Page 460 - A Little Life: A Novel

desperately back in their sockets. Above him, necklaces of cages were
strung like lanterns, each containing a vibrant, chirping bird. He had a little
cash with him, and he bought Jude one of the herb bouquets; it looked like

rosemary but smelled pleasantly soapy, and although he didn’t know what it
was, he thought Jude might.
He was so naïve, he thought as he made his slow way back to the hotel:
about his career, about Jude. Why did he always think he knew what he was
doing? Why did he think he could do whatever he wanted and everything
would work out the way he imagined it? Was it a failure of creativity, or
arrogance, or (as he assumed) simple stupidity? People, people he trusted

and respected, were always warning him—Kit, about his career; Andy,
about Jude; Jude, about himself—and yet he always ignored them. For the
first time, he wondered if Kit was right, if Jude was right, if he would never
work again, or at least not the kind of work he enjoyed. Would he resent
Jude? He didn’t think so; he hoped not. But he had never thought he would
have to find out, not really.

But greater than that fear was the one he was rarely able to ask himself:
What if the things he was making Jude do weren’t good for him after all?
The day before, they had taken a shower together for the first time, and
Jude had been so silent afterward, so deep inside one of his fugue states, his
eyes so flat and blank, that Willem had been momentarily frightened. He
hadn’t wanted to do it, but Willem had coerced him, and in the shower, Jude
had been rigid and grim, and Willem had been able to tell from the set of

Jude’s mouth that he was enduring it, that he was waiting for it to be over.
But he hadn’t let him get out of the shower; he had made him stay. He had
behaved (unintentionally, but who cared) like Caleb—he had made Jude do
something he didn’t want to, and Jude had done it because he had told him
to do it. “It’ll be good for you,” he’d said, and remembering this—although
he had believed it—he felt almost nauseated. No one had ever trusted him

as unquestioningly as Jude did. But he had no idea what he was doing.
“Willem’s not a health-care professional,” he remembered Andy saying.
“He’s an actor.” And although both he and Jude had laughed at the time, he
wasn’t sure Andy was wrong. Who was he to try to direct Jude’s mental
health? “Don’t trust me so much,” he wanted to say to Jude. But how could
he? Wasn’t this what he had wanted from Jude, from this relationship? To
be so indispensable to another person that that person couldn’t even

comprehend his life without him? And now he had it, and the demands of