Sam shook his head, no. “She wasn’t. She was just being nice.”
Several weeks later, Sadie called Sam on the phone. They hadn’t spoken for two months, and her voice sounded high-pitched and strange. “My dad needs to know if you’re coming. You didn’t send back the response card.”
“I don’t know,” Sam said. “I might have something that day.”
“Well, could you let me know when you know? We need to plan the number of meals, or whatever,” Sadie said.
“Fine.”
“Sam, you can’t be mad at me forever.”
Sam hung up the phone.
Bong Cha had spied on Sam’s phone call from the phone in the kitchen, and she returned the response card the next day in the affirmative. She bought Sam a new pair of khaki pants, a blue oxford shirt, a cotton necktie with flowers on it, and Bass loafers. She had been told by her other grandson, Albert, that this was what fourteen-year-old boys wore to fancy parties. The morning of the party, she presented Sam with the new clothes and informed him that he should get ready to go to the Bat Mitzvah.
“You shouldn’t have done that!” Sam yelled. “I’m not going!”
“But look, Sam, I made a present for Sadie.” Bong Cha opened a gift bag. She had had the maze that Sam had drawn from Sadie’s house to theirs framed and matted.
Sam banged his hand on the wall. “You had no right to do that! These are my private things! And Sadie doesn’t want a piece of crap like that!”
“But you were drawing it for her, weren’t you? It’s a very nice picture, Sam,” Bong Cha said. “I’m sure Sadie will like it so much.”
Sam picked up the frame and lifted it up high in the air. He was about to slam it on the floor when he changed his mind and set it down on the table instead.
Sam stalked up the stairs to his bedroom—he could not yet manage to run up stairs. He slammed the door.
After a bit, Dong Hyun knocked. “Your grandmother only wants to help,” he said. “She’s worried about you.”
“I don’t want to go,” Sam said. “Please don’t make me go.” He could feel that he might cry, and he was determined not to.
“Why?” Dong Hyun asked.
“I don’t know.” Sam was embarrassed to tell Dong Hyun that his only friend hadn’t been a friend at all.
“I don’t think your grandmother was right to do what she did,” Dong Hyun said. “But it is done now, and it may hurt Sadie’s feelings if you don’t go.”
“I don’t care if I hurt her feelings, and it won’t hurt them anyway. It’s a huge party. All her rich friends will be there, and her parents’ rich friends. She won’t even notice if I’m not there.”
“I think she will notice,” Dong Hyun said.
Sam shook his head. What did Dong Hyun know about life? “My foot hurts.” Sam never complained about his pain, and he knew that if he did, Dong Hyun wouldn’t pressure him to do anything. “It hurts all the time. I just can’t.”
Dong Hyun nodded. “If it’s okay with you, I’ll drop off the gift at the party. I think she will like the present you and your grandmother made.”
“Her parents can buy her anything she wants. Why would she want some dumb thing I drew on the back of an envelope?” Sam said.
“I suppose,” Dong Hyun said, “because her parents can buy her anything she wants.”
That Love is
SHOOT
all there is
SHOOT
is all we know of
Sam was about to shoot Love when Marx came into his room to ask him if he wanted to go to dinner. “What’s that?” Marx asked.
“It’s another one of my friend’s games. It’s not as good as Solution, but it’s still somewhat fun,” Sam reported.
Marx sat down next to Sam, and Sam handed him the keyboard so that he could play a round.
Because
SHOOT
I could not
SHOOT
stop for
SHOOT
kindly
An ink pot combusted on the screen, indicating that Marx, having shot the wrong phrase, had lost a life. “This is the most violent poetry game I’ve ever played,” Marx said.
“You’ve played other poetry games?”
“Well, technically, no,” Marx said. “Your friend’s talented. And odd.”
Marx Watanabe and Sam were both born in 1974, making them a year older than most of the class of 1997. Marx had taken a gap year, working for his father’s investment firm; Sam, of course, had fallen back because of the time he’d spent in the hospital. They did not, at first glance, have a great deal in common, and in all likelihood, their shared birth year was the reason they had both been assigned to be freshman-year roommates.
The layout of Wigglesworth doubles was such that the room could either be set up as two singles, with one being a walk-through, or as a shared single, with a common area. Marx was quite social, and before he met Sam, he had been hoping to convince him to set up the room with the common area, which would be optimal for having company.
Sam had gotten to the room before Marx, and so Marx met Sam’s possessions before he met Sam: an aging desktop computer with a Doctor Who sticker on one side and a Dungeons & Dragons sticker on the other; one large, travel-beaten, hard-sided, baby blue American Tourister suitcase （which would turn out to be filled with impractical lightweight clothes）; a black cane; a small bamboo in a pot shaped like an elephant. The vibe Marx got was single.
When Sam finally returned to the room, Marx couldn’t help but smile. With his sweet, roundish face, light-colored eyes, and mix of white and Asian features, Sam looked almost exactly like an anime character. Astro Boy, or one of the many wisecracking little brothers of manga. As for his personal style: Sam looked like Oliver Twist, during the Artful Dodger years, if Oliver Twist had been from Southern California and a low-level pot dealer instead of a pickpocket. Sam had dark curly hair that he wore parted in the middle and bluntly cut, just above his shoulders. He wore cheap John Lennon–style wire-rimmed glasses and one of those rough hemp striped parkas that are sold in Mexico. His blue jeans were holey and faded to almost white, and he paired his Teva sandals with thick white athletic socks. “I’m Sam,” he said, his voice a bit reedy, as if he weren’t quite getting enough air. “You must be Marx? You wouldn’t happen to know the best place to buy sheets and towels for cheap?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Marx said, smiling at the cartoon boy come to life. “I’ve got extras of everything.”
“Seriously? Are you sure?” Sam said. “I don’t want to impose.”
“We’re roommates. What’s mine is yours,” Marx said.
And so it went. Marx helped Sam with everything while never appearing to be helping Sam at all. And so, coats miraculously materialized in plastic bags, just waiting for Sam to ask about them. And gift certificates for restaurants were always left before the holidays when Sam couldn’t travel home. And when it became clear that Sam struggled to take the stairs in the dormitory they’d been assigned to, and that the elevator was only intermittently functional, Marx announced his intention to live off campus. Almost no undergraduates at Harvard lived off campus, and Marx said he understood if Sam didn’t want to join him. And when the rent on the new place with the elevator was significantly more than what the dorm would have cost, Marx said he’d take the bigger bedroom （which, by the way, wasn’t much bigger）—Sam could continue to pay what he’d been paying for the dorm. （The smaller bedroom had a view of the Charles.） And when Sam didn’t call home often enough, it was Marx who took the time to call the Lees, back in Los Angeles. “Halmeoni and Halabeoji,” he’d greet them in Korean. “Our boy is doing fine.” （Marx’s father was Japanese, and his mother was Korean American.）