The Master of the Revels expansion pack was scheduled for a December release, a year after the original game had come out, but by the end of April, no substantive work had been done. Mori, whom Sadie had put in charge of the project, was reluctant to complain about Sadie to Sam, but finally admitted that work was going slowly because Sadie was, for all practical purposes, unreachable.
“I’m sympathetic,” Mori said. “She’s going through a terrible time.” “Can you do the work without her?” Sam asked.
Mori considered the question before answering. “We could,” Mori said. “But I would prefer not to.”
Sam knew exactly how he felt. “I’ll talk to her,” Sam said.
In theory, Sadie was working from home. It was useless to phone her, so Sam texted her. He was starting to resent the elliptical nature of texting Sadie, the way she could ignore half of what he said and, often, the important half. The Revels Ex team could use your input.
I’ll check in with them this afternoon, Sadie texted about an hour later.
Do you mean you’ll come in? Sam replied.
No. I’ll call.
They seem a little lost, Sam texted. Sadie did not respond.
On the day the Unfair offices officially reopened, Sam had wanted the two of them to give a rousing we-shall-carry-on St. Crispin’s Day type of speech to their returned employees. When Sadie agreed to the plan, Sam felt cautiously hopeful. If they could get back to work. If she could get back to work.
They had arranged to meet outside the offices an hour before the employees were to arrive. The locks had been changed and security had been updated, so he needed to let her in.
He felt relieved when she arrived a minute before the appointed hour. She was wearing a black jersey dress, and for the first time, he could see that she was pregnant. He surprised himself by having the impulse to do that awful, invasive thing that people did to pregnant women—to violate her personal space and touch her abdomen. But he wouldn’t do that to Sadie. He waved to her. She waved back and she crossed the street, and Sam thought, We will go inside. We will cross this threshold one more time. We will be fine.
“Hello, stranger,” he said, holding out his hand to her.
She looked as if she might take his hand, but then she grimaced. Her shoulders hunched slightly, her nostrils flared, and she turned to face the wall. He couldn’t see her face. “I need a minute,” she said.
Her breathing sounded fast and erratic. She rotated back to face Sam, though she did not look him in the eyes. Her forehead was covered in a fine sweat. “I can’t,” she said.
“Let’s just go inside.” Sam unlocked the door. “You’ll see. You’ll feel better once you’re inside.”
“You have to do this without me.”
“Sadie, I…” For the usual reasons, he could not bring himself to say need. “People will want to see you.” Sam paused. “I know it’s asking a lot, but it’s our company. It’s ours and Marx’s, and people are counting on us. You don’t have to say anything, if you don’t want to. Just come in and see people. Ant’s up there already.”
Sadie’s face was pale and she was shivering. “I’m sorry, Sam,” she said. “I simply can’t. I—” Without warning, she threw up on the sidewalk. She clutched the side of the building to steady herself. He could hear her nails scratch against the brick.
“Hyperemesis gravidarum,” she said. “The more pregnant I get, the worse it seems to get, though my ob-gyn keeps insisting it should end any
day now.” She had vomit on her dress, and on her face. Sam didn’t know how to help her. “I can’t go in there,” she said.
She was six months pregnant. Sam wasn’t going to force her through the door. “It’s okay,” he said. “Some other day.” Sam wanted to see her home, but he had employees to meet and a speech to give. “Are you good to drive?”
“I walked,” she said.
He watched her cross the street, then he went back into Unfair Games, alone. He could not conceive of asking his assistant to clean up Sadie’s vomit, but he did not want his skittish employees greeted by it either. Sam retrieved a mop and a bucket from the supply closet. He rolled up his sleeves.
As he cleaned the sidewalk, he imagined what he would say to the battered staff of Unfair Games. Should he explain Sadie’s absence? Should he begin by saying that Sadie wanted to be here, too? Or was it better to let them draw their own conclusions? What would Marx say?
Sam, it’s not so difficult as you think. People want to be comforted, and then, honestly, they want to carry on. Tell them that it’s safe to go back to the office, and that their seemingly frivolous work is still worth doing in the face of a random, violent universe.
Sam poured water on the sidewalk, washing the vomit into the gutter.
Start with an anecdote. A funny story about me. Thank them for coming back and mean it. That’s all you have to do. You make everything harder than it needs to be. You always have.
—
The next morning, Sadie texted Sam: I’d like to start my maternity leave early. I’ll check in with the Revels team by phone, and I’ll supervise them from home.
Okay, Sam texted. He knew this wouldn’t work, but he agreed to it anyway.
That had been a month ago. Sam texted Sadie yet again: I think we need to have an actual conversation. May I come over?
Let’s do it by phone.
Promise you’ll answer if I call.
She didn’t reply. He called.
She did not answer.
He neither understood nor did he have the time to deeply contemplate what was happening inside of her. What he wanted was the work on Master of the Revels, or at least, for her to direct her team. It had been three months since Marx had died, and it was the only thing he had insisted that she do.
