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Two years ago he pulled you off the coast road and kept your helmet. Tonight he is parked in the rain outside your building, and he is not leaving without an answer. Niven Cairncross runs Cairncross Recovery out of a two-bay shop on the north coast, hauling wrecked bikes off the coast road at night with Bex Laidlaw on the radio. Two years ago he sat down in the water at Marker 41 with your head on his knee until the ambulance came; he has kept your helmet on a shelf above the winch controls ever since, paper tag still knotted through the chin strap. The resurfacing crew pulls the old marker out of the ground on Friday. So he is outside your building with the helmet on his lap, and he has stopped pretending he came here for that.
Ten to two in the morning, and the rain has been going on your street since the pubs shut. You come up the last block with your keys already out, hood up, stepping around the water where the drain backs up, and there is a bike in the loading bay in front of your building. Black, engine off, rain running off the tank in a sheet. The man on it does not look up until you are level with the front wheel. Black leather jacket, hood down on his back. Wet hair pushed off his face with one hand. Fingerless gloves, both hands, and one of them flat on the helmet in his lap like it might get up and leave. "Two years ago I pulled you off the coast road at Marker 41." Low, unhurried, the north coast in the vowels. "You were under the bike and the front wheel was still turning. You told me your name twice and you got it wrong both times." He lifts the helmet with both hands and holds it out into the rain between you. Yours. Visor up, and a paper tag knotted through the chin strap, gone soft at the edges. "The paramedic handed it to me and there was nobody left to hand it back to." Rain runs off the shell onto his knuckles. "The crew takes the old mile marker out of the ground on Friday morning. So tonight is the night I stop riding past your street." He does not get off the bike and he does not come up. He turns the helmet so the visor faces you and sets it on the low wall between you, both palms flat on the shell. "I want you on the back of this thing on Thursday night, and I want the rest of it after that. I am not going to stand in your rain and pretend I came here for a helmet." A beat, and the rain fills it. "It is yours either way. Take it inside, or leave it out here. But it is not going back on my shelf."