Delete.
Sadie fell asleep. About fifteen minutes later, someone was knocking on her apartment door. She could hear Sam’s muffled voice.
“Sadie, let me in. We have to talk,” Sam said.
Sadie didn’t answer.
“Sadie, come on. This is stupid. Talk to me. They mostly hated my side, not your side.”
Sadie still didn’t answer.
“Sadie, please. This is ridiculous. How long is this going to go on?”
Sadie got out of bed. She swung her front door open, and Sam walked in.
5B
“Say what you came to say,” Sadie said.
Sam sat down on Sadie’s couch. “I like your apartment building. I like that strange clown.”
“Can’t you leave me alone? I told Marx I’d be back to work tomorrow.”
“We tried to do something big,” Sam said. “We swung for the fences, and people didn’t like it. But I don’t care. I like what we did.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” Sadie said. “Everyone thinks it’s my game, and you supported me in my folly. They think your game, Ichigo, is the good game, and my game is the failure.”
“That isn’t true.”
“And maybe you thought Both Sides was going to flop, like that reviewer wrote. You let me go out and promote it. If you’d thought it was any good, you would have been front and center, wouldn’t you?”
Sam looked at Sadie. “Wait. What?”
She glared at him. “If you’d thought the game was good, you would have taken all the credit.” She paused. “Like you always do.”
Sam had been proud of her work and of his own. He’d stayed home because his foot was unreliable and pain management would have been difficult on the road. Sam opened his mouth to explain himself, but then he changed his mind. He went into her kitchen and poured himself a glass of water from her fridge.
“Help yourself,” she called, sarcastic and unrelenting. “What’s mine is yours. Except when it’s something no one else likes.”
“Come on, Sadie. You wanted to promote Both Sides.”
“I didn’t want to. I was willing to, because you wouldn’t. And it wasn’t easy. I’m not Sam Mazer. Strangers don’t naturally love me.”
“So I’m clear: It’s work when you do it. But it’s a vacation when I do it.”
“Yes, I think it’s easier for you.”
“Easier for me, or you could even call it something I’m good at. Something I’m good at that, maybe, you’re not good at,” Sam said.
“You’re saying the game flopped because I was bad at promoting it?” Sadie asked.
“No, of course not. I was trying to get you to admit that promoting Ichigo had been work. Stop looking for an argument. And for the record, I put everything I had into Mapletown. I’ve never put more of myself into a game.”
“Sam, you couldn’t have put everything into it. You were never here!”
“I worked my ass off,” Sam said. “And I’ve had a hard year, not that you ever asked. And what is wrong with you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Come on, Sadie. There are only two of us in this relationship. I want to know what is wrong with you. You’ve had some problem with me ever since we moved back to California.”
Sadie didn’t say anything. She shook her head.
“You’re a complete bitch all the time for no reason?”
“Screw you, Sam.”
“Say it,” Sam said. “It’s worse for me not knowing what it is.”
“I don’t care what’s worse for you,” Sadie said.
“That is so typical of you,” Sam said. “Sit there and suffer and don’t tell anyone what’s wrong.”
“You’re the one who does that,” Sadie said.
Sam banged his hand on Sadie’s coffee table. “What is it? Sadie, this is unfair. I have no idea what I’ve done. Clearly you think I’ve done something.”
“You have no idea?”
“No idea,” Sam said.
She took the Dead Sea CD out of her bag, and she flung it at him.
“What is this?” Sam asked.
“You tell me.”
He looked at the CD. “It’s Dov’s game. So?”
Sadie looked him in the eye. “You knew Dov had been my boyfriend, and that’s why you wanted me to go to him. You pretended like you didn’t.”
“So what if I knew? Ulysses was perfect for Ichigo. Sadie, this is crazy.”
“You already said that.”
“But it is crazy.”
“Stop calling me crazy. I thought you were my friend, but—”
“Sadie, I am your friend. You’re my best friend. Or I was until you decided two years ago that I wasn’t.”
“I thought you were my friend, but you’re a liar and a manipulator.”
“That isn’t true.”
“Isn’t it? You let everyone think you made Ichigo by yourself.”
“That isn’t true. I can’t control how they wrote the stories. I tell everyone you’re my partner. I tell everyone you’re brilliant.”
“You made us take the Opus deal because it was better for you.”
“You know why we took the Opus deal. We talked about the reasons.”
“I got stuck making the sequel. I got stuck doing the work while you went on a coronation tour.”
“That isn’t what happened.”
“But the worst thing you ever did to me was making me go to Dov for Ulysses.”
“I didn’t make you.”
“I know I could have built that engine, if I’d had more time. If you hadn’t pushed me to go to Dov, I wouldn’t have ended up in a relationship with him for three years. Do you know how much power he had over me and how hard it was to leave him?”
“It’s not my fault you got back with him. You can’t blame me for his actions or for yours. You can’t blame me for everything, but it seems like you do.”
“Admit it, Sam,” Sadie said. “You wanted Ulysses, and you didn’t care about me.”
“I care about you more than anyone,” Sam said. “But do I regret that I wanted you to get Ulysses? Do I regret that we got rich, and we get to make basically whatever we want now, even ill-conceived, pretentious art games like Both Sides? No, if Ulysses led to that, I would tell you to go to Dov and get Ulysses every time.”
“You think Both Sides is ill-conceived and pretentious?”
“I think it was pretty obvious that it was never going to be Ichigo, but it was what you wanted to do, so I supported you.”
“You’re saying it’s my fault?”
“No, I’m agreeing maybe it was more your idea than mine.”
“Ichigo was my idea, too. They’re ALL my ideas.”
“It’s nice that you see it that way, and if it helps you to make a villain out of me, go for it. But if I hadn’t pushed you to make Ichigo, where would you even be? You’d be one of a hundred programmers at EA working on Madden Football, if you were lucky. There aren’t that many girls in our field, you know. You’d probably be working for Dov. He’d probably have you handcuffed to your desk.”