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Leon,
or someone who sounded a lot like him, answered. “You sure? I can take care of
it. It might be easier, ‘cause I can carry him better.”

“’M
OK,” I heard myself announce. “Just gimme coffee. Gonna be fine.”

“Oh,
no, you’re not.” I knew that tone of voice. “Leon, get his keychain before he
tries to do something stupid.” I felt fumbling hands go at my jeans pockets and
tried to slap them away. “Come on, man. I don’ like you like that.” Sensibly,
Leon ignored me and fished out my keys.

“You’re
positive,” he asked, before dropping them with a jingle into Michelle’s
outstretched hand.

“Yes,”
she said. “It’s the opposite direction for you, not for me. Just help me get
him out to my car and I can take it from there.”

“Gotta
pay my tab,” I protested. “Can’ go home ‘til I do that,”

“We
covered you, Ryan,” Michelle said without breaking stride. “And since you can’t
drink anything else without dying of alcohol poisoning, it’s time we cleared
out and let the nice people at the bar have some new paying customers.”

“I’ll
pay you back,” I promised, my head flopping down and my chin hitting my chest
as Leon hoisted me out of my chair. “Hey!”

“Easy,
man. Just helping you get out to the car.” He slid one arm under my shoulder
and wrapped it around me, yanking me up and toward him so that my constant
collapse could be translated into forward motion by his direction. We played
table slalom as we lurched toward the door, Michelle presumably following, as I
didn’t see her in my admittedly narrow field of vision. Behind us, I heard the
waitress who’d served our end of the table call, “Have a nice evening!” over
the clank of glasses.

Evening?
Jesus. How long had I been there?

Outside,
the sky was dark, or nearly so. As I gaped at the few visible stars, Michelle
came around and got her weight under me. “My car’s just over there,” she said.
“Help me dump him in the passenger seat and I’ll take care of the rest.”

“My
car’s right there,” Leon answered. “Last chance—”

Michelle
tensed. “Look, Leon, if you want to say ‘Sarah’s going to be there,’ go ahead
and do it, and I’ll still say the same thing. I’ve got no problem with Ryan, or
with Sarah. If she’s got a problem with me, that’s her issue, and if she’d
rather Ryan wrapped himself around a tree instead of having me drive him home,
then to hell with her.” As if to emphasize her point, she dropped her half of
the dead weight that was yours truly and headed for where she was parked.

“Michelle,
wait. Oh, man, I didn’t mean—” Leon’s excuses trailed off into muttered
under-the-breath frustration, and he followed after her as fast as my limp
presence would allow.

She
was already in the car, windows down and engine running. “Door’s open,” she
said, not moving to help. “Just open it up and dump him in.”

“I
didn’t mean that, Shelly,” he said, propping me against the side of her car as
he yanked the passenger side door open. I slid a few inches but stayed mostly
vertical. Don’t drool on the window, I told myself. Surely you can handle that
much. Then Leon was grabbing me again and shoving me inside. A dangling arm was
pulled out of the way and thrown into my lap, and then the door slammed shut.
“I just don’t want you doing a nice thing to become a problem, you know?”

She
shot a withering glare past me, one that gentled a bit after a moment. “Silly
man. Nice things always become problems. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“See
you, Shelly,” he answered, and then turned and trudged off. We sat for a
second. Michelle put it into gear and the crunch of gravel announced that we
were leaving. Cool air slapped me in the face as we picked up speed, and I
could see my car, tucked into the corner of the lot, as we turned out into traffic.

“The
windows are down so you can puke if you want,” Michelle said conversationally.
“I’m not going to slow down, though, so be careful where you aim.”

“Don’t
need to puke,” I answered, and then pressed my gut experimentally with my
fingers to test the hypothesis. “Just sleepy.”

“Uh-huh.”
She spared me a glance with all the leftover scorn she’d pulled from Leon. “You
need coffee, and a hot shower, and a lot of water, and maybe a B complex
vitamin, and then you need to sleep.”

“Sorry,”
I said, and turned my face to the cool plastic of the seat. “Didn’ wanna be a
bother today.”

“Today
you’re entitled,” she said, a little more gently, as she made a left and went
around a minivan doing a leisurely cruise in the passing lane. “Tomorrow, God
help you, but today, you get a freebie. What Eric pulled on you was a dirty
trick.”

I
shook my head, or tried to. “He’s right. Gotta take care of everyone.”

