Page 76 of Exit Party

It was a fascinating alternate reality to consider, but as I read through the three previous transcripts, I sensed an increasing distance and disinterest on the part of the interviewers. The man’s stories were consistent from interview to interview, but the problem was that there was no way at all to verify anything he said. Still, his story lined up with Nico’s husband’s in a way that couldn’t be ignored. This Kareem had thrown a party, and at a certain point in the evening, doubles of two of his friends had appeared. Which friends? Saraya. There were two of her at his party. Also Gloria, the friend everyone worried about. Why did everyone worry about her? Because she’d survived a suicide bombing, after which she was never the same. There had been two of her at the party, just briefly, but one of the two Glorias had said her name was Nico. My breath caught in my throat.

This was where my friend had gone, then. She had disappeared from an experiment, and appeared at a party, in some dream-sequence version of the world where almost everything was different. I hated everything about this case. I took a deep breath to steady myself, and then went downstairs to the room where the other Kareem Fayed was waiting.

He’d been placed in Studio Three, my favourite of the interrogation rooms. It looked like the waiting room at a high-end spa. Floor, walls, and ceiling were white. There were two white sofas, a single tropical plant, and absolutely nothing else. The featurelessness of it was restful to me. Every time I came in here, I was struck by a desire to throw away all my possessions and paint every interior surface of my home stark white.

The man I was here to interview looked exhausted and folded in on himself, arms crossed. He’d been staring at the floor, but he looked up as I came in.

I’d expected a carbon copy of my friend’s husband, but as I entered, I saw that that wasn’t quite the situation. There were surface differences—his haircut was different from his counterpart’s, he was four or five kilograms lighter and wearing a green silk shirt that I couldn’t imagine Nico’s husband wearing, but it wasn’t just that. I had a sense that I was looking at a fundamentally different person. Yet their faces were nearly identical. I took a seat quickly to hide my vertigo.

“Kareem,” I said.

“Yes.” He spoke in the voice of the Kareem I knew, Nico’s husband. It was best, I decided, to pretend that this man was an identical twin with amnesia. Otherwise the situation was too unnerving to contemplate.

“How are you feeling?” I asked.

“I know you.” He was staring intently at me.

“I’m sure we’ve never met.” But I felt my breath catch in my throat. If there were two Kareem Fayeds, did it not stand to reason that there were two Ibari Wakers? “Wait,” I said. “Tell me more about that.”

“You don’t remember?”

“I wasn’t . . .” But words fell short when I tried to say aloud what I was thinking.

He flinched. “Of course,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t you. That was someone in the other place.”

“I’m going to ask you about that other place in a moment, but in the meantime, could you tell me more about . . . this other person? The person who looks like me?” This possibly wasn’t a strictly relevant line of questioning, but on the other hand, who was to say what was relevant? There had never been another case like this, ever.

“About the other you? I only met her once. She was Gloria’s friend. She looked like you,” Kareem said. “But she had this tattoo.” He touched his hand to the back of his left wrist.

“What kind of tattoo?”

“It said, TRUE DILIGENCE. Kind of uneven looking.”

I took a deep breath. “What do you know about her?”

“I don’t know you at all,” Kareem said. “Please don’t think I’m implying anything, but . . .”

“But?”

“But this other person, Gloria’s friend Ari, she’d just gotten out of prison. That’s where she got the tattoo.”

I stared at him. What was the most illegal thing I’d ever done? Snuck into a college donors lounge with my broken glasses?

“I’ve never even been arrested,” I said.

“Well, she had. She said she served eighteen years.”

“Murder?” I couldn’t imagine a sentence of that length for any other crime.

“Either murder or attempted murder, I wasn’t clear which it was. I’m sorry, please don’t think . . . I’m not implying that that’s you.”

“I understand. Did she give you any other details?”

“She said she took out a contract on her cousin.”

I drew a long breath. I had only one cousin, and I’d always thought of Anton as something closer to a brother. My watch vibrated softly on my wrist. I knew what the screen would say, so I pretended I hadn’t noticed.

“Did she say why?” I was in a danger zone, but it was impossible to leave the room.