“What kinds of favorite things did he have?”
Explosives, bones, shiny stolen objects.
“Me. One summer, when he was thirteen, he walked into town every Friday and came back with a box of my favorite candy.”
Her hand went to her heart. “That’s so sweet.”
“Bitter lemon, actually.” The flavor hovered at the edge of my tongue, threatening to unloose the ashen memories of that summer. “My turn. What kind of art do you make?”
“Headstones,” she said.
“Youdolike funerals.”
“Not the gothic kind! Simple inscriptions on granite, made fromcommercial headstones. I also build robots. Garrett wants me to focus—emerging artists should be consistent.”
“What kind of inscriptions?”
“My next series is about the erosion of legacy. Whenever I smell power, I ask people for their favorite Martin Luther King quote. Come to think of it.” She reached into a pocket and pulled out a small notebook. “Do you mind?”
“Do I mind…giving you a Martin Luther King quote?”
“I don’t have one from a knife-thrower.”
I stared at the notebook in her hand. Most of my education was focused on havoc, the rest on rubbing elbows with the powerful—smatterings of political gossip, history, languages.
Civil rights was not a strong point. We smelled like power, not justice.
“MyfavoriteMLK quote?”
“It doesn’t have to be profound, or accurate,” Hiromi said, her pen ready. “Whatever words are in your head.”
Something came to me dimly. “For evil to flourish, all that good has to do is…nothing?”
“Aha,” Hiromi said, writing. “Spoken like a knife-thrower.”
“It’s a comforting thought.”
She gave me a crooked smile. “It is?”
I was being too honest now.
“If you turn it around,” I said. “If evil did nothing.”
“Right.” She was still scribbling. “For a year, nobody commits intentional harm. No corporation steals its employees’ pay. No politician takes a bribe. Evil takes a year off—imagine whatgoodcould do.”
I tried to think it through, but my mind kept hitching. How soon before everyone noticed? How could you game the absence of evil for profit? How long till the world fell apart?
All those meticulous arrangements and alliances, all those spreadsheets, crumbling at once.
Was this how artists thought?
Over Hiromi’s shoulder, Garrett was headed back to us. My audition was over, and there wasn’t time to say anything profound. But with Veronica’s cocktail in my blood, I could be memorable.
“Evil can’t switch off, Hiromi. It lives too close to the heart.”
“I know,” she said, with quiet certainty. I wondered what else she knew.
Go for broke. “Are you spending the night with us?”
