The Night Listener : A Novel

twice, slowly, as if it were a private line to Camp David, or, back in the old days, the unlisted number of some really hot guy I’d met at the baths.
    There are moments, I think, when you actually feel your life changing, when you can all but hear the clumsy clank and bang of fate’s machinery.
     
    FOUR

    ROUGHHOUSING

    “GUESS I WAS RIGHT, HUH?”
    My bookkeeper was up in the window, calling down to the hot tub, where I floated naked and bereft, feeling sorry for myself in the least pitiable of places. It was four o’clock and foggy; the shampooey spice of the eucalyptus trees was drifting down from the woods.
    “About what?” I asked.
    “That book.”
    “Oh, yeah. You were, actually.” I didn’t have a clue as to how she’d deduced this.
    “There’s a message on your machine,” Anna explained, “from somebody who’s gotta be the author. Except that he sounds about ten.”
    My sodden heart stirred like some half-dead creature on a beach.
    “What did he say?”
    “Want me to play it for you?”
    “Yeah. If you would.”
    Anna left the window and returned moments later with the answering machine, which she set on the sill. I noticed something flicker in her dark hair: a streak of electric magenta that hadn’t been there on her last visit. It seemed out of character somehow, even for someone so certifiably young; Anna was such a no-nonsense sort of person.
    Then Pete’s voice settled on me like the song of a small, gray bird:
    “Hey, dude. I just wanted to thank you for reading my book. I hope you’re doin’ okay. You sounded kind of weird on the phone. No offense or anything. You don’t have to call back, unless you want to, but you better want to, you big dicksmoker. You know where to find me, unless I’m out Rollerblading with the Spice Girls. Yeah right, Lomax, dream on. Okay, that’s all, take it easy, man.” Silence consumed the garden again. Anna just stood there, gazing down at me expectantly.
    “Thanks,” I said.
    She blinked at me a moment longer, then left the window. I knew I owed her an explanation, but I just couldn’t do it. Even now, it seemed patently disloyal to launch a new story with anyone other than Jess. I needed him here to make it real for me, to trim its ragged edges and file it on the proper shelf, before I could offer it for general consumption.
    I sank into the velvety curve of the wood and let the warm water hold me. The little beige bromine floater drifted by, then nudged my shoulder like a puppy wanting attention. I pushed it away, lost in a sudden flashback. We had been here together, a year or so earlier, soaking under an out-of-focus moon, when Jess turned and studied the slope behind us. “This is where I want my ashes to go,” he said. His tone had been casual and informative, the one he would use in bookstores, say, when pointing out some other author’s enviable new dump bin. So I looked into those buried blue eyes and tried to divine their message. Don’t make a fuss over this, they seemed to be saying, and I understood immediately. For he had given me something so huge and enduring that nothing less than silence could ever contain it.
    “You got it,” I said, and we left it at that.
    As I passed the office in my bathrobe I complimented Anna on her snappy new hair color. She turned from the computer with a crooked smile, as if to accept my subterranean apology. “It’s the same as Pam’s,” she said.
    “A friend?”
    “No. On The Real World .”
    I still didn’t get it.
    “You know. Pedro Zamora’s housemate? MTV?”
    “Oh, yeah. Of course.”
    “It’s D’ or’s idea mostly.”
    I drew another blank.
    “My other mother. My mom’s partner? She was a model back in the seventies, and she’s always giving me fashion tips. Whether I want ‘em or not. She makes me feel like Eurasian Barbie.” I shrugged. “You could say no.”
    “Oh, I don’t care. It’s no big deal. It’s just hair and stuff. And she just started doing it. I wasn’t, like, you know, JonBenet Ramsey or anything.”
    Her breezy gothicism made me smile, then sent my thoughts 38 / ARMISTEAD MAUPIN
    hurtling back to Pete. Amazingly, it seemed to do the same for Anna.
    She paused, apparently weighing her words, then cast me a look of sweet contrition. “I guess I shouldn’t have checked your machine?” I felt like such a bully. My ham-handed effort at saving the story for Jess had apparently come off like an accusation of eavesdropping.
    “Oh, no,” I