“You’re safe to speak,” I say after her blatant challenge.
I expect the feeling I always like in the first second of a conversation I control—the lightness of taking weight off a system that wants direction. I don’t get it. I get a jolt that feels like being caught. It passes and leaves heat in the back of my neck anyway.
“Who is this?”
“You called the number that was left for you,” I challenge. “You can choose what you call me. What matters is what I can do.”
“You can start with a name.” Her voice is brittle in a way that makes me read for cracks. There aren’t any. It’s clean anger,not panic. “Then you can explain why there was a card in a locked gallery bathroom. Then you can explain why a brush I cleaned is wet and a footprint I didn’t leave is by my back door.”
On the monitor, she moves as she talks. Her left hand holds the card like a small shield braced against her sternum. Her right hand grips the phone. The tendons in her wrist stand up when she tightens down on it. I’ve watched that wrist hold a brush steady while she painted an eyelid without letting the paint shout. That knowledge sits in my head next to a dozen other things I can list about her body without needing to pretend I’m not keeping score.
“I’m the reason the critic didn’t get his map,” I say. “I’m the reason the museum approached you through your curator instead of trying to build a panel with your name on top of their agenda. I’m the reason no one filmed inside your studio this week. I’m the person who will keep a door closed when someone who likes open rooms tries it.”
“That was not an answer,” she says. “Try again.”
“I’m a resource. I’m a problem-solver. I’m the kind of person you want in your corner when people with the wrong kind of money decide they like saying your name.”
“You’re a stalker,” she growls. “Say the word.”
I don’t flinch. I could go down a speech-tree:surveillance isn’t stalking when its purpose is to prevent harm; oversight without consent is what institutions do, not what people do; your studio was compromised by someone other than me. All of those things are true and none of them are answers to the thing she put on the table. I let the term sit between us like a test and a weapon.
“If I wanted you hurt,” I counter, “you’d already be gone.”
It comes out more honest than I intended. There is a small beat of silence on the line and a small shift of weight on themonitor. She goes still like a cat does before it either runs or breaks your hand. She doesn’t hang up.
“Try again,” she snaps. “Why me? Why my studio? Why my show? Why tonight?”
“Because visibility moves faster than consent,” I say. “Because your work hits places where maps used to be. Because you painted a room we built for people who needed it and you did it exactly enough to make the room feel seen to the right eyes. Because rumors make predators curious and curious men turn into problem sets I prefer to solve before they get traction.”
“You left a card that says, ‘for your safety’ in the bathroom and you think that comes across as help.”
“I left a lifeline that doesn’t require you to tell me your name or explain your consent forms to a stranger on a night when the room was too loud.”
“You set the terms,” she says. “Is that the game?”
“You set the terms,” I say back. “You wrote them into the foundation email. No creative oversight. Full credit. Opt-out clause. No press that implies your participants endorsed a donor.”
“You read my emails.”
“My team sees what comes into our house,” I say. “Your project is in our house now.”
“My work is in my studio,” she says, and her voice shifts down a half-step because she’s angrier there. “And someone was in my studio. Was it you?”
I look at the heel print that is almost gone now as the floor dries. The truth is the right answer and the wrong answer at the same time. I make the choice I can control the fallout from.
“My team did a pass this afternoon,” I reveal. “We check doors and cameras. We map approaches. We don’t touch your canvases.”
“You touched my brushes,” she says.
“One of my people moved a brush,” I say. “It shouldn’t have happened. I have a name and a reprimand in my head already. It won’t happen again.”
“You came inside my house and you think a reprimand covers the part where you invaded my personal life.”
The urge to explain jurisdiction—the difference between the foundation’s houses and her rental, the lines I maintain in a network that only works because it is trusted—flares and dies. She doesn’t care about rules written by a man who paid for them. She cares that a stranger was close enough to smell the solvent on her hands and leave without closing the air behind him.
“There are men who want rooms like yours to be open,” I say. “They don’t come with cards. They don’t leave anything you can call. They don’t apologize. I apologize for my brush. I don’t apologize for checking your lock.”
“What do you want?”
