Page 533 - A Little Life: A Novel

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