Page 85 of Exit Party

“I don’t want this.” Fayed was waving his hand around drunkenly, in a gesture that encompassed the garden, the house, somehow also his entire life. “Any of this.”

“Your home, your garden, it’s beautiful,” I said.

“It’s haunted. It’s Nico. Everywhere I look in this garden, I see her. You see the jasmine vines?”

I looked.

“She planted those,” Fayed said, “right before she disappeared. She built the garden. She’s all around us. My kids don’t love me.”

“I’m sure they—”

“No, kids know when you don’t want them,” Fayed said. “They can tell.” He was fumbling with his keys.

“Stop,” I said. “We’re not going in.”

“Why not?”

“Hold on a moment.” I sat on the step to search my handbag for the little white pills I always carried, Service-issued pills that erased drunkenness. “Here,” I said, and gave him one. I let mine dissolve in my mouth, and a moment later I felt a sharpening, the alcohol haze dissipating like mist in sunlight.

“Jesus Christ, Ibari, this is the exact opposite of what I’d hoped for when you handed me a pill,” Fayed said. “I liked being drunk. I was enjoying it.” He sat beside me on the step. “You always such a goddamn buzzkill?”

“Occupational hazard.” I took off my watch and threw it into the lawn, and then threw my phone after it. They caught the light in the grass, dark jewels.

“Why are you—”

I touched my finger to my lips. Shhh. I pointed to his phone, in his jacket pocket. He handed it to me, confused, and I threw it across the length of the garden.

“Ibari,” he said, “what the actual . . .”

I shielded my mouth with my hand, and leaned close to his ear.

“I didn’t want to go into your house,” I whispered, very softly, “because your entire house is wired for sound.”

When I pulled back, his face was dim in the half-light, his eyes shining.

“And my phone is listening to me?” he whispered.

“I’d assume so,” I whispered back. “I know you lied to me in the interrogation.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Nico told me everything,” I whispered. “I know your intentions with the experiment. I’m only here because of her.”

He was staring at me. I could see him running the probabilities. It was possible I knew that he’d been working on an experiment meant to subvert the State, but equally possible that I was bluffing.

“Even if you weren’t lying,” he said, “even if this outlandish idea you’re putting forward were true, why would she tell you anything?”

“Because,” I said, “your wife was Service.”

9

A few days later, I returned to the hair salon in Culver City. I knew Latika would be working that afternoon. We’d been talking for a long time by then, and she looked less terrified now when I came in. Impossible not to feel guilt at this. I wished I could tell her: I’m worse than you thought.

“Latika,” I said, in the back room, “please give me your phone. This is just a precaution.”

She handed it to me, with a show of making no hesitation. I dropped it into a Faraday bag, and put the bag on the table.

“Is everything all right?” she asked. Still breezy.