Idiopathy

by Byers, Sam

  There was a sense of security in sitting outside. He didn’t feel hemmed in. He felt that the notional concept of ‘leaving’ was something that existed only two footsteps away, with no doors or obstacles between him and it. He wore his black woollen coat and a cashmere scarf and a pale pink shirt he ordinarily reserved for important meetings, but Katherine would not see it because Daniel would not take off his coat.

  He was, he realised, flirting with nostalgia the way he usually flirted with illness. There was something nostalgic going around. He liked the idea but didn’t want to get all the way stricken, and didn’t want it to prove catching. Certain things, though, arose unbidden. Their first date, never actually described as such, had been for coffee. Katherine had devoted two sly weeks to making him uncomfortable, culminating in her breezing up to his desk and saying ‘Look, I know you want to ask me out for coffee, so you might as well just get it over with.’ He hadn’t questioned whether he wanted to ask her out for coffee until long after he’d asked her out for coffee. Such was Katherine’s way, he thought. You did things, became things in increments, until eventually you were recognisable only to her.

  Exactly ten minutes later than the agreed time he clocked her coming up the street, a strut in her step that spoke of nerves. People gave her space without thinking about it, edging aside as she held her line. She looked different but moved the same. Her face registered not a shred of recognition, even when she’d seen him and was walking towards his table. As was her way, she started talking before actually entering earshot. She had a tendency to fade in and out. People joined her mid-flow, was the impression she gave, and on her terms. She had new hair, he noticed, and a slightly less flamboyant ethos with regards to her makeup, as if concealment, not expression, were now the prime motivating force. He put this down to age. Under the makeup, he thought, she was older, and hence the foundation was that infinitesimal degree thicker, like the concentric rings of an ageing tree.

  ‘Do I look different?’ she said, sliding into a chair and placing her hands on the table.

  ‘No,’ he lied.

  She puffed her hair. ‘Really? You’re the same as always, of course.’

  He was unable to tell if this statement carried an edge. He decided to assume that all statements would carry an edge.

  She asked him if he’d ordered anything for her. He told her he had not.

  ‘Do I want a latte?’ she said, looking over her shoulder at who knew what.

  ‘I have no idea.’

  She leaned back in her chair, lit a cigarette, and told him she would have whatever he was having. He signalled the waitress and told her, with slightly widened eyes for what he hoped was comic effect, that they would have two black coffees. Then the waitress left, and Daniel looked back at Katherine, who was now inhaling deeply on her cigarette and fluttering her eyelashes in an oddly menacing way. He had, he realised, forgotten these details about her. The level of unattractiveness she brought to smoking, for example; the ease with which she could reverse a smile into a threat, a lash-bat into the opening of an argument.

  ‘Why do you do that?’ she said.

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘You do this thing with little gestures.’

  ‘What little gestures?’

  ‘Like you widen your eyes or raise your eyebrows or something as if I’m completely mad or difficult and you want to communicate to the waitress or whoever that you’re aware that I’m mad or difficult but you’re trying to keep me on some sort of level so please just be aware. Or like you say black coffee with this expression that sort of implies we’re going to need it, as if this whole experience is going to be incredibly draining. It’s just two old friends meeting for coffee, you know. It’s not the start of a long haul at the coal face.’

  She stopped, rolled her eyes and held up a hand.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Must try harder.’

  Their coffee came. Daniel made a point of not making eye contact with the waitress. Katherine made a point, he noticed, of not looking to see if he made eye contact with the waitress.

  ‘Still on the fags,’ he said.

  She blew smoke over her shoulder. ‘Probably spare me the piety,’ she said.

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I like your haircut.’

  ‘Really?’ He ran a hand through his hair. ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Yes you are,’ she said. ‘It’s just that you’re always slightly ashamed of loving something you regard as superficial.’

  ‘Got me,’ he said.

  She squinted, leaned closer, held the position a fraction longer than was comfortable. He experienced her looking at him as a physical sensation, like breath against the downy hairs of his nape.

  ‘I was wrong,’ she said flatly. ‘You have changed.’

  ‘How so?’

  She smiled, sipped her coffee, made him wait.

  ‘You’re happy,’ she said, like it was a diagnosis.

  Daniel thought about this with a degree of paranoia he hoped was not outwardly obvious. He wasn’t sure exactly what he was supposed to say and so just smiled and nodded and gave a little shrug like, Hey, what can you do? Then he felt his face shift in a way that very definitely was outwardly obvious because he saw her face shift when she saw it.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘I suppose I am.’

  ‘Happy?’

  ‘Yeah. To an extent.’

  She smirked.

  ‘What about you?’ he said.

  She tilted her cup this way and that, frowning. ‘This coffee’s sort of mediocre, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Like it’s trying to be good coffee but not quite succeeding.’

  Daniel wondered again if this was some sort of dig. Everything seemed unnaturally weighted. He felt like she was passing statements to him across the table and asking him to heft them in his hands to see if they held true.

  ‘I think it’s a little over-extracted,’ he said.

  ‘Do you now?’

  ‘An espresso should take between eighteen and twenty-one seconds to extract. Shorter than that and it’s too watery. Longer and it’s too bitter.’

