The Rest is Silence by Scott Fotheringham Page A

turned them to face each other. She poured ginger ale into the porcelain mug she’d brought from her room. Leroy reached for the bottle of gin and poured another drink into his plastic cup.
    â€œThis one’s a little more g and a lot less t,” he said.
    Benny took a sip of her soda as Leroy sat down.
    â€œNext week, if you want, I’ll bring you a glass from my room so you don’t have to drink out of that plastic shit.”
    â€œSaves washing it.”
    She shrugged. Leroy looked over her shoulder, probably searching for his would-be girlfriend. Benny turned to follow his gaze. The woman had moved across the room and was in another animated conversation, this time with a woman.
    â€œShe’s cute.”
    He nodded and took a sip.
    â€œNow you know why I’m here with all these med students. What’s your excuse?”
    â€œI heard the noise on my way home. Then I saw you.” She paused. “I hope I didn’t offend you when I came into your room.”
    â€œHow?”
    â€œMy rant about clubbing seals.”
    Leroy laughed.
    â€œWant to know why I’m really here?”
    â€œHappy Hour?”
    She shook her head. “Grad school.”
    â€œSure. Then let’s go out for dinner.”
    â€œWhat about the cute doctor?”
    He shrugged and shook his head. “What are you studying?”
    â€œI came to this school to learn how to rid the planet of plastic,” Benny said. “When our grandparents were kids there were no plastic bags. No yogourt containers, no six-pack rings. Nothing.”
    â€œThey were plastic virgins, eh?”
    She smiled. “There were some synthetic resins produced back then. Bakelite pot handles and telephones. But that was like holding hands for plastic virgins.”
    â€œThey had yet to be screwed by plastic.”
    She liked that. “Then, before World War II, the Germans invented polystyrene and polyvinyl chloride. DuPont followed with nylon. Then acrylics, polyethylene, polyurethane. During the war the British made polyethylene terephthalate. It’s used to make these.” She tapped the back of a fingernail on the ginger ale bottle on the table. “Now we have polypropylene underwear and fleece jackets made out of recycled bottles. Our birthright is seventy pounds of plastic garbage, hanging around our necks. We drink water poisoned with effluent, breathe noxious fumes from incineration, and little boys are growing tits from bisphenol A poisoning.”
    Leroy looked at his chest.
    â€œYou’re a strange bird, Benny,” he said.
    â€œI do my best.”
    â€œIs there anything else you’re passionate about?”
    â€œDid you just wink at me?”
    â€œI was trying for coy.”
    â€œTalk to me about passion when you’re sober.”
    As he fiddled with the empty cup in his lap, she wondered why she had to be like that. He was good-looking and seemed to like her, and here she was blowing it.
    They had met a few days earlier. Benny was at the desk in her room on the fifteenth floor, looking south, on the evening before Labour Day, ostensibly reading a paper on oncogenes for a course. Her reading lamp cast a cone of light onto the paper in front of her. Beyond that light was darkness. It was still muggy, though the sun was long gone, and she couldn’t read. What she would have liked to do was go for a swim.
    The city’s thick, sweet air pushed its way into the room and surrounded her. The smell of that breeze reminded her of time spent at the lake near her house. The photo above her desk was taken by that lake when she was a little girl. Her father was wearing shorts and no shirt, laughing as he held her over the water. She was squealing, trusting his strong arms to keep her suspended above the danger.
    She got up from her chair and left her apartment. The door to the apartment across the hall was propped open. A fellow student sat by the open window reading a journal