Page 284 - A Little Life: A Novel

there. And then JB returned his hand to him and bumbled, nearly ran, out of
the café, bumping against the little tables—“Sorry, sorry”—as he went.
He still sees JB now and then, mostly at parties, always in groups, and

the two of them are polite and cordial with each other. They make small
talk, which is the most painful thing. JB has never tried to hug or kiss him
again; he comes over to him with his hand already outstretched, and he
takes it, and they shake. He sent JB flowers—but with only the briefest of
notes—when “Seconds, Minutes, Hours, Days” opened, and although he
skipped the opening, he had gone to the gallery the following Saturday, on
his way up to work, where he had spent an hour moving slowly from one

painting to the next. JB had planned on including himself in this series, but
in the end he hadn’t: there was just him, and Malcolm, and Willem. The
paintings were beautiful, and as he looked at each, he thought not so much
of the lives depicted in them, as of the life who created them—so many of
these paintings were done when JB was at his most miserable, his most
helpless, and yet they were self-assured, and subtle, and to see them was to

imagine the empathy and tenderness and grace of the person who made
them.
Malcolm has remained friends with JB, although he felt the need to
apologize to him for this fact. “Oh no, Malcolm,” he’d said, once Malcolm
had confessed, asking him for his permission. “You should absolutely still
be friends with him.” He doesn’t want JB to be abandoned by them all; he
doesn’t want Malcolm to feel he has to prove his loyalty to him by

disavowing JB. He wants JB to have a friend who’s known him since he
was eighteen, since he was the funniest, brightest person in the school, and
he and everyone else knew it.
But Willem has never spoken to JB again. Once JB returned from rehab,
he called JB and said that he couldn’t be friends with him any longer, and
that JB knew why. And that had been the end. He had been surprised by

this, and saddened, because he had always loved watching JB and Willem
laugh together, and spar with each other, and loved having them tell him
about their lives: they were both so fearless, so bold; they were his
emissaries to a less inhibited, more joyful world. They had always known
how to take pleasure from everything, and he had always admired that in
them, and had been grateful that they had been willing to share it with him.
“You know, Willem,” he said once, “I hope the reason you’re not talking

to JB isn’t because of what happened with me.”