The Night Listener : A Novel

silences.
    “So when do you have to go back?”
    I shrugged. “A few days, I guess. I dunno. I’m on my own schedule.”
    “You’re a lucky son-of-a-bitch, you know.”
    “Yeah, I guess so.”
    “Oh, hell, almost forgot: Dick Burbage called. Wants you to come to the Centurion Feast.”
    This was the annual Christmas party of my father’s club, a quasi-military hereditary society that I joined on my return from Vietnam, mostly out of deference to the old man. The Centurions did a lot of drinking and ancestor worship but not much else. I’d remained a member in absentia when I moved to California, but they’d quietly asked me to resign in the late seventies when Noone at Night made my open queerness apparent.
    I frowned. “Did you tell him I was here?”
    “Hell, no. He called me , I didn’t even know you were coming.
    Must’ve heard it through one of Walker’s friends.” I found myself grinning idiotically and sounding a lot like my father. “Well, if that don’t beat all.”
    “You wanna go, then?” The longing in his eyes was palpable. That damned club still mattered to him more than anything.
    “Sure,” I said. “Just as soon as Dick Burbage comes out of the closet.”
    “Now, wait a goddamn—”
    “And I want you to put it just that way.”
    “I won’t do anything of the kind!”
    “And while they’re at it, a written apology would be nice.”
    “That was twenty years ago, for God’s sake!”
    “So?”
    “So a lot’s changed.”
    “Yeah. I’m famous now. That’s what’s changed. So Dick Burbage gets to kill two birds with one stone: do you a favor and impress the twinkies he picks up down at Arcade.”
    “He’s not doing me a favor, I told you that.”
    “Fine. He’s not doing me one either.”
    “And you don’t know anything about…his private life.”
    “I wouldn’t lay money on that, Pap.”
    He regarded me with a wary scowl, obviously wondering if I spoke from personal experience. I didn’t bother to disabuse him, though Dick Burbage’s homohood was probably more aesthetic than carnal. Like a number of queers, he was drawn to the club by its lovely old house full of lovely old things. These guys were discreet around the dinosaurs, but even my father’s beloved Centurions had its own secret coterie of girly-men.
    “Jesus,” the old man muttered, “you’ve got the biggest goddamn chip on your shoulder.”
    I smiled at him. “I kind of enjoy it, too. I see why you like yours so much.”
    He let that pass. “The Centurions have been my life, you know.”
    “I know, Pap. Your life, not mine.”
    “Would it kill you to go down there and have a drink with them?” And would it have killed you, I thought, to defend me? To tell your buddies to go to hell when they ostracized your son for his honesty?
    “It seems like a compliment to me,” he added. “You should be happy they asked.”
    I was happy they had asked. It felt great to realize that these people no longer mattered to me at all. “Look,” I said. “I could easily go down there and be Scarlett O’Hara in my red dress, but there’s no point in…”
    “Red dress? What the hell you talkin’ about?”
    “Relax. It’s just a metaphor.”
    “Thank God.”
    “When is it, anyway?”
    “When’s what?”
    “The Feast.”
    “Oh…tomorrow night.”
    “Well, that settles it, then. I’d rather be here with you.” The old man sighed. “So what am I spose to tell Dick Burbage?”
    “Don’t worry about it. I’ll tell him myself.”
    “Jesus, don’t tell him to come out of the closet!” I laughed. “All right. I promise.”
    “You’ll give the ol’ fruit a heart attack.” I just shook my head and smiled, recognizing one of his oldest oratorical tricks: a bait and switch that allowed his audience the briefest glimpse of what he really knew to be true.
     
    TWENTY-SEVEN

    NO EPIPHANIES

    ANOTHER NURSE ARRIVED—the “little nigger gal,” I presumed—and began fiddling with my father’s IV line.
    “This is Sondra,” my father said in his best courtly fashion. “She’s a helluva fine nurse, and she comes from good folks out on Edisto.”
    “Hey,” I said.
    “Hey,” she said.
    “That’s my son, that distinguished-looking fella. He lives out in California, and he’s famous as all get-out. Just ask him.”
    “Pap…”
    “What do you do?” asked Sondra.
    “I’m a writer.”
    “What’s your name?”
    “Same as mine,” said my father. “Gabriel Noone. Embarrasses the