Seventy-two days after the shooting, two days after Marx’s funeral, Simon called Sam. “I know things have been awful,” he began. This is the way everyone started a conversation with Sam that year. “But what are we going to do about the office? Ant’s feeling somewhat better, and we had just started playtesting and debugging CPH4 when everything happened. And if we don’t get back in, we’ll never make our release date in August—are we even still releasing the game in August? And people are wondering if they still have jobs, and I don’t honestly know what to tell them…I don’t want to overstep here, but we need to know what to do.”
It had, of course, usually fallen to Marx to conduct the practical business of running their company. Sam and Sadie were creatives! They were grand schemes and big pictures! Marx kept the bills paid, the lights on, the plants watered. Marx was the one who talked to people. This wasn’t to say that this was all Sam thought Marx did. The arrangement went largely unmentioned: Marx was Marx, so that Sam and Sadie could be Sam and Sadie. But Marx, of course, was no longer here.
Sam tried to imagine what Marx would say to Simon. “I’m glad you called, and you’re completely right. Let me talk to Sadie,” Sam said. “I’ll have an answer for you by the end of today.”
Sam called Sadie. When she did not answer, he texted her, What should we do about the office? Five minutes passed before Sadie replied, Do what you want.
He considered texting her something sharp in return. Because what Sam wanted to do was to stay in bed, like Sadie was probably doing. What Sam wanted to do was get stupendously high—find a great drug that turned his brain off for a year but stopped short of killing him.
His pain, a mortifyingly psychosomatic weathervane, had returned, and none of his usual strategies for tamping it down were working. The pain seemed to come on as he was arriving at the deepest part of sleep, when his foolish human brain was the most vulnerable to dreams. During this time, Sam’s dreams usually featured a mundane task he had neglected: he’d be back in the Kennedy Street apartment, and he would realize that he had forgotten to debug a particular section of Ichigo. Or he’d be driving on the 405, and just as he wanted to brake, he’d become aware that he was missing his foot. Sam would wake up, covered in sweat, ghost foot throbbing, feeling panicked and guilty. He would be in such discomfort that he could not return to sleep. Sam had not slept for more than a two-hour stretch since December.
Still, unlike Sadie, Sam was answering his phone. Sam was replying to emails. Sam was talking to people.
He was about to press send on a strongly worded text to Sadie when he found himself asking for the second time that day, What would Marx say? Marx, Sam decided, would take a second to empathize with Sadie’s situation. Sadie was pregnant. She had not only lost her business partner, she had lost her life partner. Unlike Sam, Sadie had had no significant experience with loss or grief. It was harder for Sadie. Marx, Sam concluded, would simply get whatever needed doing done.
In the three months since Marx had been shot, Sam had not returned to the office on Abbot Kinney, and when he finally did, he decided to go alone. He did not want to subject an assistant, or his grandfather, or Lola, or Simon, or even Tuesday, to whatever horror might be inside. The only person he would have wanted with him was Sadie. Though he told her he was going, he felt it would be cruel to explicitly ask her to come with him. She did not volunteer.
In front of the threshold of their office door, an impromptu shrine had been created: stuffed-animal effigies of Mayor Mazer and Ichigo, dead carnations and roses in plastic sleeves, satin ribbons of support tied wherever they could be tied, weather-beaten cards that seemed like they must have been outside for decades and not weeks, game boxes, votive
candles. It was the kind of pointless accumulation one saw whenever a gun crime happened. All of it was meant to say, We stand with you, we love you, we condemn what happened here. In the face of this display, Sam felt nothing, except a passing desire to kick stuffed Mayor Mazer in the face. As he stepped over the shrine, he made a note: (1) remove shrine, and then he slipped his key into the door. Sam almost expected that his key wouldn’t work, but it did not resist. He made notes: (2) locks, (3) new security.
The air inside was a tick colder than usual and had a staleness, though it did not, to Sam’s nose, smell like murder or indeed, like anything. Standing in the lobby, Sam felt as if he had stepped into a little-used room at a museum. He could imagine finding a small, tasteful plaque that read: GAME COMPANY, VENICE, CALIFORNIA, CIRCA 2005. The tree in the lobby was dying: (4) plants.
Sam made his way through the space wearily, warily, like a character in a stealth game. In one of the wooden columns, a bullet hole: (5) fill hole.
The worst of the damage was a series of grisly bloodstains on the floor where Marx had been shot. Marx’s blood had seeped through the polished concrete. The floor had been overdue for a refinishing, and the blood had been allowed to settle for too long. Sam tried cleaning it with a series of increasingly potent cleansers: water, Windex, iodine, Comet, bleach. The stain was too deep; the floor would need to be professionally refinished: (6) floors.
