The Night Listener : A Novel (23 page)

“The Pfister is marvelous,” I told her. “Huge high-ceilinged rooms and hallways. Very pretty.” I stopped short of saying that I’d stayed there once on a book tour, since I knew where that would lead, and I didn’t feel like trotting out my dog-and-pony show. This trip had already been a sort of out-of-life experience, and I wanted to keep it that way. Someone else could be Gabriel Noone for a while. I would be anyone this woman imagined.

“Do you live in Milwaukee?” she asked.

I shook my head. “Here. I mean, there.” I pointed behind the plane with a smile. “The Bay Area.”

“Same here. Walnut Creek.”

“Ah.”

“Nice and warm there.”

“Yes, it is.”

“So you have family in Wisconsin?”

“Yes,” I said, after a moment’s hesitation. “My son lives there.

With his mother.”

She bit her lower lip and frowned with concern, nodding slowly.

“I get to see him on holidays,” I told her.

“Well, that’s nice.”

“It is, yes. I can hardly wait.”

“How old is he?”

“Thirteen.”

“Oh…nice age.”

The hell it is, I thought. It’s a terrible age. It’s the worst fucking age of all.

“Do you have any pictures of him?”

I couldn’t help grinning. It’s hard to say which I found more preposterous—her June Cleaverish question or the
Father Knows Best
answer I was able to provide: “As a matter of fact, I do.” I reached for my wallet like any overproud parent who’s been given such an easy opening.

She studied the snapshot soberly for a moment, pursing her lips.

“Oh, my goodness,” she said. “Just look at those eyes.”

“Yes. They’re something, aren’t they?”

“He has your nose and chin, though.”

“Does he?”

“Oh, yes. I’m sure you’ve been told that.”

“Well…” I shrugged modestly and looked away. A passing flight attendant—male and cute in his brisk, bubble-butted way—locked eyes with me for the briefest of moments. This time the look was unmistakable.

“What’s his name?” asked the woman.

“What?” I turned back to my interrogator with a start.

“Your son. What’s his name?”

“Oh…Pete. Pete Lomax.”

She looked at the snap again, as if to link the name with the face, then handed it back across the aisle. “Well, he’s very handsome, Mr. Lomax.”

“Thanks.” I returned the snap to my wallet, blushing furiously, amazed at how rapidly I’d become such a fraud.

“My name is Vera, by the way.” The lady held out her chubby, ring-encrusted hand.

“Oh…hi…I’m Peter.”

“Aha,” she said, beaming. “He’s named after you, then. That’s sweet.”

I summoned a sickly smile.

“I have a granddaughter who’s named after me. They don’t call her that, it’s just her middle name, but still…it’s nice to have another little version of you out there in the world.” I was on the verge of changing the subject when that bubble-butted flight attendant did it for me.

“Excuse me,” he said, kneeling in the aisle between me and Vera but addressing only me. “I saw your name on the passenger list, and I hope this isn’t too pushy, but…well, I just want to say that I really appreciate everything you’ve done…you know…for us.”

“Thanks,” I said, as sincerely as I could. “That’s really nice. It’s been my pleasure, really.”

He regarded me a moment longer with great solemnity, then patted me on the shoulder and hurried off.

Vera was watching me, slack-mouthed. “You’ve done something for flight attendants?” she asked.

I ended up telling her I was “kind of a labor negotiator,” though I preferred not to discuss it, since I was travelling incognito. I was horrified at my ready-made mendacity and how quickly it had gotten out of hand. I imagined that any moment the flight attendant would come scurrying back with one of my paperback editions, earnestly requesting an autograph, and I’d be compelled to tell Vera that I sometimes wrote when I wasn’t busy negotiating, and that Gabriel Noone was just a convenient pseudonym. But the flight attendant kept a respectful distance for most of the flight, approaching only for official duties and a brief, furtive offer of extra ice cream, an event which wasn’t lost on the ever-more-fascinated Vera. Her sweet conspiratorial smile seemed to be saying: “Don’t worry, Mr. Lomax.

Your secret mission is safe with me.”

