A Nondescript Contemporary Hotel Bar, 3rd Level. 2:47 am, October 19, 2015.

A ginger-haired Princeton man sits at the bar on the corner stool nursing a Perrier and cucumber. He takes a sip and is jerked up straight, sucking on his tongue and drawing back his lips with a grimace. He does not typically bastardize the taste of his mineral water during the season but, after another year where his bye week weekend was spent traveling to… jeez, he couldn’t even remember where this time…and having meetings with the boss (which was more like five minutes at breakfast before the modern prospector retired to a VIP suite of hookers and herbal Viagra), San Pellegrino and lime wasn’t about to take the edge off.

He looked around the lounge at the generic faces at tables — visually appealing but not at all memorable — engaged in conversations that produced no audible feedback to the setting. The bartender, drying a highball glass with a snow white bar towel, looked like every hotel bartender he ever had, and ever would, see in these nameless locales. Instinctively reaching for familiarity, the Princeton man’s right hand raised to rub the embroidered five-point star on his coaches polo. He froze when his grip came away with a royal blue pocket square. He peered down to see he was sitting in a fine tailored suit. He never traveled in a suit.

How did he get in a suit? How did he even get to this bar? Where was this bar?

A gentle double-tap on the Princeton man’s shoulder brought his attention away from the questions.

“Good evening, Coach Garrett.”

“Papa Wade? Fancy seeing you here!” The lights in the room seemed to glow brighter with his relief in seeing a friendly face.

“Wade? Here?” The old man gave a sympathetic smile. “Think back to your training, Jason.”

Jason Garrett, former Princeton Tiger and coach of the Dallas Cowboys, who never traveled in a suit or fell victim to poor situational awareness, felt the lights dim as he reflected on his trip to the bar. He could feel the faces in the bar peering at him. The small chandelier over his head swayed ever so slightly, refracting shards of light across the onyx bartop. He tried hard to concentrate. When he needed to think, he needed to fiddle with something. A pen, a toothpick, a coin. Something that would let his body stay grounded while his mind wandered. He patted his blazer pockets. Empty. The panic built inside him.

His old mentor held out a fist. “Here.” As he gently placed the contents in Garrett’s hand, relief swept over the entire bar. The candles ceased flickering and returned to a healthy the glow. The rain tapping on the windows quit. The air smelled of…the fresh cut grass of the Princeton student quad. Without even looking at it, Jason Garrett knew what it was. The weight, the texture, the feel. He opened his hand and stared at the brass top. It was the same top he had found the first day he moved into the head coach’s office at Cowboys Stadium. He focused, comforted by the totem.

“I don’t know how I got here, in fact. I, uhhh….well, I was on a plane. On a plane, I THINK, I mean.” He looked at his suit and back up at his mentor. But his mentor was no longer before him.

“My name is Mr. Charles. You recall now that I am the head of your dream security, yes? Now, I have reason to believe someone — let’s face it, probably the Patriots — are trying to break into your subconscious to retrieve some kind of information.”

“Well, I certainly am dreaming by the look of your standing there, Mr. Charles. You know, I go on these visits with Mr Jones and, though he’s surrounded by hookers, I get no action.” He smiled a sly little smile. “By the flight back, I’m really looking for any type of…..release. Perhaps we should go upstairs to my room?”

“Yes, Coach, I agree. We need to dive into a deeper level of your subconscious to find out what information the intruders are looking for so that we may manufacture them a false dossier to return to — let’s face it, Bill Belichick.”

As Coach Garrett and the handsome Mr. Charles walked to the elevator located in the back of the lobby, the patrons in the bar paid no attention to the well-dressed 40-something being escorted by a young, shirtless, ebony man. Instead, as populators of the dream, their collective attention turned towards another red haired man, this one younger than Coach Garrett, slowing scrambling to the stairwell.

When the young redheaded man reached the third floor of the hotel stairwell, he swung open the door to reveal a hallway with only an elevator access and a door to a single hotel room. Room number 16. The hotel room door opened and a head popped out and smiled.

