Content: Arthur/Louis Bloom, Suicide, Domestic violence

Lou and Arthur sit together in the dead of night. They'd driven past the city, into empty wilderness where the sky is starless. The police scanner is on and Arthur listens to quiet strings of numbers and words and remembers when he heard the same sounds in his head, secret and unshareable. Lou is picking each code out of the silence and one catches his ear.

"That's a suicide," he says.

Arthur shifts uncomfortably. "Oh?"

"Yes. They're generally not worth filming unless there's a domestic dispute involved. Murder/suicide. Family annihilation," he glances at Arthur, "public suicide. People don't want to hear about anyone who dies alone. They don't like to be reminded that they have to fear themselves."

Arthur nervously runs his fingers over the leather of the car seat. "They don't want to hear about it because those are thoughts they feel they should be punished for. They think people only talk about them to scare everyone and that makes them angry. Anyone can die if they're destroyed by other people's shame."

Lou grips the steering wheel, then reaches over to turn the scanner down. The words become whispers - indecipherable.

"My father committed suicide," he says.

Arthur doesn't speak, doesn't know if he should. The revelation is sudden and vulnerable but Lou speaks impassively.

"He hung himself at night, when no one else was home. I heard my mother scream when she found him. It was a new sound. It was anguish - different from fear. She pulled me away before I could look. I saw an empty chair toppled over in the doorway, but I wanted to see him. I wanted to know what it looked like when he died."

A lone coyote passes in front of the headlights and Lou watches it with mild interest. After it disappears into the darkness he continues.

"I didn't like him, but once he was gone I found myself missing him. The predictability of his cruelty. When life is chaotic the quiet feels dangerous. Like sharks circling the water."

Arthur nods. He remembers his mother's first marriage, then her second, and all her live-in boyfriends. Once they would leave there would be a lull in the storm of their lives that would quickly be swallowed up by her destructive loneliness and the threat of a new encroaching man. Until there were no more men and they were alone together. But fear forever tainted the air between them.

He turns to look at Lou and sees him staring out of the window into the dark. Seeking the coyote, or maybe something else.

"We should go home," Lou says, "Nothing is happening tonight." He turns the scanner off before starting the car. As they drive back toward the city, dust billows behind them.