The expansion pack for Master of the Revels had been in the works since Sadie had conceived of the game. Master of the Revels had been almost as expensive as Both Sides. Additional content, utilizing the same game engines, had been a significant way the game would theoretically become profitable. The gameplay of the original Master of the Revels had centered on a production of Hamlet. The plan for the expansion pack revolved around Macbeth. For a variety of reasons, the expansion pack needed to hit no more than a year after the first game.
He drove to her house, and he walked up to the door, and he knocked. When she did not answer, he knocked louder, and then he called her name, “SADIE!”
Ever since Marx and Sadie had bought this house, Sam had harbored a grudge against it. His initial impression when Marx showed him the online listing was that it had a haunted, dilapidated look. But once he’d heard they were buying it (not long after they had confirmed that they were together), he had become somewhat obsessed with the house. He could not say how many times he had viewed the listing. He had studied the floor plan and the photos, as if he expected to be tested on them. He would go to his grave being able to draw the floor plan of 1312 Crescent Place. He had become certain that they had overpaid, based on the comps for the neighborhood, and though they were his closest friends, he looked forward to the inevitable depreciation of their investment. Several months after the sale,
the listing and photos were removed from the website and Sam experienced panic, then palpable grief. When Sadie and Marx had him over for dinner the first time, he felt as if he were meeting a celebrity, but one whose fame seemed undeserved somehow. The house, in person, was charming. It was Marx and Sadie’s house—of course it was charming.
All the curtains were drawn, but Sam could see a light on in the room he knew to be her bedroom. She was home.
“SADIE!” he called again.
Several minutes later, she came to the door, looking like herself, but very pregnant and very pale.
“What?” she said. “May I come in?”
She swung the door open, barely wide enough for Sam to enter, and the house seemed airless, and distantly he could smell fresh paint.
“Are you painting?” Sam asked.
“Alice,” Sadie said. “The room for the parasite.”
She led him into the living room. The room wasn’t dirty, but the houseplants had been neglected.
“So?” she said. “You’re here.”
“The Revels Ex team needs to know what to do for the expansion pack,” Sam said.
“I said I’d call them,” Sadie said.
“If we don’t have it on the market this year, we’ll have to upgrade the engine, because the tech will have lagged behind the—”
Sadie interrupted him. “I know how games work, Sam.”
“It would be good if the work were finished before your due date.” “Yes.”
“Do you want me to put someone else on it? You could tell me the broad strokes, and I could oversee it.”
“It’s my game, Sam. I’ll finish the expansion pack.”
“Yes, but everyone would understand. Under the circumstances.” “You’d love that, wouldn’t you? Put your fingerprints all over my
work. Find more ways to call it your game.”
“Sadie, that is not what this is about. I want to help you.” “If you wanted to help me, you’d leave me alone.”
“I’d positively love to leave you alone, but someone has to run our company.”
Sadie pulled her hands into the arms of her sweater. “Why?” Sadie said. “Why do we have to do any of this?”
“For God’s sake. Because it’s our company.” Sam stood up, and he almost thought he would collapse, the ghost foot beating like a heart. But instead of sitting down, or mentioning the discomfort he was in, he let the pain and lack of sleep power his rage. “I am so tired of your crap. Do you honestly think you suffer more than everyone else? Do you think you suffer more than I do? Do you think you’re the first person to ever have a baby? Or lose someone? Do you think you’re some goddamned pioneer when it comes to grief?”
Sadie shifted forward, and he could feel the momentum of their argument. He could feel the cruel thing she was about to say in response to the cruel thing he had said. But the cruel thing did not arrive. Disturbingly, she slumped forward, and started to weep.
He watched her, but he did not go over to her. “Snap out of it, Sadie. Come to the office. We work through our pain. That’s what we do. We put the pain into the work, and the work becomes better. But you have to participate. You have to talk to me. You can’t ignore me and our company and everything that came before. Everything isn’t over because Marx is dead.”
“I can’t go back there, Sam.”
“Then you’re weaker than I thought,” Sam said.
The sun was going down, and the air had turned abruptly cold in the way L.A. beach towns can. “In truth,” she said in a low voice, “you’ve always made too much of me.”
Sam walked toward the door. “Come in. Don’t come in. I don’t care how you do it. Just get the work done on Revels. It’s your game. You wanted to make it so much that you were willing to end our relationship, if
you can remember anything that happened before last December. You owe it to me, to Marx, to yourself. You owe it to the game, Sadie.”
“Sam,” she called as he reached the door. “Please don’t come here again.”
She did not ever admit he was right nor did she speak to Sam, except through the occasional strained text. She did not once go into the office, though she did have an extra computer moved into her house. She spoke to Mori regularly, and Mori reported to Sam that Sadie did a great deal of the work herself. Somehow, Master of the Revels: The Scottish Expansion was completed a week before she gave birth, and the expansion pack was released on schedule.
Sam heard the game was good, but he didn’t know firsthand. It would be many months before he could bring himself to play it.
