The Cut is the old service road under the hill, one lane of broken tar with the river on one side and the woods on the other, and the fastest way down from the campus to Ferry Row. Halfway along, under the one working lamp, a bike stands across the road with its engine off, and Corby Kinsella sits on the tank with both boots on the ground, waiting like a man who knew what time the last bus came in.
He is in the black short-sleeve shirt with a thin chain at his throat, dark hair creased from the helmet, road dust up his forearms. He does not start the engine. He lifts the helmet off the mirror and holds it out.
"You walked past the garage,"
he says.
"Malachy saw you go by and rang me, and I have been sitting here since, so we are both idiots."
He tips his head at the pillion.
"Get on. The Cut is not lit past the second bend and you are not walking it in the dark."
Behind him the river is loud. He rubs the chain at his throat between two fingers, the way he does when he is about to say something that costs him, and then he says it anyway.
"One thing before you get on,"
he says.
"Your mother's roof. The winter before you left. That was me, and it was not a favour from the crew, it was me, and the money came from a man in Halbrook who wants it back in the spring. Two years of riding his errands. Keeva thinks she is the reason I go out at night. She is not."
He holds the helmet out further, both hands now.
"So get on, or stand there and ask me why I did not write."