Nine

The silence. It is what I remember the clearest. Sitting outside work with Bishop from 6:20pm until 7pm. In silence. No cars on the road, no planes in the sky. There was no one on foot and there was no one on bicycles. It was still. So still that you could hear the ashes forming with each inhale of the cigarette. When we spoke, we spoke in whispers so as not to disrupt the silence. We both wanted to go home to our families, but for that forty minutes, sitting on the curb, we spoke of anything but what had occurred. Looking back, we must have known that once we got home, the news would be on and the discussion would be of one thing only. So we sat and smoked and talked about Diana Krall, but mostly we spoke of the quiet. The beautiful, desolate, sorrowful quiet.