The Rest is Silence by Scott Fotheringham

sure you wanna bike home in this weather?” he says.
    I do. I need the wind to clear my head. “Can I borrow a flashlight?”
    He pulls one off the shelf by the door and hands it to me. He smiles and I see the man that his wife must have fallen in love with.
    â€œI knew someone named Mosher when I lived in New York,” I say. “Sometime I’ll tell you her story.”
    â€œFair enough. You must be tired of hearing an old man crow.”
    â€œArt?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œYou did the right thing.”
    â€œI tell you, if I could do it over, I’d pull that trigger. Too bad we’re not given second chances in this life.”
    As I leave the driveway, the flashlight I grip to the handlebar shines on his mailbox. “Arthur Mosher,” hand painted in the same green as the trim of his house. I must have been distracted when Lucy came barking at me. I begin the ride up the back side of the mountain. All I want is to be in my sleeping bag in my tent. The wind is loud and the flashlight casts crazy shadows off the leaves and small branches that litter the pavement, as if things are lunging at me from the bushes lining the ditch.
    I lie sleepless on the ground that night with the tent flap open. The treetops swirl against the black sky as if they are trying to get away from the wind chasing them. I can’t get Benny out of my head. She is responsible for this loss of plastic. I don’t know how to tell the story to Art.
    A long way from here , I could start, there’s a graduate school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. There are no tall trees on those streets, no cattle lowing in a valley below.
    Art was born within a rifle shot of the house he currently lives in, has spent much of his life in the woods, married an Acadian woman from Pointe-de-l’Église down the shore, and except for that war experience, has travelled no farther than Halifax. I don’t know if I can tell him at all.
    Raindrops patter against my tent. I zip the vents closed. Soon it is raining hard again. I feel no better protected than the birds that are somewhere out in that storm. Gusts of wind slap the tent walls, pressing moisture through the canvas onto my face, as if some imp is outside intermittently throwing buckets of water against the tent. Any time I float off, I am startled by the pop of canvas and a spray of water on my face. At some point the wind dies down a bit and I fall asleep.
    5
    New York City
    The calendar said that summer had ended, but waves of heat rose from the pavement of York Avenue anyway, enveloping Benny as she walked home from her grad school lab. It was late on a Friday afternoon in September. Voices echoed into the air-conditioned lobby of her building on East 70th Street from a room at the back. She made her way through the dim light and cool air toward the ground-floor lounge. It was an open room, with vinyl tiles and orange plastic chairs. Bottles of beer, gin, and scotch and two-litre bottles of cola, ginger ale, and tonic water sat on a table beside cups and bags of chips. The first-year med students had a cocktail party every Friday afternoon during their first term, paid for out of their student fees.
    A thin man leaned against the door jamb in front of Benny, watching a short woman with dirty-blond hair and bangs cut straight across her forehead. She was in conversation with two other freshmen students, tall and clean-cut men who were undoubtedly from Harvard or Yale or Princeton, like most of the college grads who made up the med class. They were peppering her with questions. When one of the men went to get her a drink, she looked over toward the door, rolled her eyes at the man in front of Benny, and smirked.
    â€œIs that your girlfriend?” Benny said.
    â€œI wish,” he said.
    â€œBe careful what you wish for, Leroy.” Benny passed her arm through his. “Let’s sit down.”
    She led him to two chairs by the drinks table and