An untethered strip of police tape lent the room a festive feeling. Sam threw it in the trash.
Sam went into Marx’s office. Though he had not run Unfair Games, he had some practical knowledge of business from his grandparents. In Marx’s files, he found the contact information for their insurance company. The agent he spoke to said that their policy did not explicitly cover damage from mass shootings—Did two constitute mass? Sam wondered—and thus, it was unlikely insurance would cover repairs. Do take pictures, Mr. Mazer. You’re welcome to file a claim.
Sam found the name of their cleaning service, and also, the flooring contractor who had done the floors when they first moved in, and then, in
order to pay for these things, he located the name of their accountant. The accountant had apparently been their accountant since 1997, since Cambridge, though Sam had never had reason to speak to the man before. “Nice to meet you over the phone. It’s a terrible thing that happened, but it’s good you’re getting back to work,” the accountant said. “Unfair’s a little cash poor right now.”
“We are?” Sam said.
“You tied up a lot of cash purchasing the building on Abbot Kinney last October, and that was a major expense. In the long run, you’ll be glad you did it, though.”
For the first time in his life, Sam did not want to contemplate the long
run.
Sam left Marx’s office and went into his own office, where he was
confronted by a Guernica-style massacre of Ichigo merchandise: disembodied heads with bowl haircuts, and chubby limbs, and round childish eyes, and waves, and boats, and torsos in football jerseys. Sam picked up a ceramic Ichigo head from the floor. The head had once been attached to a body, and together, they had formed a piggy bank that had been a promotional item for the game’s Danish release. Sam considered the chipped ceramic head, and he shuddered: those men had wanted to kill him. They had wanted to kill him and had settled for destroying Ichigo merch and killing Marx instead.
A memory from Marx’s hospital room: Without preamble, Sadie is screaming at Sam, They wanted you. They wanted you. They wanted you. She beats his chest with her fists, and he doesn’t try to stop her. Harder, he thinks. Please. The next day, or the next week, or the next month, she apologizes, but the apology lacks the conviction of the attack.
Sam threw the Ichigo head in the trash can. He left his office and locked the door behind him. He was in no mood to deal with the dead Ichigo museum, and maybe, he no longer required an office filled with memorabilia. What did the memorabilia prove anyway? They had made games. Some people had promoted those games and tried to monetize them with gimcracks that no one needed.
He made a note: (7) mazer office junk. He returned to Marx’s office. In his pocket, the buzz of his cell phone. It was Sadie, and her voice was tight and small. “Are you there now? Is it awful?”
“It’s not so bad.” “Describe it,” she said.
“I—there’s not much to say.”
“You have to be honest. I don’t want to be surprised.”
“It’s still the office. They mainly messed up my office. I’ll never be able to put that Ichigo piggy bank back together. There’s some damage to the floor. There’s a hole in a pillar.”
Sadie didn’t say anything for a beat. “ ‘Damage’ is obfuscation. What does ‘damage’ mean?”
“It’s blood,” Sam said. “It seeped into the concrete.” “How big is the stain?”
“I don’t know. The largest section is a couple of feet in circumference.” “There’s a spot several feet wide where Marx bled to death, you mean.” “Yes, I guess so.” Sam felt existentially tired. A contrary part of him wanted to insist that Marx hadn’t bled to death on that floor. He had died in a hospital, ten weeks later. But Sam was too tired for semantics. “I spoke to
a flooring contractor. It can be refinished.”
“Maybe I don’t want it to be cleaned,” Sadie said. “You mean, you want me to leave it?”
“No, but it shouldn’t be erased,” Sadie said. “Marx shouldn’t just be erased.”
“Come on, Sadie. The stain isn’t Marx. It’s—” She interrupted him, “The place where he died.” “It’s—”
“The place where he was murdered.”
“I think it will be hard for people to work around a huge bloodstain.” “Yes, it will be hard,” Sadie said.
“How about a great vintage rug, then? Marx loved kilim rugs.” “That isn’t even a little funny.”
“I’m sorry. It isn’t funny. I’m tired. Seriously, Sadie, do you not want people to return to work?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you want to come and look at it?” he said hopefully. “We can decide what to do together. I can pick you up.”
“No, I do not want to look at it, Sam. I do not want to fucking look at it! What is wrong with you?”
“Okay, okay.”
“Just take care of it,” she said.
“That’s what I was trying to do, Sadie.” A long pause. He could hear her breathing, so he knew she was still there.
“Considering this, considering the god-awful state of things, maybe it would be better to move offices?” she said. “Even if we clean the floor, will anyone ever want to work at those offices again?”
