Idiopathy

pulse is gone and I haven’t taken a breath since lunch.’
    He was specific about the symptoms of his death. A whiteness; voices; the presence of other souls.
    ‘Dad,’ Daniel said.
    ‘I haven’t got a pulse. I’m not breathing. It sounds like I’m breathing but it’s not really air. I cut my finger and it didn’t bleed and when I went outside nobody could see me.’
    ‘You were outside?’
    ‘But it wasn’t outside. It couldn’t have been. They couldn’t see me.’
    ‘Dad,’ Daniel said. ‘If you were really dead, how could you call to tell me?’
    A pause at the other end of the phone. A deep breath. Daniel could picture him – thin as a sparrow’s leg in frayed pyjamas; his skin soapy-pale; slightly hunched, as if he had to lean into the call to achieve maximum connection. His answer took several seconds to arrive, a space of time in which Daniel imagined he could hear his father’s thoughts as they ground against each other, as one struggled to beget another.
    ‘They let you,’ his father said at last. ‘They give you one phone call.’

    A t night, in bed, after they had either made love or, as was the case this evening, not, Daniel and Angelica would often pass the time between turning off the lights and falling asleep by talking about other people. There seemed to be an unspoken agreement that discussion of themselves, of their life together, was not to be conducted in such an intimate space.
    ‘Sebastian’s funny, isn’t he?’ said Angelica.
    ‘Funny how?’
    ‘Just funny.’
    They were lying side by side in the not-quite-dark of their bedroom, the glow of a nearby streetlight turning their thin blind into an amber screen.
    ‘I suppose,’ said Daniel.
    ‘Do you think things are alright between him and Plum?’
    ‘Hard to say,’ said Daniel. ‘They seemed happy at dinner.’
    ‘He always makes a show, though, doesn’t he? Like a big show of what a great couple they are. I suppose sometimes I wonder if he’d need to do that so much if …’
    ‘If they were actually happy.’
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘Hard to say.’
    ‘I mean, do you think Plum really gets him?’
    ‘Gets him how?’
    ‘Well,’ she thought for a moment. ‘He’s … I mean there’s so much going on with him, isn’t there? He’s well-read, he’s intelligent, he’s talented. I just wonder if sometimes he feels frustrated.’
    ‘I think he rather enjoys being with someone he feels superior to,’ said Daniel. ‘I can’t really imagine him being with anyone he found threatening.’
    ‘You don’t like him very much, do you?’
    ‘I don’t dislike him.’
    ‘You don’t have to like him.’
    ‘I know.’
    More silence, during which Daniel stared at a thin blade of streetlight creeping past the edge of the blind. He felt he knew what Angelica was saying better than she did.
    ‘You’re OK with this, aren’t you?’ she said, reaching for his leg under the covers and gripping him lightly by the thigh.
    ‘Of course,’ he said, giving her hand a little squeeze. ‘Love you sweetie.’
    ‘Love you Daniel,’ she said.
    It struck him that she probably did; that he probably did; that Katherine had probably loved him too and that he might at one stage have loved her. He felt the differences between him and Angelica more acutely in bed than anywhere. Angelica’s softness; the basic decency of her fears. It made him sad in a way that was difficult to grasp. He was, he thought, rotting from the inside out. He was handling everything badly. He put himself in certain situations because he resented not being put in them by others, but then resented the situations when he was in them. He wanted to be leaned on. He was nothing if not needed; indeed, he was
needy
if not needed, but then …
    He remembered bedtimes with Katherine, the way he’d tried and failed to fall asleep amidst the hum of tension from her side of the bed. It was like sleeping with a uranium fuel rod: you couldn’t see the mutation, the clumsy over-division of cells it set off inside you, but it was there, and it was permanent. And now he was the source, that same malignant glow under the covers. Had any progress been made? Had he learned anything at all? Yes, the register was different, but the basic approach – tactical, self-protecting, reflexively strategic – was essentially the same. He couched his disagreements in Angelica’s language of unconditional positive regard just as he had previously battled Katherine in her own language