The Night Listener : A Novel (13 page)

“Yeah. It was like I’d just been born, like she was the only mother I ever had.”

“She was, Pete. She is.”

“I know. Shit, man, I know that better than…” He couldn’t finish this thought because of a coughing jag, one that grew in ferocity until it unnerved me. Then came a shrill wheezing sound, a noise I’d never heard him make. This is it, I thought. And I’ll be the only witness.

“Pete, is your mom there? Or somebody who can—”

“It’s okay,” he gasped.

“Maybe you should ring—”

“No. I wanna be with you.”

“I know, Pete, but—”

“I’m okay, now. See?”

His breathing had improved, but it was still labored, so I asked again where Donna was.

“Down the hall. I asked her for privacy.”

“Don’t you think you should—”

“No. I’m fine. There’s a button here if it gets bad.”

“But how do you know if—”

“I know, okay? I’ve been livin’ with this shit.”

“Well, catch your breath, then.”

“Okay.”

He didn’t talk for a while, but I could still hear his tortured breathing. Finally he said: “I don’t want you to go yet.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Are you still holding me?”

“Sure.”

“You know what I’d like?”

“What?”

“If we could do this for real.”

I wasn’t sure what to say. Pete had always been too straight with me to be humored like a child, and I didn’t want to promise him something I couldn’t deliver. On the other hand, if this was a last request…

“Actually,” I said, “your mom did say something about her chili.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. When you’re feeling better.”

“You mean, like…coming to Wysong?”

“That’s what it sounded like.”

“It’s kind of a suckhole, you know.”

I laughed. “I wouldn’t be coming for the antique auto museum.” Pete giggled. “How’d you know about that?”

“Your mom told me.”

“It’s the boringest place in the world, but there’s a pretty decent lake down the road. We could go fishing together.” A ludicrous image formed in my head: Andy and Opie with their fishing poles, whistling their way down that country road. Pete was as much a fantasist as I was, but how could I begrudge him that?

“Great,” I said. “But why don’t we just walk around the lake?”

“You don’t like fishing?”

“Not really.”

“Why not?”

“I’ve never been persuaded they don’t feel pain.” I expected a teasing retort, but it never came. “I kinda know what you mean,” he said.

“Good. It’s a date, then.”

“Cool.”

“But you gotta stick around for it.”

“I hear you,” he said.

“You think you could get some sleep now?”

“Could you tell me a story first?”

“A story?”

“Don’t gimme any shit, okay?”

I wasn’t about to do that. It was painfully clear that Pete was claiming one of the missing rituals of his childhood while there was still time to do it.

“What sort of story?” I asked.

“Like one on the radio.”

“Those are all written in advance, sport.”

“So write me one now.”

“I wish it were that simple. I spend days working on a page sometimes. And lately I haven’t even done that.”

“Yeah. They’ve all been reruns.”

I issued a weary sigh. “Pitiful, isn’t it?”

“Tell me about your dad, then.”

A day or so earlier I would have offered a salty response, but so much about my relationship with the boy had already changed.

Now it somehow seemed as if he were inquiring into his own ances-try, so I couldn’t very well disparage his grandfather. “What would you like to know?” I asked.

“Did you ever go fishing with him?”

I thought about that. “Maybe once or twice. I think he was the same way as me, actually.”

“About the fish, you mean?”

“Yeah. I know he hated hunting. He had no respect for men who went off into the woods with guns. And sports were no big deal either. He never inflicted that one on me, thank God. Which was a good thing, since I was a miserable athlete.”

“What did he like, then?”

“Oh…gardening, mostly, and worshipping our ancestors and being with my mother. He yelled at her a lot, but he adored her. He hated it when they were separated.”

“Was he a writer, too?”

“No, not really. Well, he wrote a family history once. And he was an excellent storyteller.”

“Before bed, you mean.”

“Oh, no. It was more like…you know, to the whole room.”

“Like you.”

I laughed. “Yeah, I guess. Like me.”

“He sounds great.”

“Well…a lot about him was, yes.”

“He’s dead, you mean?”

“Oh, no. Not by a long shot.”

“Do you talk to him like this? On the phone.”

