Page 562 - A Little Life: A Novel

the kind of recognition he wanted, the kind of recognition he thought JB
should have received after “Seconds, Minutes, Hours, Days.”
“The question is which one of us is the frog and which is the toad,”

Willem had said after they’d first seen the show, in JB’s studio, and read the
kindhearted books to each other late that night, laughing helplessly as they
did.
He’d smiled; they had been lying in bed. “Obviously, I’m the toad,” he
said.
“No,” Willem said, “I think you’re the frog; your eyes are the same color
as his skin.”

Willem sounded so serious that he grinned. “That’s your evidence?” he
asked. “And so what do you have in common with the toad?”
“I think I actually have a jacket like the one he has,” Willem said, and
they began laughing again.
But really, he knew: he was the toad, and seeing the picture in the Times
of the two of them together had reminded him of this. He wasn’t so

bothered by this for his own sake—he was trying to care less about his own
anxieties—but for Willem’s, because he was aware of how mismatched,
how distorted a couple they made, and he was embarrassed for him, and
worried that his mere presence might be somehow harmful to Willem. And
so he tried to stay away from him in public. He had always thought that
Willem was capable of making him better, but over the years he feared: If
Willem could make him better, didn’t that also mean that he could make

Willem sick? And in the same way, if Willem could make him into someone
less difficult to regard, couldn’t he also make Willem into something ugly?
He knew this wasn’t logical, but he thought it anyway, and sometimes as
they were getting ready to go out, he glimpsed himself in the bathroom
mirror, his stupid, pleased expression, as absurd and grotesque as a monkey
dressed in expensive clothes, and would want to punch the glass with his

fist.
But the other reason he was worried about being seen with Willem was
because of the exposure it entailed. Ever since his first day of college, he
had feared that someday someone from his past—a client; one of the boys
from the home—would try to contact him, would try to extort something
from him for their silence. “No one will, Jude,” Ana had assured him. “I
promise. To do so would be to admit how they know you.” But he was

always afraid, and over the years, there had been a few ghosts who had