"We should probably search together," my friend David suggested, "until we have a reason not to." "Sounds good," I said, as quick to agree with him as I had been to argue with my husband, Mark, who wanted me to skip this excursion. I'm often nicer to men I'm not married to, something Mark just loves about me. David and I began, wading side-by-side through an overgrown patch of spring weeds bordering the community garden in Brooklyn's Floyd Bennett Field. Sporting raggedy jeans and long-sleeved T-shirts, we could have passed as gardeners, only we weren't there to spread mulch or check on seedlings. We had no legitimate interest in the garden itself, but rather what we hoped lay beneath the cool May dirt: a pirate's treasure chest. David had spent dozens of hours at home solving clues related to this armchair treasure hunt, a pastime in which a person or organization buries a prize then sets up a series of puzzles to reveal the exact location. This hunt, called We Lost Our Gold, had been put in place by two enterprising puppeteers as a promotional stunt for their work; anyone with some free time and a computer could have a go at decoding the layers of complex clues concealed in eight YouTube videos about pirates struggling to recollect the whereabouts of their missing treasure.
Once someone had correctly solved all of the clues, they would know precisely where in New York City to dig up the chest, which is what we were doing. David had determined that the garden in this defunct airport-turned-park was the X that marked the spot. # "What's actually in the treasure chest?" my husband of almost 15 years asked when I presented my plan to spend a day digging in Brooklyn with a guy who wasn't him. Mark was sprawled on the couch reading Golf Magazine with one pair of glasses placed sexily atop the other. "Ten thousand gold coins," I explained. "Like doubloons?" he asked, incredulous. "No, the golden dollar kind with Sacajawea and the presidents." Mark, who with his shock of dark hair and full lips resembled both a young Warren Beatty and an ageless Mick Jagger, took off the top pair of glasses and set it on his stomach.
"Ooh. I love that band," he said, "Sacajawea and the Presidents." "Seriously." "Seriously? There's a lot going on that day. The kids have stuff to get to. I'm working late. We have dinner plans." "But there's always a lot going on.
" "So are you telling me you're going, or asking me if it works for you to go?".