Page 251 - A Little Life: A Novel

done.” Malcolm has just finished the final pieces of work on Willem’s
apartment, which he has supervised more of than Willem has; by the end of
the process, he was making decisions for Willem on paint colors. Malcolm

did a beautiful job, he thinks; he won’t mind at all staying there for the next
year.
It is early when they finish lunch, and they linger on the sidewalk
outside. For the past week it’s been raining, but today the skies are blue and
he is still feeling strong, and even a little restless, and he asks Malcolm if he
wants to walk for a bit. He can see Malcolm hesitate, flicking his gaze up
and down his body as if trying to determine how capable he is, but then he

smiles and agrees, and the two of them start heading west, and then north,
toward the Village. They pass the building on Mulberry Street that JB used
to live in before he moved farther east, and they are quiet for a minute, both
of them, he knows, thinking about JB and wondering what he’s doing, and
knowing but also not knowing why he hasn’t answered their and Willem’s
calls, their texts, their e-mails. The three of them have had dozens of

conversations with one another, with Richard, with Ali and the Henry
Youngs about what to do, but with every attempt they have made to find JB,
he has eluded them, or barred their way, or ignored them. “We just have to
wait until it gets worse,” Richard had said at one point, and he fears that
Richard is correct. It is, sometimes, as if JB is no longer theirs at all, and
they can do nothing but wait for the moment in which he will have a crisis
only they can solve, and they will be able to parachute into his life once

again.
“Okay, Malcolm, I’ve got to ask you,” he says, as they walk up the
stretch of Hudson Street that is deserted on the weekends, its sidewalks
treeless and empty of people, “are you getting married to Sophie or not? We
all want to know.”
“God, Jude, I just don’t know,” Malcolm begins, but he sounds relieved,

as if he’s been waiting to be asked the question all along. Maybe he has. He
lists the potential negatives (marriage is so conventional; it feels so
permanent; he’s not really interested in the idea of a wedding but fears
Sophie is; his parents are going to try to get involved; something about
spending the rest of his life with another architect depresses him; he and
Sophie are cofounders of the firm—if something happens between them,
what will happen to Bellcast?) and the positives, which also sound like

negatives (if he doesn’t propose, he thinks Sophie will leave; his parents