Why did Marx do this for this strange boy, who most people found vaguely unpleasant? He liked Sam. He had spent his childhood among rich and supposedly interesting people, and he knew that truly unusual minds were rare. He felt that when Harvard had assigned them to be roommates, Sam had become his responsibility. So, he protected Sam, and he made the world a little easier for Sam, and it cost him next to nothing to do so. Marx’s life had been filled with such abundance that he was one of those people who found it natural to care for those around him. In this case, what Marx received in return was the pleasure of Sam’s company.
Sam had grown so accustomed to Marx’s assistance that it probably went unacknowledged more than it should have, and it was rare, possibly unprecedented, for Sam to ask Marx for anything, least of all his advice.
“You always know the right things to do,” Sam said while he watched Marx murdering the poetry of Emily Dickinson. “When it comes to people, I mean.”
“Are you saying I don’t know the right thing to do when it comes to other things?” Marx joked.
Sam described what he had seen at Sadie’s apartment.
Marx said what Sam already knew: “It sounds like your friend is depressed.”
“So, what do you do for that?”
Marx paused the game, looked at his friend with a mix of gravity and amusement. Sometimes, Sam seemed so much younger than his twenty-one years. “You can call her parents or tell someone at her college.”
Sam took the keyboard from Marx and resumed the game. He positioned his reticle over Hope. “I’m not sure if it’s as bad as that, and I feel like that would be an invasion of her privacy.”
Marx considered this information. “This is your good friend, right?”
“She used to be my best friend, but we had a falling-out.”
“Then, my advice to you is to keep coming around to her apartment,” Marx said. “That’s what I would do, if it were my friend.”
“I don’t think she wants me there.” Sam paused. “I’m not good at going places where I’m not wanted.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Marx said. “It isn’t about you. Just show up every day to check in with her.”
“What if she won’t talk to me?”
“Let her know you’re there. And if you can manage it, bring her a cookie, a book, a movie to watch. Friendship,” Marx said, “is kind of like having a Tamagotchi.” Tamagotchis, the digital pet keychains, were everywhere that year. Marx had recently killed one that he had received as a holiday gift from a girlfriend. The girlfriend had taken it to be a sign of deeper flaws in Marx’s character. “Get her to take a shower, talk a little, go for a walk. Open the windows, if you can. And if things don’t improve, see if you can get her to see a professional. And if things still don’t improve, then you do have to call her parents.”
The idea of doing any of these things made Sam supremely uncomfortable, but the next day, after class, he trudged back to Sadie’s place, his foot aching by the time he arrived. He went up the stairs, knocked on the door. “Sadie, it’s that kid again,” the roommate called.
Sadie yelled back, “Tell him I’m not here.”
The roommate, who was worried about Sadie as well, swung the door open for Sam, and Sam went back to Sadie’s bedroom. She looked the same as yesterday, though she was wearing a different sweatshirt. Sadie briefly looked up at him. “Sam, honestly, go away,” she said. “I’ll be fine. I just need to sleep this off.” She put her head under the covers.
Sam sat down in Sadie’s desk chair. He took out his reading for the core history class he was taking on the history of Asians in America.
Several hours later, he had finished the reading, which had been about Chinese immigration to America in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and how Chinese immigrants had only been allowed to do certain kinds of work, like food or cleaning, and that’s why there were so many Chinese restaurants and Chinese laundries, i.e., systemic racism. It made him think of his own Korean grandparents, back in K-town, and how proud they’d been when he’d gotten into Harvard. They’d put Harvard merchandise everywhere: bumper stickers on both their aging cars; a congratulations to our grandson, samson, harvard, class of 1997 banner that Bong Cha had hand-quilted, had hung in the pizza place that entire summer; Dong Hyun wore his Harvard T-shirt to work so often, there were holes in it—it had been Marx who had finally sent Sam’s grandfather a replacement. Sam felt guilty that he hadn’t called them, and then he felt guilty that he was failing to distinguish himself in the Math Department, or in any other way, since he’d gotten to Harvard.
“Are you still here?” Sadie asked.
“I am,” Sam said.
He took a bagel in a paper bag out of his backpack and set it on her desk, under his maze, and then he left. If he was honest with himself, it was the presence of the maze that kept him coming back. She had kept it all these years, and then taken it across the country with her, and moved it from dorm room to apartment. The next time he called home, he would tell his grandparents, Yes, you were right. Sadie had liked the gift.
On the third day, he brought a library copy of the novel Galatea 2.2, which he had recently enjoyed.
On the fourth day, he brought her a handheld version of the original Donkey Kong that Marx had once given him as a holiday present.
“Why do you keep coming?” she asked.
“Because,” he said. Click on this word, he thought, and you will find links to everything it means. Because you are my oldest friend. Because once, when I was at my lowest, you saved me. Because I might have died without you or ended up in a children’s psychiatric hospital. Because I owe you. Because, selfishly, I see a future where we make fantastic games together, if you can manage to get out of bed. “Because,” he repeated.
On the fifth day, she wasn’t in. Sam asked the roommate where she was. “She went to Medical,” the roommate reported. The roommate gave Sam a hug. “She seemed a little better, though.”
Except for the day he worked his shift at Lamont Library, he went to see her every afternoon for the next week. He would leave her a small offering, per Marx’s suggestion, and then he would stay a while before heading back to his apartment.
On the twelfth day, she asked him, “Did you steal EmilyBlaster?”
“I borrowed it,” Sam said.
“You can have it,” she said. “I’ve got other copies.”
On the thirteenth day, he sat at her desk. It had been many years since he had drawn a maze, but he had decided to make her a new one. He had become a better draftsman in the years since he’d drawn that last one, and he wanted her to have a sample of his more recent work. The new maze would show the route from Sam’s apartment, by the Charles River, to Sadie’s apartment, by the Necco factory.
Sadie got up from the bed, and she looked over Sam’s shoulder, at his drawing. “It took a long time for you to get here, didn’t it?”
“The average amount of time,” he said.
“I might be out tomorrow,” she said. “If I start going to my classes and doing the work this week, the dean says I can still salvage the semester.”