The Night Listener : A Novel (25 page)

I ate some eggs and sausage at the restaurant and bought a local map from the cashier. It proved too cartoonish to be useful, but I found a certain comfort in the smiling cows and dancing cheeses, the legions of happy hunters and bikinied water-skiers that would lead me north to 511 Henzke Street and the apple of my eye. I felt good, despite my banged-up hand, so I plunged into the blazing blue day, already a gypsy myself.

Once on the road, I was filled with the kind of tingly anticipation I’d felt as a child on our summer drives to Canada, when there was breakfast in my stomach and the prospect of a thrilling roadside attraction just ahead. I’d loved the spooky ones most of all, the ones that asked the questions that were never answered: a place in New Brunswick called Magnetic Hill, where drivers could watch their cars roll inexplicably uphill; or any of those specially constructed Mystery Houses, where the proportions were so out-of-whack that plumb lines seemed to fall at an angle and little boys like me looked twice as tall as any grownup.

Once beyond the roiling vapors of that power plant, I found the landscape more to my liking. North of Wausau there were pleasant farmsteads and dark green forests and countless ponds winking through the birches like pocket mirrors. I was so close to a state of enchantment that I stopped impetuously at a pseudo-rustic convenience store because a sign out front promised hot chocolate. What I found was hot all right, and a distant cousin of chocolate, but it shot from a machine in a vile diarrheal blast that tasted as bad as it looked.

I bought a soda instead, then considered the notion of calling Pete again; no, I decided, I didn’t need the sucker punch of hearing that message one more time.

The towns on the way to Wysong were too basic to be as pretty as their setting: grungy little grids of auto-repair shops and video stores and pizza parlors with their windows steamed gray against the cold. The houses that straggled into the outskirts were small and shabby, their drafty places plastered with those asphalt shingles that are meant to look like bricks but never do. Everywhere there were satellite dishes aimed hungrily at the heavens, though they seemed so sad and junky in the snow, so unfuturistic, like a broken-down car on blocks or a bedspring left to rust in the woods.

Wysong announced itself with billboards. Or rather its main attraction did. SEE THE GODFATHER’S DEATHMOBILE was the first indicator, followed by ELVIS’S FAVORITE CADDIE! and HISTORIC FUN FOR

THE WHOLE FAMILY. Americans are pathetic, I thought, always suckers for a sideshow and so easily seduced by engines and icons.

But the billboards proved useful, since they led me in a matter of minutes—sooner than I’d expected and maybe even sooner than I’d wanted—past the entrance of the Lake-Vue Motor Lodge.

It wasn’t what I’d expected. I’d envisioned something from the fifties, from the hand-tinted memory bank of my own childhood.

One of those plain white trains of a building with a painted iron swing set on its manicured lawn. I’d banked everything on the cutesy spelling of
Vue
, but here stood a pink brick monstrosity from the eighties, as bland and soulless as any industrial park. The lobby was blue and mauve with white plaster tables and curly white plaster floor lamps, the Reagan era’s take on deco. And there was a Christmas tree in one corner—white, naturally, with blue ornaments.

I identified myself to the desk clerk, who was female but far too young to have been that folksy woman on the phone. She gave me a key—or rather my card—after consulting her computer, then pointed out the hallway that led to my room. I took off immediately, relieved that I didn’t have an escort, didn’t have to comment on the room or hear another spiel about a minibar.

The room was more of the same. I dumped my suitcase on a blue-and-mauve bedspread and sank into a chair with a sigh. What on earth was I doing here? How could I possibly
not
be disappointed by what I would find? Nothing had ever met my expectations, since nothing could compete with my doctoring imagination, my pathetic compulsion to make the world quainter, funnier, kinder, and more mysterious than it actually was.

I remembered a time before I’d met Jess when I’d tried anonymous phone sex. One of my partners had been so aurally appealing that I’d insisted upon meeting him and found myself—that very night—trekking across town to an apartment in the Mission. The guy wasn’t a troll by any means, and he hadn’t misadvertised himself, but he wasn’t what I’d pictured, and I just couldn’t complete the wiring, couldn’t make the voice on the phone hook up with the actual person. It was like a Japanese monster movie where the dubbing was so bad that you couldn’t believe it at all.

