The Night Listener : A Novel

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