  ‘This is filter coffee.’

  Daniel looked at his cup.

  ‘So it is,’ he said, mortified.

  Katherine did her laugh that was an impression of a laugh. Daniel said, ‘Anyway.’

  ‘Anyway,’ she said, looking sideways and away across the street where a saggy-trousered toddler appeared to be having the tantrum to end all tantrums. ‘Bloody hell. Where do they all come from?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The kids. Who’s having all these kids? And why?’ She performed the conversational equivalent of heaving on the handbrake. ‘Shit, you’re not about to have kids, are you?’

  ‘Not as far as I know, no.’

  ‘Do you want them?’

  ‘One day,’ he said.

  Across the street the toddler’s mother was going into the routine where she said she was going home and the toddler could just stay there if that’s what he wanted, but she hoped he knew the way home because she was going home and he’d have to find his own way.

  ‘Still in the same job?’ said Daniel.

  ‘Yeah. I see you’ve upgraded.’

  ‘Did you google me?’

  ‘Saw you in the paper.’

  He squirmed. ‘Yeah. That happens periodically.’

  ‘You seem like you’re doing really well.’

  Both their coffees were empty but they both kept picking up their cups and sipping at them.

  ‘I keep having these dreams,’ Daniel said. ‘I wake up thinking I’ve been found out, that everyone’s realised what a fraud I am.’

  ‘What, like you’re not actually that good at your job?’

  ‘Like I’m actually terrible at it.’

  She nodded; looked at him in a surprisingly level way. ‘But you are good at your job, aren’t you?’

  He was briefly thrown; took another sip of nothing. ‘Yes,�
� he said. ‘I’m certainly not bad at it.’

  ‘I’d like to do something else,’ she said.

  ‘So do it.’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘I’m in that place,’ she said. ‘I go to bed saying tomorrow I’ll look for something else, and then I wake up in the morning and it’s all I can do to get into work and maintain the status quo.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Daniel, watching the toddler take all of three seconds to go haring after his mother as she walked very slowly down the street. ‘We’ve all been there.’ He raised his cup. ‘Another?’

  ‘Are you eating?’ She was studying the menu, looking somehow keen and not keen at the same time.

  ‘I could definitely nibble at something.’

  ‘Want to split one of these snacky things?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like one of those platters that has bread and olives and oil and some sort of nameless dip. You know. I fancy one of those but I can’t eat a whole one.’

  ‘That sounds fine.’

  ‘Don’t just get it because I’m getting it.’

  ‘No. It sounds nice. I’m peckish.’

  ‘Never got that word. Peckish.’

  ‘From the Latin, Peckus, meaning to allocate a small area of stomach for unnameable dip.’

  She deadpanned. It was a point of pride not to laugh at other people’s jokes.

  ‘We’re going to need a bigger boat, Roy,’ she said.

  He was ambushed by a laugh. He remembered that finding something in nothing was something at which they had both once, for better or for worse, been adept. It seemed apt, he thought, to laugh at something that had no meaning at all when it was said by someone to whom you’d once attached an excess of meaning.

  Katherine summoned the waitress by waving and calling Hello.

  ‘I think she heard you,’ said Daniel.

  ‘Good,’ said Katherine. ‘I hate it when they ignore you.’

  The waitress stationed herself slightly diffidently beside their table. Katherine ordered two more coffees and a platter of breads and dips. Daniel felt embarrassed at feeling cold, as if this were somehow an expression of weakness. Across the street an elderly woman in an abundance of padded clothing parked her wheeled shopping device beside a bench and lowered herself cautiously into a sitting position. Daniel realised he was feeling slightly furtive. He kept checking the faces of other patrons as they arrived and departed, fearing being known.

  ‘How’s your love life?’ he said, for no reason whatsoever.

  She shot him a death glare in place of an answer.

  ‘That good, eh?’

  ‘Don’t get smug,’ she said.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t being.’

  ‘So why say sorry?’

  ‘Like, I’m sorry I gave that impression.’

  ‘You’ve got a black belt in disingenuousness, you know that?’

  He chose to assume this didn’t require an answer.

  ‘Men,’ said Katherine flatly. ‘Who gives a fuck.’

  ‘Sometimes I miss being single,’ said Daniel. He had no idea if this was an honest statement.

  ‘Of course you do,’ she said. ‘That’s what happens when you’re happy.’

  Daniel had that paralysis feeling again. He blinked.

  ‘What?’ said Katherine.

  ‘It’s the way you say it,’ he said, not entirely trusting that this wouldn’t lead to an argument.

  She did the lash-bat again, all ice. Then she did her thin smile that somehow failed to involve the eyes, as if politely inviting him to annoy her.

  ‘How do I say it?’

  ‘I’ve just never known anyone to invest the word happy with such disdain,’ he said. ‘And I’ve never been able to decide why that was: if you simply don’t believe in the whole concept or if it’s more that you hate the idea of other people experiencing something you can’t.’

  He went quiet while his insides underwent a tectonic lurch.

  ‘I want to say straight away that that didn’t sound nearly as bad in my head,’ he added.

