Idiopathy

table and asking him to heft them in his hands to see if they held true.
    ‘I think it’s a little over-extracted,’ he said.
    ‘Do you now?’
    ‘An espresso should take between eighteen and twenty-one seconds to extract. Shorter than that and it’s too watery. Longer and it’s too bitter.’
    ‘This is filter coffee.’
    Daniel looked at his cup.
    ‘So it is,’ he said, mortified.
    Katherine did her laugh that was an impression of a laugh. Daniel said, ‘Anyway.’
    ‘Anyway,’ she said, looking sideways and away across the street where a saggy-trousered toddler appeared to be having the tantrum to end all tantrums. ‘Bloody hell. Where do they all
come from
?’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘The kids. Who’s having all these kids? And why?’ She performed the conversational equivalent of heaving on the handbrake. ‘Shit, you’re not about to have kids, are you?’
    ‘Not as far as I know, no.’
    ‘Do you want them?’
    ‘One day,’ he said.
    Across the street the toddler’s mother was going into the routine where she said she was going home and the toddler could just stay there if that’s what he wanted, but she hoped he knew the way home because she was going home and he’d have to find his own way.
    ‘Still in the same job?’ said Daniel.
    ‘Yeah. I see you’ve upgraded.’
    ‘Did you google me?’
    ‘Saw you in the paper.’
    He squirmed. ‘Yeah. That happens periodically.’
    ‘You seem like you’re doing really well.’
    Both their coffees were empty but they both kept picking up their cups and sipping at them.
    ‘I keep having these dreams,’ Daniel said. ‘I wake up thinking I’ve been found out, that everyone’s realised what a fraud I am.’
    ‘What, like you’re not actually that good at your job?’
    ‘Like I’m actually terrible at it.’
    She nodded; looked at him in a surprisingly level way. ‘But you are good at your job, aren’t you?’
    He was briefly thrown; took another sip of nothing. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m certainly not bad at it.’
    ‘I’d like to do something else,’ she said.
    ‘So do it.’
    She rolled her eyes. ‘I’m in that place,’ she said. ‘I go to bed saying tomorrow I’ll look for something else, and then I wake up in the morning and it’s all I can do to get into work and maintain the status quo.’
    ‘Yeah,’ said Daniel, watching the toddler take all of three seconds to go haring after his mother as she walked very slowly down the street. ‘We’ve all been there.’ He raised his cup. ‘Another?’
    ‘Are you eating?’ She was studying the menu, looking somehow keen and not keen at the same time.
    ‘I could definitely nibble at something.’
    ‘Want to split one of these snacky things?’
    ‘Like what?’
    ‘Like one of those platters that has bread and olives and oil and some sort of nameless dip. You know. I fancy one of those but I can’t eat a whole one.’
    ‘That sounds fine.’
    ‘Don’t just get it because I’m getting it.’
    ‘No. It sounds nice. I’m peckish.’
    ‘Never got that word. Peckish.’
    ‘From the Latin, Peckus, meaning to allocate a small area of stomach for unnameable dip.’
    She deadpanned. It was a point of pride not to laugh at other people’s jokes.
    ‘We’re going to need a bigger boat, Roy,’ she said.
    He was ambushed by a laugh. He remembered that finding something in nothing was something at which they had both once, for better or for worse, been adept. It seemed apt, he thought, to laugh at something that had no meaning at all when it was said by someone to whom you’d once attached an excess of meaning.
    Katherine summoned the waitress by waving and calling Hello.
    ‘I think she heard you,’ said Daniel.
    ‘Good,’ said Katherine. ‘I hate it when they ignore you.’
    The waitress stationed herself slightly diffidently beside their table. Katherine ordered two more coffees and a platter of breads and dips. Daniel felt embarrassed at feeling cold, as if this were somehow an expression of weakness. Across the street an elderly woman in an abundance of padded clothing parked her wheeled shopping device beside a bench and lowered herself cautiously into a sitting position. Daniel realised he was feeling slightly furtive. He kept checking the faces of other patrons as they arrived and departed, fearing being known.
    ‘How’s your love life?’ he said, for no reason whatsoever.
    She shot him a death glare in place of an answer.
    ‘That good, eh?’
    ‘Don’t get