Byron was willing and more than able to argue this point at length. Max cut him off. “We’ll figure something out. I have to go.” Max entered the room and hurried up to Jonah. His son shied away at his approach, with a touch of fear that hurt Max’s feelings. He caught Jonah by the shoulder and pulled him close for a hug. He bent down — he didn’t have to go very far down anymore — and whispered, “I love you. Take care of yourself.”
Jonah was already pulling away, squirming low and out of Max’s embrace. “Okay—” he grumbled.
“Bye,” he said to Sam. His dead partner’s son was still curved into the small video screen, his body jerking in alliance with his arcade alter ego.
Max left, going past Byron quickly, waving.
“Promise?” Byron said to him.
“We’ll figure it out,” he said and left, shutting the door fast behind him. He didn’t continue down the hall. Leaning his back against the door, Max consciously breathed steadily, to recover from the worry of his goodbye.
“What game are you playing?” he heard Byron ask.
It took a while before there was a response. Jonah finally said in a sullen grudging way: “It’s Boxxil. And you’re not very good at it,” he continued, presumably to Sam.
“Well, how can I concentrate with all these interruptions?” Sam whined, a childish pronunciation of his dead father’s favorite rationalization.
“I’m not good at any video games,” Byron said.
Max pushed off from the door, ready to leave for good, satisfied the boys had made some sort of truce.
“Nobody’s good at them at first,” Jonah said. “You have to play them a lot before you get good.”
“Ah!” Sam groaned. The game played a dirge. “Except for me. The more I play, the more terrible I am.”
“You want a turn?” Jonah asked Byron.
Max was about to go. He waited, however, gratified by his son’s civility and curious about Byron’s response. “No,” Byron answered. “They’re boring. It’s not like Architron. You have to use your brain and your imagination to do Architron.”
“Well,” Sam drawled. “What’s so great about it? You can draw buildings in colors. Wow! That’s really great!”
“Yeah, yeah,” Jonah said, laughing. “Haven’t you ever heard of crayons!”
“You’re both stupid,” Byron said in a low confident voice.
“Well, stupid me is going to play,” Jonah said.
There was silence. Max said to himself: Go. It’s time. You already know everything there is to know about their lives. You know the sad broken adults they’ll become; you know how they will fail.
He heard the game’s tinny music.
“Your dad thinks playing computer games is stupid,” Byron said. “He didn’t even like me playing computer chess. What he likes is architecture, that’s why he’s so interested in my designs.”
Byron got no response. Only the game’s music could be heard for an answer.
Byron resumed after a few moments of silence. “Your dad wanted to own Architron. You know? But he couldn’t afford it. He would be good at it. He only draws small things but they work. I don’t know if my buildings would work.”
“Oh, that’s really great,” Sam whined slowly, a turntable spinning at an incorrect setting. “Buildings that fall down the minute you step into them!”
“Crash!” Jonah said.
“You’re dead!” Sam laughed. He laughed coarsely, almost coughing.
There was another silence. Go, Max, he told himself. There’s nothing but loss and defeat in their youth. You can’t rescue them.
“Your dad is interested in what I do,” Byron said. “He likes me better than he likes you. He’d rather spend time with me. I think your dad loves me more than he loves you.”
Max waited for Jonah to answer. But there was only the game’s melody.
“He does,” Byron said after a while. “Your dad is really more interested in the things I’m good at.”
The computer beeped wildly. Sam exclaimed, “You did it!”
“That’s the highest score of any of my friends!” Jonah said, exhausted triumph in his voice.
“Big deal,” Byron said. “Somebody in the world has a better score.”
Max walked away. He watched his scuffed leather loafers step on the narrow oak boards, bordered by the darker strips that framed each side. His feet had walked on these ubiquitous New York floors for all of his forty-two years. He had crawled on them in Washington Heights as a baby. They had split his chin on the Upper West Side as a toddler. He had raced Matchbox cars that fitted perfectly on their narrow width. He had wet them with grief for his dead father. He had fallen asleep on them in the dark while sneaking to overhear the adults talk of sex in the living room. He had stripped and sanded and polyurethaned and stained and bleached them as an architect. He had carpeted them, he had made love on them, he had tiled them, he had cursed them. How many times had they supported the tedious walk away from defeat?
Debby confronted him as he turned past the living room into the hall leading to the front door. “Max, are you okay?” she said.
He moved into her tall body, leaning the side of his face against hers. It was strange and infuriating that he lived with this elegant and intelligent woman who said she loved him and yet couldn’t salvage the wreck of his life. “I’m going out for a walk.”
“Now?” she whispered in his ear. Her hot breath made him shiver.
“If I don’t I’m going to stab them all to death with Flora’s carving knife.”
“Max,” she sighed and squeezed him. “Don’t leave me alone with them.”
“You can handle them better than I can.”
Debby hugged him, pleading into his eyes. “Before I met you I was lost in the world. I know everybody’s bugging you, everybody wants your comfort. But I really need it. I need you to really be with me.”
He remembered the man she missed, the patient cheerful husband who always understood her nerves, her shyness, her fragility. He could almost see that husband in her eyes. But it had been a performance. How could he tell her that? How could he say: you’ve been married to an imitation?
“You weren’t happy with me.”
“That’s not true. I love you,” Debby said.
“You love me, but you aren’t happy. I couldn’t really comfort you.”
“You don’t have to comfort me. You’re confusing me with Nan. I’m not a widow.”
Max tried to pull away — there was no explaining it, not talk that she could hear.
Debby clung to him. “You should tell Nan to get off your back. She’s making you miserable. She’s making us all miserable.”
“None of this is Nan’s fault,” Max said and he stepped out of his wife’s unenthusiastic arms. “I have to go for a walk.”
“Fine. But we have to talk tonight.”
Harry appeared, moving with his head down, his thick eyebrows lifting and falling as if in time to some inner conversation. “Oh,” he said as he nearly bumped into Max. He looked from Debby to Max and back from Max to Debby. “Am I interrupting?”
“No,” Max said to him. “What are we going to talk about?” he asked his wife.
“Later,” Debby said.
“I’m interrupting,” Harry said and resumed his shuffle down the hall. “I’m just going for another bottle of wine,” he mumbled.
“About what?” Max asked. If it was something truly urgent he had better know right away before answering became impossible.
“Well, for one thing what are you going to be doing now that you shut down the office? You keep saying you don’t know, that you’ll decide later. It’s time to make a decision. I think having no plan is upsetting you.”
“No,” Max said. “It’s upsetting you. I’m going now. Maybe I’ll think up something while I’m out.”