Page 82 of Exit Party

That night when I returned home, I spent a few minutes studying Swan Dive, and then went online to try to find more of Lucas Alkaitis’s work. One other painting was available, from a seller in New York: a small square work entitled Olivia on Yellow Sofa. It was a close-up of a young woman’s head and shoulders, a yellow sofa behind her. It was apparently a portrait of the artist Olivia Collins, whoever she was, from the year Alkaitis died. I liked the directness of the woman’s gaze. I ordered it at extravagant cost. When it arrived a week later, I hung it at a point in the hallway where it was the first thing I saw when I came in. Olivia Collins looked at me, and I looked back at her, and I knew it was silly to think this way, but the painting made me feel less alone in the house.

8

On the first anniversary of Nico’s disappearance, I stayed late at the office, trying to drown myself in work, but I was consumed by thoughts of my lost friend. Finally, in the early evening, I walked down to a bar where she’d taken me a few times, a small warm place in Harbor City that featured live music on Tuesday nights. Tonight a woman was singing with a guitar. I sat watching and listening, drinking a cocktail, pretending that Nico was beside me, and I’d been there for a while, lost in my thoughts and in the music, before I noticed that someone had taken the next bar stool. A man, a quiet presence, also drinking, also listening. Then the man leaned toward me and said, very softly, “Did you come here with her too?”

I winced. “Fayed,” I said.

Nico’s husband recoiled as if I’d hit him. “Kareem,” he said. “Fayed’s my last name. I always go by Kareem.”

“I know Fayed’s your surname, but I call the other man Kareem.” I was making this up, obviously. I didn’t call the other man anything, because he was in a work camp in the desert. “Your double. So you’re going to have to be Fayed.”

“Awfully formal to call me by my surname,” Fayed said.

“I’m a chronically formal person,” I said. “And yes, I came here with her a few times.”

He nodded, and went quiet for a while. Had I been unkind? I didn’t like him, but on the other hand, he’d suffered a terrible loss. “Are you doing okay?” I asked finally, between songs.

“Terrible,” he said, “thanks for asking. Really absolutely fucking terrible.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I was dismissed from UCLA for violating research protocols. I’m working for a shoe manufacturing company. A whole career, just . . .” He snapped his fingers. “Up in smoke. The commute’s hellish now too. Forty-five minutes every morning. Two trains.”

“You could’ve been disappeared by the State,” I said, “and you’re complaining about your commute.”

He fell silent. “You’re right. Of course you’re right. I’m grateful. Can I ask, do you . . . do you know where Nico is? Where she went?”

“No.” I wasn’t sure if this counted as a lie, exactly. I was thinking of the other Kareem Fayed’s interview transcripts, that strange story about throwing a party at which Nico had suddenly appeared. Where did Nico go? She went to a party. She went to a war. “But what I can tell you,” I said, “is there’s every reason to believe she’s alive.”

“Well. Nico’s resourceful.” There was something dismissive in this that made me look at him. “If there’s a way to survive, she’ll find it.”

“You’re not worried about her?”

“Of course I am. I’m sorry. I’m exhausted. I’m not sleeping much. Parenting was more Nico’s thing than mine. We have two small children.”

“You didn’t want them?” I knew it was a rude question, but I didn’t like Fayed enough to care.

“No, no, I did,” Fayed said. “I kind of pushed for them, actually. It was Nico who was hesitant.”

“Then what happened?”

“I can’t really account for it. They came along, two kids in two years, and I just . . . I liked my life, and my routines. I found I didn’t want to change anything.”

“So what did you . . . what did Nico do?”

“She had to shoulder the burden.” The man spoke as if this were an unavoidable tragedy that had befallen Nico, and had very little to do with him. “It just didn’t come naturally to me.”

I took a deep breath. Thinking of Nico in Ohio, the way she stood before me. I’m the only parent. I was looking at the door. It would be so easy to walk out and never speak to this person again.

In a booth at the back, we finished our whiskey sours and then Fayed set his glass to the side. “Okay,” he said. “That’s better, isn’t it? Takes the edge off. I’ve been here four times a week since she left.”

“You make it sound like she walked out,” I said.

“Are we sure she didn’t, though? Are we sure?” He raised a finger, as if making a solid point, and flashed a strange, hopeless grin. He was much drunker than I was, I realized then. He must have gotten a head start. “I cannot account for what happened,” he said, “and I designed the experiment.”

“You think she changed the settings somehow? Travelled somewhere else on purpose?”

“I’m just asking,” he said, with a don’t-blame-me shrug. “Can I ask you something? How many times a week are you drunk?”