The Night Listener : A Novel

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.”