Ant embraces you, and you walk toward the stairs. “Be careful, my friend,” he says.
Charlotte Worth calls after you. “Marx, should you take a weapon?” This is the question of a serious gamer. A gamer should never enter a potential combat situation without checking one’s inventory and confirming the availability of a weapon.
“What weapon?” you say. You have no weapons. You have lived an easy life that has required no defenses of any kind. Your privilege probably makes you reckless. “I’m going to have a conversation. I’m sure this will just turn out to be a person who needs someone to listen to them.”
Before you descend, you take a quick, final look at your office. You feel as if you’ve forgotten to do something. In a game, the out-of-place object is often the solution. You notice the Worths’ portfolio, which Charlotte has left on your desk, and you scribble on a Post-it: s., tell me your thoughts. —m.
You hand the portfolio to your assistant, and you run down the stairs, and that is all you want to remember for now, because Sadie is in your hospital room.
“Are you his wife?” the doctor asks.
“Yes,” Sadie lies.
This strikes you as funny because Sadie has a thing about marriage—i.e., she doesn’t believe in it. You don’t know where this comes from exactly—her parents have been happily married for thirty-seven years; her grandparents for longer than that. If anyone should have a problem with marriage, it should be you. Your parents have been unhappily married for nearly as long as Sadie’s have been happily married. You can’t remember the last time you saw your parents together. After your freshman year in college, you came back home to find that they had moved into separate apartments in Tokyo.
“Where’s Dad?” you’d asked your mother.
Your mother seemed unconcerned. “He said he wanted to be able to walk to work.”
Over a decade later, they still aren’t divorced, and you can’t explain this either.
You proposed to Sadie last year. You asked her father for permission, which he granted. You bought a ring. You got down on one knee.
“I don’t see myself being someone’s wife,” she said.
“You wouldn’t be a wife. I’d be your husband,” you said.
She was not convinced by this argument. Her resistance was surprising, so you asked for reasons. She said that you already owned a house together, so you didn’t need to be married. She said that she didn’t want to be married to her business partner. She said that marriage was an antiquated institution that oppressed women. She said she liked her name.
“I like your name, too,” you said. “I love your name.”
But now, here Sadie is, telling a doctor that she is your wife. If you could speak, you would say to her, “All I had to do was fall into a coma for you to marry me. If only I’d known it was so easy.”
* * *
—
You have not, technically, fallen into a coma.
The coma has been medically induced.
From overhearing doctors, you have surmised that you have been shot three times: in the thigh, in the chest, in the shoulder.
The most problematic of those injuries is the bullet that went through your chest: it raced through your lung, your kidney, and your pancreas. The bullet is now chilling somewhere in your intestine, waiting until your body is well enough for it to be removed. They say it could be worse—you, like most humans, have redundancies built in. Your pancreas is, heartbreakingly, single. The trauma of the injuries has caused your body to go into shock, which is why you find yourself in the coma. You are young and healthy, or you were, and depending on the day, they say your chances for surviving this are good, better than average, not bad. You take some comfort in this.
Sadie leaves, and a nurse comes into the room to deal with the dueling portmanteaus of waste and nourishment that hang by your bed. He carefully wipes down your body with a sponge, and despite everything, you find a small pleasure in being cared for.
* * *
—
You are in the lobby of Unfair Games.
A white boy, dressed in black, with a red bandanna tied around the lower half of his face is holding a small gun to Gordon the receptionist’s head. Another white boy, also dressed in black—this one, with a larger gun and a black bandanna, is pointing the barrel of his big gun at you. “WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?” the boy with the red bandanna wants to know.
You have no idea why these boys haven’t gotten into the elevator to come up to the main floor yet. Don’t they want to wreak havoc on the most people possible? You have no idea how Gordon—sweet, baby-faced, ball-of-clay Gordon—has managed to contain them to the lobby. You remember Gordon at Halloween. He had modded his Pikachu costume so that he could make actual electric sparks.
You don’t know much about guns, other than the guns you’ve used in video games, like Doom. And even when you play Doom, guns are not your weapon of choice. You prefer a chainsaw or a rocket launcher, weapons with more Grand Guignol–style thrills to them. You determine the smaller gun is a pistol, and the larger weapon is an assault rifle.
“Hi, I’m Marx Watanabe. This is my company.” You hold out your hand in case anyone wants to shake it. The boys look mystified by this gesture. You bow your head slightly. “What can I do for you? Gordon says you want to talk to Mazer, but Mazer’s not here.”
Red Bandanna screams at you, “I don’t believe you! You’re a goddamn liar!”
“I promise you, he’s not here,” you say. “He’s in New York, promoting our new game. But why don’t you tell me what I can do for you?”
“Show me the office,” Red Bandanna says. “I want to see for myself that little faggot isn’t here.”
“Okay,” you say, desperately stalling to give Ant time to evacuate everyone to the roof. “I can do that, but can you do me a favor—”
“Boy, I cannot fucking do you a favor.”
“Explain to me what you want with Mazer. Maybe I can help.”
The one with the black bandanna has a slight stutter. “We don’t want to hurt anyone else,” he says. “We just need to talk to Mazer. If we wanted to go shoot up your office, we’d have gone up there already. We want Mazer to come down here.”
“Let’s call him,” you suggest. You dial Sam’s number, but Sam doesn’t pick up. He must be in the photo shoot with Sadie. You leave a message, keeping your voice neutral: “It’s Marx. Give me a ring when you have a chance.”
You look at these two kids. You can’t tell how old they are because of their bandannas. They’re probably your age or younger, and you aren’t afraid of them, though you are afraid of their guns.
“He’ll call back,” you say casually. “How about while we wait for Mazer to call, you let Gordon here go?”
“Bitch,” Red Bandanna says. “Why would we do that?”
“He’s not important,” you say. “He’s an NPC.” They’re gamers, obviously, so you know they will know this term.
“You’re an NPC,” Red Bandanna says.
“You’re not the first person to call me that,” you say.