“Including
Eric,” she said. “He just killed your baby. You should have had some time to
deal with that before he asked you to play rodeo clown.” I got another look,
longer and more searching. “You did a great job back there, but I could tell
your heart wasn’t in it. Blue Lightning was going to be a great game. If you’d
called bullshit, a lot of people would have followed you right out the door,
you know.”

Including
you, I thought, but didn’t say. We went past trees, past new housing
developments with names like “Kirkwood Highlands.” past strip malls at a steady
rate of one supermarket per. Somewhere in my cerebellum, drunk was fighting a
holding action against coherence and losing. “I was being selfish, Michelle. I
love Blue Lighting. I love having a job better. And if I walked, Sarah wasn’t
going to let me get another job in games. She hates me doing it, you know. And
I didn’t wanna go out the door ‘cause I was being an artiste.” I tried to bring
my hand to my forehead in the time honored “sensitive artist” pose, but just
succeeded in slapping myself instead. “Ow,” I said, and stared at my traitorous
hand.

There
was silence for a couple of blocks before she answered me. “You might want to
think about who’s being selfish there.” And then, “Give me your cell phone.”

I
reached into my pockets to haul it out. “Why?” I asked stupidly.

“To
call your girlfriend to let her know you’re safe and on your way home. That’s
why.”

“Oh,”
I said, handing it over. She fumbled with the autodial for a second, then put
it to her ear.

“Hello?
Sarah? It’s Michelle. Yes, I’m on Ryan’s phone. He’s fine. Just had too much to
drink. I’m bringing him home. Leon was headed the other direction, so…no, no,
it’s no bother. Yeah, there were lots of people there. He just drowned a couple
of people’s sorrows with one too many. Yeah, I will. Don’t worry. I’ll give you
his keys. Bye now.”

She
flipped the phone closed and tossed it into my lap. “At least she had the good
grace not to ask if you’d gotten wasted over at my place.”

I
protested. “She’s not like that.” A pause. “She likes you. She told me.”

Michelle
laughed, short and sharp and bitter. “Oh, God, Ryan. She may say that. She may
even want to think that. But she doesn’t and she never will. It doesn’t matter
that we’re ancient history. She’ll always worry.”

We
coasted to a stop at a red light. I recognized the intersection. We were maybe
six blocks from home. “Why?”

“You’ll
figure it out one of these days. And in the meantime, if I do enough stupid
things like this, maybe she’ll finally unclench her hair.” Grinning, she looked
over at me. “God, can you imagine if I did take advantage of poor little drunk
you? She’d have a heart attack.”

My
expression must have said volumes, because Shelly just laughed. “Easy there,
tiger. I’m not interested.”

I
slouched back in my seat, a half-dozen responses coming to mind. She doesn’t
like you because I was a wreck after we broke up, she does like you but thinks
you’re keeping me in video games when I should be moving on to something else,
she wants me to get a better-paying job that doesn’t work me so hard—all of
these came and went. Instead, I just said, “So are you going?”

Michelle
shrugged, then took the last right before the turn onto my street.
Min-McMansions rolled past, anonymous and identical. “I don’t know. My
headhunter texted me a couple of times today with some stuff. Word’s already
out somehow.”

“Gordon?”
It didn’t really matter. All it took was one guy barfing something onto Twitter
and word would spread, and then the vultures would start gauging their chances.

“Maybe.
Don’t know, don’t care. We’ll see if any of the offers look interesting.” She
turned left without signaling, onto Cordero, my street. The house was three
blocks down.

“I’d
like it if you stayed,” I mumbled, then leaned my face out the window. Maybe
I’d been too hasty with my assessment of my gastro-intestinal state.

“That’s
sweet, Ryan,” she said in a low voice. “Thank you.”

“Welcome,”
I muttered thickly. “I’m still pissed off about this whole thing, you know.”

I
felt, rather than saw, her nod. “I know. That’s why I wanted to make sure you
came out there today. I figured you could get some of it out of your system. I
didn’t know then that you’d been co-opted.”

“Leon
tell you?”

“Leon
has a hard time keeping his mouth shut,” she agreed. “And he likes you. So if
you want to do right by him, figure out how you really feel about this and deal
with it. Even if it does mean moving on. Because otherwise, you’re just going
to drive yourself nuts, and I won’t always be there to take you home.”

