Native Speaker

Emile Luzan is a Filipino immigrant living in New York City and practicing as a therapist. Because he supports a controversial cause in the Philippines, Glimmer & Company has been hired to scrounge up information about him. Henry is assigned to learn more about Luzan by posing as one of his clients, and though Henry is normally good at sticking to his invented backstory, he finds himself unable to stop talking about his real life in his therapy sessions with Luzan. There’s a kindness and openness to Luzan that makes Henry want to be honest with him—there’s also the fact that Henry is still mourning the death of his son. Plus, he goes to Luzan while Lelia is abroad, so he’s lonely has a lot on his mind. Eventually, it becomes clear that Henry has lost sight of his assignment. He goes to Luzan for a final session and plans to tell him to be careful, wanting to say that Luzan should be cautious about traveling and when he’s around strangers. But when Henry steps out of Luzan’s office for a drink of water right before telling him this, he finds Jack and another colleague, who physically force him to leave the building. Shortly thereafter, Luzan dies in an alleged accident while traveling, and Henry gathers that he was killed for political reasons—perhaps by the very same people who hired Glimmer & Company to spy on him.