Page 118 - A Little Life: A Novel

plasma membranes and ribosomes and fashioning flagella from strands of
licorice. He typed up a list identifying each and folded it into the box before
closing it and tying it with twine; he didn’t know Harold very well then, but

he liked the idea of making something for him, of impressing him, even if
anonymously. And he liked wondering what the cookies were meant to
celebrate: A publication? An anniversary? Or was it simple uxoriousness?
Was Harold Stein the sort of person who showed up at his wife’s lab with
cookies for no reason? He suspected he perhaps was.
The following week, Harold told him about the amazing cookies he’d
gotten at Batter. His enthusiasm, which just a few hours ago in class had

been directed at the Uniform Commercial Code, had found a new subject in
the cookies. He sat, biting the inside of his cheek so he wouldn’t smile,
listening to Harold talk about how genius they’d been and how Julia’s lab
had been struck speechless by their detail and verisimilitude, and how he
had been, briefly, the hero of the lab: “Not an easy thing to be with those
people, by the way, who secretly think everyone involved in the humanities

is something of a moron.”
“Sounds like those cookies were made by a real obsessive,” he said. He
hadn’t told Harold he worked at Batter, and didn’t plan on doing so, either.
“Then that’s an obsessive I’d like to meet,” said Harold. “They were
delicious, too.”
“Mmm,” he said, and thought of a question to ask Harold so he wouldn’t
keep talking about the cookies.

Harold had other research assistants, of course—two second-years and a
third-year he knew only by sight—but their schedules were such that they
never overlapped. Sometimes they communicated with one another by
notes or e-mail, explaining where they’d left off in their research so the next
person could pick it up and carry it forward. But by the second semester of
his first year, Harold had assigned him to work exclusively on the fifth

amendment. “That’s a good one,” he said. “Incredibly sexy.” The two
second-year assistants were assigned the ninth amendment, and the third-
year, the tenth, and as much as he knew it was ridiculous, he couldn’t help
but feel triumphant, as if he had been favored with something the others
hadn’t.
The first invitation to dinner at Harold’s house had been spontaneous, at
the end of one cold and dark March afternoon. “Are you sure?” he asked,

tentative.