“Malibu,” Bong Cha said, as if the word was disgusting to her. “Your mother is so beautiful and talented. But she has terrible taste in men.”
“But,” Sam said, “George said I was half-him. And if I’m half-him…”
Bong Cha caught her mistake. “You are one-hundred-percent perfect, good Korean boy I love.”
At the stoplight, Bong Cha patted Sam on the head, and then she kissed him on his forehead and then both of his delicious, round, shtetl Buddha cheeks, and Sam accepted her lie without argument.
3
The first week of July, Marx emailed Sam to say he was returning from the internship early: Dungeon Master Masur, Coming back from London this Saturday. The internship was a bust—will explain later. I’d like to crash on the couch, if it’s copacetic with you and Miss Green. I can also run any errands you guys need and generally smooth the way in my role as “producer,” ha ha. Dad was quite impressed with the two of you. Can’t wait to see how the game is going. Does it have a title yet? Marx, Level 9 Paladin
When Sam reported to Sadie that Marx would be back on Saturday, she was not pleased. “Can’t you ask him not to come?” Sadie said.
“I can’t,” Sam said. “It’s his apartment.”
“I know,” Sadie said. “That’s why he’s getting a producer credit. If he stays with us, does that mean we don’t have to give him a credit anymore?”
“No,” Sam said.
“We’re finally getting into a good work rhythm,” Sadie said.
“Marx is awesome,” Sam said. “He can help us if he’s here.”
“With what?” Sadie said. As far as Sadie knew, Marx was a good-looking rich kid with a wide range of interests and very few skills. At Crossroads, where she’d gone to high school, half of her male classmates had been Marxes.
“With everything that we’re not doing. You’ll see,” Sam said. “He’s a resource, if we choose to employ him that way.”
As the matter had already been decided, Sadie went back to work.
They had made a great deal of progress on the design of their still nameless child. Sam had come up with the child’s wardrobe: the father’s sports jersey worn long, like a dress; the wooden flip-flops. They had settled on the slick bowl haircut, which they both liked aesthetically and practically. A helmet-like hairstyle would have the cleanest look when layered into the complicated Hokusai-inspired backgrounds.
With the child’s design squared away, Sadie was perfecting the child’s movements. She wanted the walk to feel buoyant and slightly out of control, like a baby duck trailing after its mother. In the design document that she and Sam had written: “The child’s body moves the way a body can move before it has felt or even encountered the idea of pain.” Oh, the ambitions of design documents!
Sadie devoted several days to the problem of the child’s walk. She gave the character a tiny stride length, with fast steps that would leave bird-like, fading footprints. This was better, but what finally cracked it for her was to make the child not just move linearly, but to always have a few awkward accelerating steps to the side even when the player was piloting the character forward.
She showed her work to Sam. “It’s good,” Sam said. He moved the child around the screen. “But that’s me,” he said. “That’s how I walk.”
“No, it isn’t,” Sadie said.
“I’m a lot slower. But when I want to go forward, I end up going to the side,” Sam said. “At my high school, this one asshole used to call it the Sam shuffle.”
“I hate kids,” Sadie said. “I’m never having them.” Sadie took the keyboard back from Sam. She moved their child around the screen. “Okay, it might be a little bit you,” Sadie conceded. “But I honestly wasn’t thinking of you when I was doing it.”
Suddenly, Sadie became aware of the sound of explosions. “What’s that?” She crouched down, and Sam went to the window. Distantly, they could see fireworks. They had both forgotten it was the Fourth of July.
When Marx arrived in town, they showed him a demo of the first level. “This isn’t at all finished,” Sadie said. “There’s no lighting or sound, but it’ll give you a sense of the look we’re going for, and what the basic gameplay will feel like. I haven’t started making the storm yet either.”
Sam handed Marx the controller. The screen showed the child in the middle of the water, debris floating around them. Marx was an experienced gamer, but it took him a bit to get the hang of it, and the child perished several times under his command. “Jesus, this is hard,” Marx said.
The challenge of Ichigo’s first level was to make your way to shore without drowning while managing to grab your bucket and shovel. It was part rhythm game—you must figure out the controls that make the child swim—part action-adventure. The world was completely immersive: there were few clues, and no text. Eventually, Marx made it to the beach. When he saw the child walk, he exclaimed, delighted, “It’s Little Sam!”
“Please don’t call them that,” Sadie begged.
“I told you so,” Sam said to Sadie.
Marx manipulated the character around the beach.
“There’s no level two yet,” Sadie warned.
“No, I just wanted to see what Little Sam looked like from behind.”
“Please stop calling them that,” Sadie said.
“What’s the fourteen on the back of Little Sam’s jersey mean?” Marx asked.
“Nothing,” Sam said. “The number of the kid’s father’s favorite sports star or something. We haven’t decided yet.”
“Juu-yon,” Marx said.
“What’s Juu-yon?” Sam asked.
“It’s fourteen in Japanese,” Marx said. “You said the kid doesn’t have a name, right? Maybe someone calls him Juu-yon for the number on the back of the jersey.”
“Interesting,” Sam said.
“They’re not a he, and I don’t like the Jew part,” Sadie said. “For obvious reasons, that will sound weird to American audiences.”
“How about Ichi Yon. That means one, four. Maybe the kid can’t count above ten, so they don’t know the word for fourteen yet,” Marx said.
Sadie nodded. “I almost like that. But it’s maybe not dynamic enough.”
“You know what might be better than one, four? How about one, five? Ichi, Go. The kid’s name is Ichigo,” Marx said. “You could call the game that, too. Ichigo also means strawberry.”
“Ichigo,” Sam tried out the word. “Go is dynamic. Go, go, Ichigo, go.”
“Reminds me of the theme from Speed Racer,” Sadie said dismissively.
“Right. That’s a good thing,” Sam said.
“It’s totally up to you guys, obviously,” Marx said. “I’m not the designer.”
Sadie thought about it. She didn’t love that Marx, whom she already resented, had just named their game. “Ichigo,” she said slowly. Dammit, she thought, it’s fun to say. “I can live with that.”