Page 281 - A Little Life: A Novel

how mean, how uncharitable he is being. But he can’t. When he sees JB, he
sees him doing his imitation of him, sees him confirming in that moment
everything he has feared and thought he looks like, everything he has feared

and thought other people think about him. But he had never thought his
friends saw him like that; or at least, he never thought they would tell him.
The accuracy of the imitation tears at him, but the fact that it was JB doing
it devastates him. Late at night, when he can’t sleep, the image he
sometimes sees is JB dragging himself in a half-moon, his mouth agape and
drooling, his hands held before him in claws: I’m Jude. I’m Jude St.
Francis.

That night, after they had taken JB to the hospital and admitted him—JB
had been stuporous and dribbling when they took him in, but then had
recovered and become angry, violent, screaming wordlessly at them all,
thrashing against the orderlies, wresting his body out of their arms until
they had sedated him and dragged him, lolling, down the hallway—
Malcolm had left in one taxi and he and Willem had gone home to Perry

Street in another.
He hadn’t been able to look at Willem in the cab, and without anything to
distract him—no forms to fill out, no doctors to talk to—he had felt himself
grow cold despite the hot, muggy night, and his hands begin to shake, and
Willem had reached over and taken his right hand and held it in his left for
the rest of the long, silent ride downtown.
He was there for JB’s recovery. He decided he’d stay until he got better;

he couldn’t abandon JB then, not after all their time together. The three of
them took shifts, and after work he’d sit by JB’s hospital bed and read.
Sometimes JB was awake, but most of the time he wasn’t. He was detoxing,
but the doctor had also discovered that JB had a kidney infection, and so he
stayed on in the hospital’s main ward, liquids dripping into his arm, his face
slowly losing its bloat. When he was awake, JB would beg him for

forgiveness, sometimes dramatically and pleadingly, and sometimes—when
he was more lucid—quietly. These were the conversations he found most
difficult.
“Jude, I’m so sorry,” he’d say. “I was so messed up. Please tell me you
forgive me. I was so awful. I love you, you know that. I would never want
to hurt you, never.”
“I know you were messed up, JB,” he’d say. “I know.”

“Then tell me you forgive me. Please, Jude.”