"I'm okay," I say, and this time it's closer to true.
"What happened? After I left Monday."
"I texted Damien Tuesday. Told him I needed a couple of days. He came to the studio Wednesday night."
"And?"
"I told him. Everything."
The silence on her end is different from the one I expected. Not surprised—Tess knows me too well to be surprised that I'd tell Damien before I'd tell most people. What I hear in the pause is her recalibrating. Adjusting her map of who Damien is in my life, because the territory just expanded.
"What did he do?" she asks.
"He held my hand. He didn't say much. He didn't—perform anything. He was just there. Steady."
"That's good."
"It was." I sip my tea. "But there was something else. When I told him Kyle's name—when I said the name out loud—his face did something I haven't seen before."
"What kind of something?"
I search for the right words. The shift I saw behind Damien's eyes when I saidKyle Purcell—it wasn't grief, wasn't empathy, wasn't the softening you'd expect from a man hearing his partner's worst memory. It was colder than that. More organized. Like watching a machine receive an input and begin processing.
"It was like a door closing," I say. "Not on me. Behind his eyes. Like he took the information and put it somewhere specific. Filed it. And whatever was behind that door was—operational. That's the only word I have. Like he shifted into a different mode."
Tess is quiet for a long time.
"That's either exactly what you need," she says slowly, "or exactly what you should be afraid of. And I honestly can't tell which."
"Neither can I."
"Has he said anything since? About Kyle, about what he's going to do?"
"He hasn't said anything. He held me until I fell asleep and then he left and locked the studio door behind him."
"Locked the—"
"The cargo door. From outside. The latch."
Another pause. "How does he know how your latch works?"
"He's been to the studio. He's seen me lock up."
"Okay." She doesn't sound convinced. "Jess, can I say something that might sound paranoid?"
"You're going to anyway."
"This man—he shows up in your neighborhood, he's at your bodega, he engineers a meeting at a hardware store, he comes to your show, he walks you home, he gives you his jacket, he shows up at your studio in the middle of the night—twice now—and he knows how your door locks. And you still don't know what he does for a living beyond 'consulting.'"
Laid out like that, in sequence, it sounds like something. I can hear the shape Tess is drawing, and I don't like it, but I can't dismiss it either.
"He told me more," I say. "About the work. He restructures organizations. He assesses vulnerabilities. His clients require confidentiality."
"That's still not an answer, Jess. That's a nicer version of no answer."
She's right. I know she's right. The pattern of evasion around his work is consistent—he gives me just enough to stop the question without ever actually answering it. A room with the lights on and the furniture arranged to look lived-in, but no one actually home.
"I'll keep pushing," I say.
