“Maybe I don’t want it to be cleaned,” Sadie said.
“You mean, you want me to leave it?”
“No, but it shouldn’t be erased,” Sadie said. “Marx shouldn’t just be erased.”
“Come on, Sadie. The stain isn’t Marx. It’s—”
She interrupted him, “The place where he died.”
“It’s—”
“The place where he was murdered.”
“I think it will be hard for people to work around a huge bloodstain.”
“Yes, it will be hard,” Sadie said.
“How about a great vintage rug, then? Marx loved kilim rugs.”
“That isn’t even a little funny.”
“I’m sorry. It isn’t funny. I’m tired. Seriously, Sadie, do you not want people to return to work?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you want to come and look at it?” he said hopefully. “We can decide what to do together. I can pick you up.”
“No, I do not want to look at it, Sam. I do not want to fucking look at it! What is wrong with you?”
“Okay, okay.”
“Just take care of it,” she said.
“That’s what I was trying to do, Sadie.” A long pause. He could hear her breathing, so he knew she was still there.
“Considering this, considering the god-awful state of things, maybe it would be better to move offices?” she said. “Even if we clean the floor, will anyone ever want to work at those offices again?”
“I don’t know if we can afford to move,” Sam said. “We’re behind on every project, and we’ve been paying people for three months but not getting much, or any, work done. Simon and Ant need to finish CPH4 now. Revels expansion pack needs to be ready for December, too.”
“Ant’s coming back?” Sadie said.
“Yes. Simon thinks so.”
“That’s brave,” Sadie said, but there was a meanness to her tone, and he could tell that she was about to commence a new argument. “Are you saying we can’t move because you don’t want the bother of moving? Or can we actually not move?”
“Sadie, I’m telling you the truth. I spoke to our accountant this morning. You can call him yourself.”
“It’s just you have a way of bending reality to suit your own agenda.”
“What agenda do I have? Except to get our people back to work.”
“I don’t know, Sam. What agenda could you have?”
“I don’t want our company to close. That’s my agenda. Marx would want the same thing.”
“Marx doesn’t want anything anymore,” she said. “You know what, Sam? Do what you will. You always do.”
“Are you okay?”
“What do you think?” She hung up the phone.
（8） Sadie…
The only thing he could do for Sadie was to keep their business running until she was ready to return to it.
The day stretched impossibly long though it was only eleven, and it was two more hours until the floor guy would arrive. Sam lay down on the firm, orange sofa in Marx’s office, and he closed his eyes but did not go to sleep.
The phone in Marx’s office rang, and without considering who might be on the other end or whether he was even in a state to field Marx’s calls, Sam answered.
“Great! Someone’s here!” a female voice said. “The voicemail’s entirely filled up. I tried sending an email, but the only address I had was Marx’s, and…”
“This is Mazer. Who is this?” Sam asked impatiently.
“Mazer? Wow, it’s honestly such an honor to meet you over the phone.”
“Who is this?” Sam repeated.
“Oh! I’m sorry. My name is Charlotte Worth. My husband and I were meeting with Marx about our game when…when…Well, he was thinking of making it. Maybe he mentioned it? It’s about this mother and her daughter after the apocalypse. The mother has amnesia, and the daughter is a kid like Ichigo, and there are vampires, but they’re not really vampires, it’s hard to explain, and—”
Sam interrupted her, “I wouldn’t know anything about that.”
“I know this is a bad time, but Marx had some of our original concept art for Our Infinite Days—that’s what our game’s called—and we left it at the office, and we need to get it back, if possible.”
“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” Sam repeated.
“Well, if you see it…” Charlotte said. “Or if you could have someone look for it. It was in a black portfolio, with the monogram AW on it. A is for my husband, Adam.”
“Honestly, what the hell is wrong with you?” Sam said. “Marx is dead. I have neither the time nor the desire to look for your husband’s portfolio, or to hear your insipid game pitch.”
“I’m sorry,” Charlotte said. Her voice sounded weepy, and this pissed Sam off more than he already was. Sadie had been awful on the phone, but she hadn’t cried. What right did this stranger have to cry? “I know it’s a terrible time. I know. I just need our materials back. If you could—”
Sam hung up the phone.
In the Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club fall 1993 production of Macbeth, the director ultimately decided that Marx wouldn’t appear as Banquo’s ghost. The director had the actor playing Macbeth stare at an empty chair at a long banquet table—an invisible Marx that only Macbeth could see—and then he directed Macbeth to throw dinner rolls, purloined nightly from the Adams House dining hall, at the empty chair. “Reduced to dinner rolls, Sam!” Marx complained. “The indignity of it!” By opening night, though, Marx had made peace with the decision. As he said to Sam, “If I’ve done the work in the scenes before I die, if I’ve made a real impression, they’ll feel me in the scenes I’m not in anyway.”
Sam’s cell phone rang. The floor guy was early. Sam went downstairs to let him in.
Sam showed him the stain and the guy went cheerfully to work. “I remember when I did these floors, maybe five, six years ago, right?” the floor guy said. “Beautiful space. Great light. A pale girl with red hair let me in. What kind of company is this again? Something in tech, right?”
“Video games,” Sam said.
“That must be fun.”
Sam did not reply.
“What happened here?” the floor guy asked.
“Sorry,” Sam said. He walked away and pretended to take a call. “Yes, this is Mazer. I’m here with the floor guy right now,” he improvised lamely. “Yes, yes.” He found himself facing the pillar with the bullet hole in it. A handyman was coming tomorrow, but looking at the hole, Sam thought maybe he should leave the scar. It wasn’t gory, like the bloody floor would have been. The hole was perfectly symmetrical, round, clean. The wood was miraculously un-splintered, darker on the edges, like a knot that might have always been there. To an outsider, it didn’t obviously signify the death of his partner.
It was just a hole.
3
The Master of the Revels expansion pack was scheduled for a December release, a year after the original game had come out, but by the end of April, no substantive work had been done. Mori, whom Sadie had put in charge of the project, was reluctant to complain about Sadie to Sam, but finally admitted that work was going slowly because Sadie was, for all practical purposes, unreachable.