Page 286 - A Little Life: A Novel

Oliver, and he says, “Very much the way he is today: funny, and sharp, and
outrageous, and smart. And talented. He was always, always talented.”
“Hmm,” says Oliver thoughtfully, looking over at JB, who is listening to

Sophie with what seems like exaggerated concentration. “I never think of
JB as funny, really.” And then he looks over at JB as well, wondering if
Oliver has perhaps interpreted JB incorrectly or whether JB has, in fact,
become someone else, someone he now wouldn’t recognize as the person
he knew for so many years.
At the end of the night, there are kisses and handshakes, and when Oliver
—to whom JB has clearly told nothing—tells him they should get together,

the three of them, because he’s always wanted to get to know him, one of
JB’s oldest friends, he smiles and says something vague, and gives JB a
wave before heading outside, where Willem is waiting for him.
“How was it for you?” Willem asks.
“Okay,” he says, smiling back at him. He thinks these meetings with JB
are even harder for Willem than they are for him. “You?”

“Okay,” Willem says. His girlfriend drives up to the curb; they are
staying at a hotel. “I’ll call you tomorrow, all right?”
Back in Cambridge, he lets himself into the silent house and walks as
softly as he can back to his bathroom, where he prises his bag from beneath
the loose tile near the toilet and cuts himself until he feels absolutely empty,
holding his arms over the bathtub, watching the porcelain stain itself
crimson. As he always does after seeing JB, he wonders if he has made the

right decision. He wonders if all of them—he, Willem, JB, Malcolm—will
lie awake that night longer than usual, thinking of one another’s faces and
of conversations, good and bad, that they have had with one another over
what had been more than twenty years of friendship.
Oh, he thinks, if I were a better person. If I were a more generous person.
If I were a less self-involved person. If I were a braver person.

Then he stands, gripping the towel bar as he does; he has cut himself too
much tonight, and he is faint. He goes over to the full-length mirror that is
hung on the back of the bedroom’s closet door. In his apartment on Greene
Street, there are no full-length mirrors. “No mirrors,” he told Malcolm. “I
don’t like them.” But really, he doesn’t want to be confronted with his
image; he doesn’t want to see his body, his face staring back at him.
But here at Harold and Julia’s, there is a mirror, and he stands in front of

it for a few seconds, contemplating himself, before adopting the hunched