper.
“Luke, you’re shaking like you’ve got the DTs, so it’s unlikely you’re about to win a stupid round of pinball.
Don’t ruin your whole game because you’re hell-bent on eliminating me when I can actually help you tonight.
If anyone’s a legitimate threat to the kids getting that prize pot, it’s not the person who currently shares custody with you…
” His eyes then purposefully traveled to Imogen, pacing by video village.
So that was his master plan. “Don’t you fucking dare,” I said lowly.
“Luke, it’s time to be objective—”
“Well, objectively, I’m taking you the fuck out,” I barked, loud enough that the whole set pivoted in our direction, all regarding me like I was a ticking bomb. But I intended to have only one person in my blast radius.
2005
SEASON 3, EPISODE 4:
“Liars and Whiners and Bears, Oh My!”
“And boom goes the dynamite!” Our male team members drunkenly cheered in unison, thrusting their beer steins in the air.
As the Tribulation winners, Helena Malloy had taken our team to a local bar to deliberate for the Trial, an increasingly rare off-site reward (even then they were starting to worry about spoiler culture).
Per my plan with Barnes, I’d again volunteered for the Trial and was now killing time with a haggard Chip ’n Dale: Rescue Rangers pinball machine when Arjun drifted over.
“You don’t have to keep volunteering just because he needs you to,” he said, setting his beer beside mine.
My finger pressed hard on a button. “Barnes isn’t making me do anything.”
“I didn’t say he was making you. But as someone who’s spent most of their life building an image, I’m betting a fancy PR firm said you need to be the posterchild for Stepford devotion by next November, complete with an NRA membership and homemade apple pie,” he sighed, the pinball machine declaring my failure yet again. “Scootch over, it takes two to win.”
Our arms grazed again and again as we silently manipulated the levers and buttons.
Eventually, the ball ricocheted into the jaws of a crocodile, cuing the crackly chorus of the cartoon theme song.
My shirt rode up as he high-fived me, the baggy A&F jeans Barnes had bought me drooping just low enough to tease my briefs.
Arjun was looking, even if he was trying not to.
I promptly excused myself to the grimy bathroom, stumbling so that I dragged my hand across Arjun’s stomach as I passed, leaving him to discern if it was deliberate.
My boozy eyes grazed the novelty artwork above the urinals when Arjun snuck in behind me, locking the door.
He pulled me into one of the stalls, his mouth against mine, the all-too-familiar flavors of stale beer and stolen moments. “I’ve missed you so much,” he panted.
The theory of kissing Arjun again was different than the practice, as effortless as if the last two years had never happened, and I was so unnerved that I actually said aloud, “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t owe me an apology.” I wasn’t entirely sure I’d meant it for him, but then he said, so devastatingly blunt, “Let’s just enjoy this while we can, okay? Our secret. We won’t even tell Imogen. There’s too much at stake. For both of us this time.”
“Of course,” I answered, instantly remembering the roles we both were playing—and what my part required. “Obviously.”
I blinked back to reality as my ball clattered off the table maze at the tiny mountains demarcating “Alaska,” the seventh time I’d fallen here.
No one else had gotten farther except for Greta, who somehow was approaching Season 9’s Norwegian fjords.
I again reset the ball and violently propelled it around my old haunts of the Caymans and the Turks before sailing past those Alaskan peaks, their spiteful thorns finally avoided.
“Greta may be slow and steady, but Luke’s burning through,” Ecklund narrated from his plinth. “Does our blond tortoise have a rival in our beefcake hare?”
I grunted past Bali and Costa Rica. Unknown territory for me, solidly on Greta’s tail…
“Now Barnes is throwing caution to the wind, inches behind Luke!” Of course he was.
I glanced at Greta, who neared a wall of carved tigers that divided each map, a slim opening in the middle labeled “Ranthambore.” The person who threaded their ball through first would determine everything.
I would not lose this game. Barnes would never catch me…
2005
SEASON 3, EPISODE 7:
“Iceberg, Dead Ahead!”
The convenient thing about plotting with your fiancé to manufacture a secret romance with your ex-boyfriend is you aren’t too worried about getting caught. At least by your fiancé.
After Arjun kissed me at the bar, there were joking notes hidden in shower caddies and knees discreetly brushing on the rickety bus that shepherded us to the Trials.
In retrospect, it’s stunning how unperturbed Barnes was by what he knew was happening, but I think he was just that confident in himself.
As much as I craved Arjun, I was certain I’d never leave Barnes.
This was a last hurrah, an extinction burst of old habits before Barnes and I quit Endeavor forever, one more game within the game.
Until Glacier Bay. This was the first time Endeavor had a luxury sponsor, and the cast salivated to learn the Tribulation came with a special prize.
After a silly obstacle course navigating cardboard icebergs, the fastest time received a night on Dioscuri, the newest addition to the Mirage cruise line.
“And the winner gets a plus-one!” Ecklund cheered.
Barnes was adamant I not pick him if I got it.
“When the cat’s away, the mice decide to kill the cat,” he warned.
When I handily won, I knew I had to set Barnes up for his performance beside Greta (in pigtails no less).
“Luke, I don’t want to ruin it for you. You know I get seasick,” he whimpered.
I wasn’t expecting tears, but he knew the footage he’d generate, me cradling him in my arms. When the episode aired, it was synchronized with one of Barnes’ first major campaign events, a viewing party of the episode followed by a passionate speech I’d heavily ghostwritten about traditional values transcending traditional definitions. Time offered him an op-ed after.
