Page 607 - A Little Life: A Novel

“I doubt that,” he said. “And I’m coming.”
The picnic was held on the grounds of a large old mansion on the
Hudson, a more polished cousin of the house in which he had shot Uncle

Vanya, and the entire firm—partners, associates, staff, and their families—
had been invited. As they walked down the clover-thick back lawn toward
the gathering, he had felt abruptly and unusually shy, keenly aware that he
was an interloper, and when Jude was just minutes later plucked away from
him by the firm’s chairman, who said he had some business he needed to
discuss, quickly but urgently, he had to resist actually reaching out for Jude,
who turned and gave him an apologetic smile and held up his hand—Five

minutes—as he left.
So he was grateful for the sudden presence of Sanjay, one of the very few
colleagues of Jude’s he had met, and who had the year before joined him as
co-chair of his department so Jude could concentrate on bringing in new
business while Sanjay handled the administrative and managerial details.
He and Sanjay remained at the top of the hill, looking at the crowd beneath

them, Sanjay pointing out to him various associates and young partners
whom he and Jude hated. (Some of these doomed lawyers would turn and
see Sanjay looking in their direction and Sanjay would wave back at them,
cheerfully, muttering dark things about their lack of competence and
resourcefulness to Willem as he did.) He began noticing that people were
glancing up at him and then looking away, and one woman, who had been
walking uphill, had ungracefully veered off in the opposite direction after

noticing him standing there.
“I can see I’m a big hit here,” he joked to Sanjay, who smiled back at
him.
“They’re not intimidated by you, Willem,” he said. “They’re intimidated
by Jude.” He grinned. “Okay, and by you as well.”
Finally, Jude was returned to him, and they stood talking to the chairman

(“I’m a big fan”) and Sanjay for a while before moving down the hill,
where Jude introduced him to some of the people he’d heard about over the
years. One of the paralegals asked to take a picture with him, and after he
had, other people asked as well, and when Jude was pulled away from him
again, he found himself listening to one of the partners in the tax
department, who began describing to him his own stunt sequences from the
second of his spy movies. At one point during Isaac’s monologue he had

looked across the lawn and had caught Jude’s eye, who mouthed his