Page 90 of Exit Party

“How long are you meant to stay here?” I asked.

“They said it was indefinite,” he said softly.

“What kind of work are you doing?”

“I’m making licence plates,” he said. “Fourteen-hour days. I want you to understand, I was just, I was at a party. I know that sounds crazy, but I was at a party, there, and then I was in a lab. There was absolutely nothing in between, it was just like a . . .” He shook his head. “I didn’t come here on purpose.”

“Do you understand what brought you here?”

“No,” he said. “No, not at all. One of my interrogators referred to it as an accident, before I came here, and that is my only clue. Something happened, something went wrong, and I’ve been here ever since.”

“Kareem,” I said, “in the place you came from, the place with Ari in it, you told me you were going to be a father.”

He swallowed hard, and nodded.

“You were happy about it?”

“Yeah. I liked the idea of just, of having more in my life, I guess. Being of service to someone, being there for a kid who needed me. Helping to take care of a person.”

I nodded. “Do you think,” I said, “that given the right resources, you might be capable of taking care of two small children?”

He blinked. “Well, I used to babysit my cousins.”

In the inside pocket of my suit I carried an old pair of glasses, the pair I’d stepped on in Fillmore, repaired with their silver tape. I took them out now, and slid them across the table.

“Broken glasses,” Kareem said. “Thanks.”

“You’re going to put these on,” I said, “and keep them on, and do exactly what I say, and the two of us will walk out of here.” I rose, and gestured for him to stand too. “When we walk past the front desk,” I said, “you’ll let me do the talking.”

“Okay,” he said. He looked a little dazed.

“With me,” I said to Kareem. We walked out together, back into the reception area, where the woman with the chrysanthemum tattoo stared at us. I met her gaze, and touched the back of my hand, where the tattoo was on her body.

In later years I returned again and again to that moment, that small movement, because it wasn’t just that her eyes brightened, it was a weight lifting from her. I felt that I was watching someone rise. She stood straighter. She believed in something.

“This man with me isn’t a resident,” I said. “He’s a fellow Service officer. His name is David Grissom. Repeat that back to me.”

She nodded, and lightly touched her tattoo. “David Grissom,” she said.

“You saw me walk in there with him,” I told her.

“Yes,” she said, “I definitely did.” She smiled at me.

“Perhaps you could tell me,” Alberto said, a day later in his office in Los Angeles, “why you and Detective Grissom were visiting a resident in one of the desert camps yesterday.”

“The name came up in connection with the exit visa case,” I said. “It turned out to be nothing.”

“You’re recused from speaking with that particular resident,” Alberto said.

“I didn’t speak with him,” I said. “David did. I observed.”

Outside in the courtyard, the car was waiting. Kareem climbed in beside me. He looked shaky and a little stunned, blinking in the sunlight. “Lower your window,” I said, as the car drove us out down the line of buildings.

“I don’t know how,” he said, after a moment.

I reached over his head and pressed the button on the ceiling, and hot desert air flooded the vehicle. “How do you not know how to open a car window?”

“They’re different where I’m from.” We were approaching a camera array, an archway under which we’d have to pass. I drove slowly toward it. The lights on the array were white, until they suddenly flicked to red.