Page 43 of Exit Party

N: Yes, every waking hour. All she wanted to do was work, all the time. It made me realize how extraordinary it was that she agreed to meet me in a café. She must have been incredibly lonely. But at the same time, she didn’t seem to want to talk much with her son. She would make deals with him: I’ll take you to the park if you leave me alone and don’t ask me for anything for the next two weeks. Or sometimes it was worse, sometimes it was for things he actually needed, as in, I’ll buy you a winter coat that fits if you promise to leave me alone and let me work for a month. He was starved for any kind of interaction with her, so he always agreed to the deals.

A: . . .

N: No, it’s not a money thing. A lot of people with much less money than Gloria take better care of their kids. The thing is, he looked—he reminds me so much of my children. Marlowe and Samir. It’s not just that he’s Arab and Chinese, it’s the way he moves, little mannerisms. It’s uncanny. It still startles me sometimes when I’m with him. I asked Gloria’s permission to spend time with him, to look after him after school and such. She said yes right away, and just retreated back into work.

A: . . .

N: Yes, he has been like a son to me. I’m certainly a much better parent to him than his mother ever was.

A: . . .

N: I don’t know what’s wrong with Gloria. I think something happened to her, and now she’s unavailable.

CONVERSATION 3

A: I’m getting out of the hospital tomorrow, did I tell you that?

N: . . .

A: I’ll go back to the apartment where I lived with my husband. Pilar said she’d keep her job and help me. I can’t walk very well.

N: . . .

A: No, of course I don’t trust you. Don’t be offended, I don’t trust anyone.

N: . . .

A: Well, look, I’m sorry that that was the wrong answer, but I’m trying to be honest here. You absolutely cannot depend on other people. I’ve known that since I was a kid.

N: . . .

A: Oh, for fuck’s sake, Nico. What are you, twelve? Especially not the people who care about you.

N: . . .

A: Stop recording me and I’ll tell you.

4. THE BIRTHDAY PRESENT

1

I began researching Ari Soriano when I was fifteen years old and living at a boarding school in Normandy. I liked the school, but I couldn’t seem to acclimatize to the coastal wind. I lay awake at night listening to it, the way it howled and whined around the buildings. I’d read somewhere that if sleep doesn’t come, there’s no sense chasing it, so after a half-hour or so I’d make a little fort under the blankets to avoid waking my roommate, fire up my tablet, and resume my research project in the airless dark. In those years I was angry in a permanent, low-level way that made me feel unhinged sometimes, especially at night. My life was a slippery, confusing thing. I didn’t like being fifteen and was desperate for adulthood. It was important to have a project.

Ari was a philanthropist. My school had been a recipient of her generosity, which meant that half of my classes were in Soriano Hall. The new opera house in Paris was the Soriano-Kalisa Opera House, named for Ari and her current spouse, and there was a Soriano School for disadvantaged children of refugees just north of Paris. She had a great deal of money, from somewhere, and this was the part I found interesting. Her past seemed complicated. She walked with a cane and a serious limp. Her left leg had been badly injured in the explosion that had killed her second husband, an infamous episode in which anti-dome extremists had sent a boat laden with explosives down the Seine. Was her wealth from Bill Soriano’s life insurance policy? Possibly, but she’d also engaged in illegal activities. I imagined duffel bags stuffed with cash, high-speed shootouts on American highways, Ari holding a gun to someone’s head. Before she’d come to Paris, Ari had been a criminal in the former United States, or in Italy, or in both. The particulars of the crime were unclear, but my mother told me she’d served time in an American federal prison.

“I don’t know why Ari was in prison,” Gloria said when I asked. This was near the beginning of my research project, and she was accompanying me back to boarding school after the holidays. We were waiting under an awning in the rain at the Bayeux train station. The school transport bus was late, per usual. “It seemed rude to ask.”

“It seemed rude to ask,” I repeated. “I don’t know, Gloria, I kind of feel like if I were interviewing a potential roommate, I’d maybe ask why she’d done time in a federal prison?”

“I don’t appreciate your tone,” Gloria said.

“Then get on the next fucking train and go back to Paris. I don’t know why you came with me.” I’d gotten drunk with a childhood friend the night before, and now I had a headache and very little patience.

I watched Gloria perform a cost/benefit calculation re: getting into a fight with me. She averted her eyes and studied a vine that was curling around a nearby signpost.

“My cousin was her cellmate for a while, and she told me Ari wasn’t violent. They got along.” Gloria shrugged.

“But you told me she was in prison for something like fifteen or twenty years,” I said. “That implies violence, does it not?” Does it not was a formulation I’d been experimenting with lately. I was aware it was pretentious but it seemed to give adults pause, like they’d look at me for just an extra beat before they moved on with the conversation, and destabilizing adults was a hobby of mine.