Even Arjun was surprised I chose him, I guess assuming I’d pick Imogen.
She seemed relieved by my decision though, as if this was proof all peace treaties were secure.
I spouted platitudes about rebuilt friendships, and Mary Peach ushered us to the waiting chopper.
We sailed over acres of wilderness until the monolithic glacier appeared, an army of crystalline teeth shoved to the ocean’s edge, the gleaming cruise ship anchored amid scattered bergs.
“I’ll resist the obvious Kate, Leo, and Billy Zane jokes,” Arjun said under his breath as we filmed perfunctory promenades across the empty ship.
The first voyage for paying customers was a week away, so everything was spotless.
A gourmet dinner followed with a fleet of waiters, and I was bewitched, Arjun dreamily watching me absorb it all.
These splendors were hardly foreign to him, but I’d never experienced anything this opulent.
That we still wore our Endeavor jerseys only made it more surreal.
After dinner, Mary Peach brought us to the presidential stateroom, complete with its own private bowling alley.
The sound guy retrieved our mics, but then Mary gasped, suddenly stricken.
“Oh no… We figured Luke would win but assumed Barnes would be coming, so I apologize for what’s through those doors.
The cruise line wanted to sell romance…”
Arjun cracked the curtained French doors to the bedroom, where rose petals had been strewn across the mammoth king bed. “Unoriginal but not ineffective,” he remarked. “We’ll be fine, Mary. Oh, are there any…?” He indicated the ceilings, checking for cameras.
“Lord, no. You think they’d let us mount anything to these walls?”
Arjun smiled mischievously as the door closed behind her. “I just realized we’ve never actually fucked in a bed. It was always patio furniture or towels at the beach.”
“Well, we only had sex twelve times total that summer. I mean, the actual act.”
“Were you cutting notches on the palm trees?” He collapsed on the bed, the petals briefly sent airborne before fluttering back to the mattress. “So does the esteemed candidate actually get seasick, or was he just too scared to leave his mob unattended?”
I shrugged uncomfortably in response. “Gotta pee.”
He followed to the open door while I pissed, catching me off guard with the intimacy of the gesture. “You know there’s a whole world of men who would fall over their feet to date you. You don’t have to settle for him,” he eventually said as I washed my hands.
“I don’t want to date someone. I want to marry someone.” I managed to keep my voice even, no matter how insulted I was by his patronizing. “And I am.”
“Then why are you here with me?”
Because my boyfriend told me to. Because I’ll always love you. “Because this will never happen again,” I answered, not even lying. “And we both know that.”
He flinched, as if my words stung him somehow, and for the first time I sensed the boat gently rocking beneath us. After a moment, he took my hand, and I caught my reflection staring back in the expansive mirror, floating above his shoulder. My only witness.
Arjun was inches from me now. “Take off the ring.”
Years later, I’d wonder if Barnes did the same when he was with those men. Even though I only did it once, I’m still fairly certain I did it first.
The next morning, Arjun mussed the sheets in the suite’s second bedroom, flinging damp towels next to its shower as if staging a crime scene.
It comforted me that we were both giving some type of performance.
When we returned to set, Barnes only asked once what I’d done on the cruise ship.
“Nothing you wouldn’t have,” I replied. I do still think that’s true.
The table shuddered in protest as I sharply yanked down on the handles, trying to launch the ball through the gate of tigers—except all I did was lodge it firmly in the opening.
“Shit!” I rushed to extract the stuck ball, but as I roughly pulled it out, the serrated wood of the tigers caught the cheap plastic, slicing it wide open. It would never roll now.
“I need a replacement!” I shouted manically, except all eyes were on Greta’s map, right as her own ball tipped off the side.
“I need a new ball!” I screamed again, all too aware Barnes was approaching his own tigers, brow taut with concentration.
“Imogen, don’t let him send you home!” I called, but she ignored me, focused on her table. Without a ball, I had only one tactic to buy her time. “Barnes, you’re going to lose!”
His shoulders visibly tightened.
“Do you hear me? No one wants you here!”
He was listening. I knew it. Screw the edit.
“I actually wish you’d been here at the beginning of the season. If those people despised me, they would have crucified you… That’s probably the biggest relief of divorcing you: I can stop apologizing to the whole world for marrying you in the first place.”
With a flick of his wrists, Barnes’ ball shot briskly through the tigers.
“And now you’ll end up alone, because all you’ll ever be is someone’s second choice,” I spat. “God knows you were mine!”
He refused to acknowledge me as his ball cruised past the markers of Cortona, Shanghai, and Queenstown, irrevocably toward Imogen’s name…
“You promised me she’d be safe, you son of a bitch!” I cried, finally breaking. All I could do was watch the girl I’d met a lifetime ago in an airport as she stared blankly at Barnes’ map. She was supposed to beat him. By any standard of justice, she was always supposed to beat him.
I sank to the ground, burying my face in my knees as the horn blared through the hollow Arena. Despite the pounding in my head, I heard Ecklund heavily exhale. “With that, we lose one of the game’s best, a legend since our very first episode…”
How had I failed her all over again? And not just her. Arjun, Erika, myself…
“Greta.”
What? What had my husband done?
“Barnes brings Luke and Imogen with him to the finale.”