Page 60 - A Little Life: A Novel

adults’ dinner party. “Ah, yes, this is Margaret,” he’d say, as the client
looked at her appraisingly, much as he had minutes before been looking at
Rausch’s blueprints (blueprints finished in fact by Margaret). “She’ll be

running me out of town someday soon, I’m sure.” And then he’d laugh his
sad, contrived, walrus-bark laugh: “Ah! Ha! Ha! Ha!”
Margaret would smile and say hello, and roll her eyes at them the
moment she turned around. But they knew she was thinking what they were
all thinking: Fuck you, Rausch. And: When? When will I replace you?
When will it be my turn?
In the meantime, all they had was play: after the debating and the

shouting and the eating, there was silence, and the office filled with the
hollow tappings of mice being clicked and personal work being dragged
from folders and opened, and the grainy sound of pencils being dragged
across paper. Although they all worked at the same time, using the same
company resources, no one ever asked to see anyone else’s work; it was as
if they had collectively decided to pretend it didn’t exist. So you worked,

drawing dream structures and bending parabolas into dream shapes, until
midnight, and then you left, always with the same stupid joke: “See you in
ten hours.” Or nine, or eight, if you were really lucky, if you were really
getting a lot done that night.
Tonight was one of the nights Malcolm left alone, and early. Even if he
walked out with someone else, he was never able to take the train with
them; they all lived downtown or in Brooklyn, and he lived uptown. The

benefit to walking out alone was that no one would witness him catching a
cab. He wasn’t the only person in the office with rich parents—Katharine’s
parents were rich as well, as, he was pretty sure, were Margaret’s and
Frederick’s—but he lived with his rich parents, and the others didn’t.
He hailed a taxi. “Seventy-first and Lex,” he instructed the driver. When
the driver was black, he always said Lexington. When the driver wasn’t, he

was more honest: “Between Lex and Park, closer to Park.” JB thought this
was ridiculous at best, offensive at worst. “You think they’re gonna think
you’re any more gangster because they think you live at Lex and not Park?”
he’d ask. “Malcolm, you’re a dumbass.”
This fight about taxis was one of many he’d had with JB over the years
about blackness, and more specifically, his insufficient blackness. A
different fight about taxis had begun when Malcolm (stupidly; he’d

recognized his mistake even as he heard himself saying the words) had