“I don’t know if we can afford to move,” Sam said. “We’re behind on every project, and we’ve been paying people for three months but not getting much, or any, work done. Simon and Ant need to finish CPH4 now. Revels expansion pack needs to be ready for December, too.”
“Ant’s coming back?” Sadie said. “Yes. Simon thinks so.”
“That’s brave,” Sadie said, but there was a meanness to her tone, and he could tell that she was about to commence a new argument. “Are you saying we can’t move because you don’t want the bother of moving? Or can we actually not move?”
“Sadie, I’m telling you the truth. I spoke to our accountant this morning. You can call him yourself.”
“It’s just you have a way of bending reality to suit your own agenda.” “What agenda do I have? Except to get our people back to work.”
“I don’t know, Sam. What agenda could you have?”
“I don’t want our company to close. That’s my agenda. Marx would want the same thing.”
“Marx doesn’t want anything anymore,” she said. “You know what, Sam? Do what you will. You always do.”
“Are you okay?”
“What do you think?” She hung up the phone.
(8) Sadie…
The only thing he could do for Sadie was to keep their business running until she was ready to return to it.
The day stretched impossibly long though it was only eleven, and it was two more hours until the floor guy would arrive. Sam lay down on the firm, orange sofa in Marx’s office, and he closed his eyes but did not go to sleep.
The phone in Marx’s office rang, and without considering who might be on the other end or whether he was even in a state to field Marx’s calls, Sam answered.
“Great! Someone’s here!” a female voice said. “The voicemail’s entirely filled up. I tried sending an email, but the only address I had was Marx’s, and…”
“This is Mazer. Who is this?” Sam asked impatiently.
“Mazer? Wow, it’s honestly such an honor to meet you over the phone.”
“Who is this?” Sam repeated.
“Oh! I’m sorry. My name is Charlotte Worth. My husband and I were meeting with Marx about our game when…when…Well, he was thinking of making it. Maybe he mentioned it? It’s about this mother and her daughter after the apocalypse. The mother has amnesia, and the daughter is a kid like Ichigo, and there are vampires, but they’re not really vampires, it’s hard to explain, and—”
Sam interrupted her, “I wouldn’t know anything about that.”
“I know this is a bad time, but Marx had some of our original concept art for Our Infinite Days—that’s what our game’s called—and we left it at the office, and we need to get it back, if possible.”
“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” Sam repeated.
“Well, if you see it…” Charlotte said. “Or if you could have someone look for it. It was in a black portfolio, with the monogram AW on it. A is for my husband, Adam.”
“Honestly, what the hell is wrong with you?” Sam said. “Marx is dead. I have neither the time nor the desire to look for your husband’s portfolio, or to hear your insipid game pitch.”
“I’m sorry,” Charlotte said. Her voice sounded weepy, and this pissed Sam off more than he already was. Sadie had been awful on the phone, but she hadn’t cried. What right did this stranger have to cry? “I know it’s a terrible time. I know. I just need our materials back. If you could—”
Sam hung up the phone.
In the Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club fall 1993 production of Macbeth, the director ultimately decided that Marx wouldn’t appear as Banquo’s ghost. The director had the actor playing Macbeth stare at an empty chair at a long banquet table—an invisible Marx that only Macbeth could see—and then he directed Macbeth to throw dinner rolls, purloined nightly from the Adams House dining hall, at the empty chair. “Reduced to dinner rolls, Sam!” Marx complained. “The indignity of it!” By opening night, though, Marx had made peace with the decision. As he said to Sam, “If I’ve done the work in the scenes before I die, if I’ve made a real impression, they’ll feel me in the scenes I’m not in anyway.”
Sam’s cell phone rang. The floor guy was early. Sam went downstairs to let him in.
Sam showed him the stain and the guy went cheerfully to work. “I remember when I did these floors, maybe five, six years ago, right?” the floor guy said. “Beautiful space. Great light. A pale girl with red hair let me in. What kind of company is this again? Something in tech, right?”
“Video games,” Sam said. “That must be fun.”
Sam did not reply.
“What happened here?” the floor guy asked.
“Sorry,” Sam said. He walked away and pretended to take a call. “Yes, this is Mazer. I’m here with the floor guy right now,” he improvised lamely. “Yes, yes.” He found himself facing the pillar with the bullet hole in it. A handyman was coming tomorrow, but looking at the hole, Sam thought maybe he should leave the scar. It wasn’t gory, like the bloody floor would
have been. The hole was perfectly symmetrical, round, clean. The wood was miraculously un-splintered, darker on the edges, like a knot that might have always been there. To an outsider, it didn’t obviously signify the death of his partner.
It was just a hole.