It will be like that with Pete, I thought. You’ll find a child, all right, in the house on Henzke Street, a flesh-and-blood boy who is small and frail and close to death. But he won’t be the Pete of your imagination. He’ll be slightly off somehow, slightly out of sync with the son you’ve so painstakingly constructed. It won’t be the euphoric moment of bonding you’ve dreamed about. It will be awkward and disruptive, maybe even disturbing, and certainly rife with embarrassment. You’ll have to start over again, build a new relationship from the ground up.

If that’s even possible.

If he even wants you, after he learns what you’ve done.

My spirits improved after a shower and a fresh change of clothes. I stood at the window, assembling my courage, placing myself in context before I ventured out. There wasn’t a single Lake in Vue, at least not from this direction. I could see a piece of the snowy parking lot and a piece of the highway snaking into the trees and a corrugated-iron building that could only be the famous Neilson’s Antique Auto Barn. And across the highway a clot of slushy gas stations and burger joints that probably led into Wysong itself.

There were clouds in the sky again, gray flannel bolsters that promised more snow and plenty of it, so I headed down to the lobby without further idling. The watch had apparently changed, for this time there was an Asian woman behind the desk. She was middle-aged and slender, pleasant-looking, with a hairdo that hugged her head like a scalloped bathing cap.

“I wonder if you could help me,” I asked.

“Sure thing, hon. What is it?”

I recognized the voice immediately. This was the woman on the phone, the one who had taken my first reservation. The one I had already pictured in a knotty pine office: plump and rosy-cheeked and, yes, Caucasian. I smiled as another assumption collapsed on itself. I thought of Anna and how she would have teased me for regarding the world as white until proven otherwise.
Well, Gabriel, you can take the boy out of Charleston
…

“Is there lipstick on my teeth or something?” The lady had obviously noticed my reaction.

“No.” I laughed. “I just realized…we’ve already met. I was the guy who called from San Francisco a few weeks back.”

“The one who cancelled on me.”

“Exactly.”

“Jeez, what happened to your hand?”

“Oh…” I glanced down at my scabbing stigmata. “I fell off a truck.”

“Ouch. Hope it wasn’t a potato truck.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Bad joke. That’s what they used to say in Missouri. ‘He looks like he just fell off a potato truck.’ Don’t ask me what it means.

You want a Band-Aid for that? I’ve got some in the office.”

“Thanks, but…I think it’s better in the open air.”

“Did you hitch here or something?”

“No. Why?”

“Well…if you fell off a truck…”

“Oh, no…it wasn’t moving or anything. I was just…visiting the truck.”

The woman nodded slowly, taking that in. Or trying to, at least, bless her heart. “So what can I do for you?”

“I’m looking for Henzke Street,” I told her.

“That’s easy. Across the highway and into town. There’s a Denny’s just past the first stoplight. You take a left there and go three blocks and turn right. That’s Henzke Street. It’s one of the main streets. You can’t miss it.” I headed for the door, then stopped. “Left at Denny’s, three blocks, turn right.”

“Right.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t forget the Auto Barn now.”

“How could I?” I said.

I had a gut feeling well before I got there, well before I saw the tatty commerce of Henzke Street and realized how unlikely a setting it would be for the bungalow I’d built in my brain. I’d seen this address only once, after all—on the back of an envelope that Donna had sent—and I had never questioned it since. Stupid mistake. Why would a woman so ferociously protective of her child surrender his location that readily?

I parked against a snowbank and trudged around the corner to the door. There was a Laundromat on one side, a pink-and-chrome beauty parlor on the other. 511 Henzke Street was just what it should have been, just what I would have guessed, had I thought about it longer: one of those private post offices with a precious name—in this case, Mail ‘n’ More. I entered without hesitation, but I felt scriptless now and markedly criminal.

The room had a red-white-and-blue motif in homage to its federal ancestor. There were two men behind the counter, one of whom was funnelling Styrofoam popcorn into a large cardboard box. The other was wrangling with a cranky geezer at the head of the line who wanted some guarantee that his package would make it to an army base in Italy in time for Christmas. The other customers—half a dozen at least and all of them burdened with boxes—had begun to sigh and shuffle histrionically. I joined the end of the line, grateful for the delay, the chance to collect myself.