“We’ll
see,” I said, as the car glided up to the curb. The front door was open, and,
at the sound of the engine, Sarah came outside to the curb.

Michelle
cut the engine. “This is your stop, sailor,” she said, and unbuckled my seat
belt before getting out of the car. “Sarah? He’s fine. His car’s at
Montague’s.” My keys dangled from her hand.

Sarah
was smiling, mostly. “Thanks for taking care of him, Michelle. I owe you one.”
She took the keys, even as I fumbled with the door handle and let myself out.

“Sounds
good,” she said, instead looking back at me as I wobbled to my feet. “Really,
though, it’s no big deal. Leon would have done it, but like I said, he was
headed the other way.”

“Leon’s
a good guy,” Sarah agreed, walking past Michelle to where I was taking cautious
steps house-wards. “Honey, let’s get you inside. You’ve had a rough day.”

“I’m
sorry,” I said to her. “Was just going to go for a little while and—”

“Shhh,”
she said, even as we walked past where Michelle stood. “I understand.” Small
steps, all uphill, carried us toward the door.

“Let’s
get you some water and some aspirin, and when you feel like it, we can talk
about what happened and what happens next.”

“Thank
you, honey,” I said, and felt myself close to tears for some inexplicable
reason. “You’re good to me.”

“Most
of the time, you’re worth it,” she said, but she was smiling. Then we were on
the porch and she was opening the door. When I craned my neck back down the
hill to thank Michelle, she was gone.

Chapter 7

Much
later, we lay in bed, neither of us speaking. I’d been dosed with multiple
applications of hot water, cold water, coffee, and stern glances until I’d
reached a reasonable approximation of sober, and then poured in between the
covers with stern admonitions not to do anything except sleep.

Sleep,
of course, proved impossible.

The
venetian blinds sliced the streetlight outside into thin, neat strips that ran
across the ceiling. Occasionally, a car would go by, its stereo almost loud
enough to be heard. After a while, Sarah came to bed, undressing without a word
and climbing between the sheets. I’d set Linus, her favorite teddy bear, on her
pillow before my last attempt to shut my eyes and force myself to sleep. She
held him up for a moment, then gently set him on the floor and lay back, inches
from me.

Outside,
a neighbor’s cat got into it briefly with something or another, One yowl, then
another, then that was all she wrote. I found myself hoping the cat was all
right, then wondering where the animal’s owner was before finally giving up and
not caring. Next to me, Sarah’s breathing was deep, slow and measured, the
sound of someone trying to go to sleep.

Trying.
Not succeeding.

“It
would have been a good game.” I said finally, into the stillness. “It really
would have.”

“I
know, honey.” She didn’t move. “I know that one meant a lot to you.”

I
let out a long breath. “You don’t understand. It really was going to be good.
We had something different. Something really cool.”

“I’m
sorry,” she said. “I really am, Ryan.” Then she rolled over, propped herself on
one elbow and looked at me. Her hand reached out to take mine and hold it,
tight. “I wish it hadn’t happened, and I’m sorry if it didn’t seem that way.”

“No,
no. It’s not that at all.” I raised her hand to my lips and kissed it. “It’s
just…hell, I wanted to see it. I wanted to play it. All those games I’ve worked
on and there weren’t a whole lot I just really wanted to play, you know? They
were work, and they were kind of interesting to do, but this was the first time
I really felt like we were doing something special. Like I’d finally done
something worthy with a design, something memorable and new. And now it’s
gone.”

She
didn’t say anything for a moment. “Is there any chance….” The words just
trailed off, and I let them.

“In
theory? Maybe. In reality? No.” I laughed, surprised by how bitter it sounded.
“By the time Horseshoe’s next project wraps up, the tech will be outmoded, or
someone else would have thought of it. It’s just not going to happen.”

“Horseshoe’s
next project….” she said. “Does that mean it’s not going to be your next
project?”

 “I
don’t know. I need more time to think.”

“How
much time?”

“I
don’t know,” I repeated, a little more forcefully. “Jesus, Sarah, it’s so
tempting to just walk away. Eric laid this guilt trip on me this morning, about
how everyone’s going to follow my lead, so if I go it’s all going to fall down.
Like I’d be screwing Leon and the team if I left”

“That’s
not true, and you know it,” Her voice was right by my ear, her body pressed up
against mine. “And that’s not fair of him. It’s not your fault the game got
cancelled.”