“Let’s go, Doop! They’re heading up.”

“My. Name. Isn’t. Fucking. Doop.” He gritted his teeth but his anger was interrupted by the sound of the first floor stairwell door opening. It was security. Garrett’s security. This is why he hated the Mr. Charles gambit. He met his backup at the doorway and stepped into the #16 suite. They listened for the elevator to arrive, praying that security did not reach them first. He breathed a sigh of relief when the alert chimed, the doors opened, and he could see through the crack in the door Mr. Charles and Coach Garrett step into the hallway.

“…which is why you mustn’t die in this dream. Limbo’s gonna become your reality. You’re gonna be lost down there so long that you’re gonna become an old man.” Mr Charles preemptively scolded the coach.

The man called Doop opened the door, “Filled with regret.”

“And when you do finally wake up,” added the smiling backup, “your mind will be warped forever.”

Coach Garrett just grinned and shook his head at the embodiments his mind, apparently, chose to display as they escorted him into room #16. The door locked behind them and Mr. Charles placed a series of lines into the forearms of all the bodies. Coach Garrett and the smiling backup lying on the bed, Doop peering through the peephole for security, and Mr Charles in the chaise lounge. “Remember,” he prompted Garrett, “find the dossier.” Mr. Charles initiated the device attached to the lines and eyes of everyone in Suite #16 closed, with Mr. Charles falling back into the lounge and Doop slouching effortlessly against the entrance door.

A pounding sound shakes AT&T Stadium, waking Coach Garrett. Doop is peering out the luxury suite window as the 1.2 million pound video board sways with each pound. The stadium intercom blares: “I know you don’t think I know you’re in Suite 16!” More pounding shakes the stadium.

“It’s time,” Mr. Charles points to a golden door marked J. Jones, Owner.

“Can you come with me?” Jason Garrett asks his guide.

“This….this you must do alone, Coach.” More pounding. More yelling through the PA. “Besides, I tore my ACL sitting down in the hotel room. Now hurry! There isn’t much time!”

Coach Garrett approaches the door and freezes as he grasps the knob. He reaches in his pocket and retrieves the brass top. Running his fingers over the surface, he is calmed. He opens the door and steps into an identical luxury suite.

“Come right in, my friend.”

“Sir? Is is really you.”

“Well, this is my suite isn’t it? Have a seat. I know you’ve had a long season.”

“It has, sir. As we discussed, with the multitude of injuries we have sustained –” Coach Garrett stopped, waiting for his superior to begin a barrage of hoots and hollers and calls for Garrett to ‘figure it out’ or ‘just get it done.’

The older man sipped his martini and calmly started. “Jason, you’ve known me for years. I trust you. I know it was difficult for you to step in for Wade and have always felt torn between respecting what you learned from your mentor and staying true to what is best for this franchise, the Dallas Cowboys.”

“It has, sir. You know I’ve never shined to the spotlight as you have but I’ve always felt my coaching spoke for itself and I would never apologize for the decisions I make on the field.”

Another thunderous shake. The stadium sound system screeched. “When I get through this door, I’m gonna put you to sleep PERMANENTLY! WOOOO!!!!”

The old man ignored the chaos and tapped on a leather dossier case on the table. “Jason, I chose you for a reason. And that reason was to instill a culture of commitment — not just to winning or to our fans; but to our team. We know what this 2015 season is. No outside help is going to change that. We have a team that we have to stay true to because, next year, we need everyone on our side, not worrying about their roster spot week to week. Jimmy used to pull that shit and I don’t want you to ever feel that pressure. Do you understand?”

The Princeton man just smiled.

“Alright you rascal, go on and give it your best!” The owner pressed the intercom, button “Lin Sue, please come escort my good friend and colleague, Coach Jason Garrett, back to his friends.”

“Yes Mr. Jones. I will be in shortly to escort Mr Gar–” the speakerphone was overtaken by the bursting calls of the PA.

