Page 483 - A Little Life: A Novel

endless series of articles, the ceaseless requests for interviews, the
speculations and television segments, the gossip columns and the editorials,
about his revelation that had greeted them on their return to the States, and

which, as Kit told them, they were powerless to control or stop: they would
simply have to wait until people grew bored of the subject, and that might
take months. (Willem didn’t read stories about himself in general, but there
were just so many of them: when they turned on the television, when they
went online, when they opened the paper, there they were—stories about
Willem, and what he now represented.) When they spoke on the phone—
Willem in Texas, he at Greene Street—he could feel Willem trying not to

talk too much about how nervous he was and knew it was because Willem
didn’t want him to feel guilty. “Tell me, Willem,” he finally said. “I promise
I’m not going to blame myself. I swear.” And after he had repeated this
every day for a week, Willem did at last tell him, and although he did feel
guilty—he cut himself after every one of these conversations—he didn’t ask
Willem for reassurances, he didn’t make Willem feel worse than he already

did; he only listened and tried to be as soothing as he could. Good, he’d
praise himself after they’d hung up, after every time he’d kept his mouth
closed against his own fears. Good job. Later, he’d burrow the tip of the
razor into one of his scars, flicking the tissue upward with the razor’s corner
until he had cut down to the soft flesh beneath.
He thinks it a good sign that the film Willem is shooting in London now
is, as Kit would say, a gay film. “Normally I’d say not to,” Kit told Willem.

“But it’s too good a script to pass up.” The film is titled The Poisoned
Apple, and is about the last few years of Alan Turing’s life, after he was
arrested for indecency and was chemically castrated. He idolized Turing, of
course—all mathematicians did—and had been moved almost to tears by
the script. “You have to do it, Willem,” he had said.
“I don’t know,” Willem had said, smiling, “another gay movie?”

“Duets did really well,” he reminded Willem—and it had: better than
anyone had thought it would—but it was a lazy sort of argument, because
he knew Willem had already decided to do the film, and he was proud of
him, and childishly excited to see him in it, the way he was about all of
Willem’s movies.
The Saturday after Willem leaves, Malcolm meets him at the apartment
and he drives the two of them north, to just outside Garrison, where they are

building a house. Willem had bought the land—seventy acres, with its own