He pressed the button and held it.
"'Dear Harper,'" he read. "'My name is Agnieszka Mazur and I am eight. I live on Hertel Avenue in the back. I listen to you on my green radio every night when my daddy is at the plant. My mother died in April. Her name was Basia. I do not know where heaven is. Sister Mary Agatha says it is up but my cousin says it could be anywhere. I think maybe it is on a lake, because you talk to the lakes every night and they are very far and dark and nobody can see them but you still talk to them. So could you please say a message to my mother. Please say Merry Christmas Mama, I am being good, I am not scared most of the time. Thank you. Your friend, Agnieszka Mazur.'"
He paused. He turned the page over.
"'P.S.,'" he read, "'When I grow up I am going to have a name like yours, because nobody can spell Agnieszka.'"
He let go of the button. He took a breath, and pressed it again, and his voice, when it came, was steady, though Harper could see the paper trembling in his other hand.
"I'll tell you what I said that night," he said. "I remember it, because my wife wrote it down for me on the back of the envelope, and I've had twenty-one years to read it. I said: 'To Mrs. Basia Mazur, wherever the water is widest and darkest tonight. Your daughter Agnieszka, on Hertel Avenue, says Merry Christmas, Mama. She says she's being good. She says she's not scared most of the time. I believe her on all three counts.' And then I said: 'And to Agnieszka. The name you want isn't mine. It was lent to me by somebody who loves me, and she's sitting right here, and she says you can have it whenever you're ready. Just keep it warm. And keep a lamp in the window.'"
He set the letter down on the console, on top of the trip sheets, very gently, the way you'd lay down something sleeping.
"This is Harper, on the Harbor Light," he said. "Wind's easing a little out of the west. The snow will quit by sunup, they say, and the sun will come up over Cheektowaga like it always does, whether we deserve it or not. To all the cars of Niagara Checker Cab, and to whoever else is listening on a scanner by the bed: thank you for the company. I'd forgotten how good it is. Keep a lamp in the window. Goodnight, Buffalo." His voice caught, and he waited it out. "Goodnight, lakes."
He let go of the button and hung the microphone back on its hook.
For a long moment no one said anything on the frequency at all. Then Mose Hubbard keyed his mike, and didn't speak, and let it go. And then Sobczak, of all people, at the Your Host on Main, said in a thick voice, "Goodnight, Harper," and one by one, all seven of them said it. Goodnight, Harper. Goodnight, Harper. Goodnight. And Harper did not know, and would never know, which of the two of them they meant.
She was crying. She had not noticed starting. She was sitting on the edge of the desk with her face wet and her hands in fists in her lap, and Lucian turned slowly in the oak chair, the stuck wheel squealing as it carried him in its little curve to the left, and looked at her at last.