Page 629 - A Little Life: A Novel

voicing: I would trade you for him. He would have traded any of them for
Willem. JB, instantly. Richard and Andy—poor Richard and Andy, who did
everything for him!—instantly. Julia, even. Harold. He would have

exchanged any of them, all of them, to have Willem back. He thinks of
Hades, with his shiny Italian brawn, swooning E. around the underworld. I
have a proposition for you, he says to Hades. Five souls for one. How can
you refuse?
One Sunday in April he is sleeping when he hears a banging, loud and
insistent, and he wakes, groggily, and then turns onto his side, holding the
pillow over his head and keeping his eyes closed, and eventually the

banging stops. So when he feels someone touch him, gently, on his arm, he
shouts and flops over and sees it is Richard, sitting next to him.
“I’m sorry, Jude,” says Richard. And then, “Have you been sleeping all
day?”
He swallows, sits up halfway. On Sundays he keeps all the shades
lowered, all the curtains drawn; he can never tell, really, whether it is night

or day. “Yes,” he says. “I’m tired.”
“Well,” says Richard after a silence. “I’m sorry to barge in like this. But
you weren’t answering your phone, and I wanted you to come downstairs
and have dinner with me.”
“Oh, Richard, I don’t know,” he says, trying to think of an excuse.
Richard is right: he turns off his phone, all phones, for his Sunday
cocooning, so nothing will interrupt his slumber, his attempts to find

Willem in his dreams. “I’m not feeling that great. I’m not going to be good
company.”
“I’m not expecting entertainment, Jude,” Richard says, and smiles at him
a bit. “Come on. You have to eat something. It’s just going to be you and
me; India’s upstate at her friend’s this weekend.”
They are both quiet for a long time. He looks about the room, his messy

bed. The air smells close, of sandalwood and steam heat from the radiator.
“Come on, Jude,” Richard says, in a low voice. “Come have dinner with
me.”
“Okay,” he says at last. “Okay.”
“Okay,” Richard says, standing. “I’ll see you downstairs in half an hour.”
He showers, and then down he goes, with a bottle of Tempranillo he
remembers that Richard likes. In the apartment he is waved away from the

kitchen, and so he sits at the long table that dominates the space, which can