When they reached the airport parking loop, he said, “I feel like I’ve fucked everything up. I’m a fucking genius so I don’t know why I fuck everything up all the time, but I do. I want to stop, but I don’t know how.” He took her suitcases out of the car, and he moved them to the curb. He pulled her tightly into him, crushing her head into his mesomorphic chest. “I’m a beast, but I fucking love you, girl,” Dov said. “For better or for worse, you can take that on your travels.”
* * *
—
For the flight to California, Marx had booked her a business-class ticket, and Sadie felt fancy. Even though her parents were wealthy, the family had always flown in coach. Her father, a business manager to movie stars, had seen too many of his clients go broke, wasting money on fripperies like luxury travel, divorces, restaurant investments, and second homes they never used.
Sadie settled into her seat. She accepted the heated washcloth, the orange juice in a glass flute, the small cup of warm nuts. She opened the window shade. It was not quite 7 a.m., and the sun was rising, a delicate, white blotch in a grayish sky. The plane took off, and she made sure to take a last look at Boston Harbor, which was covered in ice. She knew she wouldn’t be back anytime soon.
It was only 10 a.m. when Sadie arrived in Los Angeles. Marx and Zoe picked her up at the airport. Zoe thrust a bouquet of multicolor gerbera into Sadie’s arms. “Welcome home,” Zoe said.
Zoe was wearing a long, white maxi dress, and Marx was wearing a white T-shirt and blue jeans. They looked, respectively, like Stevie Nicks and James Dean. Both wore sunglasses. “You guys are so Californian already,” Sadie said. “I was born here, and I look way less Californian than either of you.”
Marx and Zoe drove straight to the office—Zoe driving, Sadie in the front seat, Marx in the back. Sadie was tired from the flight, so Zoe did most of the talking. Zoe was the anti-Dov, eager to tell Sadie about her California discoveries: Had Sadie gone to the Griffith Observatory? Had she been to movie night at Hollywood Forever Cemetery? The Cinerama Dome? The Greek? The Hollywood Bowl? The Getty pavilions? LACMA? The Theatricum Botanicum? The Bob Baker Marionette Theater? The Watts Towers? The Museum of Jurassic Technology? Did Sadie have magic friends and had she been to the Magic Castle? Had she tried green juice? Had she ever gone to the donut place that looked like a donut? Hot dogs were gross, but had she been to Pink’s? Had she taken one of those tours of celebrity homes on the double-decker buses? Had she been to the restaurant that was built around a tree? What was her favorite place to hear live music? The Whisky a Go Go? The Palladium? The Troubadour? What was her favorite part of town? Which canyon was her favorite for hiking? The sun was always out and it never rained, wasn’t that so great?
“They say there’s no culture here, but I’m finding plenty of things to do,” Zoe said.
“She loves it.” Marx was appreciative of his partner’s exuberance.
It was a tourist’s list, but Sadie liked Zoe anyway. She was intelligent, but her intelligence didn’t get in the way of her enthusiasm.
“You’re from Beverly Hills, right?” Zoe asked.
“The flats,” Sadie said.
“The flat part of a place named for its hills?” Zoe said.
“You can’t have hills without flats,” Sadie replied.
“Yes,” Zoe said. “That’s the truth.” Zoe turned to Sadie. “I’ve decided we’re going to be great friends, by the way. Don’t bother trying to resist me. I’ll stalk you until you submit.”
Sadie laughed.
The Venice office was on Abbot Kinney, which in 1999 didn’t have a single high-end chain store to its credit （or deficit, depending on your point of view）。 The space was industrial and, aside from bathrooms and a half-dozen offices along its perimeter, undefined. Its significant architectural details were massive, steel-framed casement windows and concrete floors, which Marx had the customary plans to warm up with wooden furniture, rugs, and plants. Compared to the cramped space they had left, Abbot Kinney felt colossal, and its expansiveness caused Sadie to feel a fleeting anxiety bordering on kenophobia. When she spoke, her voice echoed. “We can afford this?”
“We can,” Marx said. Venice was still relatively cheap—Santa Monica’s shabby cousin—and Unfair Games was flush with cash. “The realtor said Charles and Ray Eames’s office was down the street.”
Sam emerged from one of the offices. “Hello, colleagues!” Sam turned to Sadie: “What do you think?”
“I think Both Sides better blow it out,” Sadie said.
“If you go up to the roof,” Marx said, “you can see a majestic, if terribly narrow, strip of ocean.” His phone rang: It was the movers with their Cambridge office boxes. “I have to meet them. You two go on without me.”
But when Sadie and Sam reached the landing, they found the only access to the roof was a steep spiral staircase. It was the kind of structure that gave Sam trouble, and Sadie was surprised Marx hadn’t warned them. “We don’t have to,” Sadie said.
Sam sized up the staircase, and then he nodded. “No, I’ll make it. I want to see this unimpressive vista for myself.”
As they carefully ascended, Sam leaned on Sadie, but only a little. He talked as they went so she wouldn’t notice his discomfort. “I was trying to remember the name of a game. It was around the time you started bringing the laptop to the hospital. There was a kid who’s trying to save his girlfriend.”
“But of course.”
“And a scientist whose brain was taken over by, maybe, a—I want to say—a sentient meteor? And there was a character with a green tentacle.”
“Maniac Mansion,” Sadie said.
“That’s it. Of course, it’s Maniac Mansion. God, we loved that game. I was thinking, we should make something set in a mansion sometime.”
“And each room is a time-travel portal.”
“Maybe all the people from all the different periods who ever lived there are there.”
“And they’re not happy about it,” Sadie said.
By then, they had reached the top of the stairs.
“Thank you,” he said.
“For what?”
“For the use of your arm.”
On the roof, if she got on her toes and craned her neck, she could, indeed, see the Pacific. It wasn’t a magnificent view, but it was there. And, in any case, she could feel that she was near the ocean—she could smell it and she could hear it and the air felt like it, too. She took a deep breath.
The space Marx had chosen was so immaculate. Sadie loved clean, bright things, and she felt hopeful. It was right that they should come to California. California was for beginnings. They would make Both Sides, and it would be even better than Ichigo, because they were so much smarter than when they’d made Ichigo. Sam would be healed, and she wouldn’t be angry at him anymore—it wasn’t his fault that people thought Ichigo was his. And Sadie would be brand-new.
* * *
—
That night, Sadie borrowed her father’s car and drove into K-town. She parked the car in the alleyway behind Dong and Bong’s New York Style House of Pizza.