Page 459 - A Little Life: A Novel

anyway, and so he’d probably be fine. At the end of the story, there was a
link to a picture of him with Jude at the opening of Richard’s show at the
Whitney in September.

When Jude came out, he handed him the phone and watched him read the
article as well. “Oh, Willem,” he said, and then, later, looking stricken, “My
name’s in here,” and for the first time, it occurred to him that Jude may
have wanted him to keep quiet as much for his own privacy as for Willem’s.
“Don’t you think you should ask Jude first if I can confirm his identity?”
Kit had asked him when they were deciding what he’d say to the reporter
on Willem’s behalf.

“No, it’s fine,” he’d said. “He won’t mind.”
Kit had been quiet. “He might, Willem.”
But he really hadn’t thought he would. Now, though, he wondered if he
had been arrogant. What, he asked himself, just because you’re okay with it,
you thought he would be, too?
“Willem, I’m sorry,” Jude said, and although he knew that he should

reassure Jude, who was probably feeling guilty, and apologize to him as
well, he wasn’t in the mood for it, not then.
“I’m going for a run,” he announced, and although he wasn’t looking at
him, he could feel Jude nod.
It was so early that outside, the city was still quiet and still cool, the air a
dirtied white, with only a few cars gliding down the streets. The hotel was
near the old French opera house, which he ran around, and then back to the

hotel and toward the colonial-era district, past vendors squatted near large,
flat, woven-bamboo baskets piled with tiny, bright green limes, and stacks
of cut herbs that smelled of lemon and roses and peppercorns. As the streets
grew threadlike, he slowed to a walk, and turned down an alley that was
crowded with stall after stall of small, improvised restaurants, just a woman
standing behind a kettle roiling with soup or oil, and four or five plastic

stools on which customers sat, eating quickly before hurrying back to the
mouth of the alley, where they got on their bikes and pedaled away. He
stopped at the far end of the alley, waiting to let a man cycle past him, the
basket strapped to the back of his seat loaded with spears of baguettes, their
hot, steamed-milk fragrance filling his nostrils, and then headed down
another alley, this one busy with vendors crouched over more bundles of
herbs, and black hills of mangosteens, and metal trays of silvery-pink fish,

so fresh that he could hear them gulping, could see their eyes rolling