Page 141 - A Little Life: A Novel

incredibly arrogant about that, as if he was saving a jalopy because he had a
sentimental attachment to its sound system.
If I walk just a few more blocks, I can be at his office, he thought, but he

never would have. It was Sunday. Andy deserved some sort of respite from
him, and besides, what he was feeling now was not something he hadn’t felt
before.
He waited a few more minutes and then heaved himself to his feet, where
he stood for half a minute before dropping to the bench again. Finally he
was able to stand for good. He wasn’t ready yet, but he could imagine
himself walking to the curb, raising his arm to hail a cab, resting his head

against the back of its black vinyl banquette. He would count the steps to
get there, just as he would count the steps it would take him to get from the
cab and to his building, from the elevator to the apartment, and from the
front door to his room. When he had learned to walk the third time—after
his braces had come off—it had been Andy who had helped instruct the
physical therapist (she had not been pleased, but had taken his suggestions),

and Andy who had, as Ana had just four years before, watched him make
his way unaccompanied across a space of ten feet, and then twenty, and
then fifty, and then a hundred. His very gait—the left leg coming up to
make a near-ninety-degree angle with the ground, forming a rectangle of
negative space, the right listing behind—was engineered by Andy, who had
made him work at it for hours until he could do it himself. It was Andy who
told him he thought he was capable of walking without a cane, and when he

finally did it, he’d had Andy to thank.
Monday was not very many hours away, he told himself as he struggled
to stay standing, and Andy would see him as he always did, no matter how
busy he was. “When did you notice the break?” Andy would say, nudging
gently at it with a bit of gauze. “Friday,” he’d say. “Why didn’t you call me
then, Jude?” Andy would say, irritated. “At any rate, I hope you didn’t go

on your stupid fucking walk.” “No, of course not,” he’d say, but Andy
wouldn’t believe him. He sometimes wondered whether Andy thought of
him as only a collection of viruses and malfunctions: If you removed them,
who was he? If Andy didn’t have to take care of him, would he still be
interested in him? If he appeared one day magically whole, with a stride as
easy as Willem’s and JB’s complete lack of self-consciousness, the way he
could lean back in his chair and let his shirt hoist itself from his hips

without any fear, or with Malcolm’s long arms, the skin on their insides as