This pointless little charade was closer than I’d come in years to impersonating a heterosexual, though I assured myself it had nothing to do with some lingering fear of public exposure. I had already proven that on an airplane, in fact, on a painfully long flight to Europe six or seven years earlier. Determined to beat jet lag, Jess and I had been following a program that required us to eat a carbo-heavy dinner at our normal time, then dress comfortably for bed and go immediately to sleep, regardless of what the rest of the plane was doing. So we repaired to the head and reemerged minutes later in our black satin eyeshades and long cotton nightshirts—blue for him, pink for me—to be greeted by waves of laughter and a respectable smattering of applause. When someone shouted across the plane to ask admiringly where we’d bought the nightshirts, Jess yelled “San Francisco” back at him, and the place cracked up all over again.

I had basked in that moment, the joyful recklessness of it, the way all those strangers could see for themselves that we were a couple and didn’t give a damn who knew it. When Jess conked out before I did, and his fuzzy blond head sank onto my shoulder, I wore it there for ages like an epaulet of honor, proud as a man could be as I waved off the flight attendant who had come to bring us supper. It was wonderful to have witnesses.

The Milwaukee airport was chaos itself: a slushy pileup of flatulent buses and angry people scrambling for home. I had packed lightly enough for a carry-on, so there hadn’t been the usual delay at the carousel, but my rental car took almost an hour, thanks to a computer breakdown. While I waited, I had a cup of coffee in a snack bar, surrounded by more apple-cheeked white people than I’d seen in ages. Once removed from the mindless purgatory of the plane I felt slightly overwhelmed by the logistics of what lay ahead. Wysong was much farther north, and it was already late afternoon and getting dark. Should I crash here and get a fresh start in the morning or press on into the night?

I decided to press on. A map I’d been given at the rental counter made my route clear enough: north along the limp dick of Lake Michigan past Sheboygan and Green Bay, then west on Highway 29 toward Wausau. I probably wouldn’t make it to Wysong that night, but I could stop anywhere I wanted: and anywhere would surely be preferable to the great bland nowhere of the airport. Besides, the longer I sat still, the more I began to question the wisdom of this pilgrimage. I was fearful of losing my nerve.

So I trudged across a snow-scabbed lot to the white Taurus I’d selected. (I’d decided against anything fancy, since I wanted to remain as neutral and invisible as possible.) The air was numbingly cold—a cold I’d all but forgotten—and the sky was the dingy off-white of an old T-shirt. My fingers felt brittle as I wiggled the key into the car door, and, once inside, I was greeted by the icy kiss of blue vinyl. I started the engine immediately and fidgeted with the heater controls, muttering “fuck, fuck fuck” as I waited for the blast of air to feel anything close to warm.

Moments later, I looked up to see a face that already seemed to belong to another world entirely. It was Vera, my fellow traveller, bundled up in a huge Christmas-red coat, crossing the lot with two other adults, presumably her daughter and disgruntled son-in-law.

I was sure she wouldn’t see me, but somehow she did, turning to twiddle her fingers merrily and mouth the words
Mr. Lomax
before disappearing behind a row of cars.

Vera is my welcoming committee, I thought with an odd little shiver, my very own white rabbit.

And now that she’s led me down the hole I’m strictly on my own.

NINETEEN

MAN’S COUNTRY

AFTER AN HOUR on the interstate, the snow began. It seemed to fall in all directions at once, gusting in sideways from the lake or spewing up like gravel from the wheels of hell-bent tractor-trailers. In this blinding blur even the signs on the overpasses became hopelessly hieroglyphic, blobs of green ectoplasm that lunged out of nowhere to set my nerves on edge.

I found a pop music station on the radio that calmed me for a while, but I was forced to abandon it when its bouncy songs proved to be invoking Jesus with disturbing regularity. I eventually settled on an all-polka station—just the right sound track for the territory, I thought—though it faded out after half an hour, casting me back into Top 40 hell. Then I remembered my proximity to Pete and searched in vain for Wisconsin Public Radio, combing the left end of the dial for the spot where the boy had first discovered me.

It was odd to think that my voice had preceded me here, a place so frozen and desolate that a shopping mall at a cloverleaf could believably pass for an arctic weather station. There were folks here who knew me already—or thought they did—somewhere out there in the warmth of those stoic little houses. I had listeners here, for God’s sake, so why should I feel like such an intruder, someone who had come to upset the natural order of things? If this story was happening to me, I had just as much right to live it as to tell it.

