Page 5 of Exit Party

“Just one moment,” Ari said, and made a quick search of the living room, the bedroom, the bathroom, the terrace. The apartment wasn’t large, and Kareem wasn’t in it.

Gloria caught her eye and then slipped out without saying goodbye to anyone, so Ari followed. The street carried a breath of menace now, given the hour. Gloria seemed tired. She walked slowly, hugging the painting to her chest.

“Did you see Kareem leave?” Ari asked. “It’s the weirdest thing, I thought he was in the kitchen, but then—”

“Hold on a moment,” Gloria said. She hooked one arm around the nearest streetlight and closed her eyes.

“Are you okay?”

“A little nauseous.” Gloria stood with her forehead pressed to the steel for a few deep breaths. “Okay. I can walk again.”

“Want me to carry your painting?”

“No, I got it.”

Ari offered her arm, and they walked on, very slowly.

“You okay, Gloria?”

“I don’t know what that word means,” Gloria said.

Ari wasn’t sure she had a working definition either, now that she thought about it. “Me neither,” she admitted. It was frightening to admit. Never show weakness had been the mantra of her entire life, but she’d emerged from prison into a different world, even the country was gone now, and in the disorientation it seemed possible that she’d changed too. “You think it was something you ate?” she asked.

“No. Who the fuck gets pregnant by accident at the age of thirty-seven?”

“Oh my god. Really?” Ari had herself never wanted a child, but she was capable of being awed on someone else’s behalf.

“It’s early.” Gloria was looking away, clearly trying not to cry. “Nobody knows except Kareem. But you probably noticed I haven’t been drinking.”

Ari hadn’t noticed this, and made a mental note to try to pay more attention to other people. She could be a different person, she found herself thinking. More attentive, less hard.

“Are you . . . it’s none of my business, but are you dating the father?”

“It was a one-time thing,” Gloria said miserably. “The father’s Kareem.”

This was surprising to Ari, who’d thought Kareem was gay. “He knows?”

“Yeah.” Gloria’s voice was small. “We were supposed to talk at the party, but we kept missing each other.”

“Why don’t you text him? Say you want to find a time to talk.”

“I did. Just now.”

The following morning, Gloria still hadn’t heard from Kareem. Ari was trying to find a job and was mostly gone from the apartment, papering the neighbourhood with résumés that were ignored because there was an eighteen-year gap in employment and more people in this city than jobs, until on the fourth day after the party she walked into a restaurant seconds after she saw someone hang a handwritten SE NECESITA LAVAPLATOS sign in the window and talked her way into a dishwashing job, and after that she was never home.

Ari had some money from her old, pre-prison life, a little, not enough to live on by itself but enough that she could stretch it for a while with the addition of the dishwashing money, but the thought that kept her up at night was: Is this it? It wasn’t that she thought she deserved more than what she had, or more than other people, it was just that she’d once had a considerable amount of money, her own business, and a beautiful apartment in a tower in New York City, and now she felt disoriented and a little incredulous. Before prison she’d operated under the assumption that she could bend reality to her will, but that had been an entirely different version of the world. Was this going to be the rest of her life? That was the question she was thinking about when she woke on the seventh morning (afternoon) after the party, drifted into the kitchen in her bathrobe, and almost walked into James. He was leaning on the stove, arms crossed, and he was holding a little spiral notebook and a pen. Gloria was at the table with another man whom Ari vaguely remembered from the party.

“Morning,” James said. “Sorry for materializing in your kitchen.”

“Good morning,” Ari said. The bathrobe was long, but she felt naked.

“This is James,” Gloria said, as if Ari weren’t presently caught up in some extremely pleasant flashbacks, “and Bruno.”

“Hey,” the man at the table said. He also had a little notebook and pen. There were only two chairs, which was why James was standing by the oven. Ari took another step into the room, and stood with her back pressed to the fridge. The kitchen was too small for four people.

“They’re here about Kareem,” Gloria said softly. “He’s missing.”

“You still haven’t heard from him?” Ari and Gloria had been keeping opposite schedules. She hadn’t seen Gloria in days.