I could not afford nice shawls like Chris L, or I did not have the taste, so I had gone to Savers on Sydney Road on Friday and asked a roving person where I could find the shawls, whispering like I was at a sex shop. She smiled at me. ‘Actually it’s complicated,’ she said. ‘They’re clothes, but because they’re shawls, we hang them with the sheets.’ Complications into clothes, shawls into sheets: even at Savers the world had a frictionless quality, like anything could be swapped out of existence, even me.

I had shown up at the café wrapped in this heavy scarf, this thick brown one I had seized in a fit of dark unreason, because I could not find a light shawl and I did not want a sheet and it turned out the large scarves were hung there also. Another thing that Savers had was giant bug-eyed sunglasses, plenty of them, heaps of them, perfect for accessory-ruiners. I had bought a handful of them and wore a pair with pride.

‘You don’t think the scarf’s appropriate?’ I said.

‘I don’t know what to say,’ said Dan. ‘It’s very low-hanging fruit.’

‘What has Chris L been wearing lately?’

He leaned back and crossed his arms.

‘Don’t be maudlin,’ he said.

‘I’m not being maudlin,’ I said. ‘I’m asking a question.’

‘You’re putting us all in an uncomfortable position,’ said Dan. ‘He has housemate privileges. You’re my friend.’

My body had come out of my body, and crawled across the floor, and into another apartment where Chris L happened to live, sharing a wall with Dan just the way that I had.

‘Would it be so terrible if you gave me one fashion tip from Chris L?’ His Instagram had been no help, ever. It had always been a veil, a young man in a silver cape in good light, in bad. I clung to the crumbs of him, like they’d turn into bread.

‘It wouldn’t be so terrible,’ Dan said. ‘I don’t think he’d care. But I think it would be good for you to accept he’s gone.’

‘That’s not fair.’

‘It’s really fair.’

Lachlan tipped his head and frowned, fairness-agreeing, like my fortune had been levered out of a fairness machine.

‘Are you okay?’ asked Dan.

I stared at him.

‘Cauliflower,’ I said.

‘Yes!’ he said. ‘One vegetable, all five vowels. Yes,’ he clapped.

Life was in the business of closing doors, it’s true; as for which doors, if I didn’t want to tempt the wrath of hell, maybe it was best not to be picky.