Page 533 - A Little Life: A Novel
P. 533

He had been expecting a dungeon, slippery and leaking and dank, but it
                really was a bedroom, with a mattress made up with a blanket and sheets,
                and a blue circular rug beneath it, and lining the left-hand wall, bookcases

                of the same unfinished wood the staircase had been made from, with books
                on  them.  The  space  was  bright-lit  in  that  aggressive,  relentless  way  he
                remembered  from  hospitals  and  police  stations,  and  there  was  a  small
                window, about the size of a dictionary, cut high into the far wall.
                   “I put out some clothes for you,” the man said, and he saw that folded on
                the  mattress  was  a  shirt  and  a  pair  of  sweatpants,  and  a  towel  and
                toothbrush as well. “The bathroom’s there,” the man said, pointing to the far

                right-hand corner of the room.
                   And then he began to leave. “Wait,” he called after the man, and the man
                stopped his climb and looked at him, and he began, under the man’s gaze, to
                unbutton  his  shirt.  Something  changed  in  the  man’s  face,  then,  and  he
                climbed another few steps. “You’re sick,” he said. “You have to get better
                first,” and then he left the room, the door clicking shut after him.

                   He  slept  that  night,  both  from  lack  of  anything  else  to  do  and  from
                exhaustion. The next morning he woke and smelled food, and he groaned to
                his feet and walked slowly up the stairs, where he found a plastic tray with
                a plate of eggs, poached, and two lengths of bacon, a roll, a glass of milk, a
                banana, and another of the white pills. He was too wobbly to bring it down
                without falling, so he sat there, on one of the unfinished wooden steps, and
                ate the food and swallowed the pill. After resting, he stood to open the door

                and take the tray to the kitchen, but the knob wouldn’t turn because the door
                was locked. There was a small square cut into the bottom of the door, a cat
                door, he assumed, although he hadn’t seen a cat, and he held back its curtain
                of rubber and poked his head out. “Hello?” he called. He realized he didn’t
                know the man’s name, which wasn’t unusual—he never knew their names.
                “Sir? Hello?” But there was no answer, and he could tell from the way the

                house was silent that he was alone.
                   He should have felt panic, he should have felt fear, but he felt neither,
                only a crush of tiredness, and he left the tray at the top of the stairs and
                worked his way slowly down again, and then into bed, where he slept once
                more.
                   He dozed for that entire day, and when he woke, the man was standing
                above him again, watching him, and he sat up, abruptly. “Dinner,” the man

                said, and he followed him upstairs, still in his borrowed clothes, which were
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