Page 508 - A Little Life: A Novel

“Well, he hasn’t said anything to me,” he says, and he can feel himself
fill with strata of emotions: fear layered upon irritation layered upon fear
layered upon curiosity layered upon fear. “Andy, you’d better tell me,” he

says. Something in him starts to panic. “Is it bad?” he asks. And then he
begins to plead: “Andy, don’t do this to me.”
He hears Andy breathing, slowly. “Willem,” he says, quietly. “Ask him
how he really got the burn on his arm. I have to go.”
“Andy!” he yells. “Andy!” But he’s gone.
He twists his head and looks out the window and sees Jude walking
toward him. The burn, he thinks: What about the burn? Jude had gotten it

when he tried to make the fried plantains JB likes. “Fucking JB,” he’d said,
seeing the bandage wrapped around Jude’s arm. “Always fucking
everything up,” and Jude had laughed. “Seriously, though,” he’d said, “are
you okay, Judy?” And Jude had said he was: he had gone to Andy’s, and
they had done a graft with some artificial skin-like material. They’d had an
argument, then, that Jude hadn’t told him how serious the burn was—from

Jude’s e-mail, he had assumed it was a singe, certainly not something
worthy of a skin graft—and another one this morning when Jude insisted on
driving, even though his arm was still clearly hurting him, but: What about
the burn? And then, suddenly, he realizes that there is only one way to
interpret Andy’s words, and he has to quickly lower his head because he is
as dizzy as if someone had just hit him.
“Sorry,” Jude says, easing back into the car. “The line took forever.” He

shakes the mints out of the bag, and then turns and sees him. “Willem?” he
asks. “What’s wrong? You look terrible.”
“Andy called,” he says, and he watches Jude’s face, watches it become
stony and scared. “Jude,” he says, and his own voice sounds far away, as if
he’s speaking from the depths of a gulch, “how did you get the burn on your
arm?” But Jude won’t answer him, just stares at him. This isn’t happening,

he tells himself.
But of course it is. “Jude,” he repeats, “how did you get the burn on your
arm?” But Jude only keeps staring at him, his lips closed, and he asks again,
and again. Finally, “Jude!” he shouts, astonished by his own fury, and Jude
ducks his head. “Jude! Tell me! Tell me right now!”
And then Jude says something so quietly he can’t hear him. “Louder,” he
shouts at him. “I can’t hear you.”

“I burned myself,” Jude says at last, very softly.