At night, after he’s eaten and tried to get through the news (a terrorist attack in Mumbai, the president elect announces his cabinet, the market plummets), he doesn’t even attempt to write again. He cannot. He remembers the girl, the wave in her hair and the boy laughing hysterically. Did he ever laugh like that? His shoulder radiates an echo of pain not necessarily from the bone. He thought of her voice on the answering machine, he wants to hear it again but he cannot. Outside the soft staccato of rain, a shower hesitant to breach the earth below.