Page 539 - A Little Life: A Novel

anything,” he said, “biting, anything, and I will beat you in the head with
this until you become a vegetable, do you understand me?”
He nodded, too petrified to say anything. “Speak,” Dr. Traylor yelled,

and he startled.
“Yes,” he gulped. “Yes, I understand.”
He was scared of Dr. Traylor, of course; he was scared of all of them. But
it had never occurred to him to fight with the clients, had never occurred to
him to challenge them. They were powerful and he was not. And Brother
Luke had trained him too well. He was too obedient. He was, as Dr. Traylor
had made him admit, a good prostitute.

Every day was like this, and although the sex was no worse than what
he’d had before, he remained convinced that it was a prelude, that it would
eventually get very bad, very strange. He had heard stories from Brother
Luke—he had seen videos—about things people did to one another: objects
they used, props and weapons. A few times he had experienced these things
himself. But he knew that in many ways he was lucky: he had been spared.

The terror of what might be ahead of him was, in many ways, worse than
the terror of the sex itself. At night he would imagine what he didn’t know
to imagine and begin gasping with panic, his clothes—a different set of
clothes now, but still not his clothes—becoming clammy with perspiration.
At the end of one session, he asked Dr. Traylor if he could leave.
“Please,” he said. “Please.” But Dr. Traylor said that he had given him ten
days of hospitality, and that he needed to repay those ten days. “And then

can I go?” he asked, but the doctor was already walking out the door.
On the sixth day of his repayment he thought of a plan. There was a
second or two—just that—in which Dr. Traylor tucked the fire poker under
his left arm and unbelted his pants with his right hand. If he could time it
correctly, he could hit the doctor in the face with a book, and try to run out.
He would have to be very quick; he would have to be very agile.

He scanned the books on their shelves, wishing yet again that some of
them were hardcovers, not these thick bricks of paperbacks. A small one, he
knew, would feel more like a slap, would be more wieldy, and so finally he
chose a copy of Dubliners: it was thin enough for him to grip, pliable
enough to crack against a face. He tucked it under his mattress, and then
realized he didn’t even need to bother with the deception; he could just
leave it by his side. So he did, and waited.