The Night Listener : A Novel

that. I don’t even know how to find it. I use my computer as a word processor.”
    “But E-mail is so easy, man.”
    “I know, and I plan to learn very soon. Just not right now. There’s not enough room in my head.”
    “I could teach you,” Pete offered eagerly. “I taught Warren, and he’s pretty out of it, too.”
    “Thank you,” I said dryly. “Who’s Warren?”
    “My AIDS counselor.”
    “Oh, sure.” Pete had written at length about this man, a social worker in his forties—gay and HIV positive—who had helped to ease him back into the land of the living.
    “Warren’s a big fan of yours, too. We listened to Noone at Night together all the time.”
    “At the hospital, you mean?”
    “No. Later. When I was home. The first time I heard you I was…you know…alone.” His voice quavered on the last word, speaking volumes in the silence that followed.
    “You okay?” I asked.
    “I can’t believe it, that’s all.”
    “What?”
    “That I’m talking to you, man.”
    His worshipful tone unsettled me, so I tried to depersonalize the moment. “That’s what books do, you know. They put you out there to the world. You never know who you’re reaching. Wait’ll your book’s published. You’ll see. You’ll be hearing from everybody.”
    “Right.”
    “I mean it. Who would you like to hear from?”
    “I dunno.”
    “C’mon. There must be somebody you’ve always wanted to meet.” I was talking down to him, I realized, but I couldn’t help it. It was safer somehow to deal with a child than to address the wise and battered old soul I had met in The Blacking Factory .
    “I wouldn’t mind hearing from Cal Ripken,” he said.
    “Awriight.”
    “You know who that is?”
    “Well, yeah. Sure. Sort of.”
    “Who, then?”
    “He’s a…sports guy.”
    Pete snorted. “You big homo.”
    “Excuse me?”
    That schoolroom giggle erupted again. “What sport?”
    “Jeez,” I said. “Get picky on me now.”
    “Don’t you even look at the sports section?”
    “No,” I said. “I throw it out first thing, along with the business section.”
    “Man.”
    “I tell you what else. I would order a paper without a sports section if they had one.”
    “Well, ‘scuse the fuck outa me.”
    Now I was laughing.
    “Warren’s the same way,” he said.
    “Is he?”
    “I told him: ‘Just ‘cause you’re a dicksmoker don’t mean you can’t watch a ball game sometimes.’”
    “A what?” I asked.
    “A ball game.”
    “No. Before that.”
    “What? Dicksmoker? You never heard that?”
    “No,” I said, chuckling.
    “Shit, man. Where you been?”
    “I dunno. Smokin’ dicks, I guess.”
    He giggled again. “I got lots of stuff like that. Really cool stuff.
    Expressions and all.”
    “I bet you do.”
    “Okay, okay,” he said, and for a moment I thought he was still talking to me, but then came another wheezy interlude and the cold squeal of metal, and I realized some sort of adjustment was being made, either to him or his bed or the apparatus draining his lungs.
    I asked if this was a bad time to talk.
    “My mom is here,” he explained. “Bein’ a big pain.”
    “Hey,” came a woman’s voice softly scolding him.
    “This is him,” he told her. “Say something.” Whereupon Donna came on the line. “Hello, Him,” she said. Her voice was honeyed oak, as sturdy as it was warm. Odd as it seems now, I felt instantly at ease with her, as if we’d been gabbing on the phone for years, sharing everything.
    “Thanks for arranging this,” I said.
    “Oh, please. You did me the favor. I’ll be hearing about this for months, believe me.”
    “Well…glad to be of service.”
    “We’re doing the yucky stuff now. If I’d known he was gonna call you I would’ve told him to hold off a tad longer.” I said I understood completely.
    “You’re his favorite writer, you know.”
    “Well, he’s mine,” I said. “From now on.”
    “C’mon.”
    “I mean it. Ashe didn’t exaggerate a bit.”
    “Oh, God, really? That’s so great.”
    She was clearly pleased, but she sounded distracted. In light of
    “the yucky stuff” at hand and the complications I’d already caused, I thought it wise to sign off. “Look,” I told her, “I’ll call back later.”
    “You don’t have to. You’ve done plenty.”
    “I’d like to. If it’s okay.”
    “Of course. If you’re sure it isn’t…”
    “I’m sure,” I said.
    Donna gave me their phone number. I read it back to her