The Night Listener : A Novel (35 page)

I wasn’t obsessive about it. I went about my usual rituals after the reading was over, washing dishes and sorting laundry and tidying up. And a few thoughtful friends did call to say that they’d heard the broadcast and couldn’t wait to find out where this new plotline was heading. But an hour passed and that hoped-for call never came, so I smoked a joint and went out to the hot tub for a moonlight soak.

A spring’s worth of bamboo shoots, some as fat as broomsticks, had made a benign jail cell of the big redwood barrel. As I floated there in its amniotic warmth, watching a Japanese woodblock moon dawdle in the new leaves, I savored the thought that my story was finally out there in the ether, a self-sufficient organism beyond my control, changing shape in every new mind that absorbed it. And I was so much less afraid about everything, even my solitary state. It felt fine to be there, middle-aged and single, soft in the gut and long in the scrotum, keeping watch over my own little acre of stars.

When I was a boy, my father swapped daylily bulbs with an English professor named Preston Stamey. I knew that Preston was gay, because I’d once heard Pap describe him to my mother as “a fairy nice fellow.” He had a tiny jewel box of a carriage house over on Tradd Street that he shared with a three-legged spaniel named Sumter. Preston was a bull-necked old nancy, jolly as a pirate, but while my father seemed to enjoy his company, privately my parents expressed pity for the professor. “How lonely he must be,” my mother would say. “No wife and no children to carry on.” Long after I’d discarded my own requirements for wife and children, I still bought that melancholy assessment of Preston’s life. I might be gay, but I would never be
that
kind of old queen: alone in my fifties, fussing over my flowers and my Williamsburg weather vane; I would find a lover to protect me against such emptiness. It had never occurred to me that Preston might have been more evolved than the rest of us, that he might have treasured his own company.

And there could well have been students who idolized him, ex-lovers who still loved him, sailors he met on the Battery who followed him home and swung on his friendly old dick and called him Daddy.

He could have been having a life, in other words—and a damn good one at that.

All you have to do is believe and let go, and you’ll have all the proof you
need
…

A ringing phone yanked me back into the moment. Remembering that I’d turned off the answering machine, I scrambled out of the hot tub and blotted myself hastily with my sweatpants.

Hang on, son, I’m coming
.

Naked and dripping, I raced down the steps to the terrace, swung open the sliding door, barreled through the house and up the stairs to the office. On the last turn I whacked my knee sharply on the banister.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” I did a little war dance of pain as the phone rang for the fifth time.

I grabbed the receiver and dropped into a chair.

“Hello!”

“Well, damn,” my father said. “There you are. Thought you’d be out gettin’ drunk.”

“Oh, hey, Pap.”

“Listen, son. That was one helluva first chapter you read tonight.” It had been a while since I’d received such a call from the old man.

“Well, thanks, Pap. That’s nice of you.”

“No, it ain’t. It was just a damn good piece. Was that the little boy you told us about on our way to Tahiti?”

“Yeah…pretty much.”

“What do you mean? He either is or he ain’t.”

“Well, I changed his name, of course, and a few identifying details.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, you know. Where he lives and what he looks like. Some of the things that happened to him.”

“So the whole goddamn thing’s a lie.”

I laughed. “That’s what fiction is for, Pap. To fix the things that have to be fixed.”

“Well, you had me going there.”

“Good. That was the idea.”

“Then…all that stuff about you and Jess…you fellas are okay, aren’t you?”

“Oh, sure. We’ll always be okay.”

“So when are you gonna come see us? We ain’t seen you since you threw up on that bagpiper at my birthday party.” I laughed. “I’ve got some stuff to do, but I’ll come as soon as this series is done.”

“How long is this one gonna be?”

“I’m not sure yet. It’s not done.”

“Jesus. You’re cuttin’ it close. How much you got left to do?” I began to feel a sort of low-grade anxiety. “I don’t know. A hundred pages or so. Don’t ask.”

“Am I in it?”

“Are you in what?”

“You know what I’m talking about, you little son-of-a-bitch. What have you done to me this time?”

I told him I hadn’t decided yet.

GN

San Francisco

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

MY SISTER, JANE YATES, lives in the nether reaches of New Zealand but inhabits many hectares of my heart. Likewise, Ian McKellen and James Lecesne make me feel loved and valued from afar. Pam Ling and Judd Winick provide family here in my own valley. Robert Jones is a gifted writer with a generous nature, which makes him the best of all possible editors. Patrick JansonSmith has championed my work longer than anyone. Binky Urban took me under her wing long before she became an agent, let alone mine. Steven Barclay is a master at providing what I love the most: a stage. The extraordinary Patrick Gale helped me to unravel my past before I twisted it back into fiction. Tony Maupin and I have just learned what it means to be brothers, which fills me with joy. Tim McIntosh makes me laugh and listens beautifully. Cheryl Maupin has my admiration and affection more than ever. Don Bachardy continues to inspire me by his remarkable self-discipline. David Hockney and Barry Humphries help me to remember to play while I’m working. My friends Stephen McCauley, David Sheff, Karen Barbour, Darryl Vance, Louise Vance, Peggy Knickerbocker, Anne Lamott, Thomas Gibson, Cristina Gibson, Buddy Rhodes, Susan Andrews, Jake Heggie, Steven Lippman, and Davia Nelson read an early draft of this novel and offered invaluable insight and support. Maggie Hamilton brought me light when I needed it. Nic-olas Sheff makes me dote like an old gay godfather. Gary Lebow felt like family far sooner than I expected. Nick Hongola is my swell new friend. David Wong has the gentlest of hearts. Barry Jones, Liz McKereghan, and Lawrence Jenkins remind me to live in my body.

