The Night Listener : A Novel

life, not cruising toilets in his tractor-trailer. I also knew that my imagination had a way of turning feral after sex, roaming the landscape like some ravenous snuffling beast. This had sometimes proved useful in my work, in fact, when the beast didn’t get out of hand. When it didn’t turn on me with a slobbery yellow grin and start to weird me out…
    “Do you live around here?” I asked.
    The man shook his head as he polished off his candy bar. “Florida.”
    I checked the photo again. There was even a ragged palm tree as proof. I let go of my nasty reverie with a sigh.
    “What?” said the man.
    “Nothing. Florida’s nice.”
    “Lots nicer’n this.” He rolled on his side and gripped my leg between his furry thighs like a bear shinnying up a tree. “Too goddamn cold here.”
    He’s really nice, I thought. Just a regular guy who needs the comfort of other guys sometimes. I was certain he was a closet case—that eternal bane of my existence—but I forgave him everything for holding on to me, for needing my warmth that night as much as I needed his.
    “My name’s Gabriel,” I ventured without offering my hand, which would have felt foolish, since I’d already offered everything else.
    “Named after the angel?”
    “No. My father. And my grandfather.”
    “Oh.”
    “They weren’t angels. Still aren’t.”
    “Your grandfather’s still alive?”
    “No. But the old man is.”
    “You get along?”
    “We don’t talk that much,” I explained. “He’s a banker, and…I’m not.”
    “What are you?”
    I hesitated, fearful of forfeiting this peaceful anonymity. “I’m a writer,” I said at last.
    “What kinda writer?”
    “Novels. Stories.”
    “Like what? John Grisham or something?”
    “No. Not exactly.” My postcoital confidence was slipping by the second. Why, I wondered in an ugly spasm of self-betrayal, had I never written a novel like John Grisham? A novel that a regular guy like this might have read? Had I been preaching to the choir all my life? “My stuff is on the radio, too,” I said, trying another angle.
    “Ever listen to NPR?”
    The guy just frowned at me. “What’s your last name?” he asked.
    “Noone.”
    “Gabriel Noone?”
    “Yeah.”
    The frown deepened as he shook his head. “No. Sorry.”
    “That’s okay.”
    “I don’t read much, I guess. And I mostly just play tapes in the…”
    “So what does your wife think?”
    The guy drew back. “About what?”
    “You know…sucking dick in the back of your truck.”
    “Hey, man!” My partner in passion scrambled to his knees, his eyes narrowing in anger and alarm. “What the fuck is this?”
    “Nothing. I was just wondering what—”
    “If you’re a cop or something, you was the one who grabbed my dick!”
    “I know, I know. Stay cool.”
    He remained there on his knees, breathing heavily, distinctly Neanderthal in his panic.
    “I’m not a cop,” I said quietly. “Or anything like it.” I offered him a faint, peacemaking smile. “I’m just another queer like you.”
    “Fuck you. I’m not a queer.”
    “Okay. Sorry. Whatever. It doesn’t matter.”
    “It fuckin’ matters to me. What was that shit about my wife?”
    “Nothing, man. I was just curious. I didn’t mean to give you grief.
    Really.”
    This was a lie, of course. I had meant to give him grief. I’d meant to make him squirm for a moment, to punish him in some small but palpable way for not recognizing my name. And here was the kicker: if he were to beat me to death with a tire iron and dump my body in a snowbank, I’d have only my vanity to blame.
    He was still breathing heavily, still glowering at me. “My wife is a goddamn saint, all right?”
    “I’m sure. I’m sure she is.”
    He picked up my jeans and flung them at me. “Get dressed and get the fuck outa here.”
    I accomplished that in record time, scrambling down the side of that gleaming red mountain without attempting another word. But I misjudged the distance and fell hard against the icy asphalt, skinning my palm in the process. I staggered to my feet, ignoring my newfound stigmata, and strode briskly away, pausing only once to look back at the truck. I remember finding irony—if not exactly amusement—in the sign I saw emblazoned on its bumper.
    It said: WIDE LOAD.
    Back in my room, I collected my wits as I dabbed at my bloody hand.
    My first instinct was to call Jess. Not because I’d had a scare and feared briefly for my life, but because I’d