Idiopathy by Sam Byers Page A

of the café, backlighting the three other patrons as they sat in relation to Nathan and causing him to squint and then blink rapidly whenever he looked up from the black hole of his coffee, leading in turn to the sensation that reality was a gauzy screen in which some nameless creature had chewed ragged holes.
    Nathan’s possessions: one holdall containing three complete changes of clothes, two books and basic toiletries; a packet of rolling tobacco that also contained papers, filters and a Zippo lighter; and his wallet. The coat that had once seemed adequate was no longer sufficiently effective despite the body heat generated by the brisk three-mile walk on which Nathan had embarked because he didn’t want his parents to collect him directly from The Sanctuary and didn’t want any of The Sanctuary’s staff to drive him anywhere. He’d thought that walking to the nearest village would make him feel good. He did not feel good.
    For much of Nathan’s adult life people had stared at him and as a general rule he accepted this, just as he also accepted that it was likely to occur more frequently given certain developments and alterations in his physical presentation. Keeping his coat on had not entirely concealed the tattoos and scars that crept vine-like out of his collar and sleeves. His beard was shaggy and wiry; his hair neck-length and pushed back off his face using some Brylcreem he’d borrowed from another resident. People could have surmised a lot from his eyes, he thought, if they’d been looking at his eyes.
    The café was greasily steamed and smelled strongly of damp rag. Nathan had ordered a breakfast the menu described as Olympian. There were four other people there: an elderly couple with mugs of tea, dividing the
Sun
between them according to sections of interest; the woman who ran the place, wearing a blue tabard and a hair net and a smile that looked like she might have to sit under the drier every morning to have it set; and in the opposite corner a stubbly, thick-set man eating a bacon roll and peering at Nathan over the crest of his bap. This wasn’t how Nathan had imagined his first meal outside, but when he thought about it he realised this was partly because he hadn’t imagined much at all. He felt tired. The conditions were draining. You probably had to wash the walls in a place like this, he thought, but in a place like this that probably didn’t happen. He wondered if the café offered brown sauce and if they did what sort of symbolic dispenser it would be served in. Bap-man was chewing ostentatiously, perhaps even aggressively. The woman with the styled smile brought his breakfast and the cutlery that went with it. It was not the first time Nathan had not been trusted with cutlery outside of the circumstantially appropriate setting of a meal. The resonance of this was notable but not particularly upsetting. The newspaper couple were now doing the crossword together. Bap-man asked for another cup of tea. Nathan’s eggs were fried just to the point of congealing and no further. The sausages were of the cheap supermarket variety and contained indeterminate pieces of hard matter which he took to be bone. The bacon was not crispy. After asking, he determined that brown sauce was not an option. He’d eaten very healthily for several months and the grease was a shock and the shock was a disappointment because the anticipated emotion was happiness. He was careful to chew his food and to pay attention to what he was eating but the bone in the sausages might have been a reality too far. His coffee was hot and he burned his mouth and then experienced that sandy feeling on his tongue which would last, he expected, about a day.
    When Nathan was six years old his mother had discussed with him in detail the Chambers Concise English Dictionary definition of disappointment and his exact relationship to the word with reference to his relationship to her. During his time away Nathan had at one point redefined