LISTEN UP

by Nick Faber

Hank stood in front of in the bathroom mirror with the old, rust-tipped tweezers

wobbling less than an inch from his eye, held loosely in his spotted hand. His eyebrows

had been gradually making their way around his eyes for months, and this morning, the

hair had finally grown into a semi-circle that was so well defined that Hank couldn't go to

the liquor store without grooming himself first.

One by one, he plucked all of the extra hairs, along with some that weren't extra,

and by the end of it, his eyes, which were blurry with age anyway, were now blurry with

tears, and the skin around them was bright red, like someone had just sucker-punched

him with both fists at once.

Hank carefully slid his arms into the brown leather jacket, which was cracked and

faded from fifty years of all-season wear. The sky was overcast and even a little foggy,

but Hank left the house wearing his big black sunglasses, the same knock-off Ray Ban's

he had worn since high school.

The subway stop on Hank's street was outdoors, so he sat in the indoor lobby

where the air wasn't quite cold enough to make his knees ache, but was still cold enough

that he could see his breath. He didn't hear the high-pitch beeping that announced the

train's approach, so he didn't realize that the train was coming until it was pulling up to

the platform right above him.

Hank pulled himself up the stairs just in time to see the subway doors close with a

pleasant bing-bong. When he got to the top step, he waved, hoping the conductor would

see him and open the doors again, but the F-train pulled away, leaving a freezing cold

gust in its wake, giving Hank a real chill. His long white ear hairs danced in the frosty

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February air.

He spit on the tracks and waited on the cold platform for the next train.

***

Hank was the only man that Rita had ever known in the Biblical Sense. They met

at a neighborhood dance on Ocean Parkway that Rita’s sister had dragged her to. With her

buck teeth and scrawny legs, Rita wasn’t much of a looker. She had only been on two

dates in her life, and neither guy had called her back. On most nights, she just stayed in

and read, resigned to the fact the only men in her life would be the detectives in her

novels. Rose, who was 27 and already had three kids of her own, was genuinely terrified

that her sister would become a spinster, a common worry of the time. But more than that,

she liked to get away from her family once in a while to have a little fun, and to feel like

a young person.

The dance hall was nearly empty. Rita and Rose danced all night, right in the front

of the band, who was playing in the provocative new rock and roll style. The girls had a

few vodka drinks throughout the night, making every song sound poignant and

meaningful, every dance move feel more urgent and inspired. Rose and Rita slow danced

to the slow numbers, waved their fingers and jitterbugged to the fast ones. By the last

song, a real rollicking tune, the girls were boogying around a neat pile they had made

from their purses and high heel shoes.

Hank never learned to play an instrument, but he dressed like the guys in the

band, and leaned coolly against the stage, facing the crowd all night, snapping his fingers

as if he were the band's snapper. He stood right under the handsome bass player, who

happened to be Hank's cousin.

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 After the guitar's final chord finished ringing, the small crowd started to gather up

their coats and purses and head out. Rose checked the clock in the back of the hall. They

still had ten minutes before her husband, David, was to pick them up.

Rose dug her fingers into Rita's shoulders and spoke very gravely. “Listen to me,

baby sister,” Rose said, sweaty face to sweaty face with her sister. “I want to know if you

trust me.” Her breath was hot and stunk like fermented cranberries.

Rita nodded. “Sure, I trust you.”

“Good,” Rose said and she dragged Rita to the stage by the arm. The band was

wrapping up their cables and putting away their instruments. Rose was so fixated on the

handsome young bass player that she pulled her sister right into Hank, who wiped his

shoulder like Rita had just spilled a drink on him.

“Watch it lady,” he said, trying to curl up his lip and look more like a hood. His

eyes were filled with fear and contempt and Rita's eyes were filled with drunken

desperation. It was love at first sight. While Rose was still trying to get the bass player's

attention, Hank took off from the dance hall and Rita followed closely behind him. He

drove her down to Coney Island on the back of his motorcycle and she gave herself to

him on a playground bench.

