Page 67 of Exit Party

“You look up, startled from something foreign and incomprehensible,” I said, “and you are surprised by the question.” I hadn’t done this in a while, and the exercise felt a little silly. My watch buzzed once, registering the first round of the confirmation phrases, then the screen display read NEXT PHRASE: GO. “On the ferry at night there is no sky and no sea, the horizon marked only by scattered lights.”

“Scattered lights in darkness,” Grissom said. He spoke very seriously. “Starless, no moon, cold wind, cold night, lights in the distance.”

“Lights in the distance. Always coming home.”

My watch vibrated once more on my wrist and displayed a green check mark.

“Okay,” he said, and smiled at me. “Your Service record is impeccable. You’ve been in this posting for a while now, haven’t you?”

“Two decades, give or take.”

“What is the attribute that distinguishes you from your colleagues in Service?”

A vulnerability to corruption and a chronic case of low-level dread. “I’d say intelligence,” I said, “but everyone at the academy was intelligent. So I think I’d have to say intuition. Premonition. I realize that sounds strange.”

“As it happens,” he said, “notes from your supervisors back you up on that, so you don’t need to worry about sounding like a lunatic. How would you describe your premonitions?”

I’d spent a lifetime brushing it off—Oh, it’s nothing, I just sometimes have a sense of something that’s going to happen—but I wanted the promotion, I sensed Grissom’s willingness to take me seriously, and I decided to take the risk. “It’s a kind of deep listening,” I said. “If you’ll permit me an analogy, you can walk into a café and register that there’s a song playing on the sound system, or you can really deeply listen to the song, and in so doing you can predict when the beat will drop, or when the chorus will come in.”

He nodded, and made a note. “Something to do with listening and pattern recognition.”

“Yes, I suppose that’s fair.” Pattern recognition wasn’t quite it, but some things are difficult to articulate.

“You have a nice life here,” he said, “by all appearances. Fillmore is a highly coveted post.”

“Absolutely. I’m grateful for it.”

“In the detective position,” he said, “there is no more cover life. You would be a full-time detective, and your cover would just be a story you told people.”

“I understand.”

“Why do you want to give up your current life?”

“I want to do something more.”

“The position you’re applying for involves a higher level of trust,” he said, “and that means, if we can speak frankly here, a higher possibility of encountering cases that you might find personally distressing. It is necessary work, but there’s a darkness in it, there is personal sacrifice in performing this service, and there’s a price we pay to maintain a harmonious society. I’m speaking candidly and off the record.”

“I appreciate that.”

“There are people who ascend the ranks because they want power, Ibari, and people who ascend because they wish to be of greater utility to the State, and people with different motives altogether. I’m going to ask you again, and I need you to be absolutely honest with me. Why do you want to give up this seemingly very pleasant life as a midlevel agent, in order to take on a high-stress detective position in Los Angeles? Why do you wish to ascend in Service?”

A series of barely plausible lies flitted through my head—I just want to give back, I believe in the Promise of the State, the relentless propaganda just really resonates for me—but my basic understanding of Service was that Service knew everything, so I went with something closer to the truth. I want to dive into freezing water. “Lately,” I said, “let’s say over the past year or so, I’ve felt restless. I’ve been living this life for a while, and I’ve enjoyed it, but I’d like to be a more active person. I mean someone who’s more actively engaged in the world.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I think I’ve too often been an observer,” I said. “In my life, but also in the world. I don’t want that anymore. I’d like to be someone who does things. I guess I like the idea of being closer to the centre of things. Just, doing more. Going further.”

He nodded. “I understand. Would you be alone in Los Angeles? Do you know anyone there?”

This felt like a trap—didn’t Service know everything?—but I answered anyway. “I have a good friend there,” I said.

“Nico Li?”

It’s only unsettling if you choose to be unsettled, that’s what I remembered my father saying about Service when I was young. You can choose to accept surveillance as an inevitability, like taxes or the weather, and there’s peace in that. “Yes, Nico Li. We went to grad school together.”

I saw Nico a week later, when I came down to LA for a ballet performance at her invitation. Nico had trained as a dancer in childhood, and loved going to the ballet. I don’t specifically love ballet and have never really understood it, but I admire technical excellence in all things, and there was pleasure in taking the train into the city, to have dinner with Nico and then sit for a while in a beautiful theatre.

“It’s Felix Washington’s farewell tour,” Nico said, as we settled into our seats.