I would have to find the car again, I realized, but that would be easy enough, since I’d parked it next to the water tank. I would head there as soon as I’d thawed out, then drive back to the motel for a good night’s sleep. It was time to be rational again. I could make a few calls in the morning, check in with Ashe Findlay maybe.
He might even have a home address for the Lomaxes, since he had once been close to Donna and had even…
I slapped the table as it came to me. Of course. Donna Lomax had to be a real person, because Ashe Findlay had met her. He had met her when she came to New York for some psychiatric convention.
He had sung her praises so much, in fact, that I’d wondered about the nature of their relationship. How I’d forgotten this important detail I couldn’t tell you. Write it off to snow blindness, I guess, or my deeply preoccupied imagination. Or maybe I’d just been looking too hard for answers, forcing an exotic resolution when a simple one failed to present itself naturally.
My stigmata had begun to throb again, since I’d stupidly whacked the table with my damaged hand. I looked down at the scab and smiled at my own madness. I’d been slightly out of control ever since I’d left the airport in Milwaukee. I needed to be gentle with myself, tread more carefully in this hour of confusion. For if Pete had ever loved me, that surely hadn’t changed in the past two days; he still loved me, wherever he was and whatever he was thinking.
And that should be enough for now.
My back was to the door, so I didn’t see her when she came in, but it must have happened some time after my cobbler arrived. She wasn’t visible behind the high walls of the neighboring booth, but I recognized her voice immediately, that fusion of smoke and silk that had charmed me from the beginning. This time, though, the sound of it made me freeze like a cornered animal, as if she had been the one who’d been looking for me.
“There now,” she said. “Don’t you feel better?”
For one macabre moment I thought she meant me. That she had been there all along and had recognized my voice when I placed my order with the waitress.
But the next time she spoke, it was clearly to someone nearby.
Someone in her own booth: “You’re hungry, aren’t you? I’ll fix you something good when we get home.”
I turned my head and cocked an ear, shutting out the room tone as best I could. But there was no reply—nothing at all.
“I know,” she continued. “You love those burgers, don’t you? But they’re awful on your stomach.”
My mind was racing just as wildly as my heart. This is the moment, I thought, the one I always knew would come. He’s right there with her, less than five feet away: my pride and joy, the offspring of my heart. But why isn’t he speaking?
“Don’t look at me that way,” she said.
He’s been traumatized, I thought. The ordeal of the last few weeks has been too much for him. The cancellation of his book has thrown him into such a deep depression that it’s taken his voice. Unless, of course, he was born that way. Unless Donna had been his voice all along, telling his story on the phone because he wasn’t able to do it himself. Or maybe it was something more gruesome, something that happened later, something to do with the people who’d abused him.
Maybe they had forced him into silence. Maybe they had cut out his tongue when they were done with him.
I closed my eyes against the force of my own imagination. When I opened them again, I made an unnerving discovery: the mirror behind the cash register reflected another mirror that caught the face of Donna Lomax. She was looking down, so I risked a quick assessment: late thirties, long brown hair, strong jaw, handsome fleshy features. Not far from the image I’d already constructed. That might have reassured me somewhat had I not also noticed that she was completely alone in the booth.
She’d been talking to herself.
At that point all I wanted was to get out without being discovered, to avoid a showdown at any cost. But I knew my voice would betray me if I asked for my check, and there was no way to leave without passing Donna’s booth. So I just sat there and sipped my tea and waited for the problem to resolve itself. If I stayed long enough, she might just go on her way. She had probably come in here for the same reason I had: to thaw out before heading home, wherever that might be. All I had to do was keep quiet and bide my time and hope that she didn’t spot me in the mirror.
But keeping quiet wasn’t easy. The waitress returned seconds later with a big solicitous grin on her face.
“How’s that cobbler?”
I smiled back, nodding appreciatively but not making a sound.
“You need another tea bag?”
