Page 62 of Exit Party

“Water, please. No, seltzer.”

“Lemon or lime?”

“Lime, thanks.”

There was a particular shadow further down the alley that he had his eye on, just at the base of the dumpster. Why did it look wrong to him? Because it had changed. The shape had been different just seconds ago, he was certain of it. Samir leapt up from the table and ran full-speed toward the dumpster, just in time to collide with the man he’d been chasing. Samir grabbed his arm. The man doubled over, breathing hard.

“Who are you?” Samir asked.

The man straightened, and Samir stepped back. He was looking at a rough approximation of his father. But this man was a different Kareem who wasn’t dying of an inexplicable cancer, a Kareem who drank heavily—this man’s nose was red and misshapen—and who had gotten into at least one fight in the recent past. He smelled bad. He had a black eye and a cut on his forehead.

“No one,” the man said, wheezing. “Fucking Christ, I’m too old for this.”

Samir couldn’t speak.

“Why are you staring at me?” the man asked. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” He laughed once, a barking sound that ended in a cough. “You Service, or Control?”

“Neither,” Samir whispered.

“I’m guessing Service,” the man said. “Junior agent probably, no fucking idea what you’re doing. You look surprised.” He coughed again, then spat phlegm on the sidewalk. “I’ll give you some intel for free,” he said. “There’s no state behind the State. That’s what nobody’s telling you. Half the surveillance drones don’t even work anymore.”

“You don’t recognize me,” Samir said.

“Sweetheart, I am one hundred percent certain I’ve never seen you before in my life. Go back to your little friends at Service, tell them we’re onto them and their days are numbered.”

“I’m not Service.”

“It’s written all over you,” the man said.

“Then tell me your name.”

“Kareem Fayed.” The man stared at Samir for a moment, and Samir sensed the man’s profound desire to spit in Samir’s face. Samir stepped back, and this shifted some balance between them: the man turned and was gone, walking now, limping a little.

Samir stared after him, dazed, out of breath. He texted Detective Waker:

Who is the other Kareem Fayed?

This late at night he expected no answer, but her reply came almost immediately:

A ghost.

Samir turned back to the café. As he moved toward the tables, a young couple rose quickly and left. They were absorbed into the darkness beyond the café’s pool of light. They thought he might be Service, he realized, because of the way he’d chased the older man. He ordered another seltzer. He tuned in and out of the conversations around him, listening for patterns and signs. How many of these people were reporting on one another? How many reported to Detective Waker? After a while he walked back to the house, very slowly now. The house was silent. He avoided his father’s bedroom and went instead to his childhood room, where someone had dropped his duffel bag on the bed. The walls were a pale grey that he’d found sophisticated when he was fourteen. There was a rocket-ship bedspread. He felt undone by exhaustion and strangeness. In the bathroom he shaved, brushed his teeth, showered, tried not to meet his own eyes in the mirror. Thinking of the man in the alleyway, thinking that only a ghost can speak freely, because they’re already a ghost. Does freedom require losing everything? In his bedroom he lay on his back, staring unblinking at the pattern of glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling, until he was awakened by a knock on the door.

Marlowe was crying.

“Oh god,” Samir said, “oh god, I thought we had more time.”

8

In a run-down office building a kilometre away, Ibari knocked softly on her boss’s door, and waited a moment until he called out something inaudible from the interior. It was very late, but Service never sleeps and there were people here at all hours, running surveillance operations, running computational risk assessments on subjects’ interactions. Ibari found Haruki behind his desk, staring intently at his monitor screen, but his eyes were bright—a tell that he’d been drinking—and a perfect circle of condensation was fading quickly from the desk near his right hand.

“I saw your message,” he said. “Please, come in.” He was looking closely at her now. Ibari had been here for so long that she’d all but merged with Service, in the sense of carrying vast troves of secrets and institutional knowledge. She knew she was something of a curiosity. Most people retired earlier. “He was a friend of yours,” Haruki said, clearly testing a theory. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Ibari said. “I spoke with his doctor. It was peaceful.”

“Well, good.” Haruki looked tired. Ibari had been here long enough to observe his gradual transformation from bright-eyed management trainee to exhausted bureaucrat. “If I understood correctly,” he said, “this means you’re leaving us.”

“Yes, sir.”