Even if I didn’t have an ending.

Dinner happened at a truck stop outside Wausau. It was a mammoth warehouse of a restaurant: a sort of
Hofbrauhaus
on steroids, with Christmas lights twined around the rafters and huge suspended panels of colored Plexiglas meant to evoke stained-glass windows.

I took a seat near the front and was promptly handed a menu—plastic-sheathed and profusely illustrated—by a tired red-head with a blinking snowman on her lapel. I was somehow seduced by all this. I couldn’t remember the last time a uniformed waitress had served me, and there was something about this Teutonic shelter from the cold that compelled me to order a bacon double cheesebur-ger and get pleasantly shitfaced on old-fashioneds.

From where I sat I could see the parking lot and the trucks that idled there, snorting shafts of white breath like bulls in an icy corral.

Across the highway in the distance, there was some sort of power plant, a Plutonian cityscape of domes and towers and cylinders, that stained the snow around it with a poisonous green light.

The restaurant itself harbored a number of teenage boys that night, huddling in packs and full of scattershot menace. I avoided their eyes as usual, and it struck me that I’d been wary of these creatures all my life. As a small child I’d seen them as towering bullies, but even in my own adolescence I’d felt utterly removed from their stupid strutting ways, as if I was something less than them and better than them all at once. Forty years later I
still
felt that way, so that every time I passed a ball game or a clot of baggy-pantsed hip-hoppers waiting for a bus, I would brace myself instinctively for their casual abuse.

Pete, of course, had been the exception, my only ambassador to that alien world. It helped that he was an outsider himself, that he was largely a mixture of childlike need and grownup kindness. The two of us had filled in the blanks for each other, meeting in a place of our own invention to enjoy something rare for males of the species.

Unless, of course…

Suddenly I was on my feet looking for a telephone. I knew this was an impulsive act—and probably fuelled by alcohol—but I didn’t care. If that disconnected phone had just been temporary, it was only fair to let Pete know that I was on the way, that I would be there soon, tomorrow at the latest, asking his forgiveness and understanding. And he
would
understand, surely, if I kept my heart open and told him the unvarnished truth. No good could possibly come from creeping around like a spy.

I found a bank of phones next to the rest rooms and dialled his number. It was a local call now, thrillingly enough—or at least the same area code—but my hopes were dashed by the same recording:

“We’re sorry. The number you have called has been disconnected or is no longer in service…”

Back at my table, I ordered another drink and slid into a much darker place. What if the Lomaxes had moved away for good? That was possible, I realized. Pete might have been so depressed by the cancellation of his book that Donna had decided on a permanent change of scenery. On the other hand, what would I do if they
were
still on Henzke Street? Walk up and ring the doorbell? Leave a note?

Ask the neighbors if a single woman lived there with her sick little boy? Wouldn’t they find me suspicious? See me as one of Pete’s former tormentors, come there to do him harm?

“There you go!”

My waitress was back with my drink, smiling down at me with tarty goodwill. I thanked her absently, barely forcing the words out.

“Can I get you some dessert? Some nice mincemeat pie?”

“No thanks…but…I was wondering…”

“Yeah?”

“Do you know a place called Wysong?”

“Sure. Up north a few hours.”

“How many’s a few?”

“Oh…two maybe…three. With the roads like this.”

“Should I try to make it tonight?”

The waitress regarded me for a moment. “After three drinks, you mean?”

I hadn’t meant that at all, in fact, so I wondered if I seemed more fucked up than I actually felt. She had a point, at any rate; bourbon didn’t mix with a blizzard, especially after a draining day of travel.

I asked her if there was a motel nearby.

“Oh, sure. Just around back there.” She gestured out the window past the trucks. “It’s not fancy, but it’s clean. You better hurry and register, though. A lot of these guys are sleeping over tonight.” I won’t pretend this didn’t conjure up a certain image. It sounded, in fact, like the opening line of an old-fashioned porn novel, a less-than-subtle suggestion of orgies to come. And by the time I was crunching through the snow to the motel office, wishing I’d brought a scarf or a much more substantial coat, my mind had been so loosened by fatigue and whiskey that it was already making plans to move south.