Page 167 - A Little Life: A Novel

3

THREE WEEKS BEFORE he left for Thanksgiving in Boston, a package—a large,
flat, unwieldy wooden crate with his name and address written on every
side in black marker—arrived for him at work, where it sat by his desk all
day until he was able to open it late that night.
From the return address, he knew what it was, but he still felt that
reflexive curiosity one does when unwrapping anything, even something
unwanted. Inside the box were layers of brown paper, and then layers of

bubble wrap, and then, wrapped in sheets of white paper, the painting itself.
He turned it over. “To Jude with love and apologies, JB,” JB had
scribbled on the canvas, directly above his signature: “Jean-Baptiste
Marion.” There was an envelope from JB’s gallery taped to the back of the
frame, inside of which was a letter certifying the painting’s authenticity and

date, addressed to him and signed by the gallery’s registrar.
He called Willem, who he knew would have already left the theater and
was probably on his way home. “Guess what I got today?”
There was only the slightest of pauses before Willem answered. “The
painting.”
“Right,” he said, and sighed. “So I suppose you’re behind this?”
Willem coughed. “I just told him he didn’t have a choice in the matter

any longer—not if he wanted you to talk to him again at some point.”
Willem paused, and he could hear the wind whooshing past him. “Do you
need help getting it home?”
“Thanks,” he said. “But I’m just going to leave it here for now and pick it
up later.” He re-clad the painting in its layers and replaced it in its box,
which he shoved beneath his console. Before he shut off his computer, he

began a note to JB, but then stopped, and deleted what he’d written, and
instead left for the night.
He was both surprised and not that JB had sent him the painting after all
(and not at all surprised to learn that it had been Willem who had convinced
him to do so). Eighteen months ago, just as Willem was beginning his first
performances in The Malamud Theorem, JB had been offered representation
by a gallery on the Lower East Side, and the previous spring, he’d had his