The Night Listener : A Novel

said. “Check anything you want. It would help, really.
    I’m not on the planet right now. There aren’t any state secrets on that thing. Trust me.”
    Anna was still looking chastised. “Jess thought there might be a message from your accountant.”
    My breathing must have come to a standstill. “You talked to him?”
    “Your accountant?”
    “No. Jess.”
    “Yeah,” she said cautiously.
    “When?”
    “This morning. That was okay, wasn’t it?”
    “Of course.”
    “He was worried about your quarterlies. They’re coming up next week.”
    My heart turned to goo at the thought that Jess was still looking out for me, even from a distance. Oh sweetie, I thought, you know this is forever, so just stop this bullshit and come home before we break something that can’t be fixed. I was tempted to grill Anna further, but I resisted on her behalf. “That would be a help,” I said finally. “If you’d talk to my accountant, I mean.” I started to leave and then stopped. “He’s thirteen, by the way.”
    “Your accountant?”
    I smiled. “The boy on the phone.”
    Her eyes widened. “Really?”
    “He lives in Milwaukee and he’s had a really shitty life and he writes like an angel.”
    “It didn’t depress you?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “You said it depresses you when other people are brilliant.” I’m sure I must have reddened a little. “This is different.”
    “Why?”
    I hesitated. “I don’t know exactly.” You do too, I told myself. Tell her at least part of the truth. It won’t queer things with Jess if you share this with somebody else. It won’t affect the outcome one way or the other.
    So I spilled a few of the beans: “I guess he sort of has a thing about me.”
    Her brow furrowed gravely. “A thing?”
    “Oh, God, no,” I said, catching her train of thought. “He’s one of my listeners.”
    “Oh.”
    “He thinks of me…kind of like a father.”
    “Why?”
    It was embarrassing to explain things in my own words, but I did my best. “He was laid up in the hospital during a bad time, when he was sort of shut off from the world. And the sound of my voice was like…you know, the father he never had. Well, he had one, actually, but he was a monster.” Anna, to my discomfort, was still frowning. “He told you all that?”
    “Not on the phone. In the book.”
    “Oh.” She weighed that for a moment. “That’s kind of intimidating.”
    “How so?”
    “I just mean…well, it’s a big compliment, Gabriel, but it’s really intense for somebody to lay that on you.”
    I resisted the notion that some worrisome new burden had been dumped in my lap. Pete himself had never come close to suggesting as much. “He didn’t lay anything on me,” I said calmly. “I know he sounds like some tragic waif, but he’s not. He’s really bright and funny, and he can hold his own with grownups. The father thing was just something he shared, that’s all. It didn’t come with any strings attached. Really.” Even to my own ears, this declaration sounded anxious and overstated, so I abandoned it immediately.
    “I’m done with the galleys,” I said, “if you’d like to look at them.”
    “Thanks,” said Anna, turning back to the computer. “I’ve got too much reading for school already.”
    That night I cooked myself a real meal—my first since Jess had left.
    Hugo smelled the chicken roasting and made his way stiffly down the stairs, obviously expecting to share in this bonanza. I could hardly refuse him; taste was his last surviving sense, the only cheap thrill he had left. I tossed a chunk of meat on the porch and watched as he tore into it like a T. rex , mumbling lasciviously under his breath.
    Then I collapsed on the sofa and lit my first joint in weeks.
    It wasn’t like me to have gone without grass that long. I’ve been a confirmed pothead half my life, finding release in my nightly joint the way the other Gabriel Noones have found it in their bourbon.
    But I also know that dope erases nothing, merely underscores that which is already there. Now that Jess was gone I was wary of facing my solitude stoned. Who knew what fresh terrors might emerge in the wide-screen version of my grief?
    But something had changed already. My one conversation with Pete had brought me the childish consolations of laughter and spontaneity. I wanted more of that, I guess, so I convinced myself—only moments before I called him—that a toke or two couldn’t hurt.
    He answered on the