1 #16
Later, in a visitors’ room, a white cavernous space with cement tables at intervals, I sat alone with my racing thoughts.
There was natural light here, through skylights far above, but sand had settled in patches on the glass and the room was dimmer than it should have been.
I felt outside of myself. But there was a world where another me had served almost twenty years in prison, I told myself, and what that meant was that I was strong enough for prison time.
The thought of that other person was with me constantly now. Ari, my double, my other, my ghost.
A door clanged open on the far side of the room, and the Kareem from the other place entered. His clothes were several sizes too large, and his shirt had buttons missing. He looked thinner than he had when I’d seen him last, more tired.
“Kareem,” I said. I’d met this version of Kareem only briefly, in the shortest interrogation I’d ever done. “I’m Detective Ibari Waker.”
“You’re the other Ari. I remember you.” He took a seat across from me.
“Explain your clothes,” I said.
“There’s a clothing shortage.” Kareem’s voice was a little hoarse. He cleared his throat and tried again. “There’s an everything shortage, actually.”
“Are you being interrogated here?”
“No. I’m being stored here, I think. No one’s talked to me in a long time.
I don’t have an identifier number, and it means I don’t get regular rations.
It’s like they don’t really know I’m here.
” I felt his desperation across the table.
“You’re the first person in a long time.
I don’t understand what I . . . I don’t understand what I did to get here,” he said.
“It wasn’t my choice to come here. It wasn’t my fault. ”
“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.
“What does that mean?” Kareem asked.
“Let me do the talking,” I said. I stopped the car. There was a small guardhouse nearby, from which a tall man in a brown uniform emerged. He moved slowly in the heat, his face shaded by a wide-brim hat. I lowered my window, and he peered in at the two of us.
“Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “It’s a random check.”
“We have a train to catch,” I said, in the most bored voice I could muster. “Myself and my colleague.”
He looked at me for a moment, then held out a palm scanner. I placed my hand on the screen. “I need your voice confirmation,” he said.
“My voice is my passcode.”
“No,” he said, slowly, “that Service shit. Fucking poetry or whatever.”
“Fine.” What was the correct passphrase for the day?
My heart was racing. “As night fell the last light remaining was on the highest floor of the tower,” I said.
A single green check mark—one of three—appeared on the screen, hard to see in the glare of the afternoon.
“Below in the darkness we travelled onward.” Second check mark.
The third passphrase was a rewording from a previous month.
“Wind on your face, darkness, scattered lights. Lights in the darkness. Always coming home.”
“We took the liberty of examining the contents of yours and Detective Grissom’s phones,” Alberto said. “Why didn’t you tell me what your informant said about him?”
“I’ve prepared a report on it,” I said. “I’d just wanted to look it over again this morning before I submitted it to you.”
“I don’t care about typos,” Alberto said irritably, “when there’s a corrupt agent in play.”
“Enjoy your drive,” the guard said, and stepped back from the car. I kept my window lowered too, because I didn’t trust this car.
“Where are we going?” Kareem asked softly, once we’d cleared the edge of the camp.
“I’m keeping a promise I made to a friend,” I said.
The train platform was a small shape on the horizon, shimmering in the heat.
Something was wrong with the car. It wasn’t just that the transponder was out, I realized, it was that something had gone wrong with the entire electrical system.
The windshield screens were flickering, the control panel too.
The car shuddered to a halt and went dark.
We sat still for a moment, Kareem and I.
It was the end of the afternoon, the sun low in the sky.
“Now what?” Kareem asked.
“We walk,” I said. “It’s five kilometres, we’ll be fine.”
“My door’s locked.”
“Good thing your window’s open,” I said, and climbed out of mine. I liked this version of myself, that was what I was thinking as I dropped awkwardly to the ground. When I rose, the car looked hollow and inert in the half-light, a discarded exoskeleton.
“Of course,” I said to Alberto. “Forgive me. I’ll forward you the report when I’m back at my desk.”
“Thank you,” he said. “A replacement will stop by your office sometime this afternoon.”
“A replacement?”
“For David Grissom,” Alberto said. “He was arrested this morning.”
Kareem was standing up on the other side of the car, brushing sand off his clothes. “Do I still need to wear these?” he asked. He was holding the glasses.