The Night Listener : A Novel

standing on a bluff at Big Sur. That had to be Frank, I realized, Jess’s so-called “motorcycle buddy.”
    There was nothing of me.
    “Orange, okay?”
    “What?…Oh, yeah, fine.”
    Why would he leave that photo there if he knew I was coming?
    Wouldn’t it be common decency to take it down? Or did he want me to see it? Was this his way of making something official?
    “I was at Barb’s yesterday,” he said, handing me the glass of juice.
    “Oh, yeah?” Barb was his doctor, a gentle, dapper dyke who wore men’s suits and retro wire-rimmed glasses. Jess adored her.
    “My viral load is zero.”
    He said this so quietly, so tentatively, that I wasn’t sure at first how much weight to give it. “You mean it’s…?” He nodded. “It seems to be inactive. I’m actually growing T cells.” I’d like to believe there was a moment when I received this news with unalloyed joy. Here, after all, was the miracle I’d never dared permit myself. But if that moment occurred, it was swept away in a flood of bitter irony. For the great love I’d longed for all my life had been a certainty only while Jess was dying. Now that he had a future again—or the hope of one, at least—all deals were off. How loudly was I expected to rejoice?
    “God, babe,” I said. “That is so wonderful.”
    “Isn’t it?”
    I gave him a clumsy hug, still holding the glass of juice.
    “Barb says I’m a poster boy for the cocktail.”
    “Jesus, that is just great.” I should have elaborated, I know, or asked a few pertinent questions or hugged him again or something , but I couldn’t pull it off. Not in my current state. Not with Frank staring at me from the refrigerator.
    Jess seemed to study me for a moment, then headed into the living room. “I got a call from Passavoy. He says it’s a go.” Passavoy was an executive at Curtain Call, the cable network that wanted to film me reading my stuff. Or had wanted to, once upon a time. Despite what I’d told my father—that brazen invocation of Alistair Cooke—the project had been stalled for over a year. Money was tight, and producers had moved on, and dozens of encouraging phone calls had come to nothing. We had all but given up several times.
    “You think he’s for real?” I asked.
    “Who the hell knows?” Jess dropped to a secondhand sofa I didn’t recognize. Had he bought it himself? Or borrowed it from one of his HIV/leather buddies? “I’ll believe it,” he said, “when I see the contract.”
    I sat next to him, but not too close to presume anything.
    “I wondered what I should do,” he said.
    “What do you mean? It’s what we want, isn’t it?”
    “No…I mean…do you still want me to handle things?” He was looking directly into my eyes.
    “God, babe, sure…of course.”
    He shrugged. “I wasn’t sure what you wanted to do.”
    “Sweetie…” I hesitated for a moment, then risked a hand on his knee. “I can’t imagine any of this without you. We did it all together.
    It wouldn’t be any fun anymore.”
    “I liked it, too.”
    “Good.” I squeezed his knee. “Then don’t make it past tense.” His face was unreadable, but he eventually gave me a small, tentative smile. “I’ve got an idea for the set.” Already I felt such a flood of relief. “What?”
    “Well…sort of a Nicholas Nickleby thing that rotates around you.
    Your chair could be in the middle and remain…you know, fixed.
    But the rest of the set could change slightly as the chapters change.
    You know, different rooms on different levels. Or trees for the out-door stuff. It could be really beautiful, if we get the lighting right.” It was so calming to hear him say “we” again, to know he’d been thinking about this, planning our future. I thought how lucky I was to have found him, this man who cared about my vision of things, who wanted to make it grander and richer, more accessible to the world. I felt such tenderness toward him. “I love that,” I said, meaning “I love you.”
    “It would work, wouldn’t it?”
    “Oh, yeah. Absolutely.”
    “But not too gimmicky. Like that Spalding Gray movie with those ugly psychedelic gels.”
    “No. God, no. I hated that.”
    “And I want us to be in charge. We’re gonna get your name in the title—not above it but in it—so you can raise hell if they try to censor the queer stuff. I know these Hollywood pricks. They’ll cut your guts out when you’re not looking, and expect you to be grateful.
    We’re not