They met at another dance the next night, and afterwards they went back to

Hank's and made it in his bed. Rita tried to snuggle up to him, but Hank just wanted to

lay back with his hands behind his head and listen to his records all night. He told Rita

who had written and produced each record, what the instrumentation was, and who

played what on each cut. He told her which parts of each song were his favorite and why.

They had sex one more time in the morning, at Hank's insistence, and when he

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dropped her off in front of her apartment building, Rita said goodbye to Hank, expecting

to never see him again. She regretted losing her virginity to such a low-life, but now that

she had done it for the first, second, and third times, she was confident that she could do

it again with someone else, someone who would actually care about her.

The future did not pan out the way that either of them had intended. Rita got

pregnant and forced herself to see Hank again, hoping that she could convince him to

love their child. Hank got to be with Rita again, but she was pregnant and the baby would

be his, and his family pressured him into marrying her, years before he had intended to

settle down.

So they got married under those conditions, raised their son Michael together, and

paid off a mortgage and five cars under those conditions. Hank wasn’t the best father, but

he was a present father, and that was all Rita really wanted from him. He ate at the table

with his family every night and some days, during the summer months of Michael’s

childhood, he brought his son to work with him at the hardware store, where he taught

him how to use a tape measure and cut chain.

When Michael left the house to live on his own, Hank converted his son's

bedroom into the Lounge, lit with florescent bar signs, and equipped with a miniature ice

chest so he and his buddies could always enjoy their Scotch on the rocks. Over the years,

God had whittled the group of eight guys that played weekly poker games at Hank's

Lounge down to a monthly group of three.

Hank spent most of his time alone in the Lounge, sitting in his old green recliner

that he called the Throne, listening to rock and roll musicians who were young when he

was young but who were now mostly dead. He listened to the records loud, like he had

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his whole life, but now it was an act of necessity, rather than an act of rebellion.

Over the years, Rita felt more and more like a ghost who lived in Hank's house

and cooked his dinner.

***

Hank was watching the Tonight Show at volume level 64 (out of 70) while Rita

sat up in bed next to him and tried to read her crime novel by the blue flashing light of the

TV. She fiddled with the hairnet she wore at night, which she believed to keep her dyed

black hair from falling out. She also wore orange industrial strength ear plugs to block

out the blasting TV. As Hank's hearing started to go, and the nightly listening volume

reached new peaks, Rita gradually upgraded to bigger and bigger plugs with higher and

higher noise-blocking grades.

Tonight, Rita was smiling to herself, not because the book she was reading was

particularly good, or because the TV show, which she could still hear, was particularly

funny, but because she knew that there was a special parcel on its way to the house that

would change both of their lives forever.

That morning, when Hank had run out to the liquor store, Rita saw a commercial

during the Price is Right that caught her attention. In the commercial, an elderly couple

sat up in bed next to each other. The lady was reading a book, and the man was watching

TV with the volume up too high. The woman in the commercial looked at her husband

scornfully and said, with the wag of her finger, “Will you turn that down already?” The

commercial played out and apparently this husband also liked to the listen to the stereo at

abrasive levels, and he was always asking his wife to repeat herself, and he almost got hit

by a car because he didn't hear it coming. So the lady in the commercial bought her

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husband the Whisper 5000, and the man was able to watch TV at a lower level and still

be able to hear it, he could listen to his stereo from across the room without disturbing his

wife, and he knew to dodge the oncoming car as he crossed the street. The Whisper 5000

was so sophisticated that it could block out other sounds and let you choose which sounds

you want to focus on. So Rita picked up the phone and called the number on the screen.

Exactly six weeks later, the UPS guy rang the door bell, and thank God Hank

didn't hear it, because he would have told the guy that he wasn't expecting anything and

to get lost. Rita snuck the box upstairs and quietly closed and locked the bedroom door

behind her. Yes, the contents of package were for Hank to use, but Rita wanted to make

sure she knew how the thing worked, in case Hank wanted to put up a fight about it, like

the time she bought him sweatpants. Hank was in the Lounge listening to records,

drinking Scotch whiskey and smoking a nub of a cigar.

