## Act I: The Bottle (20%)

The bottle sat on the top shelf of the liquor store in Minneapolis, between a half-empty quart of cheap whiskey and a box of instant coffee that had been on the shelf since Jack could remember. It was small, maybe six ounces, and the liquid inside was the colour of amber under fluorescent light. There was no label. There was no price tag. There was only a handwritten note on a piece of masking tape that said, in handwriting that was too neat to be casual:

*For the tired.*

Jack Morin was forty-two, a forklift driver at a warehouse on the east side of town, and he was tired. He was tired of the divorce that had taken everything except the car he drove to work. He was tired of the unemployment that had followed the divorce. He was tired of the beer that had followed the unemployment. He was tired of waking up every morning and knowing that the day would be exactly like the day before and exactly like the day after.

He reached for the bottle. He put it in his cart. He paid two dollars for it, which was either a bargain or a scam, and he could not tell which.

He drove home to his apartment above a laundromat on Franklin Avenue, parked in the lot behind the building, and went upstairs and opened the fridge and put the bottle on the top shelf next to the cold coffee and the takeout containers that he would not eat and the beer that he would drink.

He did not open the bottle that night. He did not open it the next night, or the night after that. It sat on the top shelf of the fridge, and he looked at it sometimes when he opened the door, and he thought about what it was and what it did and whether it was worth trying.

He never decided.

## Act II: The Old Man (30%)

The old man was named Earl, and he had worked at the warehouse with Jack for twenty years. He was sixty-five, which in the rust belt meant he looked eighty, and he was retiring because his back had given out and his knees had followed.

On Jack's last day before Earl retired, they sat in the break room after shift, drinking coffee that tasted like burnt rubber and talking about nothing. Earl was the kind of man who talked about nothing with the intensity of a man who had nothing else to talk about.

"You look tired, Jack," Earl said. It was not the first time he had said it.

"I'm always tired," Jack replied.

Earl nodded. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small plastic bag and handed it to Jack. Inside the bag was a bottle, small and amber, and Jack recognized it immediately.

"I found it at an estate sale," Earl said. "Some old lady had a shelf full of them. I bought a bunch. Told me it was some kind of秘方 from China. Said it could make you young again. I don't believe in that stuff, but I figured, what the hell."

Jack held the bottle in his hand. It was warm from Earl's pocket. It was heavier than it looked.

"What do I do with it?" Jack asked.

"Do what you want," Earl said. "I'm retiring. I'm sixty-five. I'm done. But you—you're forty-two. You've got time. Or you didn't have time. I don't know. I'm too old to figure it out."

Jack put the bottle in his jacket pocket and went home and put it in the fridge next to the other bottle, the one from the liquor store, and stared at them both for a long time.

Two bottles. Two chances. Or two scams. Or one of each. He would never know.

## Act III: The Fridge (35%)

Jack opened the fridge every morning. He opened it to get beer. He opened it to get coffee. He opened it to see if the bottles were still there.

They were always there.

He thought about opening them. He thought about drinking whatever was inside. He thought about what might happen if they were real and what might happen if they were not.

If they were real, he would be twenty years younger. He would be twenty-two. He would be strong and fast and full of energy and he would not be tired. He would not be forty-two, divorced, unemployed, living above a laundromat on Franklin Avenue.

If they were not real, he would drink alcohol that was not labeled and not priced and not sold in any store he recognized, and he would get drunk and he would wake up and he would be exactly where he was now.

He thought about this every morning. He thought about it for weeks. He thought about it for months.

And he never opened the bottles.

Not because he was afraid. Not exactly. But because the act of opening them required a decision, and Jack Morin was a man who had spent his life avoiding decisions. He had married the woman he married because it was what you did. He had stayed at the warehouse because it was what you did. He had divorced because that is what happened when you stopped trying.

Opening a bottle was a decision. And Jack was not ready for decisions.

## Act IV: The Cold Coffee (15%)

Years passed. Jack stayed forty-two. Then he was forty-three. Then forty-four. The bottles sat in the fridge, and the cold coffee sat next to them, and nobody drank either of them.

Jack got a new job at a different warehouse. He met a woman named Lisa. They dated for six months and then they did not. He went back to being alone. He went back to the fridge.

The bottles were still there.

He did not know what was in them. He would never know. Maybe they were real. Maybe they were not. Maybe if he had opened them, his life would be different. Maybe it would not.

He stood in front of the fridge one morning, looking at the bottles, and he felt nothing. Not regret. Not hope. Just nothing. The quiet, empty nothing of a man who has watched his life pass him by and has not done anything about it.

He closed the fridge. He made coffee. He drank it cold.

He was forty-five years old, and he had never been younger.

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