Idiopathy

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