It’s a small town, I thought; they’re bound to know Donna. She must come here all the time if she doesn’t get mail at home. She could even be here now, in this very room, one of these yule-weary women waiting in front of me. At any moment she could turn and confront me. Or would she just remain silent—and invisible—in the face of my suspect behavior?

You have not been invited, I reminded myself.

When my time came with the clerk, I went for partial confession in the hope that my candor would be disarming. I tried to be as breezy as possible, but the words came out sounding forced and overhearty.

“The good news,” I began, “is that I don’t have a package.”

“And the bad?” The guy was about thirty and actually had a cigarette dangling from his lips, a display that seemed—to a Californian eye, at least—only slightly less brazen than a penis dangling from a fly.

“Well,” I said. “It’s not bad really, but I need your help finding a friend of mine. She lives here in Wysong, and we’ve been talking on the phone for a while, and…well, I’ve sent her stuff here and everything, and she’s written to me…I’ve always assumed…really stupidly, I know…that 511 Henzke Street was her actual address.” The clerk squinted at me like a suspicious horned toad. Then his lips twisted into a leer, making the cigarette bob obscenely. “You meet her on-line or something?” I laughed nervously. “No. Nothing like that.” Fuck, I thought I’d deliberately left Pete out of my explanation so this guy wouldn’t think I was some creep who stalks kids he’s never met. So now, apparently, he thought I was stalking Donna—or at least determined to nail her. “She’s just an old friend. We’ve known each other for years…I’ve just never been to Wysong before and I always assumed…I’m sure she thinks I already have her address…that’s the frustrating part.”

“Right.”

“She must come here a lot, actually. Donna Lomax?” The clerk took the cigarette from his mouth and ground it into a stray Snapple cap. “Know what she looks like?” I tried my best to reconstruct Pete’s description in
The Blacking Factory
. “Oh…brown eyes, lanky…attractive. She’s a psychologist.

Has a kid she’s adopted.”

He seemed to absorb that for a moment. “And you want her address?”

“If…you know…it’s cool with you.”
Cool with you?
Why was I talking like a VJ from MTV? And why had I taken this idiotic approach? It sounded much too desperate and wormy.

I was debating whether to reveal my benign homosexuality when I realized that the clerk was smirking at me. “You know why most people pay us, don’t you?”

“Sorry, I…”

“They pay us so they don’t
hafta
use their real address. That’s the whole point of this place.”

“Well, of course, I understand that completely, but…Donna’s an old friend, and I’ve come a long way, and I’m sure she’d…”

“I can’t make that judgment, pal.”

“Not even if—”

“Nope. Not even.”

“Right.” I gave him an insipid smile. Now the people behind me had started to shuffle, fully aware that I had no valid business here.

“You can use the phone,” the clerk offered, “if you wanna call her or something.”

“You know her, then?”

“Who?”

“Donna Lomax? You recognize the name? She has a box here?”

“Look, man, you’re gonna hafta…”

“Okay. Fine. Sorry.”

I slunk out without argument, my face as scarlet as the countertop, while the other customers witnessed my humiliation. I could feel their eyes on me as I left, hear their little grunts of disdain. And I knew what fine camaraderie they would share at my expense, once I was out the door.

Dazed, I wandered without purpose or thought for at least ten minutes, finally seeking refuge in one of those Italian restaurants where Christmas decorations are all but lost amid the raging year-round gaudiness. There, over a cup of coffee, I faced the question of the hour:

What, if anything, did I know for sure?

I could see that house so clearly in my mind’s eye: a single-story bungalow with its scaffolded bed and its shelves full of Tom Clancy and
The X-Files
and me. I could see rooms that Pete had never described: a blue kitchen with a neat row of cereal boxes, and the bedroom across from Pete’s, where Donna probably slept. I could even see into the yard sometimes, especially at night, when the light from Pete’s window would cast a golden Rembrandt glow on the snow. There were trees in that yard, I imagined, evergreens and sturdy sentinel oaks that baffled the sound of the cars out on Henzke Street.

No. Not Henzke Street. Somewhere else entirely. And who could say where that might be? It had to be here, though, somewhere, maybe only blocks away. Maybe I could find it. Wysong wasn’t huge, after all; I could walk around for a while, ring a few doorbells until someone recognized Donna’s name or knew of Pete’s predicament.