Page 591 - A Little Life: A Novel

“You were treated horribly. You came out on the other end. You were
always you.”
On and on Willem talks, chanting him back to himself, and in the

daytime—sometimes days later—he remembers pieces of what Willem has
said and holds them close to him, as much as for what he said as for what
he didn’t, for how he hadn’t defined him.
But in the nighttime he is too terrified, he is too lost to recognize this. His
panic is too real, too consuming. “And who are you?” he asks, looking at
the man who is holding him, who is describing someone he doesn’t
recognize, someone who seems to have so much, someone who seems like

such an enviable, beloved person. “Who are you?”
The man has an answer to this question as well. “I’m Willem
Ragnarsson,” he says. “And I will never let you go.”

“I’m going,” he tells Jude, but then he doesn’t move. A dragonfly, as
shiny as a scarab, hums above them. “I’m going,” he repeats, but he still
doesn’t move, and it is only the third time he says it that he’s finally able to
stand up from the lounge chair, drunk on the hot air, and shove his feet back

into his loafers.
“Limes,” says Jude, looking up at him and shielding his eyes against the
sun.
“Right,” he says, and bends down, takes Jude’s sunglasses off him, kisses
him on his eyelids, and replaces his glasses. Summer, JB has always said, is
Jude’s season: his skin darkens and his hair lightens to almost the same
shade, making his eyes turn an unnatural green, and Willem has to keep

himself from touching him too much. “I’ll be back in a little while.”
He trudges up the hill to the house, yawning, places his glass of half-
melted ice and tea in the sink, and crunches down the pebbled driveway to
the car. It is one of those summer days when the air is so hot, so dry, so still,
the sun overhead so white, that one doesn’t so much see one’s surroundings
as hear and smell and taste them: the lawn-mower buzz of the bees and

locusts, the faint peppery scent of the sunflowers, the oddly mineral flavor
the heat leaves on the tongue, as if he’s just sucked on stones. The heat is
enervating, but not in an oppressive way, only in a way that makes them
both sleepy and defenseless, in a way that makes torpor not just acceptable
but necessary. When it is hot like this they lie by the pool for hours, not