Page 287 - A Little Life: A Novel

pose JB had that night. JB was right, he thinks. He was right. And that is
why I can’t forgive him.
Now he drops his mouth open. Now he hops in a little circle. Now he

drags his leg behind him. His moans fill the air in the quiet, still house.

The first Saturday in May, he and Willem have what they’ve been calling
the Last Supper at a tiny, very expensive sushi restaurant near his office on
Fifty-sixth Street. The restaurant has only six seats, all at a wide, velvety
cypress counter, and for the three hours they spend there, they are the only
patrons.
Although they both knew how much the meal would cost, they’re both
stunned when they look at the check, and then both start laughing, though

he’s not sure if it’s the absurdity of spending so much on a single dinner, or
the fact that they have, or the fact that they can that is to blame.
“I’ll get it,” Willem says, but as he’s reaching for his wallet, the waiter
comes over to him with his credit card, which he’d given to him when
Willem was in the bathroom.
“Goddammit, Jude,” Willem says, and he grins.

“It’s the Last Supper, Willem,” he says. “You can get me a taco when you
come back.”
“If I come back,” Willem says. It has been their running joke. “Jude,
thank you. You weren’t supposed to pay for this.”
It’s the first warm night of the year, and he tells Willem that if he really
wants to thank him for dinner, he’ll walk with him. “How far?” asks
Willem, warily. “We’re not going to walk all the way down to SoHo, Jude.”

“Not far.”
“It’d better not be,” Willem says, “because I’m really tired.” This is
Willem’s new strategy, and he is very fond of it: instead of telling him he
can’t do certain things because it’s not good for his legs or back, Willem
instead tries to make himself sound incapable in order to dissuade him.
These days, Willem is always too tired to walk, or too achey, or too hot, or

too cold. But he knows that these things are untrue. One Saturday afternoon
after they’d gone to some galleries, Willem had told him he couldn’t walk
from Chelsea to Greene Street (“I’m too tired”), and so they had taken a cab
instead. But then the next day at lunch, Robin had said, “Wasn’t it a