Page 32 of Exit Party

“You can’t tell stories to strangers,” I said. “That and your general incompetence are going to get us killed.”

“They’re strangers,” he said. “We’ll never see them again. What’s the harm?”

We’d reached our floor. “How have you made it this far?” I asked.

“There’s so much luck in the world,” he said, “even now. I’ve been so lucky.” We were in the corridor. I unlocked our room and led him in, sat him on the edge of the bed, and began unlacing his boots like he was a child. But I’d never once in my life wished for a child, that was the problem here. “Look at how we escaped from Texas,” he said.

I stopped midboot to stare at him. “That wasn’t luck,” I said. “That was me. I procured two separate sets of passports and kept them in the van in a go bag.”

“You’re my luck,” he said. He fell back into the bed and was snoring within seconds. When I finally fell asleep that night I dreamt of Los Angeles again, for the first time in a while: walking with Gloria in the Silver Lake hills at twilight, talking about something that I couldn’t remember when I woke. Felix had opened the curtains, and the room was violently bright. I covered my eyes.

“Morning, love,” he said. “Join me for a walk?”

The dread I felt wasn’t the dream, I realized. The dream had been benign. The dread was premonition.

“I don’t think I’m awake enough for a walk,” I said, and as I spoke, the dread solidified into understanding: if Felix went for a walk this morning, he would die. I knew it in the same way I knew the name of the hotel, the day of the week, the colour of his eyes. It was just a fact.

“Why don’t I order you some coffee,” he said. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

“Thank you. Yes.” I watched him pick up the room phone and order a latte for the last time, the sunlight on the side of his face. His hand on the phone, his beauty, his eyes when he turned to me.

“You okay?” he asked.

I knew that if he walked out of the room, he wouldn’t come back.

“I’m fine,” I said. “Enjoy your walk.”

“Enjoy your latte,” he said, and was gone. Even after he closed the door, it still wasn’t too late. I could have run after him, explained that I had a bad feeling about the walk and endured his skepticism to bring him back into the room, or dispensed with the truth and just used the promise of sex to pull him back into bed. Instead I lay still, staring at the ceiling, for enough time that he must now have been at the elevators, now down in the lobby, now gone. Out of reach. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, what is a murder?

A knock on the door startled me, but it was only room service with the coffee. I showered and then went out to the terrace, where I sat staring at the water beyond the village rooftops. There were a few bursts of gunfire far out at sea, but the morning was tranquil, until it wasn’t: I had dropped my cup, I was standing, I was watching coffee spread in a pool around my feet. Felix was dead. There was no external sign of this truth in the world around me, but I knew it was true. I ran down five flights of stairs to the lobby, where people stared. I must have looked frantic. Some of the guests in the lobby were vacationing mercenaries and others were more innocent, old-school tourists of a breed that hardly existed here anymore and had disappeared altogether on the other side of the Atlantic. I saw the two men who’d been drinking with Felix last night, sitting separately, staring at their phones. The older one—Soriano, I remembered dimly—rose with a look of concern as I ran past him into the hot still air.

Outside, the sky was cloudless and I was aware in a way I hadn’t been before of how scorched this place was, how the orderly lines of cypress trees and the cacti were the only things alive in a landscape of rocks and dry grass.

“Felix!” I shouted, although of course I was too late. Behind the hotel, two security guards were playing dominoes at a folding table in the shade; one of them called out half-heartedly as I passed, but no one stopped me from running down the path to the staff quarters, then behind the staff quarters to the chained-off road. I jumped the chain and sprinted past the burnt ruins of the shantytown—a nightmare blur—and up to the villas. As I ran past, en route to the diving cliff, I dimly noticed that the second villa was occupied now, white curtains billowing in an open window. Down the empty path to the diving platform, which was of course deserted, because Felix was dead. I wasn’t thinking clearly, I realized, but how could anyone. I walked out to the end of the diving board, and stood very still. It felt like standing on the edge of the world. The only movement was water, and the ripples of dead cliffside grass in the wind.

No, I was thinking clearly. This was the right place. I felt Felix’s recent presence here, then saw him. He was floating face down in the water, far below.

There was a sound behind me on the path. When I turned I saw Soriano.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

I stared at him for a moment before I shook my head.

“No,” I said, “not at all.”

“I followed you from the hotel,” he said. “You seemed distressed.”

“Felix just died.”

He blinked. “I’m sorry. Listen, could you do me a favour and come in off that diving board? You’re making me nervous.”

I walked in from the diving board, and then, because I didn’t know what else to do, sat on the cracked concrete of the platform. I felt weak. He was looking around in a casual way.

“Is this a setup?” he asked.

“If it’s a setup,” I said, “then I’m being set up too.”

He stood for a while, surveying the terrain, then eventually came to sit near me.