This was the complication. The most dangerous person in a subject's life was usually also the person the subject was least equipped to see clearly, because love — the real kind — produced a specific form of blindness that was not stupidity and was not weakness but was simply the cost of being human.
He watched Rohit Kapoor leave at eight-thirty. At the BMW he paused, reaching into his jacket for his keys, and for a moment — just a moment — he turned and looked back at the building. Not up at her window. At the building's entrance, the lobby, the street. The look of someone checking something. Scanning. A fraction of a second, then gone.
Arjun wrote in his notes: Day 4. RK visit 7-8:30. On exit, scanned entrance/lobby area. Duration: approx 1 second. May be habit. May not be.
On Day Five, he met Priya properly for the first time — not the formal meeting of Day One, but the genuine meeting that came from both of them being at the coffee place when she arrived earlier than usual and found him already there with his terrible takeaway cup from the chemist's ancient machine.
"You've been here every morning," she said. She sat down across from him without asking — she had been aware of him all week and had been deciding when to have this conversation.
"Yes."
"You didn't interfere with anything."
"That was the agreement."
She looked at his coffee cup. "That coffee is terrible. I can tell from here."
"The chemist's machine has seen better days. I think it's from around 2011."
"Why don't you just get your coffee here?"
"I didn't want to be in your space."
She looked at him. Then: "You can get coffee here. Just don't sit at my table unless I invite you." She flagged Raju. "Black, no sugar," she said, indicating Arjun.
They sat in an almost-silence. Her idli arrived. She ate it without looking at her phone, which was different from every other morning. Today she was looking at the street. Thinking.
