The Night Listener : A Novel Read Online Free PDF

immensely.
    Then I heard a muffled clunk, which I took to be the phone dropping. And movement of some sort. And the sound of labored breathing.
    “Pete?”
    Nothing.
    “Pete?”
    “It’s okay,” he said. “Stupid tubes.”
    An image came instantly into my head: a small, ruined body strung up like a marionette, struggling desperately to breathe while I was busy being clever. “God, Pete, I’m sorry.”
    “No. It’s cool.”
    “You sure?”
    “Yeah.”
    I listened for his breathing. It seemed to be regular again. “What happened?”
    “I just knocked the damn thing, that’s all. They’re draining my lungs.”
    “I see.”
    “Sounds worse than it is.”
    “What is it? Pneumocystis?”
    “Yeah. As usual.”
    “What about a prophylaxis? Septra or something?”
    “Not for somebody my age.”
    “Oh.”
    “That shit’s so boring, anyway. Let’s talk about something else.
    Do you have an E-mail address?”
    “I don’t, actually.”
    “But you’ve got your own Web site.”
    “Yeah, but Jess does that. I don’t even know how to find it. I use my computer as a word processor.”
    “But E-mail is so easy, man.”
    “I know, and I plan to learn very soon. Just not right now. There’s not enough room in my head.”
    “I could teach you,” Pete offered eagerly. “I taught Warren, and he’s pretty out of it, too.”
    “Thank you,” I said dryly. “Who’s Warren?”
    “My AIDS counselor.”
    “Oh, sure.” Pete had written at length about this man, a social worker in his forties—gay and HIV positive—who had helped to ease him back into the land of the living.
    “Warren’s a big fan of yours, too. We listened to Noone at Night together all the time.”
    “At the hospital, you mean?”
    “No. Later. When I was home. The first time I heard you I was…you know…alone.” His voice quavered on the last word, speaking volumes in the silence that followed.
    “You okay?” I asked.
    “I can’t believe it, that’s all.”
    “What?”
    “That I’m talking to you, man.”
    His worshipful tone unsettled me, so I tried to depersonalize the moment. “That’s what books do, you know. They put you out there to the world. You never know who you’re reaching. Wait’ll your book’s published. You’ll see. You’ll be hearing from everybody.”
    “Right.”
    “I mean it. Who would you like to hear from?”
    “I dunno.”
    “C’mon. There must be somebody you’ve always wanted to meet.” I was talking down to him, I realized, but I couldn’t help it. It was safer somehow to deal with a child than to address the wise and battered old soul I had met in The Blacking Factory .
    “I wouldn’t mind hearing from Cal Ripken,” he said.
    “Awriight.”
    “You know who that is?”
    “Well, yeah. Sure. Sort of.”
    “Who, then?”
    “He’s a…sports guy.”
    Pete snorted. “You big homo.”
    “Excuse me?”
    That schoolroom giggle erupted again. “What sport?”
    “Jeez,” I said. “Get picky on me now.”
    “Don’t you even look at the sports section?”
    “No,” I said. “I throw it out first thing, along with the business section.”
    “Man.”
    “I tell you what else. I would order a paper without a sports section if they had one.”
    “Well, ‘scuse the fuck outa me.”
    Now I was laughing.
    “Warren’s the same way,” he said.
    “Is he?”
    “I told him: ‘Just ‘cause you’re a dicksmoker don’t mean you can’t watch a ball game sometimes.’”
    “A what?” I asked.
    “A ball game.”
    “No. Before that.”
    “What? Dicksmoker? You never heard that?”
    “No,” I said, chuckling.
    “Shit, man. Where you been?”
    “I dunno. Smokin’ dicks, I guess.”
    He giggled again. “I got lots of stuff like that. Really cool stuff.
    Expressions and all.”
    “I bet you do.”
    “Okay, okay,” he said, and for a moment I thought he was still talking to me, but then came another wheezy interlude and the cold squeal of metal, and I realized some sort of