PROVO — Mark Nugen starts smiling as soon as he sees the couple — a middle-aged pair, out for the night to take a break from the children.
"So you want to have some fun?" he asks, eagerly.
"We just want to shoot each other," the woman answers, nodding to her husband, who laughs and squeezes her hand.
"Well, you've come to the right place," says Nugen. And he hands each one a gun — a laser gun, that is.
During the course of a week, Nugen, owner of Laser Assault in Provo, outfits about 1,000 people in the exact same way. He then sets them free in a dark room to shoot beams of red light at one another as they duck and dodge their way through a maze of canisters, ramps and tunnels.
The key to winning the game?
"Don't get shot," Nugen said, shrugging.
Of course, even Nugen, who spent 13 years as an officer for the U.S. Air Force, gets shot sometimes.
"I know how to evade," he said. "I know how to be stealthy, to sneak and snipe, but I get my share of hits."
Nugen discovered Laser Assault when he was working as an ROTC instructor. Brigham Young University takes its cadets to the laser tag arena twice yearly as a training exercise.
He loved the game. It was great for practicing teamwork and leadership skills, he said. But it never occurred to him that he would end up buying the laser tag arena.
"I'm not a laser tag fanatic," Nugen said.
He is, though, crazy about his job.
He works late hours, weekends are his big business days and, with only five part-time employees, most of the time he has to run the Laser Assault by himself. Still, Nugen doesn't mind. He gets to deal with people.
"I love this work," he said. "I'm smiling from ear to ear every day. I mean, I'm in the business of providing people with fun."
Nugen's goal is to make the fun at Laser Assault bigger and better. He's only owned the business for a year and a half, but already he's added in a black-light miniature golf course and painted the walls with whimsical murals. Soon, he even hopes to open another location.
There are some things that Nugen refuses to change, however.
For one, he said, a computer will never brief his customers on the rules before they hit the game floor. Joking around with the players is Nugen's favorite part of the night.
Nugen's also adamantly opposed to strict, inflexible scheduling. He frequently opens the store early to accommodate birthday parties. Sometimes he stays open late so players can get in an extra game.
"I'm not corporate," he said. "I'm a people person."
E-mail: estuart@desnews.com