The Night Listener : A Novel

telltale black box.
    The things I knew for sure had become a litany I recited to friends on the telephone: Jess had taken an apartment on Buena Vista Park.
    He wanted space, he said, a place to be alone. He had spent a decade expecting to die, and now he planned to think about living. (He could actually do that, he realized, without having to call it denial.) He would meditate and read, and focus on himself for once. He couldn’t say for sure when he’d be back, or if he’d ever be back, or if I’d even want him when it was over. I was not to take this personally, he said; it had nothing to do with me.
    Then, after stuffing his saddlebags full of protease inhibitors, he pecked me solemnly on the lips and mounted the red motorcycle he had taught himself to ride six months earlier. I’d never trusted that machine. Now, as I watched it roar off down the hill, I realized why: It had always seemed made for this moment.
    The solitude that followed sent me around the bend. Or at least into the Castro once a day, where I foraged for pork chops and porn tapes, just to be among the living. It was weird doing this after a decade of cocooning with Jess. All those bullet-headed boys with their goatees and tats. All those old guys like me shambling along in their dyed mustaches and gentlemen’s jeans, utterly amazed to still be there, still out shopping for love.
    And the creeping genericism of it all, the Body Shops and Sunglass Huts of any American mall. The place had become a theme park for homos, where the names of icons were writ large upon the wall of the flashy new juice bar. I couldn’t help checking, of course, and there I was, GABRIEL NOONE—just to the left of the wheat-grass machine—between OSCAR WILDE and MARTINA NAVRATILOVA.
    Even in my depression, I got a rush out of that, and the way my name would surface softly in my wake as I walked down the street.
    Once I was stopped by the tour guide for an operation called
    “Cruisin’ the Castro.” With genial decorum she offered me up like a resident artifact to a dozen visitors from Germany and Holland.
    They applauded politely, standing there in the midst of the busy sidewalk, and one of them asked how Jess was doing. I said he was fine, that the new cocktail was working wonders, that his energy levels had never been higher, that he had a real chance to live, thank God. And they were all so happy to hear that.
    I left before anyone could see what a fraud I was. Or notice that the video under my arm was called Dr. Jerkoff and Mr. Hard .
    Then one afternoon my bookkeeper, Anna, came by the house to drop off checks for my signature. I had explained things to her on the phone, since Jess had always handled our finances. She took it in stride, but I detected a trace of motherly concern. This felt odd coming from a twenty-one-year-old, but I accepted it gratefully.
    It was Anna who made the Pete thing possible. Without her inter-vention that morning, he would never have found his way into my rapidly shrinking orbit. She and I were holed up in the office—Jess’s office—sorting receipts and combing the mail for bills. I could have managed this on my own, but Anna, I think, had noticed my red-rimmed eyes and was trying to keep me company. Her own eyes, glossy black in a heart-shaped face, would study me solemnly when she thought I wasn’t looking. I remember noticing a faint resemblance to Olivia Hussey in Lost Horizon , a reference so hopelessly antediluvian I didn’t even bother to express it.
    “That looks interesting,” she said, pushing a parcel my way. It was a padded envelope, about eight by ten.
    “Don’t bet on it,” I said. “It’s just galleys.”
    “Photos?”
    “No. Galleys for a book. Some editor wants something blurbed.”
    “You can tell that from the package?”
    “In the dark,” I said, “and blindfolded.” I pointed to the colophon on the envelope. “It’s from Argus Press, see?” I might have also told her how the cover letter would read. How it would acknowledge the many demands on my time and the number of manuscripts that must come my way each week. How it would go on to point out that just a few kind words from a writer of my stature would help this searing memoir, this tender coming-out novel, this fabulous celebrity AIDS cookbook, find its way to “the audience it so richly deserves.” Meaning, of course, fags.
    But I kept quiet. I didn’t want Anna to see how poisonous a broken heart could be. I wanted her on my