The Night Listener : A Novel

just not the right time.”
    “Oh…sure…other visitors or something?”
    “God, no. We’re bored silly out here. A little stimulation would be wonderful. Especially from you. But Pete’s immunity is zilch right now, and I just can’t take the risk of outside contamination. I hope you can understand. I’m as disappointed as Pete is.” Disturbed as I was, I didn’t put up a fight. I did let her know that my health was excellent, just in case it mattered.
    “That’s just the problem,” she said. “Your system can easily live with things that would kill Pete. You could pick up a simple flu bug on the plane that he wouldn’t be able to shake. One more strain on his system right now would be…all she wrote.”
    “It’s that bad?”
    She answered with a sigh. “I try to downplay it around him, so he doesn’t feel like a china doll. But it’s really precarious at the moment.”
    I didn’t know what to feel: renewed concern for Pete’s health or frustration over a clever excuse I could never refute. I certainly didn’t want to infect Pete, but, until now, he hadn’t exactly sounded like a boy in a bubble. And what about all those trips to the hospital? He must have encountered new people all the time. Why would one more be so threatening?
    “Even his buddies from the hospital have to keep their distance,” Donna went on. “They have to wear masks and wave at him from across the room. It cramps his style something awful. He loves being around people. Thank God he’s got the telephone.” Fine, I thought. But why did you even invite me in the first place?
    “I don’t expect this to be permanent,” she added, as if in response to my silent rebuttal. “I’d love for you to visit soon. But we got some new tests back yesterday that were pretty disappointing, and I would never forgive myself if he were to…”
    “I understand, Donna. Really.”
    “Oh, I hope so, Gabe. I really do.”
    There was something about the inflection of that phrase that sounded disturbingly like Pete.
    But Pete, of course, would have known not to call me Gabe.
    I called Jess to cancel his house-sitting duties, but there was no answer, so I left a message. He came by the house early that evening, obviously still uninformed, having spent the day on the run. I tried to ease into the news, but somehow he sniffed it out and jumped ahead of me: “She bailed on you, didn’t she?”
    “Well, I wouldn’t put it that way, but—”
    “I knew this would happen!” He wore a look of fiery triumph, as if some risky, far-flung investment was finally showing big di-vidends.
    “Of course you knew,” I said darkly. “You always do.” He regarded me through half-lidded eyes. “Meaning?”
    “You predict calamity, and calamity happens. It’s not that hard to do, you know. If you’re always suspecting the worst, every now and then you’re bound to be right.”
    He studied me, assessing my emotional state, and apparently decided that another raving madman would be more than the moment could safely support. “So what did she say?” he asked with uncommon calm.
    “Does it matter?”
    “I would be interested, yes. If you don’t mind.” I hesitated. “He got some tests back yesterday. She worried about him picking something up.”
    “What sort of tests?”
    “I don’t know, Jess. The usual, I guess. I didn’t ask.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because I didn’t want to sound like I was interrogating her. I didn’t want her to think I was suspicious.”
    “ Are you suspicious?”
    “I don’t know what I am.”
    “But you think she thinks you’re suspicious?”
    “I don’t know. Probably not. I’m being way too paranoid, I guess.”
    “Why should you be paranoid at all? You haven’t done anything.”
    “I know. But I’m still…I dunno…afraid.”
    “Of what? That she’ll figure out you’re on to her and won’t let you talk to him anymore?”
    I shrugged. He’d come excruciatingly close to the truth.
    “Do you know how strange that sounds?”
    “Yes,” I said quietly. “I believe I do.”
    “You’re never gonna meet him, you know.”
    “Jess…”
    “You know what else, sweetie? Someday soon she’s gonna call you and tell you that he died the night before, and that’s how she’ll end it. And you’ll just have to live with that, because you’ll never be able to prove it one way or the other.”
    “Well, thank you so much for that. That helps a whole fucking lot.”
    “No, listen to me. If you