Page 13 of Exit Party

“Look, I’m not trying to be mysterious. It’s just, we had a fun time together, but I hardly know you.”

“Okay. My name is Ari Smith. I’m from New York City.”

“Yeah, okay, but I still hardly know you.”

“There was this thing a friend of mine used to say, when she wanted something.”

“Go on.”

“She’d say, ‘Can we trade a story for a story?’ and then she’d tell the other person something they didn’t know, in exchange for information.”

“Interesting,” James said. “I like that.”

“Me too. So let me tell you something I never tell anyone, and then maybe you’ll feel like you know me better. Okay?”

There was a beat of silence on the line. “Okay. Why not. I’m literally just sitting here waiting for my laundry.”

“I had a business selling fake passports in my twenties,” Ari said, “but that’s not why I went to prison.”

“You went to—wait, what? Like, are we talking prison prison? As in actual, literal—?”

“Yes, an actual literal medium-security federal penitentiary, because I committed an actual serious crime.”

“What kind of crime?”

“Will you tell me about the party if I tell you?”

“Sure. Yes.”

“I tried to kill someone,” she said. “I took out a contract on my cousin. He’s fine, by the way. The plan failed.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Listen, I’m not that person anymore. But now I’m here, in this place, and there’s a person who’s . . . very much like Gloria, but isn’t Gloria, in a way that I don’t understand, and I just . . . James, now you know more about me than anyone except possibly my cousin and my parents, and I don’t even know if any of those people are still alive. Whatever happened at that party, I promise I won’t think you’re crazy.”

James drew a shaky breath. “Okay,” he said, and it seemed to Ari that he was speaking more to himself now. “Okay. There was this girl—there was this woman at the party, Saraya. She arrived not that long after I did, but then a little while later, another Saraya was there too.”

“What do you mean, another Saraya?”

“I’d gone out to get more alcohol when the first guests started arriving, because Kareem was worried we didn’t have enough. When I got back, people were coming in. I took the beer to the kitchen, and then I came out to the living room and he was staring at someone across the room. So I look, and there’s his friend Saraya, by the window, in this beautiful silver dress.”

“Okay. Why was that strange?”

“Because another Saraya had just come in from the kitchen, wearing a pink shirt and shorts. I remember Kareem said something like ‘James, there’s two of them.’ I remember we just stood there for a minute, staring from one to the other, then Kareem went into the kitchen and I followed. I was so freaked out.”

“What happened then?”

“Kareem was dissociating, I think. He didn’t know what to do, so he was just busying himself. He was looking for a bottle opener or something, I remember he was kneeling down looking in a cupboard. Then I saw a woman kneeling next to him. I got a funny feeling, something about the way Kareem was staring at her. I knew something was wrong. He stands up, the woman stands too, and it’s another Gloria.”

“It was Gloria?”

“No, another Gloria. It was a version of Gloria, but with different hair and no scar on her face. The woman you just met, presumably. Then a second later, our friend Gloria comes into the room, and the other Gloria slips out. I went out into the living room, and there was only one Saraya, the Saraya in the silver dress. We were out on the terrace together a little while later, and that’s when the other Saraya appeared again, the woman in the T-shirt and shorts who called you Ibari. We had our little thing in the bedroom, you and I, which by the way I’ve never had that much fun at a party before or since. Later I looked everywhere but the second Saraya was gone, and I could only find one Gloria. Our Gloria. So those two extra women, those two . . . copies, they must’ve slipped out.”

“Do you know what happened to Kareem?”

“No. He left for a while. Just kind of wandered out with a dazed look on his face. He came back a long time later, like over an hour. That whole night I was trying to act normal, and also I felt a little crazy. I felt like I was just on the edge of something, like some kind of great mystery. I don’t mean to sound grandiose.”

“You don’t sound grandiose.”