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘it’s OK. It’s a fair comment.’

  He wanted to say, with some incredulity: It is? He thought better of it and instead said nothing.

  ‘I mean, I get it, of course,’ she said, squinting slightly as if she could see what she wanted to say in the distance and was trying to bring it into focus. ‘I get why people want it, but, I don’t know. It lacks something for me.’

  ‘Happiness lacks something for you? Is that a serious statement?’

  ‘Have you ever known me to make an unserious statement?’

  ‘Well, admittedly no.’

  ‘Right, so don’t ask.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Anyway,’ she said. ‘I’ve been thinking recently that the whole trying to be happy thing makes people kind of unhappy so I’m experimenting with not trying to be happy at all.’

  ‘And how’s that working out?’

  She arched an eyebrow. ‘It has its moments.’ She ran a hand through the air as if to sweep the conversation off the table. ‘Whatever,’ she said. ‘You seem really happy, and that’s nice.’

  ‘It is,’ he said, after a tactful pause. ‘I think it is.’

  ‘Is it the hippy that makes you happy?’ said Katherine with a grin that wasn’t entirely free of hostility.

  ‘Partly,’ he nodded.

  ‘You don’t look like a hippy,’ she said.

  ‘That’s because I’m not one.’

  ‘Is it like a Romeo and Juliet situation? Do her family disapprove of you because you wear a suit?’

  ‘Her parents are very nice.’

  Katherine blinked. Daniel wondered if she’d taken his remark to be a dig at her mother. He wondered if he should clarify, but then clarification was chancy because she might not have thought that at all until he sought to clarify, at which point she’d immediately think it. He considered what he thought was a subtle shift.

  ‘How’s your mum?’ he said.

  ‘Subtle,’ said Katherine.

  ‘I didn’t mean …’

  ‘She’s her usual self, let’s put it that way.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I suppose I sort of worry about her now,’ said Katherine. ‘I still get annoyed by her and all that, but sometimes I also just find myself feeling sad for her and hoping she’s alright.’

  Daniel nodded.

  ‘How’s your dad, anyway?’ said Katherine.

  ‘Comes and goes,’ said Daniel.

  It was Katherine’s turn to nod. They were both, Daniel noted, at great pains to show they understood.

  ‘Does he remember you?’ said Katherine.

  ‘Most of the time.’

  ‘Would he remember me, do you think?’

  She looked earnest, a little afraid. She had a thing about being forgotten. Everyone, Daniel thought, has a thing about being forgotten. In many ways it was why they were here now, having lunch, swapping inanities.

  ‘No,’ he said honestly.

  ‘That’s awful.’

  He laughed. ‘I know,’ he said, affecting high camp. ‘All that fabulous Katherine-ness, lost.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant,’ she said.

  ‘I know. I was teasing.’

  Their food and coffee arrived. They ignored it. In the street, on the other side of the rope that demarcated their eating area, people moved back and forth who were just like them. Daniel imagined the things that worried them as they walked: the phone calls they hadn’t made; the phone calls they hadn’t received; the micro-disappointments of an average day. A young couple passed a camera to an old couple and asked for a picture. The girl had a blue Mohawk; the old woman had a blue rinse. Momentarily, it looked as if the young couple were handing the camera to their future selves. Daniel looked at Katherine, this woman he knew so well. Too well, really, to talk to now. He wanted to tell her she was lucky, in a way, to be in a position where she could still yearn for more, rather than simply fear
the loss of what she already had.

  She took a glug of her coffee and watched him over the rim of her cup. For a second he watched her watching him. He felt a nameless tug and wanted to leave.

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘Nathan.’

  ‘Ah yes. Nathan.’

  Saying his name felt like an achievement.

  ‘What’s the plan?’ said Katherine.

  ‘How should I know?’

  ‘Well you’re the planner.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘You plan. You do plans. You’re never knowingly without a plan.’

  ‘Do we even need a plan?’

  She held up her hands. ‘Hey, you know me. If the plan is that we don’t need a plan then I’m absolutely fine with that. The question is: are you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Daniel. It came out sounding like a question.

  They went quiet again.

  ‘Fuck,’ said Daniel after a while. ‘Fuckitty tits.’

  ‘Well,’ said Katherine. ‘Ain’t that the truth.’

  ‘I keep thinking,’ said Daniel.

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘You know.’

  ‘I’m sure there was nothing we could have done.’

  Daniel felt stalked again; shadowed. Something nameless and hot licked gently at his nape and slipped a spindly finger through his belly button into his stomach. It was the kind of horror that woke you in the night and sent you pacing downstairs into the dawn. His father was going to forget everything and die.

  ‘That’s the statement,’ he said. ‘That’s the statement I keep unpacking. If there was nothing we could have done, then was there something someone else could have done?’

  ‘Why should that worry us? There’s always something someone else could have done.’

  ‘But what if all that means is that we should have been someone else?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘I probably don’t want to think about it anyway.’

  He made an exploratory start on the foodstuffs. Some were crunchy; some were semi-liquid. Katherine let her fingers hover above the spread, then seemingly thought better of it.