Read The Night Listener : A Novel for Free Online

then nudged my shoulder like a puppy wanting attention. I pushed it away, lost in a sudden flashback. We had been here together, a year or so earlier, soaking under an out-of-focus moon, when Jess turned and studied the slope behind us. “This is where I want my ashes to go,” he said. His tone had been casual and informative, the one he would use in bookstores, say, when pointing out some other author’s enviable new dump bin. So I looked into those buried blue eyes and tried to divine their message. Don’t make a fuss over this, they seemed to be saying, and I understood immediately. For he had given me something so huge and enduring that nothing less than silence could ever contain it.
    “You got it,” I said, and we left it at that.
    As I passed the office in my bathrobe I complimented Anna on her snappy new hair color. She turned from the computer with a crooked smile, as if to accept my subterranean apology. “It’s the same as Pam’s,” she said.
    “A friend?”
    “No. On The Real World .”
    I still didn’t get it.
    “You know. Pedro Zamora’s housemate? MTV?”
    “Oh, yeah. Of course.”
    “It’s D’ or’s idea mostly.”
    I drew another blank.
    “My other mother. My mom’s partner? She was a model back in the seventies, and she’s always giving me fashion tips. Whether I want ‘em or not. She makes me feel like Eurasian Barbie.” I shrugged. “You could say no.”
    “Oh, I don’t care. It’s no big deal. It’s just hair and stuff. And she just started doing it. I wasn’t, like, you know, JonBenet Ramsey or anything.”
    Her breezy gothicism made me smile, then sent my thoughts 38 / ARMISTEAD MAUPIN
    hurtling back to Pete. Amazingly, it seemed to do the same for Anna.
    She paused, apparently weighing her words, then cast me a look of sweet contrition. “I guess I shouldn’t have checked your machine?” I felt like such a bully. My ham-handed effort at saving the story for Jess had apparently come off like an accusation of eavesdropping.
    “Oh, no,” I said. “Check anything you want. It would help, really.
    I’m not on the planet right now. There aren’t any state secrets on that thing. Trust me.”
    Anna was still looking chastised. “Jess thought there might be a message from your accountant.”
    My breathing must have come to a standstill. “You talked to him?”
    “Your accountant?”
    “No. Jess.”
    “Yeah,” she said cautiously.
    “When?”
    “This morning. That was okay, wasn’t it?”
    “Of course.”
    “He was worried about your quarterlies. They’re coming up next week.”
    My heart turned to goo at the thought that Jess was still looking out for me, even from a distance. Oh sweetie, I thought, you know this is forever, so just stop this bullshit and come home before we break something that can’t be fixed. I was tempted to grill Anna further, but I resisted on her behalf. “That would be a help,” I said finally. “If you’d talk to my accountant, I mean.” I started to leave and then stopped. “He’s thirteen, by the way.”
    “Your accountant?”
    I smiled. “The boy on the phone.”
    Her eyes widened. “Really?”
    “He lives in Milwaukee and he’s had a really shitty life and he writes like an angel.”
    “It didn’t depress you?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “You said it depresses you when other people are brilliant.” I’m sure I must have reddened a little. “This is different.”
    “Why?”
    I hesitated. “I don’t know exactly.” You do too, I told myself. Tell her at least part of the truth. It won’t queer things with Jess if you share this with somebody else. It won’t affect the outcome one way or the other.
    So I spilled a few of the beans: “I guess he sort of has a thing about me.”
    Her brow furrowed gravely. “A thing?”
    “Oh, God, no,” I said, catching her train of thought. “He’s one of my listeners.”
    “Oh.”
    “He thinks of me…kind of like a father.”
    “Why?”
    It was embarrassing to