Eden
The champagne has hit me hard. I’m vaguely aware of Nat muttering under her breath, “I won’t have this, I won’t have this. Look at you, Eden. You’re a state. What has he done to you? Stupid man, making you upset like this. It’s not right. It’s not even close to right. Well, that’s that, isn’t it? He’s ruined it with you. Don’t worry, babe. I’ll always be here.”
She strokes my head as I lay in her lap. My mouth is dry, and my lips are chapped, sticking together when I close my mouth. He hit her, I think, numbly. He hit her and cheated on her, and he’ll do the same to me if I give him a chance. I know how drunk I am, and yet at the same time I’m convinced I’m not that drunk. It’s a strange state.
But all I know for absolute certain right now is that my head aches and my belly is churning.
The car stops, and Nat leans down and whispers in my ear.,“We’re at my place now,” she says. “Shall we get you up? You can have some water and a sleep. How does that sound?”
I know she’s talking to me like I’m a baby, but I’m not offended. I appreciate it, really. Right now I feel like I need to be babied a little bit.
“Yeah—uh, okay,” I mumble, the pounding in my head drowning out my words. “Sure. Let’s go.” And then the pain overwhelms me, and I begin to sob, “He hit her, he cheated on her, he hit her, he cheated on her. And the screensaver, Nat. He told me to go up there. No one else did! He scouted every inch of that house before tonight. That’s his job. And he knew I would see it. Why! Why!”
“Oh, sweet,” Nat sighs, stroking my sweat-damp forehead. “Men are like that sometimes. I don’t know why.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I breathe. Saliva builds up in my mouth, and I’m suddenly sure I’m going to vomit.
“There’s something about the bruise,” I mutter, hardly even hearing my own words. “There’s something…”
I close my eyes tight-shut and think about nothing, and soon I’m drifting to sleep. Vaguely, I feel Nat leading me up the stairs to her apartment and laying me on the bed, but I hardly know what’s happening at all. I’m tired, and drunk, and my heart is aching.
This is a dream. And when I wake up, it’ll be next to Maddox, and he’ll be the man I remember.
***
I wake up to the smell of coffee on Sunday morning, wrapped up in Nat’s love-heart-patterned sheets. The curtains are closed and let only a tiny pin of light in, but even that is too much. I roll over and follow the scent of coffee. Nat is sitting next to the bed, mug in hand. Another mug sits on the bedside table.
“What time is it?” I groan.
“Nine o’clock,” Nat says. “I can leave, if you want.”
“It’s okay,” I sigh.
I sit up in bed, feeling as though every bone in my body is going to snap, as though every tendon is stretching too far. Memories of last night come to me, and what I remember first is the champagne: how sweet and tasty it was; how I drank four or five glasses without realizing. And then I think about Maddox and Cassandra, and I swallow harshly. Saliva tries to rise in my mouth, but my mouth is too dry.
“Water,” I breathe.
Nat reaches underneath her chair and picks up a water bottle. I snatch it from her, tip my head back, and gulp in as much as I can. I gulp and gulp until the bottle is empty, and then I bring my hand to my head and massage my temples. “I was drunk last night,” I mutter.
“I know,” Nat says. “I was there.”
“A woman told me that Maddox hit her, told me that he cheated on her. And there was a screensaver, Nat…”
“You told me all about it before you went to sleep,” Nat says. I look at her face. Her lips are pressed together, and her eyes are wide. As I study her, her nostrils flare. She grips the coffee mug as though she wants to shatter it. “It’s unacceptable,” she growls. “He shouldn’t be making you feel this. I hate seeing my friend feel like this.”
I smile at her. “You’re a good friend, but there was something, Nat…” I shake my head, trying to remember. When it comes to me, I’m sure I’m wrong. There’s no way; it’s too strange. You’re just looking for excuses. It’s a natural thing to do. But you have to forget about him now. It’s over.
But still—
“What something?” Nat asks, blowing on her coffee.
“The woman, Cassandra—”
“The woman he beat?”
“Yeah, it’s odd. I was drunk at the time, stressed out, so it didn’t seem that strange. Or if it did, not so strange to stop me listening to her. But she had a bruised eye, a black eye, you know—and her knuckles were all cut up. I don’t even know how. But the weird part is, she was crying, and when she was crying, the black eye was disappearing, sort of like if you drip water onto face paint. You know how it smudges?”
