Page 493 - A Little Life: A Novel

as the three of them talk, he finds himself staring, hypnotized, at the small
orange flame at the tip of the client’s cigarette, which winks at him,
growing duller and brighter, as the client exhales and inhales. Suddenly, he

knows what he is going to do, but that revelation is followed almost
instantly by a blunt punch to his abdomen, because he knows that he is
going to betray Willem, and not only is he going to betray him but he is
going to lie to him as well.
That day is a Friday, and as he drives to Andy’s, he works out his plan,
excited and relieved to have a solution. Andy is in one of his cheerful,
combative moods, and he allows himself to be distracted by him, by his

brisk energy. Somewhere along the way, he and Andy have begun speaking
of his legs the way one would of a troublesome and wayward relative who
is nonetheless impossible to abandon and in need of constant care. “The old
bastards,” Andy calls them, and the first time he did, he had begun laughing
at the accuracy of the nickname, with its suggestion of exasperation that
always threatened to overshadow the underlying and reluctant fondness.

“How’re the old bastards?” Andy asks him now, and he smiles and says,
“Lazy and sucking up all my resources, as usual.”
But his mind is also full of what he is about to do, and when Andy asks
him, “And what does your better half have to say for himself these days?”
he snaps at him: “What do you mean by that?” and Andy stops and looks at
him, curiously. “Nothing,” he says. “I just wanted to know how Willem’s
doing.”

Willem, he thinks, and simply hearing his name said aloud fills him with
anguish. “He’s great,” he says, quietly.
At the end of the appointment, as always, Andy examines his arms, and
this time, as he has for the last few times, grunts his approval. “You’ve
really cut back,” he says. “No pun intended.”
“You know me—always trying to better myself,” he says, keeping his

tone jocular, but Andy looks him in the eyes. “I know,” he says, softly. “I
know it must be hard, Jude. But I’m glad, I really am.”
Over dinner, Andy complains about his brother’s new boyfriend, whom
he hates. “Andy,” he tells him, “you can’t hate all of Beckett’s boyfriends.”
“I know, I know,” Andy says. “It’s just that he’s such a lightweight, and
Beckett could do so much better. I did tell you he pronounced Proust as
Prowst, right?”