The Night Listener : A Novel

resolution you wanted.”
    “Don’t worry about it.”
    “If you’d like me to pull your blurb, by the way…”
    “Oh, no. Leave it.”
    “You’re sure?”
    “Absolutely.”
    And that was the truth, largely.
    That afternoon Anna left a message on the machine about collecting my latest receipts. I picked up the phone as soon as I realized who it was.
    “Sure,” I said. “Drop by anytime.”
    “Oh…Jess…I didn’t think you’d be there.”
    “This is Gabriel,” I told her.
    “Oh…sorry. Wow, you guys sound just alike on the phone.”
    I laughed.
    “You’ve never been told that?”
    “Oh, yes. Many times. But it’s especially funny right now.” Why hadn’t I thought of that earlier? People who live together, who rely on each other for emotional support, often grow to sound alike. It had happened with me and Jess, and it had even happened to Anna, I learned.
    “My brother and I are like that,” she told me. “Drives people nuts.
    We’re twins, of course, so that helps, but you’d think it wouldn’t work that way when one’s a boy and one’s a girl.” And with those words she handily validated my thesis.
    “Boy, have I got a story for you,” I told her.
    I had coffee ready when Anna arrived, so she could sit and listen without interruption. I have to say I relished the telling of the tale.
    There were aspects of it that still disturbed me, even as I put it to bed, but it helped to study someone else’s reaction, to counter the chaos of real life with the symmetry of a neat little mystery, neatly resolved.
    “It makes so much sense,” I told her, “when you think about it.
    She gave Pete a whole new existence, a whole new family. She even gave him his name back. And after all those hours on the couch he must have…absorbed some of the qualities of her speech. There’s a name for it, isn’t there? Imprinting or something?” Anna gaped at me. “This was that kid on the machine? The one who called you Dicksmoker?” I chuckled. “Yeah.”
    “You thought that was a woman?”
    “I thought it could have been,” I said. “For a little while.” I was already beginning to be embarrassed. Talk about imprinting. Jess had implanted the idea of an elaborate hoax with barely any effort at all.
    “And you don’t think that anymore?”
    I shook my head. “It’s just too far-fetched.”
    “But if nobody’s ever seen him…”
    “Nobody I know has ever seen him. There’s a big difference.”
    “So why don’t you just call the hospital and ask if he’s a patient there?”
    It was such a no-nonsense Anna-like suggestion, but it instantly made me shudder. “I can’t do that,” I said.
    “Why not?”
    “I don’t know the hospital, for one thing. And they probably register him under an alias, anyway.”
    “You’ll never know until you ask.”
    “No. It might get back to him.”
    “What would be terrible about that?”
    “I’m way too close to him, Anna. He trusts me. And I want him to know I trust him. I don’t want to sneak around behind his back.” She gave me an off-kilter smile. “This person who might not exist.”
    “Yes.”
    “Do you even know what he looks like?”
    I was ready for that one. I pulled out my wallet and produced the snapshot with the startling green eyes, handing it to her with a prideful smile. She studied it for a moment in silence.
    “He sent you this?”
    I nodded. “Well…Donna did.”
    She gave it back to me. “Sweet-looking kid.” She might as well have added: Whoever he is .
    I returned the snap to my wallet, feeling awkward and a little foolish. Anna peered into her coffee cup intently, as if there were vital clues swimming just below the surface. “You know who he reminded me of on the machine?”
    “Who?”
    “Bart Simpson.”
    I smiled. “That actually occurred to me, too.” She took a sip of her coffee as she considered something for a while. Then she looked back at me and widened those Olivia Hussey eyes for greater dramatic effect. “Bart Simpson is a woman, you know.”
    “Pardon me?”
    “On the cartoon. That’s actually a woman’s voice.” She had intended to rattle me, so I tried not to show how well she’d succeeded. “I guess I knew that,” I said evenly. “Or read it.
    Now that you mention it.”
    Her gaze returned to her coffee.
    “And you know who you remind me of?” I asked.
    “Who?”
    “Jess. He loves to tantalize me with that kind of shit, then see where I’ll run in my