1 #2
By the Santa Monica Pier he walked out onto the sand, toward the water.
The ocean breeze was beautiful. There were parties here and there on the beach, people gathered around illegal bonfires.
He walked to the ocean and stared at the horizon.
A ship was passing in the far distance, the faintest constellation of lights.
He tried to let his mind go blank, to use all the calming exercises his therapist had taught him, but it was impossible not to imagine the guests at his party doubling in his absence.
Perhaps even now other Brunos and other Jameses were spilling down the stairs to hang out with the other Saraya and the other Gloria, a shadow party congregating on the street.
It was the thought of the other Gloria that brought him to his senses.
When he spoke with the other Gloria, the version of Gloria who called herself Nico, she hadn’t been menacing.
She’d been terrified. Why had Kareem fled?
He was struck by the realization that he was being a terrible host—he’d abandoned his apartment, his party, his guests—so he summoned a car that spirited him home.
But when he was close to his house he found he was desperate to be outside in fresh air, so he had the driver pull over early and he walked the last half-mile.
Someone was sitting at the bottom of the steps leading up to his apartment. A woman with short dark hair, seemingly staring at nothing in particular, resting there. She looked up, and his heart seized for just a moment, but it was neither Gloria nor Saraya nor their strange doubles. It was Ari.
“It’s strange talking about this,” he said. “I know she isn’t you.”
“Did you speak with her?” Ibari asked.
She smiled when she recognized him. He said, “You’re Ari, right?”
“Hi. Yes.”
For just a moment, he wanted desperately to tell her. “There’s something wrong with the party,” he said. But what if she thought he was crazy? He sighed.
“What do you mean?”
“I’d tell you more,” he said, “but you’d think I’m insane.”
“I doubt that.”
“No, it’s actually crazy. You don’t want to know.”
“If I didn’t want to know I wouldn’t have asked,” Ari said, and Kareem saw that he’d annoyed her a little. He was desperate to change the subject. He saw black tattoo letters on her wrist.
“What’s that tattoo?” he asked. “Do you mind me asking? I like tattoos.”
Ari pushed up her sleeve, and he saw the words TRUE DILIGENCE. The lettering was uneven.
“True diligence,” Ibari said. “You’re sure that’s what it said?”
“Yes. It was a memorable phrase.”
“I’ve had it for a decade or so,” Ari said.
“You got it done in prison?” Kareem asked. Then, “I’m sorry. It’s none of my business. Gloria let it slip, but I don’t think she meant to tell me.”
“It’s okay.”
“You were in for a while, right?”
“Eighteen years,” Ari said. “I’ve been out for two months.”
“Jesus,” Kareem said. “Can I ask . . . ?”
“I took out a contract on my cousin,” Ari said. “It was a mistake and I’m not that person anymore.”
“Okay,” Kareem said. “Just when I thought this evening couldn’t get any stranger.”
“Why, what was strange before?”
“I can’t . . .” He sighed. “There’s something really wrong with this party,” he said, but saying even that was a mistake.
Surely she’d think he was some kind of lunatic.
They walked up the stairs in silence after that, and as he opened the door he had a wild thought that perhaps everyone had left—for how long had he been gone?
—but the party was still there, the party had shed several guests and rearranged itself into something smaller, gentler, someone had switched the music to Django Reinhardt, the party had shrunk to the size of two rooms in lamplight, in candlelight, people clustered in just a few conversations.
James was on the couch with a beer. In the living room, the candles illuminated the flowers, and the remaining guests were beautiful in the soft light.
All was tranquil. It was the kind of evening they’d all dreamt of for months, for years, through the desert of successive curfews and fear following the coup d’état.
He could see it on the faces of his guests: this night was magical.
There was such relief. But for Kareem, scanning his apartment for doppelg?ngers, there was a quality of nightmare to the scene.
He heard someone saying, “Oh please, please, please, please,” over and over, and realized that he was talking to himself, a murmured plea as he looked behind the shower curtain, as he peered faux-casually into groups of people, as he opened the closet—“Oh, just looking for more candles”—and looked under the bed.
His hands were shaking. He knew he was losing it, but if he didn’t look under the bed he would have to keep wondering if his double was hiding there.
A strange thought when he went out to the terrace: he longed to see his double.