I shook my head, desperately afraid that the next question would require something more than a yes-or-no. But my interrogator just yawned noisily and moved to the next booth. The one with Donna in it.
“Oh,” I heard the waitress say pleasantly. “You’re back.”
“Mmm. Does twice in one day make me a cocoa junkie?” The waitress chuckled. “Not in this weather. That’s what you want, then?”
“Please.”
“What about him?” asked the waitress.
Him? I thought. Had I heard that right? My eyes dared another glance at the mirror, but there was still no one but Donna in the booth.
“No, thanks,” said Donna. “We shouldn’t make a habit of it. He’ll expect it every time we come in.”
What the fuck?
“It’s just those eyes,” said the waitress. “They get to me every time. You mind if I…”
“Of course not,” said Donna. “He needs all the lovin’ he can get.
Don’t you, Janus?”
Janus? Janus!
Another glance at the mirror revealed that the waitress had already squatted to stroke the Lomaxes’ beloved family pet. I couldn’t see the dog—a yellow Lab, wasn’t it?—but I could hear its murmurs of gratitude. It was all I could do to keep from laughing out loud.
“Okay,” said the waitress, rising to her feet again. “We’ve had our fix. One cocoa coming up.”
I looked down at my cobbler, still wary of being nailed as a spy.
But the mere sound of that dog had erased my misgivings. Pete had played with this very animal, I remembered; he had laughed with me about its hatred of vacuum cleaners; I’d even heard Janus barking in the background.
It was such a relief to be in the presence of sanity again.
More time passed. Most of it I spent composing my remarks, rehears-ing the breezy, unthreatening tone I would use when I approached her table. I would admit to almost everything, I decided. I would tell her that I’d flown to Wysong to surprise them, having made a stupid assumption about their address. I would leave out the part about the water tank, which might sound desperate or even a little unhinged.
I wouldn’t mention my role in the book cancellation until I could prove my good intentions. And maybe, if Donna invited me home to meet Pete, I wouldn’t have to tell her at all. I could call Ashe Findlay in the morning and say that I’d seen the boy with my own two eyes and demand that he proceed with The Blacking Factory.
Everything would be back to normal again.
Had I thought a little less about my salvation and a little more about that unseen dog in the next booth, it might have occurred to me why Janus was such a familiar sight to the waitress, and why, for that matter, he was even allowed in a 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 tha
t 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, I can tell.” She was talking about his shit, I realized, and it gave me a twinge of remorse to have invaded her privacy so completely. I myself had paid similar compliments to Hugo—and unashamedly—but I would not have looked kindly upon eavesdroppers.
“Okay,” said Donna. “Let’s go.” With that they were off again, moving faster than before. The blocks were shorter here and the streets more mazelike, so I knew I would have to keep pace or lose them completely. I decided to trail her from the other side of the street, where I would look a little less like a stalker. I made myself promise not to lose my nerve.
Then I heard a voice coming from a house.
“Hey,” it called. “You’re gonna miss him.” It was a woman’s voice—one that Donna obviously recognized.
“Oh, hi.” She brought the dog to a halt. “Miss who?”
“C’mon now. Who would you miss at eleven o’clock?”
“Really? Is it that late?”
I stopped behind a tree and pretended to kick snow off my shoes, an unconvincing charade intended only for this unseen woman. I was fairly sure she hadn’t spotted me, but I wanted to look innocuous in case she had. There was no quicker way to forfeit my invisibility.
“What are you doing in this mess?” said the woman.
Donna sighed. “I just had to get out for a while. I like this, anyway.
It’s so peaceful without the traffic. Is it really eleven o’clock?”
“’Fraid so. You wanna come in and listen? I could make us some cocoa.” There was something about her tone that seemed unusually tender and solicitous—even for someone speaking to a blind lady in a snowstorm.
“That’s sweet, Pat. But I’m beat.”
“You sure?” coaxed the woman. “Should be a good one. Jamie’s eccentric uncle gets back from his hunting trip tonight.”
