Page 25 of Exit Party

“I was about to have dinner,” Gloria says. “Please, won’t you join me?”

“Thank you,” I say, because engaging with her seems like the best way to get my painting back, and I sit at her little round table.

“Dinner seems like the least I can do, considering.” She disappears into the kitchen, and I’m alone in the strange apartment. I’ve been in apartments with murals before, but there’s something oddly, determinedly immersive about this one. The person who painted it—or the person who commissioned it—wanted to be in a specific place, it seems to me, and tried very hard to re-create that place here in this room.

Gloria returns with two grilled cheese sandwiches.

“Why did your sister commission a mural in your apartment?”

“Well, she was here for a while,” Gloria says, “and it’s a place she misses. Her garden, I mean, not my apartment.”

“Does Sebastian come here sometimes?” I ask, when it becomes apparent that she isn’t going to say anything more. Her gaze keeps shifting toward the bedroom door, in a way that makes me wonder if he’s here now.

“Sometimes,” she says placidly, “but not tonight. Sometimes he stays with my sister.”

“Wait,” I say, “are we talking about Nico?”

“Yes.” She absolutely cannot meet my eyes. “My sister Nico.”

I put my sandwich down, and stare at her. “I understand why you lie about Nico,” I say, when she finally looks at me. “Anyone would, under the circumstances. But I wish you wouldn’t lie to me, Gloria. I was at that party.”

Gloria looks at me for another moment, unreadable, and then returns to placidly eating her grilled cheese. She’s lapsed into distance. I think I remember this from the time when we lived together; the way you could be sitting across from her and she’d somehow recede without leaving the table, until you were alone with a kind of Gloria placeholder.

“You’d like Nico,” she says finally. “You and she have some things in common. She lived in Ohio too, you know.”

“Yes, I know,” I say. “I met her there.”

“What? You met her?”

“I came across her by chance in Ohio, and told her you were in Paris. I’m the reason she’s here.”

Gloria’s eyes widen. She was always a discreet person, I remember that about her, and it’s interesting to realize that Nico shares that quality. There was a time in my life, back in Ohio, when how alike or unalike Nico and Gloria were was something I spent a lot of time thinking about.

“I didn’t know any of that,” she says, after a moment. “Have you seen her since?”

“I got hurt a few years ago, in an explosion. She came to visit me in the hospital afterward.”

“That was kind of her.”

“I thought so too, but unfortunately we got into a screaming argument.”

“In your hospital room?” Gloria sounds incredulous.

“I have some regrets,” I say.

“I can’t believe you got into a screaming fight from your hospital bed,” she says.

“Well.” I shrug. I can’t believe she used to believe in tarot cards, but I manage—just barely—not to say this aloud. Instead, after a moment of consideration, I go for her throat: “Why do you pretend that Nico’s your sister?”

“She is my sister.”

“We both know Nico’s not your sister, and we both know your degenerate son is in this apartment with my stolen painting.”

Gloria has gone very still.

“Look,” I say, “I’m not saying you owe me anything, Gloria. Maybe we owe each other nothing at all. But I wish you wouldn’t be such a liar.”

“I think you should leave,” Gloria says quietly. She rises, walks to the door, and holds it open, face like a closed fist, and after that I have no choice but to gather my rain jacket and cane and walk out with as much dignity as I can find in that moment—she’s the one harbouring a thief, I tell myself, I’ve no reason to be embarrassed here—and I’m back out in the dream-blue corridor, the elevator, the rain.