Idiopathy

inherently absurd. He was glad he hadn’t said it aloud.
    ‘Well what have you achieved so far?’ he said, sounding more petulant than he’d intended. If it was possible to hear someone smile down a phone line, then that was what he experienced as he said it: Katherine’s wry, valedictory sneer.
    ‘Tetchy,’ she said, pushing another rice cake into her mouth. ‘Take it you’re not smoking.’
    ‘Take it you still are.’
    ‘Made you give up, did she?’
    ‘No. Who?’
    ‘You know. She.’
    He felt a slight lurch at his core; a tectonic shift. He wondered if Katherine knew. If she’d known all along.
    ‘You mean Angelica.’
    ‘If that’s her name. What’s she like?’
    ‘She’s nice.’
    ‘
Nice
.’
    ‘I like nice.’
    ‘Of course you do.’
    ‘Not everyone equates difficulty with passion, you know.’
    ‘Of course not.’
    ‘Anyway, what about you?’
    ‘I’m off men.’
    ‘Were you ever on them?’
    ‘That’s one of those statements that initially sounds snappy and witty but which, when you pick around at it, actually turns out not to mean anything.’
    ‘You’d know.’
    ‘Again …’
    He gave up. She was pushing him around and he couldn’t remember how to do anything about it. Perhaps he’d never known. Perhaps he’d never wanted to know.
    ‘Let’s go and see him,’ said Katherine.
    ‘What?’
    ‘Let’s just arrange to go and see him. Or are you not able? Or don’t you want to? Or won’t she let you?’
    ‘None of the above. Maybe we should go and see him.’
    ‘Great. When?’
    He faltered. ‘I … Um … Well, when’s he free?’
    ‘How would I know?’
    ‘Can’t you call him and ask?’
    ‘Can’t you?’
    ‘Jesus. Is that what it’s going to take to achieve something?’
    ‘Probably, yeah.’
    ‘What’s his number?’
    She told him and he took it down.
    ‘When are you free?’ he asked.
    ‘Oh,’ she said, an odd drift to her voice. ‘I’ll be free.’
    ‘OK. That’s decided then.’
    ‘Yeah.’
    There was a flatness to her tone now, as if her energy were fading. She sniffed. Daniel put his sock back on, then his shoe. He tucked the phone under his chin while he tied his laces. He heard a rustling from Katherine’s end of the phone, followed by more silence, and gathered that she’d run out of rice cakes. Outside his window, the protestors started an off-key rendition of ‘We Shall Not Be Moved’, even though no one was attempting to move them. He’d received three more high-priority emails since he’d last looked.
    ‘Good to hear from you,’ he said.
    ‘You too.’
    ‘I’ll call. It’ll be after the weekend.’
    ‘Understood.’
    She hung up. He took a deep swig of his coffee and stared a moment at the swirling, lightly oiled surface of the brew. He scrolled blankly through his emails. He checked his schedule. He liked saying that, even to himself.
I’ll check my schedule
. Half his life, he thought, he’d longed to be the sort of person who had to check their schedule. He thought about Katherine. He was unable to think about her in her entirety. He had to break her into manageable pieces. He used to think this was because Katherine was Katherine. Now he knew that to be untrue, because he thought of Angelica in the same way. He couldn’t, or wouldn’t, know someone whole. He would guess at them in pieces and either love the hypothetical sum of their parts or weigh them and find them wanting.
    ‘Clara.’ He liked to line up his chin over his extended index finger when he pressed the button and spoke into the intercom, as if taking aim.
    ‘Hello.’
    ‘What’s my schedule?’
    ‘You have it there.’
    ‘Come in and tell me my schedule.’
    She came in and read him his schedule. It helped.

    T he day passed in its usual gyroscopic way. He circled his office: a meeting here; a tour of this or that department there; back to the office; an interview; the office; a press release; a walk; the office. It was the circling that kept him upright.
    He called it a day at six and switched off the lights behind him. Sebastian and his friends had already vacated the car park. It gave him a sense of satisfaction to think he’d put in more hours. He got in his car and drove slowly home, blinking in the glow of the streetlights across his frosted windows. He felt disassociated, dislocated. He kept thinking of Nathan at that last party: motionless, not even swaying to the music as however many hundred others danced around him. He