No, that wasn’t right. He was desperate not to see his double.
No, both. A double, well, was that not something like a twin?
A twin might be an ally in an uncertain life.
Surrender, he told himself, surrender, there is nothing you can do, but when in his life had he ever surrendered? It wasn’t in his nature.
Nonetheless, it seemed there truly was nothing to be done, so he returned to the terrace, where a few people had gathered. He sat by Bruno, who put an arm over Kareem’s shoulder, and for just a moment Kareem wanted to cry.
“How do you and Kareem know each other?” Bruno asked Ari.
“Oh, I don’t, to be honest,” Ari said. “I’m here with my roommate.”
“Gloria,” Kareem said. “We used to work together, back in the day.” Where was Gloria? He needed desperately to talk to her. Another woman was asking Ari something, so Kareem and Bruno were momentarily alone.
“Everything okay?” Bruno asked softly.
“Fine,” Kareem said. “Why?”
“You seem shaken.”
“It’s nothing,” Kareem said. “I’m good.” He noticed that everyone’s glasses were empty, so he went inside for more wine.
He saw Gloria for the last time on his way to the kitchen.
She was standing by the dining nook, looking up at the only painting he owned—Swan Dive, by Lucas Alkaitis, gifted to Kareem long ago by an uncle—and finally she was alone.
He’d bring wine to his guests outside, he decided, then come back in and finally talk with her.
She didn’t seem to notice as he walked by behind her. He walked into the kitchen—
“Then what?” Ibari asked. They were close to the train station now. Night was falling. Later, reviewing her video of the interrogation, she would notice the way he looked up at the sky as it filled with stars.
“I don’t want to talk about this,” Kareem told her. “I don’t think I can keep it together.”
“You walked into the kitchen, and . . . ?”
—and it was the wrong room. The doorway had somehow misfired and delivered him into an entirely different place.
He had exited his apartment. He was in a much larger room, surrounded by incomprehensible equipment.
He was standing on a low metal platform of some kind, crowded uncomfortably close to someone, so he stepped down to the floor to have more space.
He looked up, and the person who’d been standing beside him was him, his double, a man with his face.
Kareem closed his eyes. “What the fuck just happened,” someone said.
“Oh. Oh god. He’s another me,” the double on the platform said, and the nightmare deepened: the double didn’t have just Kareem’s face, but Kareem’s voice. “Something’s gone wrong.”
“Who is that?” the other man said, and then, “Who are you? Tell me your name.”
“Kareem.” Kareem opened his eyes, but the hallucination persisted. “Kareem Fayed.” And then, absurdly, “I was just in my apartment.”
“But where are the others?” the other Kareem said, in tones of mounting distress. “Where are the others? The other two? Saraya and Nico?”
“Please,” Kareem said, “can someone tell me where I am?”
But he seemed unimportant. The other two men were shouting at each other and examining the equipment.
What he wished in later years was that he might return momentarily to that version of himself, to the man crouched terrified on the floor in those first minutes, that he could tell him: There will be darkness for a while, you will spend a year in a detention camp in the Mojave Desert, but that life will draw to a close and a new life will begin when Ibari comes for you.
2
He saw his double again only briefly, only once, on the day Ibari came to him.
They drove and then walked to the desert train station, while he told the story of the party for what he decided would be the final time, and then took the train into Los Angeles, connected with a trolley, and walked a few blocks to a house between towers.
Ibari had explained the terms of the arrangement.
He would care for the children. She would be there to help.
His double wished to devote his time to working against the State and didn’t want to be a parent anymore.
Kareem had braced himself for the meeting, but he still wasn’t prepared when the door to the house opened, and his double stood before him.
Ibari pulled Kareem inside quickly, and the two men stared at one another in the foyer.
They weren’t exactly identical, Kareem saw now.
His double was a little heavier, and had a furtive expression that Kareem didn’t entirely recognize.
“She took all the recording devices out of the house,” the double said finally, with a glance at Ibari.
“Okay,” Kareem said. He wasn’t sure why a house would have recording devices in it.
“I told the kids my brother would be taking care of them for a few days,” the double said.
“Where are you going?” Kareem asked, and immediately regretted it. It was a stupid question, he decided. Whatever his double was up to, it was secret enough that it was best he didn’t know.