The Whisper 5000 was a sleek and modern gadget, encased in silver-colored

plastic. You could hold it in your hand or strap it to your belt. It had a knob in the middle

of it with settings such as “nature,” “conversation,” and “TV,” and a little built-in

microphone for precision eavesdropping. Rita plugged in the tiny earphones that came in

the box, and flipped the on/off switch with an acrylic fingernail. The thing came with

batteries, but it didn't seem like it was working at first. In fact, it was doing the opposite

of what it was supposed to do. All sounds were just muffled by the earphones, almost like

she were wearing her foam orange ear plugs. But then Rita heard a bird singing, loudly

and crisply as if it were sitting right on her shoulder. A little startled, Rita pulled the

earphones out of her ears and looked around to see if a bird had actually flown into the

bedroom. The only sound she could hear was Hank's music sneaking out from under the

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Lounge door. She carefully put the earphones back in her ears and heard the pleasant

birdsong again. Rita noticed The Whisper 5000 was set to “nature,” and she smiled. She

hadn't been in real nature in over thirty years.

She lay on the bed in her polka-dotted dress and red pumps and listened to the

bird singing away. Unlike Hank's records, which were always the same, the bird's song

was so natural and unpredictable. Rita started to drift off into a daydream about walking

with Hank and Michael in Prospect Park, until the sound of the singing bird was violently

interrupted by a barking dog. Rita jumped up and pulled back the curtain. The Russian

man who ran the little restaurant around the corner was holding a taut leash, on the end

off which his bulldog was barking at the Bangladeshi man who worked at the grocery

near the subway. The Russian man was laughing and leaning back just far enough that his

dog couldn't bite, and the Bangladeshi man was yelling, more at the dog than at the man.

But Rita could only hear the dog barking. She turned the knob to “conversation” and

aimed the device out the window, towards the men and the dog. Each man was yelling in

his own language, but using English curse words for emphasis. The vulgar language

offended Rita, and she turned the knob again, this time landing on “music.”

Now Rita heard Hank's rock and roll music, the guitars and drums, and when she

aimed the Whisper 5000 at the door, she could hear the band as if it were set up in the

corner of the bedroom. The gadget worked better than Rita had hoped it would and she

cried. She would finally get some good reading done tonight.

When the music ended, and Rita turned the knob to “conversation,” and she could

hear Hank snoring loudly in her ears. She pulled out the earphones, kicked the cardboard

box under the bed, and went downstairs to get started on dinner.

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 ***

Rita stopped Hank at the bottom of the stairs, on his way up to the Lounge for his

after-dinner cocktail. She held the Whisper 5000 behind her back and she gave Hank a

coy, dramatic smile, wagging her hips around girlishly. “I got somethin' for you, Hank”

she said. “It's a little present.”

“Can't it wait?” Hank said, wholly unaffected by Rita's attempted flirtation. After

she didn't move or respond to him, he looked her in the eyes, which, in her old age, were

now more gray than brown, and sighed.

“A little present, Hank” she said and held out the little gizmo out in front of her,

hoping he might recognize it from TV commercials.

“What the hell is it?” Hank said. “Some kind of Walkman or something? What do

I want that for?”

“It's a sound amplifier. It makes everything louder. The TV and your records will

all be louder and clearer than ever. I tried it myself. You just put these things in your ears,

and -”

“Sounds like a waste of money,” Hanks said. “Now excuse me.”

But Rita was still in his way, still smiling, too. It felt so good to be interacting

with Hank so much, and was fun to feel like she had the upper hand in this situation. And

she did: Hank had bad knees and she was standing in his way.

“Come on,” Rita said, leaning forward from the bottom step. She and Hank were

almost touching noses. “Just try it. You can go upstairs in a minute, and I swear you're

gonna wanna take this thing with you.”

“Rita, will you move? I don't wanna put those lousy things in my ears.”

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 “Fine,” Rita said, “But let me show you how it works. Please. You just stay right

here, and I'll go in the kitchen and you'll see how it works, OK?” She started for the

kitchen. “You won't have to put anything in your ears if you don't want to, you can just

say something.”

