Page 234 - A Little Life: A Novel

again. On the fourth call, he left the message he hoped he would never have
to leave: “Willem, I really need help. Please call me. Please.” He had a
vision of Willem calling him right back, telling him he’d be right there, but

he waited and waited and Willem didn’t call, and finally he managed to
stand again.
Somehow he made it inside. But he can’t remember anything else from
that night; when he woke the next day, Willem was asleep on the rug next to
his bed, and Andy asleep on the chair they must have dragged into his room
from the living room. He was thick-tongued, fogged, nauseated, and he
knew that Andy must have given him an injection of pain medication,

which he hated: he would feel disoriented and constipated for days.
When he woke again, Willem was gone, but Andy was awake, and
staring at him.
“Jude, you’ve got to get the fuck out of this apartment,” he said, quietly.
“I know,” he said.
“Jude, what were you thinking?” Willem asked him later, after he had

returned from the grocery store and Andy had helped him into the bathroom
—he couldn’t walk: Andy had had to carry him—and then put him back
into bed, still in his clothes from the day before, and left. Willem had gone
to a party after the show and hadn’t heard his phone ring; when he had
finally listened to his messages, he had rushed home and found him
convulsing on the floor and had called Andy. “Why didn’t you call Andy?
Why didn’t you go to a diner and wait for me? Why didn’t you call

Richard? Why didn’t you call Philippa and make her find me? Why didn’t
you call Citizen, or Rhodes, or Eli, or Phaedra, or the Henry Youngs, or—”
“I don’t know,” he said, miserably. It was impossible to explain to the
healthy the logic of the sick, and he didn’t have the energy to try.
The following week, he contacted Lucien Voigt and finalized the terms of
the job with him. And once he had signed the contract, he called Harold,

who was silent for a long five seconds before taking a deep breath and
beginning.
“I just don’t get this, Jude,” he said. “I don’t. You’ve never struck me as a
money-grubber. Are you? I mean, I guess you are. You had—you have—a
great career at the U.S. Attorney’s. You’re doing work there that matters.
And you’re giving it all up to defend, who? Criminals. People so entitled,
so certain they won’t be caught that being caught—that very concern—

doesn’t even occur to them. People who think the laws are written for