He'd started hearing himself about six months ago. Not an echo exactly — more like a second track, running just behind the first, annotating everything he said with what he might have meant.
"Sounds like Darren's a good ally," he said, and he heard the weight he'd put on the word ally even though he'd tried not to, and she didn't seem to hear it. She was cutting a pepper into strips that were too wide but he didn't say that either, and he heard himself not saying it, and the not-saying had its own weight that she also didn't hear.
"He's been really helpful with the transition," she said.
The transition. He heard that one land clean. No annotation. She meant the departmental restructuring. He knew she meant the departmental restructuring. The second track confirmed it and then, because it had nothing to flag, flagged the absence. See? Nothing there. Why are you checking?
He opened a beer. The cap hissed and he said "Want one?" and it was fine, it was just a question, but the track caught the rising pitch at the end and noted it — too casual, you're performing ease — and he thought about correcting the pitch next time and then heard the thought itself and knew that correcting would be worse.
She took the beer. She drank from it while reading something on her phone, one hip against the counter, and he watched her throat move and felt nothing complicated. That was the thing. He didn't feel surveilled or anxious or any of the words that would have made this a condition. He just heard himself. The way you hear your own breathing once someone mentions it.
"Do you ever listen to yourself talk?" he asked.
She looked up. "Like, recordings?"
"No, in real time. While you're talking."
"I don't think so." She thought about it. "Sometimes when I'm presenting. But that's different."
"How?"
"I don't know. It's on purpose, I guess. I'm checking the delivery." She went back to her phone. "Why?"
He almost said no reason and heard the lie forming and swerved. "I've been doing it. Not on purpose. Just — hearing the second meaning of everything I say."
"Everything?"
"Most things."
She put the phone down. She looked at him the way she looked at a problem at work — not worried, just interested in the structure. "Like what? Give me an example."
And he couldn't. That was the other thing. The track only ran live. He couldn't replay an instance because the act of replaying would generate a new annotation, and the new annotation would be the one he was aware of, not the original. He'd be performing the memory of self-consciousness, which was a third thing entirely, and the track would catch that too.
"I can't think of one," he said, and heard himself choosing can't over won't and the track noted the substitution and he let it go. You had to let them go. If you engaged with every annotation, the annotations nested and you stopped talking.
She was looking at him.
"It's not a big deal," he said. "It's like — you know how when you learn a new word, you hear it everywhere? It's like that but with subtext."
"Your own subtext."
"Yeah."
She nodded slowly. Then she said, "The peppers are too wide, aren't they," and he laughed, and the laugh was real, and the track went quiet for exactly as long as the laugh lasted, and he understood something about why people keep trying to be funny — not for the joke but for the silence after, the two or three seconds when the monitor steps away from the glass.
She slid the cutting board toward him and handed him the knife. He started halving her strips without being asked. The pepper was cold and firm under his fingers. His hands knew the width without him deciding. He cut eight strips and didn't hear himself do any of it.
She took one and ate it raw and said "Better" with her mouth full, and he said "Obviously" and meant only that, and knew he meant only that, and didn't check.