Idiopathy

her habit, finish them on his behalf.
    ‘How have I been?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Great. Fantastic. Amazing.’
    ‘Great.’
    ‘You?’
    ‘Great, yeah. Really good.’
    ‘Great.’
    ‘Are you still, um …’
    ‘Yup. Same old same old.’
    ‘Mmmm.’
    Another pause.
    ‘So God it’s been like, what …’ said Daniel.
    ‘A year? Something like that?’
    ‘Yeah. Must have been. Wow.’
    ‘Crazy.’
    ‘Anyway. It’s good to hear from you.’
    ‘Is it?’
    He detected, immediately, the shift in tone. He felt like an insect negotiating the tines of a Venus flytrap.
    ‘Yes,’ he said quickly. ‘Of course it is.’
    He could feel her weighing the sincerity of this statement.
    ‘So Nathan,’ he said, a little too hurriedly.
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘How is he?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ said Katherine. ‘He left a message. I haven’t called back.’
    ‘Why haven’t you called him back?’
    ‘You know.’
    ‘Not really.’
    ‘Why should I take responsibility for this?’
    ‘Because he called you.’
    ‘Only because he doesn’t have your number.’
    She meant, Daniel knew, that she was reluctant to deal with Nathan on her own and would welcome a degree of support from someone else who knew him. Not that she would say that.
    Daniel swivelled gently in his chair so he could again look out the window. Clearly done with the thermos, the merry band outside was unfurling a gaudy new banner that said
You Are What You Eat
. Imaginative, he thought.
    He realised he’d had a lingering sense of nameless dread, of something a-stink in the woodshed of his life, for months. Katherine, at least, was a dread he could name. There was something reassuring about that.
    ‘Look,’ he said.
    A loud crunching came down the phone line.
    ‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘What are you eating? A car?’
    ‘Rice cake.’
    ‘Do you have to?’
    ‘No,’ she said, bearing down on what must have been at least half a rice cake at once. ‘Just want to.’
    ‘Right. So. Anyway.’
    She sniffed.
    ‘Nathan,’ he said. ‘What about Nathan?’
    ‘Yup,’ she said flatly. ‘What about him?’
    ‘What,’ said Daniel, with pointed patience and precision, ‘shall we do … about
Nathan
?’
    To his relief, she didn’t respond immediately. She seemed to be giving it genuine thought.
    ‘I’ve got a lot on,’ she said eventually.
    ‘Me too.’
    ‘But at the same time …’
    ‘Yeah. That’s what I think.’
    ‘It’s like … you know.’
    ‘I know.’
    Neither of them said anything for a bit. Daniel had a sudden and slightly bizarre urge to remove one shoe and sock and pick at the sharp corner of his second toenail, which was digging into the flesh of the toe beside it. Wasn’t there a school of philosophy that encouraged the excision of that which caused you pain? Wasn’t it in the Bible? He rested his foot on the desk, unlaced his shoe, and peeled away his sock. He realised it was the first time the skin of his foot had met the air of his office. Funny, he thought, how certain parts of us never come into contact with things that other parts of us come into contact with every day. He tried to think of other examples, then realised that all the examples involved his feet, and that what he was actually realising was that he wore shoes all day which, now that he thought about it, wasn’t exactly a revelation.
    ‘What are you doing?’ said Katherine.
    ‘Thinking about my feet.’
    ‘
Riiiiggghhhht
.’
    Clara walked in with his coffee.
    ‘Just put it there thank you Clara,’ said Daniel, pointing at the free patch of desk next to his foot. She set down the tray with a frown and left. He pressed the plunger on the cafetière and poured himself a cup.
    ‘Just there thank you Clara,’ said Katherine. ‘That’s it. And just tongue my balls while you’re there, there’s a dear.’
    ‘Touch of jealousy, perhaps?’
    ‘Whatever.’
    ‘So,’ he said, taking a sip of his coffee. ‘Nathan.’
    ‘I know, I know.’
    ‘What does your gut say?’
    ‘That you or I or we should do something.’
    ‘Agreed. That something being what?’
    ‘Why am I making all the decisions here?’
    ‘OK, OK. Let’s think this through.’
    ‘What’s to think through? Do you ever do anything without thinking it through?’
    This was a fair point, Daniel thought. Maybe he should be a bit more reckless. Maybe it would be good to see Nathan again and get back in touch with that part of himself.
    It struck him that the phrase
a bit more reckless
was