“I’ve heard that one already,” said Donna. “These are all reruns, you know. He hasn’t done anything new for ages.” Then it hit me: they were talking about me. Or at least about Noone at Night. Donna’s voice, while remaining civil, seemed to have a dismissive ring to it, as if she wanted no part of this woman’s fan-dom.
“Well, go home, then,” said the woman. “Tuck yourself in.”
“I hear you,” said Donna, putting a fresh spin on that late-twentieth-century cliché. She had heard me for years, after all. She had only heard me. Like other sightless radio listeners, she had built a teeming three-dimensional world from the sound of my voice alone.
Judging from the letters I received, that intimate aural connection could be far more potent than anything the eyes could contain. But if Donna had once known that experience—and shared it with her son—she seemed to have lost it now.
I heard a door close solidly as the woman went back inside. Then Donna and the dog went on their way, and the knot in my chest loosened a little. I waited until they had rounded the corner before continuing my bogus stroll. At that moment, a clock began to toll gravely in the distance, offering proof of the eleventh hour. I half expected to hear my own voice coming from one of those houses, intoning the intro to my show: “I’m Gabriel Noone and this is Noone at Night…” But there was only the clock, and the sound of a faraway train as it screamed through the frozen night.
At the end of the next block I heard the jingle of keys and realized that Donna was almost home. Still watching from across the street, I kept my distance as she stopped in front of her house. The place was nearly—though not exactly—what I’d imagined. It was set back on the lot, but there were no trees to speak of, just a huddle of overgrown shrubbery against the windows. And the house, while compact, wasn’t a bungalow at all but an L-shaped brick ranch from the sixties with a cluttered carport to one side. The aluminum-framed windows afforded a partial glimpse of a still-lighted Christmas tree.
Still lighted, no doubt, for the benefit of the neighbors.
Or the benefit of someone other than Donna.
The implications were both heartening and terrifying. After all my reckless sleuthing, I was suddenly paralyzed with indecision.
This was clearly not the time to confront this woman, much less force a meeting with an ailing boy. It would be better to return in the morning when Donna wouldn’t feel so cornered and I could pretend that I’d found their address through legitimate means. I could bring them some flowers,
perhaps, or a nice Christmas present, something to soften the blow of my rude invasion. And I would feel more rested then, ready to face whatever it was that awaited me.
I turned and walked away briskly, heading back the way I’d come.
The relief I felt was enormous, but only temporary, since I couldn’t resist the temptation to look back at Donna one more time. She had stopped halfway down her front walk and was facing toward me with a new expression on her face. Had she been sighted, I would have known right away that the game was over. As it was, I had to wait for the sound of her voice: “Come now, Gabriel, aren’t you going to say hello?”
TWENTY-FOUR
THE IDEA OF HIM
MY FIRST THOUGHT, irrational as it sounds, was that she wasn’t really blind; that the guide dog and the harness and the careful mannerisms were just a clever ruse to flush out the people who might be tempted to exploit such limiting circumstances. People like me, for instance.
But when I got closer and caught the dull pewter sheen of her eyes, the reality was undeniable. I was so lost for a response that I heard myself affecting a tone of jovial astonishment, as if we were old friends from college who’d just bumped into each other in a crowded European airport: “Donna? ”
Her reaction was laughter, deservedly enough, a throaty chuckle that might have reassured me if it had not raised the hairs on the back of my neck. “Save us both the trouble,” she said. “Hank told me you were here.”
Hank? Who was that?
She read my confusion and explained: “The clerk at the Mail ‘n’ More. He called me as soon as you left. Said some guy from California was asking about me. I figured you’d turn up eventually.”
“I’m so sorry, Donna.” My effort to sound sincere was undermined by the distracting thought that guide dogs might also be trained to attack. Janus seemed friendly enough, but he had a sort of wait-and-see gleam in his eyes that worried me. “I know how this looks,” I went on. “I tried to reach you by phone, but you were disconnected and…I really didn’t mean to…”