Page 500 - A Little Life: A Novel

behind your bed when you’re trying to sleep in—seem instead reminders of
your own permanence, of how life, your life, will always graciously allow
you to step back inside of it, no matter how far you have gone away from it

or how long you have left it.
Also that week, the things you like anyway seem, in their very existence,
to be worthy of celebration: the candied-walnut vendor on Crosby Street
who always returns your wave as you jog past him; the falafel sandwich
with extra pickled radish from the truck down the block that you woke up
craving one night in London; the apartment itself, with its sunlight that
lopes from one end to the other in the course of a day, with your things and

food and bed and shower and smells.
And, of course, there is the person you come back to: his face and body
and voice and scent and touch, his way of waiting until you finish whatever
you’re saying, no matter how lengthy, before he speaks, the way his smile
moves so slowly across his face that it reminds you of moonrise, how
clearly he has missed you and how clearly happy he is to have you back.

Then there are the things, if you are particularly lucky, that this person has
done for you while you’re away: how in the pantry, in the freezer, in the
refrigerator will be all the food you like to eat, the scotch you like to drink.
There will be the sweater you thought you lost the previous year at the
theater, clean and folded and back on its shelf. There will be the shirt with
its dangling buttons, but the buttons will be sewn back in place. There will
be your mail stacked on one side of his desk; there will be a contract for an

advertising campaign you’re going to do in Germany for an Austrian beer,
with his notes in the margin to discuss with your lawyer. And there will be
no mention of it, and you will know that it was done with genuine pleasure,
and you will know that part of the reason—a small part, but a part—you
love being in this apartment and in this relationship is because this other
person is always making a home for you, and that when you tell him this, he

won’t be offended but pleased, and you’ll be glad, because you meant it
with gratitude. And in these moments—almost a week back home—you
will wonder why you leave so often, and you will wonder whether, after the
next year’s obligations are fulfilled, you ought not just stay here for a
period, where you belong.
But you will also know—as he knows—that part of your constant leaving
is reactive. After his relationship with Jude was made public, while he and

Kit and Emil were waiting to see what would happen next, he had