The Night Listener : A Novel

restaurant in the first place.
    As it was, I didn’t wise up until Donna murmured “Let’s go” and rose—earlier than I’d expected—to make her exit. She and the yellow Lab left the restaurant as a unit, her companion guiding the way as her left hand held tight to his harness.
     
    TWENTY-THREE

    THE ELEVENTH HOUR

    WHY DOES A SANE man track a blind woman through the snow?
    Moments before I’d been full of good intentions, but now I was thinking like a felon again. I could have approached her before she left the restaurant. I could have come clean on the spot. But the very predicament that made her such a “special” person—to use Ashe Findlay’s carefully chosen word—might have made my sudden appearance seem threatening. I was much too close to finding Pete—or finding something —to risk the chance that Donna would refuse me access to the boy. So I gave her enough time to get down the block, then headed out the door after her.
    Why does a sane man track a blind woman through the snow?
    Because he can.
    She and the dog were about twenty yards away, standing beneath a streetlight that wore a furry nimbus in the snow. They were waiting to cross an empty street, and the sight was so poignant it was all I could do to keep from shouting “All clear!” I wondered if blindness was a new experience for her or if the dog was just more cautious in this weather. Then I heard Donna say “Forward” and Janus trotted smartly across the street. I waited until they had reached the other side before following them.
    Half a block along, they turned left down a side street bordered by a hedge with a thick cap of snow. Then another left past an open field and a cluster of low-slung brick buildings, and I realized we were skirting the junior high school. Both Janus and his mistress moved more confidently here, settling into a steady rhythm, as if the world was finally behind them and home was almost at hand.
    I looked around for the star, and sure enough, there it was: a burst of blue behind the dark tracery of the trees.
    It made sense now, all of it. No wonder this woman had been so paranoid about motherhood. She’d been entrusted with a boy whose grisly history demanded constant vigilance, but her resources were severely limited. She had no way of identifying Pete’s enemies, no way of knowing when alien eyes were upon him. Of course she kept Pete’s friends and counselors confined to the telephone. A world comprised solely of voices put her vulnerable family on an equal footing with everyone else.
    Was that why Ashe Findlay never told me she was blind? Had Donna demanded his silence as part of the deal? And was that why this crucial detail was nowhere to be found in The Blacking Factory ?
    Findlay had told me there were things I didn’t know, valid reasons to trust Donna’s motives and respect her wishes. This was obviously what he’d meant. When I’d pressed the issue, he’d cancelled Pete’s book rather than reveal the omission that made it something less than the whole truth.
    Were blind people allowed to adopt children? Why not? Especially a psychiatrist, someone equipped to deal with the boy’s emotional health. She wouldn’t be able to drive him anywhere, but that could easily be done by a social worker or a friend. Someone like…Marsha from across the street! Marsha who rode with them on those long, boring trips into Milwaukee, Marsha who’d been so very helpful, by Donna’s own account.
    Beyond the junior high school the street became more residential and wooded. It was snowing harder now, so I expected Donna and Janus to pick up speed, but instead, without warning, they stopped dead in their tracks. Some forty feet behind them, I found myself doing the same—an odd sight indeed for anyone watching from a window.
    “C’mon,” said Donna. “I thought we took care of that.” Janus mumbled something in his own language.
    “Okay,” replied his mistress. “Do it, then.” The dog squatted in the gutter and shat, the steam from it curling in the air like smoke from a genie’s lamp. Janus, meanwhile, looked around with the mortified expression that canines wear on such occasions. For a moment, his eyes seemed to settle on me, though I was almost a block away. In my consternation I couldn’t decide whether it was better not to move or move in a way that might be interpreted as natural.
    Mercifully, the dog looked back at Donna when she spoke to him again. “Yeah, that’s a good one,