Nat nods.
“Well, it was doing that.”
“Why would she paint herself with a black eye?” Nat says.
“No idea.” I shrug, and my whole body roars out against it. My arms ache, my shoulders ache, everything aches in that way only a hangover can bring. “To make me feel sorry for her, maybe? And the screensaver. So, yeah, sure, he told me to go to that room, but how was he to know I wouldn’t immediately touch the mouse or keyboard, disturb the screensaver? How could he be sure I would see it? If he was playing a sick game with me, I mean.”
In the yellow light of morning, these questions need to be answered. Not like last night, where all that mattered was rage and outrage and heartbreak.
“Okay, fair enough,” Nat says, some of the tension leaving her face. “But what about the flash drive? That’s the best way to know, isn’t it? If he really did want you to see something that’d upset you, he’d put it on the flash drive, wouldn’t he? That’s what you were doing up there, after all.”
“I didn’t even look at it,” I say.
“Well…”
Nat places her coffee mug on the table, walks from the bedroom to the living room, and returns a moment later with her laptop. She places it on my lap. “Where’s the drive?”
“Hang on.” I reach into my bra. It’s still there, wedged between the fabric of my bra and my breast. When I take it away, I feel the outline it has imprinted on my skin, from where I’ve slept on it. Nat giggles. I laugh, too.
I take the flash drive and insert it into the laptop.
My heartbeat is like a rushing bull, bounding ahead, up into my throat, making it hard to breathe. This is it. This is what I should’ve done last night, just to be sure. But makeup! It was makeup! It was stupid silly makeup!
“You’re scared,” Nat comments.
“I’m scared,” I admit.
She reaches across and places her small hand on my shoulder.
***
The folder appears in the computer tab. I think of the names it might have before it’s finished loading: fooled you; stupid bitch; it was never you. And a hundred other vindictive, taunting titles. But when it does load, the title is not fooled you but for you.
I trail my finger across the trackpad, leaving a snail’s trail of sweat, and double-click the file. It opens, and my shoulders sag. Oh, what did I do? I think. Why didn’t I get more information?
“Wow!” Nat squeaks, leaning across and peering at the screen. “Just . . . wow!”
The first file is marked: code, further improvements. I click on it, and lines and lines of the source code for Angels of Death appear on the screen. The changes are marked in yellow, with tracked comments along one side. Increases stability; prevents crashes; quicker loading times; etc. And next to each tracked comment are the initials M O.
“M O?” Nat asks. “You don’t think . . .”
“Maddox Owens,” I say. “Maddox Owens! He was the programmer this whole time! Nat, I never thought he was stupid. I wouldn’t be with a stupid person. But if this is him—”
“He’s a coding genius.”
“Yeah, and look, he’s done it.” I scroll through the code. “He’s done it, Nat. All of it. Look. It’s fixed.”
“He’s even implemented the sub-level and the boss,” Nat says in wonder, as I get to the bottom of the code, where two multi-page yellow chunks have been inserted. “Eden!”
I’m breathless. Beads of sweat slide down my chest in between my breasts. My finger trembles on the trackpad, causing the mouse to move erratically on the screen. I aim for the minimize icon twice before finally hitting it. I go to the next file, which is a word document. It opens with two pages of bullet points. The title is suggestions for the game.
“All this work,” Nat whispers. “All this work for you. Why would he—”
“He didn’t,” I say firmly. “I think I was duped. A painted-on bruise, a sob story. I didn’t even hear his side of it.”
I close the word document and go to a simple text file. Maddox writes: “I have taken the liberty of finding someone who might be willing to fund your game for expansion after the dissertation submission. That means you could develop it into a commercial game for sale. Here is the number . . .”
“Eden!” Nat cries. “This is massive. This is huge. If this is real—”
“It is,” I breathe. “It is, Nat. Goddamn it, what have I done?”
“Listen, I don’t know exactly what happened,” Nat says. “But I think you’re right: you need to hear his side of the story.”
“Where’s my phone?” I mutter.
Nat leans down under the bed, picks it up, and hands it to me. I have two texts, both from last night:
We need to talk. Please.
I can explain all of this. Cassandra is crazy. That bruise on her eye was makeup, Eden. Fucking makeup!
“I knew it,” I mutter, showing the text to Nat. “Maybe she is mad.”
I text back: I’ll listen now, Maddox.