Page 216 - A Little Life: A Novel

“Sounds interesting,” said Arthur, looking bored. “I don’t think I’ve
heard of it, though. Huh. I’ll have to look it up. Well, good for you,
Willem.”

He hated the way certain people said “good for you, Willem,” as if his
job were some sort of spun-sugar fantasy, a fiction he fed himself and
others, and not something that actually existed. He especially hated it that
night, when not fifty yards away, framed clearly in the window just behind
Arthur’s head, happened to be a spotlit billboard mounted atop a building
with his face on it—his scowling face, admittedly: he was, after all, fighting

off an enormous mauve computer-generated alien—and BLACK MERCURY 3081:
COMING SOON in two-foot-high letters. In those moments, he would be
disappointed in the Hoodies. They’re no better than anyone else after all, he
would realize. In the end, they’re jealous and trying to make me feel bad.
And I’m stupid, because I do feel bad. Later, he would be irritated with
himself: This is what you wanted, he would remind himself. So why do you
care what other people think? But acting was caring what other people

thought (sometimes it felt like that was all it was), and as much as he liked
to think himself immune to other people’s opinions—as if he was somehow
above worrying about them—he clearly wasn’t.
“I know it sounds so fucking petty,” he told Jude after that party. He was
embarrassed by how annoyed he was—he wouldn’t have admitted it to
anyone else.
“It doesn’t sound petty at all,” Jude had said. They were driving back to

the city from Red Hook. “But Arthur’s a jerk, Willem. He always has been.
And years of studying Herodotus hasn’t made him any less of one.”
He smiled, reluctantly. “I don’t know,” he said. “Sometimes I feel there’s
something so … so pointless about what I do.”
“How can you say that, Willem? You’re an amazing actor; you really are.
And you—”

“Don’t say I bring joy to so many people.”
“Actually, I wasn’t going to say that. Your films aren’t really the sorts of
things that bring joy to anyone.” (Willem had come to specialize in playing
dark and complicated characters—often quietly violent, usually morally
compromised—that inspired different degrees of sympathy. “Ragnarsson
the Terrible,” Harold called him.)
“Except aliens, of course.”