Page 534 - A Little Life: A Novel

too wide in the waist and too short in the sleeves and legs, because when he
had looked for his own clothes, they were missing. My money, he thought,
but he was too addled to think beyond that.

Once again he sat in the brown kitchen, and the man brought him his pill,
and a plate with brown meat loaf, and a slop of mashed potatoes, and
broccoli, and another plate for himself, and they began to eat in silence.
Silence didn’t make him nervous—usually, he was grateful for it—but this
man’s silence was closer to inwardness, the way a cat will be silent and
watching, watching, watching so fixedly that you don’t know what it sees,
and then suddenly it will jump, and trap something beneath its paw.

“What kind of doctor are you?” he asked, tentatively, and the man looked
at him.
“A psychiatrist,” the doctor said. “Do you know what that is?”
“Yes,” he said.
The man made his noise again. “Do you like being a prostitute?” he
asked, and he felt, unaccountably, tears in his eyes, but then he blinked and

they were gone.
“No,” he said.
“Then why do you do it?” the man asked, and he shook his head.
“Speak,” the man said.
“I don’t know,” he said, and the man made a huffing noise. “It’s what I
know how to do,” he said at last.
“Are you good at it?” the man asked, and once again, he felt that sting,

and he was quiet for a long time.
“Yes,” he said, and it was the worst admission he had ever made, the
hardest word for him to say.
After they were done, the doctor escorted him once again to the door, and
gave him the same little shove inside. “Wait,” he said to the man, as he was
closing the door. “My name’s Joey,” and when the man said nothing, only

stared at him, “what’s yours?”
The man kept looking at him, but now he was, he thought, almost
smiling, or at least he was about to make some sort of expression. But then
he didn’t. “Dr. Traylor,” the man said, and then pulled the door quickly shut
behind him, as if that very information was a bird that might fly away if it
too were not trapped inside with him.
The next day he felt less sore, less febrile. When he stood, though, he

realized he was still weak, and he swayed and grabbed at the air and in the