“No.
It’s those bastards from BlackStone.” Pulling my pillow out from behind my
head, I gave it a couple of punches. The gesture felt weak and empty, and after
a moment, I let the pillow drop. “And now the next project will be with them,
so every day the knife gets another little twist.”

“So
leave. Walk out. You don’t have to find another job. You could stay home and
write—you could stay home and not write if you wanted to. But I don’t want you
beating yourself up every day.”

I
swallowed, surprised at the sudden presence of what felt like a dagger in my
throat. “It’s not even that,” I croaked.

Sarah’s
hand clenched for a second, then relaxed. “Honey? What is it? Don’t tell me
you’re still thinking about going back.” She said it without hope, without
judgment, without anything at all.

I
nodded, afraid to speak. “Thinking about it,”

“Why?”

Something
grabbed my guts and twisted them, even as I tried to answer. It was obvious, it
was simple, it was impossible to put into words. I opened my mouth and nothing
came out.

“Honey?”

I
swallowed, closed my eyes, and tried again. “It’s hard to explain.” A deep
breath later, I gave it another shot. “There are people counting on me. If I
quit over this, it’s going to look bad. It’ll look bad to whoever I interview
with next, because I cut and ran.”

 
She took her
hand from mine and patted my cheek. “Funny, I thought the time in between
projects was the best time to switch jobs. And if you’re staying home, it won’t
matter, anyway.”

“Yes.
No. I don’t know. That’s not it, okay?” I rubbed my eyes, covering them with my
hands. “It would be like I’m being driven off, like I’m taking my toys and
going home.”

“Maybe
you’re too big for toys.”.

I
kissed her gently. “Are you saying it’s time to be a grown-up?” I asked when we
broke apart.

 
 “I could be.
Being a grown-up has its benefits.” She draped one leg over me. “Just thought
I’d mention it.” My face rose up to meet hers and we kissed again. My hands
found her back and roamed over it, pulling her to me.

And
when we broke the kiss, she looked into my eyes, and said, “You’re still going
back in tomorrow, aren’t you?”

I
looked away. “Tomorrow? Yes. Beyond that, I don’t know. It’s what I do, honey.
I make games. Without that….”

She
sighed and dropped her head to my chest. “I know you love your work, Ryan. I
just hate how you have to do it.”

“This
one’s a port. They’ve already done most of the heavy lifting on the design end
so it should be a pretty easy development cycle for me.”

Her
chuckle was a felt thing, not a heard one. “Oh, come on, love. We go through
this on every game. There’s always a reason this one’s going to be easier, and
there’s always a crisis and a deadline and a milestone and you’re there until
two in the morning every night for a month.”

“It’s
not—”

She
put a finger to my lips. “It is. Every time. And if this is what you still love
and still want to do, I understand, and I won’t make you choose between it and
me, because I lose that one no matter what. But it’s not what I want for the
rest of our life together, Ryan, and I keep hoping that you’re going to get as
tired of it as I am.”

It
took me a moment to realize that the strange warmth I was feeling were tears,
her tears, and that she was shaking. “I’m sorry, Sarah,” I said, knowing it was
inadequate, knowing I hadn’t explained anything at all. “I just can’t. Not now.
Not yet.” I wrapped my arms around her, and buried my face in her shoulder, even
as she buried hers in mine.

“I
know,” she said, and we stayed like that all night, not speaking another word,
until morning.

*   *   *

Breakfast
was mostly silent. Sarah offered to drop me off at my car. I thanked her, and
then we both concentrated on eating. Last night's words hung heavy in the air
between us. At one point, she asked me to pass the orange juice. I did so
without comment.

The
drive to my car was nearly as quiet. It wasn't until Montague's was visible
ahead of us that she turned to me. “Are you going to be home at a reasonable
hour tonight?”

I
shrugged. “Most likely. If I’m going to be late….”

“…you’ll
call,” she finished. “I hope you won’t be,” she said a moment later. “It would
be nice to have an evening together.

I
nodded. “I’d like that.” We pulled up at the curb by Montague’s. “I’ll get out
here. No sense making you pull into the lot. It's a minefield.”

“OK.”
She leaned over and gave me a peck on the cheek. “Have a good day, Ryan. And I
really am sorry about your game.”

