Page 239 - A Little Life: A Novel

so many of them lived in a world that was deaf to practicalities. He knew it
was romantic, but he admired them: he admired anyone who could live for
year after year on only their fastburning hopes, even as they grew older and

more obscure with every day. And, just as romantically, he thought of his
time with the organization as his salute to his friends, all of whom were
living the sorts of lives he marveled at: he considered them such successes,
and he was proud of them. Unlike him, they had had no clear path to follow,
and yet they had plowed stubbornly ahead. They spent their days making
beautiful things.
His friend Richard was on the board of the organization, and some

Wednesdays he’d stop by on his way home—he had recently moved to
SoHo—and sit and talk with him if he was between clients, or just give him
a wave across the room if he was occupied. One night after studio hours,
Richard invited him back to his apartment for a drink, and they walked west
on Broome Street, past Centre, and Lafayette, and Crosby, and Broadway,
and Mercer, before turning south on Greene. Richard lived in a narrow

building, its stone gone the color of soot, with a towering garage door
marking its first floor and, to its right, a metal door with a face-size glass
window cut into its top. There was no lobby, but rather a gray, tiled-floor
hallway lit by a series of three glowing bare bulbs dangling from cords. The
hallway turned right and led to a cell-like industrial elevator, the size of
their living room and Willem’s bedroom at Lispenard Street combined, with
a rattling cage door that shuddered shut at the press of a button, but which

glided smoothly up through an exposed cinder-block shaft. At the third
floor, it stopped, and Richard opened the cage and turned his key into the
set of massive, forbidding steel doors before them, which opened into his
apartment.
“God,” he said, stepping into the space, as Richard flicked on some
lights. The floors were whitewashed wood, and the walls were white as

well. High above him, the ceiling winked and shone with scores of
chandeliers—old, glass, new, steel—that were strung every three feet or so,
at irregular heights, so that as they walked deeper into the loft, he could feel
glass bugles skimming across the top of his head, and Richard, who was
even taller than he was, had to duck so they wouldn’t scrape his forehead.
There were no dividing walls, but near the far end of the space was a
shallow, freestanding box of glass as tall and wide as the front doors, and as

he drew closer, he could see that within it was a gigantic honeycomb shaped