“3……..2……..1!”

In the hotel suite, Jason Garrett is jerked awake. Consumed by his own introspection, he hardly notices the chaos in the room. Mr. Charles is holding his knee and grimacing, leaning back in his chair. The smiling backup is no longer smiling. His stare is locked on the doorway. Jason Garrett follows the stare to see the one they call Doop pinned on the ground under the detached #16 door, being screamed at by the source of the voice from the intercom.

“That’s how you dream security, baby! Wooo!”

Blood trickling out of Doopy’s ear was the only response.

“You want to play in Sunday’s game?! I’m playing you in Sunday’s PAIN! Woooo!”

The real head of Jason Garrett’s dream security turned his attention to Mr. Charles, who was on the floor dealing with his pain. The curtains of the open window above him whipped about in the winds of the night air. Coach Garrett watched as the motions of the curtains became more violent with each step the security agent took towards his injured guide.

Garrett rushed to Doopy. “Hang tight, son. I need you for Sunday.”

Doopy opened one eye and locked it on Coach Garrett — he always locked on his target and never looked away — “First….more reps.” He groaned and his eye closed.

Doopy wakes up in the crashing waves of the Texas Gulf Coast. Or, a version of the Texas Gulf Coast. His legs are no longer crushed and there is no blood leaking from his ears. He looks down to see himself in a crisp white Dallas Cowboys uniform with his helmet under his arm.

“Finally,” as the only occupant of the world, he speaks only to himself, “adequate time for me to prepare for the Giants.”

He looks out over his training facility and smiles a doopy little smile as he begins walking to the shore.

“Grab him! We can’t leave our field general behind!”

Jason Garrett and the still-not-smiling backup slide the door off Doopy’s disfigured legs and pick him up. “I think he’s still breathing, Coach! How long can we wait for him to come back to us?”

Coach Garrett looked across the room to see Mr. Charles being held by his neck outside the window. The head of security continued to spit rhyming insults and train sounds in between threats to release his grip as the thrashing of the wind began to rip the flailing curtain.

“No time. We have a team to stay true to.” Coach Garrett threw Doopy over his shoulder, grabbed the frozen backup by the hand, and raced towards the window. “We just need to trust him out there.”

A split second after diving out the window past his head of security, Coach Jason Garrett of the Dallas Cowboys gasped a deep breath of stale recirculated airplane air. His eyes opened to the dim illumination of the first class accommodations on Delta’s flight 16 from LAS to DFW.

His right hand reached to rub the embroidered five-point star on his coaches polo and, as he grasped the ideogram that defined his life, he thought about what that star really meant. He peered back at the players section behind him — specifically, his two healthy roster quarterbacks that had been with him since the start of 2015. He felt a sense of honor as he picked up the in-flight phone.

As the line rang, he patted his pocket for something to fiddle with during the phone conversation. From his pants, Coach Jason Garrett produced a familiar brass top. He rolled it between his fingers as he peered back, once more, at his quarterback corps. The backup was shaking the redheaded soon-to-stay starter with an eager grin and a clearly audible, “Wake up! It worked, Doop!” However, the sleeping player in the #3 sweatshirt did not respond.

“Must be exhausted from all that game prep he’s putting in.” the Coach approved to himself.

The line picked up.

“I’M FUCKING BALLS DEEP IN SOME SKUNKY SHIT, BOY! THIS BETTER BE — [away from the phone receiver] DO YOU NOT KNOW WHAT A FIST IS?! I’M FUCKING CRAZY OVER HERE!! [back to the receiver] SO WHAT’S SO IMPORTANT, JASON?!”

The Princeton man did not need to take a breath. He knew he was right. He knew this was truly what the modern prospector wanted. “Sir, I’ve made a decision regarding this week’s offensive gameplan. I think it’s best for the team and the Dallas Cowboys historic franchise…”

He spun the brass top on his airplane tray table and focused on its whirling as he continued…

{fin}