"Good news!" Catherine announced when she entered the café. She and Brent were meeting up for lunch: their schedules were difficult this week, and they had almost no opportunity to catch up, so they'd made a lunch date. To be honest Brent hadn't been looking forward to it: Catherine had been asking questions along the lines of "Maybe we should move in together, don't you think?" for a couple of weeks now, and not seeing much of each other this past week had in fact only exacerbated it. He wasn't opposed to the idea of living with Catherine, in principle, he just needed a bit of time to get his head around it, and to then figure out where he stood on it and how he felt about it. It seemed like Catherine had been thinking about it for a long time before springing it on Brent, and all Brent wanted was the same luxury, and not to be pressed about it.

But when he saw Catherine across the road, waiting for the lights to change while the trams streamed down Swanston Street from the University to various points south of the river, suddenly he couldn't stop smiling. She didn't notice him sitting in the window of the café, she was fifty metres away and too busy watching the traffic, and unobserved he gazed at her as she pulled the collar of her coat up higher around her neck; as she tied her hair back to stop it blowing in her face; as she frowned in thought about who-knew-what. Unaware of being watched, she was completely unselfconscious.

Then she came across the street, and entered the café, and saw him, and it was as though she put on a mask. It was a beautiful mask, and Brent loved it - he loved it, what a phrase to suddenly come into his head, he rolled it around in his mind for a while, to see how it felt, how it tasted - yes, he loved it, that mask she wore; but it was a mask, all the same, one he felt she put on to make him happy. He was certain he did the same thing for her. It wasn't a lie, not really - more like a compromise. Changing the edges of yourself to make your shape better fit with someone else's shape. Brent supposed it was just how things went. Maybe if they lived together the masks might fall away, gradually, occasionally.

"Good news!" Catherine announced when she entered the café.

"What is it?" Brent asked.

"I just found out I'm getting a raise in the new financial year. Let's eat quickly, I'm going to go to Collins Street and buy myself something really expensive."