Page 615 - A Little Life: A Novel

He had smelled it: it was green and slightly peppery, with a raw, aching
finish. “Vetiver,” Willem had said. “Try it on,” and he had, dabbing it onto
his hand because he didn’t let Willem see his wrists back then.

Willem had sniffed at him. “I like it,” he said, “it smells nice on you,”
and they were both suddenly shy with each other.
“Thanks, Willem,” he’d said. “I love it.”
Willem had had a scent made for himself as well. His had been
sandalwood-based, and he soon grew to associate the wood with him:
whenever he smelled it—especially when he was far away: in India on
business; in Japan; in Thailand—he would always think of Willem and

would feel less alone. As the years passed, they both continued to order
these scents from the Florence perfumer, and two months ago, one of the
first things he did when he had the presence of mind to think of it was to
order a large quantity of Willem’s custom-made cologne. He had been so
relieved, so fevered, when the package had finally arrived, that his hands
had tremored as he tore off its wrappings and slit open the box. Already, he

could feel Willem slipping from him; already, he knew he needed to try to
maintain him. But although he had sprayed—carefully; he didn’t want to
use too much—the fragrance on Willem’s shirt, it hadn’t been the same. It
wasn’t just the cologne after all that had made Willem’s clothes smell like
Willem: it had been him, his very self-ness. That night he had laid in bed in
a shirt gone sugary with sandalwood, a scent so strong that it had
overwhelmed every other odor, that it had destroyed what had remained of

Willem entirely. That night he had cried, for the first time in a long time,
and the next day he had retired that shirt, folding it and packing it into a box
in the corner of the closet so it wouldn’t contaminate Willem’s other
clothes.
The cologne, the ritual with the shirt: they are two pieces of the
scaffolding, rickety and fragile as it is, that he has learned to erect in order

to keep moving forward, to keep living his life. Although often he feels he
isn’t so much living as he is merely existing, being moved through his days
rather than moving through them himself. But he doesn’t punish himself too
much for this; merely existing is difficult enough.
It had taken months to figure out what worked. For a while he gorged
nightly on Willem’s films, watching them until he fell asleep on the sofa,
fast-forwarding to the scenes with Willem speaking. But the dialogue, the

fact of Willem’s acting, made him seem farther from him, not closer, and