The Night Listener : A Novel

something else altogether, some terrible news he had yet to break?
    “Smells great,” I said. “Straits Café?” He nodded. “Spring rolls and okra. And I got us some of those barbecued oysters.”
    Savoring the sound of us , I took the bag into the kitchen and began to arrange the food on plates. Jess followed and stood in the doorway, surveying the room. It was littered with dirty dishes and empty takeout boxes, completely betraying my state of mind.
    “Are you okay?” he asked.
    I shook my head. “Something awful’s happened.” He gazed at me solemnly. “I know.”
    For a moment I felt a flicker of hope. “Did Pete call you?”
    “No. Anna told me. She’s worried about you.”
    “That’s nice.”
    “Have you heard from him at all?”
    “No. Nothing. They seem to be out of my life.”
    “Did you talk to Findlay about it?”
    “Oh sure.”
    “What did he think?”
    “He wasn’t very forthcoming, but…I’m sure he thinks this proves he was right all along.”
    “That it was a hoax, you mean?”
    “Or something.” I looked him directly in the eyes. “Is that what you still think?”
    He hesitated. “Does it matter?”
    “Oh, yeah, Jess. Absolutely.”
    “Well…the main thing is: it’s not your fault.” I went back to arranging the oysters.
    “You know,” said Jess, “for someone with such a healthy ego you always manage to think the worst of yourself. Why is that?”
    “Look…analysis is the last thing I need right now.” Jess shrugged. “Maybe it’s the first thing.”
    I tried to stay calm. I didn’t want another fight, but I didn’t want to be told how to fix myself either. Not by the man who’d left me.
    “Where shall we eat?” I asked.
    We ate where we always had—on the floor next to the coffee table—and our silence was long and agonizing. It was Jess who broke it: “I’m really sorry,” he said. “About last time.”
    “Oh, sweetie, I am too.”
    “You’re all I’ve really got, you know. Nobody knows me like you do.”
    With no fanfare at all, tears began to spill down my face. I didn’t move though. I was afraid of taking this where it might not be leading.
    “And I’m sorry about Pete,” Jess added, “but I hated having to hear it from Anna.”
    “I know. I wanted to call. I just didn’t know whether you’d—” I cut myself off.
    “What? Say I told you so?”
    “Yeah. Or tell me to stop feeling guilty.” Jess smiled faintly. “Like I just did.”
    “But you understand, don’t you?”
    “A little, I guess, but I think you might be—”
    “I took away his voice, Jess. That’s no small thing.”
    “Well…yeah…if he ever existed in the—”
    “All right, if. If he existed, I took away his voice. He spent two years shaping that atrocity of a life into something he could understand. And I took that away from him overnight. Or caused it to be.” Jess shrugged. “So give it back to him.”
    “What?”
    “You still have that power.”
    “C’mon. I have no power at all. I did everything but rim Findlay, and he wouldn’t even—”
    “You don’t need Findlay. Forget him. You’ve got your own editor.”
    “So? He’ll be no more inclined to publish it than Findlay was.
    Especially when he hears that Argus has—”
    “I’m not talking about Pete’s book, I’m talking about yours —the one you could write from all this. It’s better than any novel, babe.
    Just start at the beginning and tell the whole thing. How you read his galleys and talked to him on the phone and got really close to him and…everything. It’s an amazing story, Gabriel. You couldn’t make this shit up.” I just sat there blinking at him.
    “Don’t you think?” he asked, blinking back.
    “I could never do that.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because, for one thing, I don’t know how it would end.”
    “So get off your butt and go find out.” Jess widened his eyes in a playful, challenging way.
    “Go where, for God’s sake?”
    “Where else? You’ve got their address, don’t you?”
    “Oh, no. Forget it. I could never do that.”
    “Why not? You were all set to go last week.”
    “I was invited then.”
    “Oh, don’t be so damn well bred.” This was one of Jess’s pet themes: while he himself was poor white trash, brash as hell with nothing to lose, I was a timid little country-clubber who tried way too hard not to misbehave. “You don’t even have to write this book,” he said. “You’re living it. Every bit of it is there, if