Made in a Saucepan

I asked him for a coffee on the eleventh of July, in the office, at half past four in the afternoon, standing at his desk with a drawing in my hand that I did not need.

“Are you free on Saturday?”

He looked up. “Saturday.”

“Yes.”

“For what?”

“For a coffee,” I said, “at which I’m going to tell you some things, and it isn’t going to be romantic, and I’d like you to come anyway.”

There was a very long two seconds.

“Yes,” Daniel said. “Where?”

“Somewhere with terrible lighting and other people in it.”

—

We met at eleven in a café on Hoe Street with a floor that had been mopped with something chemical and a man behind the counter listening to a phone-in about parking. I got there first. I had thought about what to wear for forty minutes and then put on the thing I…