The Night Listener : A Novel

own torment. I didn’t want to undermine his fragile new belief system.
    “Your mom was right,” I said. “It does belong to you. But it takes courage to own it in public. Maybe more than I have. That’s why I admire what you did, Pete.”
    “You could do it, too.”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “Your life was worse?”
    “God, no. Not even close.”
    “Why not, then?”
    “Because I’m always too aware of the effect I’m making. I’m afraid people will lose interest if I don’t keep tap-dancing. My whole mechanism is about charming people. And fixing things that can’t be fixed. That’s why I tell stories: it helps me create order where none exists. So I jiggle stuff around until it makes sense to me and I can see a pattern. Then I split myself up into a dozen different people and let them tell the truth. It’s not very brave, Pete. In fact, it’s pretty cowardly.”
    “You wrote about being gay. That wasn’t cowardly.”
    “And what a perfect little fag I was, too. With the perfect witticisms and the perfect relationship.”
    “You weren’t so perfect to me.”
    “Oh, really?”
    “No…you were like…really insecure. You thought everything was about you, even when it wasn’t. And you treated Jamie…or Jess or whoever the fuck it was…like he was already dead or something.” This hit me like a two-by-four across the face. “You don’t say.”
    “Yeah. And that shit gets old, man.”
    “I guess so.”
    “But it felt like the truth. It felt like I knew you.” There was barely a breath left in me. “Maybe you knew somebody I didn’t know.”
    “C’mon.”
    “I mean it. I don’t see myself very clearly.”
    “Then look at the people who love you. That’s what Mom says when I get…you know, confused and shit. Look into their eyes and see what they’re seeing; that’s all you need to know about yourself.” By now there were tears scalding my cheeks, and there was nothing I could do but let it happen. I had arrived without ceremony at the place I had feared the most. Holding the phone away, I took broad angry swipes at my eyes and tried to collect myself.
    “Gabriel?”
    “Yeah, I’m here.”
    “You okay, man?”
    “No. Not really.”
    “If I said something that—”
    “No, Pete, no. It wasn’t you.”
    “Then why…”
    “Jess moved out last week. He wants to be by himself for a while.
    I’m not really sure if…” I couldn’t finish, as well as I knew this speech. My grievances seemed so paltry and self-indulgent when recited to a thirteen-year-old who’d been fucked by his father and sold into prostitution. There he lay, scaffolded in chrome and entangled in tubes, while a melodramatic old queen whimpered away about losing his warm-and-fuzzy. It wasn’t the way it was supposed to be.
    But Pete was already on the case. “Do you know why he left?”
    “No,” I said. “Not completely.”
    “What do you know?”
    I couldn’t let him take me there. “Pete, look…this is sweet, but—”
    “Fuck you, I’m not sweet! Talk to me, man.” I hesitated a moment. “I’m just not comfortable with that, Pete.”
    “Why?”
    “I just…”
    “Because I’m not a dicksmoker?”
    I startled myself with a noise that resembled laughter. “No. It’s just that it’s kind of personal and…you know, sexual. I don’t think it’s really appropriate, considering.”
    “Considering what?”
    I didn’t have an answer ready.
    “Are you calling me a kid or something?”
    “No. Well, yeah, I guess I am.”
    “You think I don’t know about that shit?”
    “Pete…”
    “I bet I know more than you do.”
    This was more than boyish bluster, of course. I’d read Pete’s book, after all. My sex life was a mere skirmish compared to the world war he had endured for the past six years. Why was I trying to protect him? And from what? My feeble little French-vanilla existence?
    “Anyway,” said Pete, “I might as well be gay. My ward was nothing but gay guys. And half those other jackoffs thought I was gay.”
    “Who?”
    “At the hospital. The pediatric AIDS people. They got all these shrinks and social workers, and they ask you all this shit, but all they wanna know is if you liked it.”
    “Liked what?”
    “Takin’ it up the butt.”
    “Jesus, Pete.”
    “I’m just tellin’ ya.”
    “They didn’t ask you that, did they?”
    “Not like that, no. But that’s what they wanna know.”
    “But why on earth would it—”
    “Get a clue, man. They