The Night Listener : A Novel

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.
    The last sensible thing I did that night was call Wysong and reserve a room at the Lake-Vue Motor Lodge for the following day. I had hoped to reach the person I’d dealt with ten days earlier, the woman who had arranged, then unarranged, my first reservation. (Somehow it would have made me feel more welcome to hear her jolly voice.) But the desk clerk was young and male this time and deeply disinterested in my history with the motel. He took my credit card number and told me flatly that checkin time was twelve noon. That was fine with me; I could sleep late and take my time getting there, mapping out my strategy along the way.
    My room at the truck stop was as basic as advertised but perfectly adequate: a second-floor niche off a common walkway that commanded a view of the whole complex. Once I’d brought in my bag and brushed my teeth, I put a sweater on under my coat and went outside to survey my surroundings. The snow had stopped, so the Oz-like minarets of the power plant had come into sharp relief against the horizon. I could smell the grease belching from the kitchen below and hear the frigid thunder of truck doors being slammed. Out toward the highway at the edge of a thicket I saw what had to be a public toilet: a small, square building with milky windows, toward which men were trudging, pilgrimlike, through the snow.
    I was drawn there without a moment’s thought. It was as if some younger, more reckless version of myself had taken over, em-boldened by my solitude and the raw anonymity of the situation. I headed down the steps, then followed a newly beaten path across the parking lot, threading my way through the maze of trucks. Here and there I saw men stamping the snow off their boots or sprawled in the cabs of their rigs, their faces aglow in the phantom flare of a match. For all their big-buckled bravado, they seemed less threatening to me than those free-range teenagers back at the restaurant. The air was rife with the certainly of ritual and something else—a feeling I couldn’t quite identify—a sort of gruff, unspoken understanding.
    The toilet was nearly as cold as the parking lot and had the unmistakable ferny smell of fresh semen. As I entered, there was already action in one of the stalls. I stood at the urinal for a while, pretending to pee, wondering if I had spoiled the game for someone else, but there was only a brief shuffling sound before the sounds began again.
    Then a man came in and stood at the trough next to me. He was thirty-five probably, burly and balding and unremarkable, except for a fat candy apple of a cock that he shook one too many times after peeing. Returning his semaphore, I shook back at him—two or three longs and a short—as I clocked his reaction from the corner of my eye. When it seemed we were speaking the same language, I sidled closer and reached for him.
    I’d done nothing like this since the early eighties, but even then I hadn’t done it for the danger, the threat of exposure that some men find so thrilling. For me, the thrilling part—beyond the sex, of course—was the tacit implication of brotherhood, the stripped-down humanity of connecting with a stranger and banking everything on his decency as he banked everything on mine. But I’d always wanted privacy once that leap of faith had been made.
    “I have a room,” I told the man. His cock was plumping in my hand, miraculously warm and silken.
    He cast an anxious glance at the door, then back at the stalls, then reached down and weighed my balls soberly in his palm, as if they might help to make up his mind. “Where?” he asked finally.
    “Here.” I jerked my head toward the motel.
    He stuffed his cock back into his trousers, which I realized (somewhat to my chagrin) were beltless and polyester. Taking his cue, I buttoned up my jeans and led the way out of that rank little room, grateful for the bite of fresh air in my nostrils. As we tramped down the path together without a word, I caught him gazing sideways at me. He’s wondering if I’m a cop, I thought. Or a serial killer.
    “I’m visiting,” I offered. “From California.” He didn’t react, just kept walking.
    When we reached the parking lot, he stopped and turned. “I wanna go to