Hank started walking up the stairs as soon as Rita entered the kitchen.

“Say something quiet!” she yelled out to him.

Hank muttered quietly. “Gimme a break already.”

Before he could get to the top of the stairs, Rita bounded out of the kitchen,

gleefully waving the Whisper 5000. “Give you a break already,” she was saying. “I heard

you. You said give you a break already. I told you it worked.”

Hank stopped. He'd been muttering under his breath for years and not once had

Rita reacted until now. What an invasion of privacy. “Come on, Rita,” he said. “Leave me

be, will you?”

“This thing works. I'm telling you.” Rita walked up the stairs and practically

shoved the earphones into Hank's ears. He twitched and flinched and made faces the

whole time, but Rita was really enjoying touching her husband so much, even though he

wasn't as soft as he used to be.

Rita hurried down the steps and back into the kitchen to say something for Hank

to hear. She was giddy. She wanted to say something secret and sincere. She wanted to

tell him that she didn't feel like anything in her life was a mistake, and that she would

marry him a million times over. But instead she said, “Testing, 1, 2, 3.”

Rita asked Hank if he could hear her and he said “Testing 1, 2, 3, now I'm going

upstairs to listen to my records -- without this damn thing. I don't like it in my ears like

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that.” He handed the Whisper 5000 to Rita and finally climbed the last stair.

***

Each morning, Hank dipped his comb in a jar of pomade and ran it through his

hair, which was now thinner and whiter than ever, and which now covered less of his

head than ever. At the end of each day, Hank rubbed the stuff out with a bath towel, and

combed his hair back down with a wet comb. This was a routine he developed as a

teenager, when his mother told him that if he kept getting his pillow cases greasy, he'd

have to wash them himself.

When Hank came out of the bathroom that night, he found Rita reading her book

in bed, pretending not to notice the little gadget she had placed in the center of Hank's

pillow. He asked her what the hell it was doing there and Rita just kept reading her book,

until Hank brushed the Whisper 5000 off of the bed and knocked it against the night

stand, calling it a piece of shit. She slammed her book shut.

“Now why the heck would you go and do that?” said Rita. She never cursed and

she had trouble showing Hank how upset she really was.

“Because I don’t wanna use it,” Hank said. He pulled back the blanket and slowly

lowered his bottom onto the bed. “I don’t need any help,” he said, and he a carefully

lifted each leg off of the ground and slid underneath the blanket. He turned on the TV,

almost on full blast. Rita set her book down and marched around the bed to where the

Whisper 5000 lay.

“I paid 19.99 plus eight dollars shipping,” she said, holding the Whisper 5000 like

an injured animal, holding it up to Hank so he could be affected by it, too, but Hank was

watching TV and he didn’t so much as glance at his old wife beside him.

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 Rita held the Whisper 5000 close to her chest and left the room with a slam of the

door, which was muffled by the television.

She sat on the living room couch, sobbing quietly, rocking the little gadget like a

baby doll, and whispering, “Darn it all,” over and over.

She lay on the couch, put the earphones on and turned the knob to “nature.” Right

away, she could hear crickets. Crickets in Brooklyn -- in April! In any direction she

pointed the Whisper 5000, Rita could hear crickets chirping, sonorous and sad, and

syncopated by the occasional low coo of a distant, hungry pigeon.

East 3rd St. glowed peacefully outside. The shops were all closed on Ditmas Ave,

so there was very little foot traffic in the neighborhood. Rita put on her slippers and

Hank’s blue windbreaker that he never wore. She figured she looked decent enough to

stand out on the front porch for a minute or two.

Outside, it sounded like there were crickets in every yard on the street. Rita

thought that maybe there were always crickets in April and that maybe she had just

missed them before, so she took off the earphones but heard nothing. No crickets, no

birds, no barking dogs, just an occasional car down the street. She put the earphones in

again and she heard an owl hoo-hooing. It sounded so calm and omniscient. Rita turned

around in a slow semi-circle until she heard the owl again and followed it north, where

and owl was perched in the Park, over a mile away. Yes, the Whisper 5000 was that

effective.