“Well…yeah, if there’s a birthday or something. He’s no good at the spontaneous stuff. He has to have a reason. And I get a little tired of always being the one who calls.”

“Oh, man, if I had a dad…”

“Hey, I thought we’d just arranged that.” Another significant pause, and then: “That didn’t weird you out?”

“No…well, maybe at first, but…I want you to call me that, okay?

I want to be that person for you.”

He started to cry again.

“I know,” I said. “You could do a lot better.”

“Fuck you,” he said.

“Hey…that’s ‘Fuck you, Dad.’”

We talked for another five minutes or so. Trivial stuff mostly, since I wanted to lessen the urgency of saying goodbye. The end announced itself naturally enough, when Pete’s voice began to dwindle.

But he said “I love you” before we signed off, and I said it back to him.

And I remember thinking how easily those words had come, and how preposterously
true
they seemed, and how they would seem that way for years to come, even if they proved to be our last.

NINE

MORE THAN ELEPHANTS

THE SIDEWALK OUTSIDE Pasqua was bustling with Bears: big guys in beards and suspenders who would have been called portly in an earlier age. Though they often gathered here in—what? packs?—their furry-shouldered presence was especially evident this morning. Was there a convention in town, I wondered, some mass migration from the hinterlands? There was a distinct tribal hum in the coffeehouse, the kind you hear on an airplane when every passenger but you is travelling to the same ball game.

I waited in line with a trio of grizzlies, then took my turkey pesto sandwich to a table in the corner, where I pondered my identity. At just under two hundred pounds I was certainly eligible for Beardom.

What would it be like to abandon the gym, to sa yes to jelly doughnuts, to buy a pair of roomy overalls and learn to eroticize fat? Bears were supposed to be free of attitude, weren’t they? I liked the idea of that, and of reviving the carnal democracy of yore, before steroids and circuit parties had bullied so many men into seeking identical pneumatic bodies.

Then again, I already knew how it felt to be thirty pounds heavier.

At the height of my domesticity with Jess I had lost my body-consciousness to such an extent that I stopped consulting the scales and started wearing sweatpants. Jess found me sexy in any size, he claimed, so I relaxed and ignored the obvious. I didn’t realize how much had changed until I went on a book tour in Europe and read my own press profiles. Photographs can be denied as easily as mirrors, but even translated from the Finnish the word “fat” is sufficiently clear. So I joined a gym when I got home—not a gay one, which would have been too intimidating, but the gym down at the UC Medical Center, three blocks from the house. And I hired a trainer this time, adding financial commitment to my growing list of incentives.

My body changed in subtle ways—and slowly—but it changed.

It was thrilling to discover the muscles in my back, to see my chest begin to expand, to feel that deep exquisite soreness the day after.

And my thrice-weekly endorphin rush was an antidepressant like none I’d ever known. As Jess grew ever more distant and restless, my workouts became a routine bordering on a habit. (It was as if some part of me already
knew
I was about to require a much deeper reserve of self-esteem.) I was so pleased with my progress that I bought a pair of 501s—the first I’d braved in over a decade—though I snipped off that faux-leather label on the waist. Thirty-six was respectable, I told myself, but hardly worth advertising.

I was wearing my delabelled Levi’s today, in fact. And wondering for the first time in ages if my basket was presented to its best advantage. Or did guys in their thirties even give a damn about fifty-four-year-old baskets?
I
certainly hadn’t, as I recalled. Once, for instance, when I was doing PR for a local hotel, the owner, a burly, white-haired guy in his fifties, asked me jovially if I had ever seen his cock. Before I could answer, he had reached into his desk and produced a plaster cast of the member in question, fully engorged. It was the proverbial baby’s arm, ropy-veined and magnificent, and I was instantly drawn to it—but not, alas, to its proud owner. Looking back, I wonder why I didn’t just drop to my knees and narrow my focus a little. But all I could manage then was a clumsy compliment, as if the nice gentle-man, a much braver soul than I, had just shown me a snapshot of his grandchild.

I had been in the coffeehouse for at least ten minutes before I realized Jess was there. He was at a table near the window with a group of leathermen, most of them shiny-skulled and stacked like chorus girls. There was no clean escape without awkwardness, so I waited until I was sure he wasn’t gripping the knee of anyone in particular, then made my way over. He was seated with his back to me, but he seemed to sense my approach and turned around. Or maybe someone had nudged him under the table.

