Being difficult came naturally to him, true enough. But something about this line of questioning ran up a flag in Kariya's mind. There was a line, you see, between run-of-the-mill gossip and straight-up fishing for information, and she was walking right down the middle of it.

Maybe she had a chain he could yank.

"Nothing much. Oh - I did get to see an evil clown," he said, picking an event that felt relatively innocuous. "Funny guy. Not a lot of jokes, though."