Because Rita had set the Whisper 5000 to “nature” and not to “traffic” and

because she was looking for the owl and not for oncoming cars, Rita crossed the street

carelessly and was hit by a purple mini-van on Cortelyou Rd. She died almost instantly,

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which was nice, because she didn’t feel very much pain for very long.

Even though she had never seen the place before, and everything she had read

about it offered conflicting descriptions, Rita knew that she was in Heaven as soon as she

could see again. She recognized God right away, too, beaming at her warmly.

“You’re so beautiful,” she said to her Heavenly Father.

“And so are you,” He said. Rita couldn't see herself, so she thought God must say

that to everyone, which he did, because everyone in Heaven was beautiful. The Lord told

Rita that everyone got to pick one thing from their terrestrial life to have and to keep with

them for all Eternity. Rita considered for a moment how nice it would be to have her

collection of books, so that she could read peacefully through all Eternity, but then she

thought about poor Hank. She worried that the father of her son wouldn’t make it up to

Heaven on his own, so she asked God for Hank.

And so Hank, who was still watching Leno at an extremely loud volume, suffered

an aortic aneurysm and died before he even had a chance to wonder where Rita had gone

and what was taking her so long to come back to bed.

Hank looked so handsome and perfect when he appeared in front of Rita. He was

wearing his brown leather jacket, which was brand new and smelled like real leather

again. And Rita looked so gorgeous to Hank's rejuvenated eyes, in her favorite blue house

dress that she used to wear when Michael was little. Hank gawked at Rita amorously, and

he didn’t even realize that his own Creator was standing majestically behind him. Hank

ran -- no, he flew -- over to Rita and embraced her gently and kissed her all over her

perfect white face.

“I’m sorry,” he said, laughing, “I don’t know what’s come over me.” And he

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laughed some more, and it felt so good, and it was so infectious that Rita started

laughing, too. Rita pointed behind Hank, and Hank turned around to face God, who was

laughing along with them.

“I didn’t think I’d make it,” Hank said. He put his arm around Rita. “I didn’t think

they’d let me come here,” he said, and he hung his head, trying to show shame, but he

couldn't, because he no longer had any shame. He was ecstatic and free of pain. “I had

such a hard time of it down there,” he said.

“Everyone does,” the Lord said, and He smiled warmly.

Hank cried tears of relief and happiness, and when he wiped his eyes with the

back of his hand, he could feel that his eyebrows were no longer stubbly semi-circles,

they were just normal eyebrows, and he felt confident and handsome. When God asked

Hank what he would like to bring into Eternity with him, Hank looked at Rita and

thought hard. Even though she was in Heaven, Rita said a little prayer to herself and to

God that Hank would say that having Rita for Eternity would be good enough for him,

but Hank turned to the Lord and asked for his favorite Buddy Holly record, along with

his turntable to play it on.

Rita was as worried as one could be in Heaven that she would lose Hank again to

his records, but he held her close and said something he had never said to her before.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I was so crummy sometimes.”

Rita looked at Hank, who was more youthful than he had ever been in life. She set

the record player’s needle down on Hank’s favorite cut, “Listen to Me.” “I forgive you,

Hank,” she said.

The lead guitar echoed throughout the Heavens in stereophonic sound, and when

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the singing began, Hank sung along with all of his soul. He moved his hips around to the

rhythmic percussion, and none of his bones or muscles ached. His voice was so unscathed

by the life he had lived, that he really sounded wonderful singing in Heaven. He looked at

Rita when he sang, full of new life and joy, and she could feel his loving gaze cover her

like a blanket of warm sunshine. Rita felt the way she did the first time she got drunk, but

this high was exponentially stronger and cleaner.

The volume of the record was just right. Rita could actually hear every note, and

it didn't hurt her ears. It sounded perfect.

Hank grabbed Rita by the hand, they were both so soft now, and for the first time,

they danced together.

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