Page 69 of Exit Party

“It must be nice for you to take a break from work,” my mother said, as we got out of the car. Her understanding of my life was that I’d left academia to work in an urban planning consulting firm.

“Oh, it’s a good job,” I said. “I’m enjoying it so far.” Trying not to think about the desert prison as I got out of the car.

“Do you think you could help me with the garden while you’re here?” my mother asked.

“Are we still planting wildflowers?” I was looking up at the site where the mall had been. On a previous visit I’d helped pry broken concrete pieces out of the way to create narrow spaces for planting, and it was a pleasure to see the spindly apple trees emerging from the gaps.

I’ve never been much of a gardener, but I can follow instructions and dig a hole, so the following afternoon, I put on the oldest clothes I could find and went up to the former mall. The work was hard in a meditative way. It was possible to still my thoughts, and only in the stillness did I realize my thoughts had been racing. I was thinking of a study I’d read once, a long time ago, about a rise in the number of gardens following the formation of the modern State, which is to say the version of this country in which voting was no longer required and the president would one day be succeeded by his son.

The rise in gardening had been presented in purely positive terms, evidence of a new pastoral tranquility settling over the nation, but it’s not a coincidence, I found myself thinking, that gardening is an activity that blunts your sharpest thoughts. I’d been at it for a while, pulling weeds and pouring fresh topsoil into ever-widening cracks, when I became aware of someone watching me. I looked up, and almost dropped my trowel.

“Nico,” I said. “Good lord.” She looked terrible, that was my first thought. I hadn’t seen her in some months, and she looked like she hadn’t been sleeping much. There were dark circles under her eyes. She needed a haircut. “I had no idea you were in Ohio.”

Nico held my gaze, and raised her left wrist. She mimed unbuckling a watch—her wrist was bare—and throwing it away. I hesitated just a moment before I nodded. I walked quickly away, well beyond my watch’s audio range, and laid it carefully at the base of an apple tree.

When I turned back, she was sitting cross-legged between banks of flowers, close to where I’d been working. She watched my approach. I wasn’t sure what to do, so I sat too, facing her.

“Nico,” I asked softly, “is everything all right?”

“No. Not at all.” Nico sighed. “I heard you just got promoted.”

“You didn’t come here to congratulate me on my promotion.”

Nico glanced over her shoulder. No one stirred among the houses in the meadow. My parents and the neighbours were indoors. “Let’s start with the cover story,” she said. “I am going to tell you something true, and this is the moment you’ll think of when you’re asked what we talked about.”

“What?”

“I’m the only parent,” Nico said. She held my gaze. “I make the same amount of money as my husband, actually a bit more because I have one more degree than he does, but I’m the only parent. I think he used to love me, but now he cares about his research and literally nothing else in the world. My kids are two and almost four, and he’s literally never brushed their hair. He doesn’t know what food they like, or what time they get dropped off at preschool, or the name of their doctor. The reason he doesn’t know these things is because he doesn’t care.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “You’ve talked to him about it?”

“A thousand times, and nothing changes. This isn’t why I’m here.”

“Okay.”

“For the past five years,” Nico said, “I’ve been reporting on my husband and two colleagues.”

“Jesus, Nico.”

“He and two other scientists are running illegal experiments. I infiltrated the group for Service.”

“What kind of experiments?”

“Dangerous ones,” Nico said. “Experiments involving technologies that could undermine the State.”

“You reported them?”

“No,” Nico said quietly. “I want it to work.”

I sat back.

“Why would you tell me this?” I whispered. “Why would you do this to me?”

“It’s a gamble,” Nico said. “I’m not entirely sure what you’ll do, and that’s why I didn’t sleep last night. But in a few days I’m going to participate in a dangerous experiment, and I need you to promise me something.”

“What?”

“If something happens to me, don’t let my kids go into a State orphanage.”