Page 617 - A Little Life: A Novel

plausible enough that he could fool himself into believing it for long
stretches, sometimes for several days. (He was grateful then that the
logistics and realities of Willem’s job had, in many cases, been barely

credible: the industry’s very improbability helped him to believe now, when
he needed it.)
What’s the movie called? he imagined Willem asking, imagined Willem
smiling.
Dear Comrade, he told Willem, because that was how Willem and he had
sometimes addressed their e-mails to each other—Dear Comrade; Dear
Jude Haroldovich; Dear Willem Ragnaravovich—which they had begun

when Willem was shooting the first installment in his spy trilogy, which had
been set in nineteen-sixties Moscow. In his imaginings, Dear Comrade
would take a year to complete, although he knew he would have to adjust
that: it was March already, and in his fantasy, Willem would be coming
home in November, but he knew he wouldn’t be ready to end the charade
by then. He knew he would have to imagine reshoots, delays. He knew he

would have to invent a sequel, some reason that Willem would be away
from him for longer still.
To heighten the fantasy’s believability, he wrote Willem an e-mail every
night telling him what had happened that day, just as he would have done
had Willem been alive. Every message always ended the same way: I hope
the shoot’s going well. I miss you so much. Jude.
It had been the previous November when he had finally emerged from his

stupor, when the finality of Willem’s absence had truly begun to resonate. It
was then that he had known he was in trouble. He remembers very little
from the months before; he remembers very little from the day itself. He
remembers finishing the pasta salad, tearing the basil leaves above the
bowl, checking his watch and wondering where they were. But he hadn’t
been worried: Willem liked to drive home on the back roads, and Malcolm

liked to take pictures, and so they might have stopped, they might have lost
track of the time.
He called JB, listened to him complain about Fredrik; he cut some melon
for dessert. By this time they really were late, and he called Willem’s phone
but it only rang, emptily. Then he was irritated: Where could they have
been?
And then it was later still. He was pacing. He called Malcolm’s phone,

Sophie’s phone: nothing. He called Willem again. He called JB: Had they