Ben Shaw, Todd Hargis, and Jose Landes have brought me all the comforts of home. Alan Poul’s dedication and good taste have kept
Tales of the City
on television. The incandescent Laura Linney is both the woman I would want and the woman I would want to be.

Olympia Dukakis has always been a goddess-send. Terry Anderson, who keeps our cottage industry on course, gave me his unequivocal blessing, then cajoled, encouraged, and tolerated me until this novel was finished. When all is said and done, he’s still the one.

AM

San Francisco

About the Author

ARMISTEAD MAUPIN
is the author of
Tales of the City, More Tales
of the City, Further Tales of the City, Babycakes, Significant Others, Sure
of You
, and
Maybe the Moon
. Film versions of
Tales of the City, More Tales of the City
, and
Further Tales of the City
have been broadcast to great acclaim on PBS and Showtime. He lives in San Francisco.

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

Praise
for

The Night Listener

—A New York Times Notable Book

“After an eight-year wait, Armistead Maupin rewards his fans and accomplishes the unthinkable: He surpasses the excellence of his Tales of the City series. Filled with twists and turns that rival
The Sixth Sense
and
The Crying Game
, Maupin’s new novel is a deceptively simple page-turner…. Maupin presents his tale with such polished, effortless elegance that his talent can be underestimated because the sweat behind it is invisible.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“With rare authority, humor, and stunning grace, Maupin explores the risks and consolations of intimacy while illuminating the mysteries of the storytelling impulse.”

—Chicago Tribune

“Heartbreaking, affirming, and hilarious…absolute, unadulterated, page-turning pleasure.”

—Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“An excellent psychological drama….
The Night Listener
asks why we tell stories, and to whom, and why we listen to them.”

—The Guardian (London)

“A roller coaster…. A meticulously plotted midlife coming-of-age novel…storytelling at its best.”

—Houston Chronicle

“A powerful and moving suspense story, and an examination of the power of belief, of a writer’s ability to induce it in his readers…. A rich and intriguing book about the obligations and liberations of dependency, and the lies we tell ourselves in the name of love.” —The Observer (London)

“Maupin’s best book to date…. [
The Night Listener
] contains complex characterizations and is meticulously constructed…so much so that when you reach the end you want to go back and read it all over again to see whether you can spot the clues scattered on the way.” —Time Out

Also by Armistead Maupin

Novels

Tales of the City

More Tales of the City

Further Tales of the City

Babycakes

Significant Others

Sure of You

Maybe the Moon

Collections

Credits

Cover design by Chip Kidd

Author photograph © 2000 by Annie Leibovitz

Copyright

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

THE NIGHT LISTENER. Copyright © 2006 by Armistead Maupin. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen.

No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader June 2006 ISBN 0-06-123419-2

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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• Cover Image
  
• Title Page
  
• Dedication Page
  
• Epigraph Page
  
• Contents
  
  • Chapter One: Jewelling the Elephant
    
  • Chapter Two: The Noones
    
  • Chapter Three: Life Isn't Radio
    
  • Chapter Four: Roughhousing
    
  • Chapter Five: Semaphore
    
  • Chapter Six: Wayne
    
  • Chapter Seven: A Guy Thing
    
  • Chapter Eight: Don't Even go There
    
  • Chapter Nine: More than Elephants
    
  • Chapter Ten: The Monkey Wrench
    
  • Chapter Eleven: A Little Like God
    
  • Chapter Twelve: Laura
    
  • Chapter Thirteen: Room for Disillusionment
    
  • Chapter Fourteen: Stranger and Stranger
    
  • Chapter Fifteen: Room Tone
    
  • Chapter Sixteen: The Sandbar
    
  • Chapter Seventeen: Just Turn the Page
    
  • Chapter Eighteen: A Convenient Pseudonym
    
  • Chapter Nineteen: Man's Country
    
  • Chapter Twenty: The Shock of Recognition
    
  • Chapter Twenty-One: Family Things
    
  • Chapter Twenty-Two: Snow Blindness
    
  • Chapter Twenty-Three: The Eleventh Hour
    
  • Chapter Twenty-Four: The Idea of Him
    
  • Chapter Twenty-Five: Giving Up the Ghost
    
  • Chapter Twenty-Six: The Boo Daddy
    
  • Chapter Twenty-Seven: No Epiphanies
    
  • Chapter Twenty-Eight: My Old Room
    
  • Chapter Twenty-Nine: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost
    
  • Afterword
    
  • Acknowledgments
    
  • About the Author
    
  • Praise
    
  • Also by Armistead Maupin
    
  • Credits
    
  • Copyright Notice
    
  • About the Publisher