Page 262 - A Little Life: A Novel

that was really more of a glide and to have the face and body that he did.
But Jude spent most of his time trying to stand still and look down, as if by
doing so, no one would notice he existed. This had been sad and yet

somewhat understandable in college, when Jude had been so childlike and
bony that it made JB’s joints hurt to look at him, but these days, now that
he’d grown into his looks, JB found it simply enraging, especially as Jude’s
self-consciousness often interfered with his own plans.
“Do you want to spend your life just being completely average and
boring and typical?” he’d once asked Jude (this was during their second big
fight, when he was trying to get Jude to pose nude, an argument he’d known

even before he’d begun it that he had no chance at all of winning).
“Yes, JB,” Jude had said, giving him that gaze he sometimes summoned,
which was intimidating, even slightly scary, in its flat blankness. “That’s in
fact exactly what I want.”
Sometimes he suspected that all Jude really wanted to do in life was hang
out in Cambridge with Harold and Julia and play house with them. Last

year, for example, JB had been invited on a cruise by one of his collectors, a
hugely wealthy and important patron who had a yacht that plied the Greek
islands and that was hung with modern masterpieces that any museum
would have been happy to own—only they were installed in the bathroom
of a boat.
Malcolm had been working on his project in Doha, or somewhere, but
Willem and Jude had been in town, and he’d called Jude and asked him if

he wanted to go: The collector would pay their way. He would send his
plane. It would be five days on a yacht. He didn’t know why he even
needed to have a conversation. “Meet me at Teterboro,” he should’ve just
texted them. “Bring sunscreen.”
But no, he had asked, and Jude had thanked him. And then Jude had said,
“But that’s over Thanksgiving.”

“So?” he’d asked.
“JB, thank you so much for inviting me,” Jude had said, as he listened in
disbelief. “It sounds incredible. But I have to go to Harold and Julia’s.”
He had been gobsmacked by this. Of course, he too was very fond of
Harold and Julia, and like the others, he too could see how good they were
for Jude, and how he’d become slightly less haunted with their friendship,
but come on! It was Boston. He could always see them. But Jude said no,

and that was that. (And then, of course, because Jude said no, Willem had