Dangerous by Default

21. The artist

From the shadows, Caine watched the crowd. While they were noticing the details of the artwork, he was noticing the details of their faces, how they moved and spoke. A rare opportunity to study human behavior in its rawest form.

During exhibitions, he was happiest hiding on the outskirts and shadows of galleries with a whiskey in hand, surveying the crowd with an inquisitive eye. Tonight, Caine had found the perfect perch. Hiding behind the spanish columns that punctuated the edges of the bullring, he watched VIPs come and go. He sipped his chilled liquid in silence, enjoying its stinging warmth on his throat. And yet, something was bothering him.

He glanced at his phone again. Where was she? The threshold of sobriety was just ahead, flashing red, but Caine kept his foot on the gas. He took another sip.

Why was she so quick to change the subject with sex?

She had been distant since... since Joseph's bathroom. At the time her reaction to the email, from the adoption agency, had seemed... strange. The routes to parenthood were limited for them. This made getting the news of a pregnant woman looking for an adoptive family, hopefully them, feel like a godsend.

So why had she been so distant? He couldn't help but think how surrogacy must have made Mina feel. Was her inability to conceive and carry a child was making her insecure? They had talked about this in the past, and it had always been a sore spot for her. He had to tread lightly. To be patient and follow her lead.

It's only work, she told him. Wait for me. Mina had been under extraordinary pressure, he knew that much was true. That's why they were traipsing around San Francisco in disguise, staring into the eyes of danger only to laugh in its face. At least that's what he was trying to teach her, and she seemed to be learning fast. Shaker technology at work. Mental technology. But Caine felt that there was something else there, something hidden under the surface. Something she wasn't telling him. It was starting to pick at him.

His thoughts were interrupted by two familiar faces, in an unfamiliar form. Ami, in a dress for once. And her girlfriend, the cop, whose name Caine for some reason could not remember. She looked dashing in a tweed blazer. Frankly, he found Ami to be quite dull; But it was the cop that really made him nervous. Caine receded further back into the shadows as they moved in his direction.

Why did she interrogate Mina the other day? Is she really onto us? Or was it just a lucky coincidence? And yet, as he stood there in the dark, his eyes still followed them.

He studied their gaze, the pace of their walk, the rhythm of their breath. Most of all, what they said. The moment of truth, he called it, when a couple arrived at the edge of a work and divulged their private thoughts to each other.

Caine wasn't particularly eager to hear praise about his work, as the data had no value to him. It meant the viewer was prepared and it revealed nothing. All else being equal, hate was the far more valuable reaction. Hate allowed Caine to watch their thoughts spinning in real time, as if the crusty tectonic plates of a person's mind were being scraped aside by hot magma desperate to break free. It meant that he did his job. There was only one reaction that bothered Caine to his core, that made him feel low and worthless, like an undergraduate art student hanging his work in the back of a coffee shop. Indifference.

Janus clutched Ami close as they approached. Ami was the first to speak.

"The Ring of Saturn." she said, looking at the exhibition brochure. "Wait, wasn't there supposed to be a bull here?"

"Ugh" Janus let out a loud groan. "Like I've said before, artists looove to lie."

"Artists are supposed to lie. It's how they tell the truth." Ami shot back with a cheeky grin.