I
got out. “I know. Love you too.” I shut the door and she peeled away, trying to
catch the light at the end of the block while I walked across the lot, dodging
potholes and puddles. The car was right where I’d left it, which I appreciated.
A few bars I’d known would tow vehicles left there overnight, but Montague’s
would give you until five PM the next day to come get your car. The sole
exception was if you just went back into Montague’s and started drinking all
over again. Then you got an indefinite stay of execution.

Looking
in the window, I could see that my laptop bag was still safe and sound on the
passenger seat. That was a relief. I'd half-expected it to be gone, courtesy of
a broken window. Muttering silent thanks to whoever watches over drunks and
their stuff, I climbed in. Plugging my phone into the aux cable took a
second—old school hardware, I know, but some habits die hard—and punched up a
driving mix. God knew something had to psych me up for going in to the office,
and caffeine wasn’t going to be able to handle the job on its own.

The
first track that came up was some AC/DC, a version of “Thunderstruck” off a
live album. Good stuff to start a day with, I decided, enough to get the blood
pumping. Slamming my hands on the wheel in time with the beat, I rolled down my
window and started howling along with Brian Johnson. Other drivers shot me
Significant Looks, which I mostly ignored. Let them get their own AC/DC, I
thought.

Three
choruses in, the song started skipping. A steady pulse of
“THUNDATHUNDATHUNDATHUNDA” hammered at my ears until I hit a red light and was
able to pause the damn thing. A skip was bad news—it meant either the file was
corrupted or the hardware was, and as “Thunderstruck” had played just fine
earlier in the week, the odds were I was looking at a trip to the Apple store.

I
clicked through to the next track. Maybe it was just the one song that was
corrupted, or the thing was still warming up. The dulcet tones of Mama Young’s
best boys cut off abruptly, replaced by a random Yes album track. It lasted
maybe thirty seconds before it started sputtering, and I took the opportunity
of another red light to stare at the thing in disbelief.

“Oh,
no you don’t,” I told it and clicked through again. It got halfway through the
intro before REM’s “Driver 8” was choking on itself. “Crap, crap, crap,” I said
to no one in particular and tried again.

It
was an instrumental this time, heavy synth lines with a weird contrapuntal
thing going on in the guitar part. It took me a minute to recognize it as one
of the sound files we’d commissioned for Blue Lightning. The track was
rough—the percussion line was way too over the top, and the main riff wasn’t
quite there yet—but we’d been talking about this one as the main “alert state”
loop, the one that would play every time things started to go to hell for the
player. I’d dumped all of the rough music cuts to my iTunes so I could give
them a few good listens before sending notes back to the sound studio in New
York. I hadn’t had the chance to do it more than once, though, and now it
didn’t seem like there was any point.

Still,
the song was catchy, and it wasn’t skipping, two points in its favor. I let it
go and got into it a little bit as I drove. It was too short to be good driving
music—loops like that rarely get over two minutes long, or they don’t work for
in-game—but it was fun while it lasted. Finally, it faded out in a crash of
major-chord synths, and the too-familiar intro to “Baba O’Riley” started in.
“Come on,” I encouraged it. “Get to the vocals. Just make it to the vocals. You
can do it.”

Instead,
it tripped over the first guitar riff and kept stumbling through it, replaying
a half-second of Pete Townshend windmill for as long as I could stand it.

I
did a quick location check. Five more minutes to the office. All I needed was
one more song to get me back into a good mood, and I’d be able to tackle the
day.

I
clicked forward on the playlist.

Garbled
sounds that could have been something off the new Dave Gahan album.

Click.

A
few bars of an acoustic Richard Thompson performance from Newport, jangled up
with one another into an impenetrable mess.

Click.

Some
Elvis I’d thrown on there as a joke, “Love Me Tender”. Only this time, it
jumped straight into the middle of the song, letting the King beg “Love me/Love
me/Love me/Love me-”

“Sorry,
Elvis, you’re not my type.” Click.

Roxy
Music, telling me what lived in every dream home, or at least trying to before
their own noise overwhelmed them.

One
more, I told myself. One more, and then I’d shut it off. After all, I didn’t need
music, I just wanted it.

Click.

There
was nothing for a moment, then up came a swell of strings with that
voice-of-God, O Fortuna chorus chanting over them. I felt a chill run down my
spine as the brass came in, jagging along in an unresolved chord while the
vocals thundered over it. It felt majestic, like the soundtrack to the end of
the world.