Page 126 - A Little Life: A Novel

snow, and the flakes cycloned toward the door, so fast that they both took a
step backward.
“I’ll call a cab,” he said, so Harold wouldn’t have to drive him.

“No, you won’t,” Harold said. “You’ll stay here.”
And so he stayed in Harold and Julia’s spare bedroom on the second
floor, separated from their room by a large windowed space they used as a
library, and a brief hallway. “Here’s a T-shirt,” Harold said, lobbing
something gray and soft at him, “and here’s a toothbrush.” He placed it on
the bookcase. “There’s extra towels in the bathroom. Do you want anything
else? Water?”

“No,” he said. “Harold, thank you.”
“Of course, Jude. Good night.”
“Good night.”
He stayed awake for a while, the feather comforter wadded around him,
the mattress plush beneath him, watching the window turn white, and
listening to water glugging from the faucets, and Harold and Julia’s low,

indistinguishable murmurs at each other, and one or the other of them
padding from one place to another, and then, finally, nothing. In those
minutes, he pretended that they were his parents, and he was home for the
weekend from law school to visit them, and this was his room, and the next
day he would get up and do whatever it was that grown children did with
their parents.
The summer after that second year, Harold invited him to their house in

Truro, on Cape Cod. “You’ll love it,” he said. “Invite your friends. They’ll
love it, too.” And so on the Thursday before Labor Day, once his and
Malcolm’s internships had ended, they all drove up to the house from New
York, and for that long weekend, Harold’s attention shifted to JB and
Malcolm and Willem. He watched them too, admiring how they could
answer every one of Harold’s parries, how generous they were with their

own lives, how they could tell stories about themselves that they laughed at
and that made Harold and Julia laugh as well, how comfortable they were
around Harold and how comfortable Harold was around them. He
experienced the singular pleasure of watching people he loved fall in love
with other people he loved. The house had a private walk down to a private
spit of beach, and in the mornings the four of them would troop downhill
and swim—even he did, in his pants and undershirt and an old oxford shirt,

which no one bothered him about—and then lie on the sand baking, the wet