Idiopathy

‘Yes.’
    ‘What are you looking for?’ said Henry.
    ‘Henry,’ said Archie.
    ‘What?’ said Henry.
    ‘What have you got?’ said Daniel, before realising that, much as it was wise to conceal his intentions from wider view, concealing them from the person he was trying to communicate them to was going to be somewhat counterproductive.
    ‘No one’s got anything,’ said Archie.
    ‘But they
might have
,’ said Henry, tapping the side of his nose.
    ‘Or they might not,’ said Archie.
    ‘Right,’ said Henry. ‘Absolutely. But equally
they might have
.’

    R efreshed by his success, and now reframing the weekend in his mind as a sort of blokey reminiscence session, he called Katherine as soon as he got home.
    ‘Hi,’ he said.
    ‘Hi,’ said Katherine. She sounded edgy, he thought, as if she were awaiting some sort of verdict. He wondered if he had, again, misjudged his opening syllable. He told her it was just a quick call, then immediately regretted it.
    ‘Great,’ she said. ‘I always love it when people open with that.’
    ‘What?’ said Daniel, knowing exactly what.
    ‘Just a quick call. Like, don’t get comfortable in this conversation because it’s not going to last long.’
    ‘I think it’s more like, don’t worry, this isn’t going to take up too much of your time.’
    ‘Why don’t you let me be the judge of how much of my time I want to invest in this conversation, and when I’ve run out of time I’ll let you know. How about that?’
    Daniel examined his fingernails, then flipped his hand over to look at his palm. Periodically he wondered if one of the lines was his Katherine line.
    ‘Like I said, this doesn’t really need to be a whole big thing.’
    ‘OK, right, I give up. You obviously want to converse entirely in bullet points and have me take it down in shorthand or something. Go ahead.’
    He could hear her lighting a cigarette: the spark of the lighter followed by the damp lip-smack of her inhalation.
    ‘I was just calling to say I spoke to Nathan.’
    ‘Bravo,’ she drawled.
    ‘If you’re going to be sarcastic about everything then I may have to just send you an email.’
    ‘Sorry. Go on.’
    ‘Right. So I phoned Nathan and, well, he’s not that well.’
    ‘Duh.’
    ‘Right. As I said before …’
    ‘Sorry. Couldn’t help myself. Please continue.’
    Daniel had put some thought into how he was going to phrase this, but in the event all of that thought seemed to dissipate into an insubstantial notion of saying it and backing away.
    ‘I mean, he’s sort of better now, is the gist, but at one point he was really very seriously unwell and he, ah, I’m not sure really, if he tried to kill himself, or if he cut himself or something, but anyway, he hurt himself in some way, and he’s been away ever since getting some sort of treatment.’
    ‘What sort of treatment?’
    ‘The psychiatric sort.’
    There was a long pause.
    ‘Fuck,’ said Katherine.
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘Do we know why he … you know?’
    ‘I didn’t ask.’
    ‘You didn’t ask?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Well, isn’t it sort of an obvious question?’
    ‘That’s why I didn’t ask it,’ said Daniel, sensing a tangent and getting tired in advance. ‘I thought it was sort of insensitive or stupid or something. I thought maybe I should just be like, oh yeah, you know, that happens, rather than being ghoulish about it.’
    ‘So basically you just bottled out and avoided the whole issue and talked about the weather or something?’
    ‘No. I invited him to come and visit.’
    ‘Oh,’ she sounded slightly deflated.
    ‘You see? And at first he was a bit reluctant.’
    ‘Mmmm
hmmmm
.’
    ‘But then he texted and said OK, he’s coming. And I said OK, great.’
    ‘So when’s he coming?’
    A note of unease had crept in. Daniel wasn’t sure if he should try and keep things chipper or take a more business-like, PR approach. He was, after all, supposed to be good at this.
    ‘This weekend.’
    ‘This weekend? God, that’s not much notice, is it?’
    ‘Well, I’ve got a free house.’
    ‘Oh. What’s her name’s away is she?’
    ‘Angelica. Yes.’
    ‘Everything OK?’
    ‘
Yeeeesss
, thank you. She’s, um, she’s away on a demonstration.’
    This time her pause was for effect. He could imagine her at the other end, drawing her head back, turning away slightly to regard him out of the side of her eye, a smirk of pleasure already beginning to bloom.
    ‘A demonstration? About