“Hi,” he said quietly, as if we were alone.

“I’m not stalking you,” I joked, realizing he’d wonder a little, since Pasqua had never been a haunt of mine. I’d come here for the reasons he’d probably first come: the camaraderie and mild sexual energy, the chance to be alone in a crowd without alcohol.

He introduced me to his friends—as his partner, amazingly—then invited me to join them.

“Thanks,” I said. “I gotta get back. I’m hopelessly behind on this episode.”

Jess gave me a private smile, recognizing a glamorous lie told for the benefit of the others. “I’ll walk you out,” he said.

When we were on the sidewalk, he added: “I wanted to tell you that I called Pete.”

I hadn’t expected this. “Oh, yeah?”

“How bad off
is
he, anyway?”

“What do you mean?” I was fretting already, though Donna had promised she would call me if he got any worse. It had been at least three days since our last conversation.

“He sounds awful,” said Jess. “Congested.” I told him that was business as usual.

“He’s a spunky little fucker, isn’t he?”

“What did you talk about?”

“Oh…Matthew Shepard, mostly.”

“Who?”

“That kid in Wyoming.”

“What kid in Wyoming?”

“You haven’t seen a newspaper, have you? Look over there.” He pointed to the corner of Eighteenth and Castro, where a makeshift shrine was already materializing on the sidewalk: burned-out rain-bow candles and limp bouquets, a grainy blowup of a sweet-faced young man. “A couple of cowboys picked him up in a bar. Tied him to a fence and pistol-whipped him to a pulp. In front of their fucking girlfriends.” I winced. “He was gay, you mean?”

“What do
you
think? It was Wyoming.” Jess’s face was flushed with outrage, but there were tears in his eyes. This was what I loved him for: the pent-up passion of that big, gentle, wounded heart.

“Is he dead?” I asked.

“Might as well be, apparently.”

“Jesus.”

“I didn’t bring it up, by the way. He did.”

“Who?”

“Pete. He was crying about it. About how mean the world can be.”

“He knows enough about
that
,” I said.

Jess wiped his eyes. “He said to tell you he’s enjoying the magazine. Whatever that means.”

I smiled. “Good. He got it.”

“Got what?”

I explained about the
Playboy
, knowing Jess would understand.

Another reason I loved him: he saw sex as everybody’s blessing.

“Do you think he’s hiding it?” he asked.

“I would imagine. It’s required by the laws of puberty, isn’t it?” Jess couldn’t let that one slip by. “Don’t tell me you ever hid
Playboys
.”

“No. But I saw them sometimes. And I was turned on.”

“‘Sex in the Cinema,’ right?”

I laughed. “Some of those guys were hot. Not to mention naked.

You didn’t get a lot of that back then.”

“So you’ve told me.” The teasing look he gave me spoke to our age difference, and how long we’d been together, and how well he knew the particulars of my shopworn stories.

“Are you gonna talk to him again?” I asked.

“Pete?”

“Yeah. I’m not sure he’s getting the best advice about treatment.

And the doctors at that hospital act like he’s dead already.”

“I know. He told me.”

“It’s really unbelievable.”

“Yeah…it is…as a matter of fact.” There was a deepening crease in his forehead that disturbed me.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean…some of it really
is
unbelievable.”

“In what way?”

“No doctors are
that
insensitive, you know. Not to a kid with AIDS. Not nowadays.”

“Well…maybe not here…but he’s in Milwaukee. It’s probably a lot different back there. What are you getting at?”

“Just that he might be…revving it up a little. Telling you what you want to hear.”

“What are you talking about? Why would I want to hear that he’s being treated like a piece of meat?”

Jess remained calm. “It just makes for a better story. And it makes it that much easier to care about him.”

“
A better story?
”

“He’s a writer, isn’t he? A pretty good one, you said.”

“So he’s making all of this up, just to give me a—”

“I didn’t say he was making anything up. Don’t put words in my mouth, Gabriel. You do that way too much.” We had stumbled upon a larger issue—and a much more threatening one—so I softened my tone. “Then what are you saying?”