Page 630 - A Little Life: A Novel

and has sat twenty-four, and strokes Richard’s cat, Mustache, which has
jumped into his lap. He remembers the first time he saw this apartment with
its dangling chandeliers and its large beeswax sculptures; over the years it

has become more domesticated, but it is still, indisputably, Richard’s, with
its palette of bone-white and wax-yellow, although now India’s paintings,
bright, violent abstractions of female nudes, hang on the walls, and there are
carpets on the floor. It has been months since he’s been inside this
apartment, where he used to visit at least once a week. He still sees Richard,
of course, but only in passing; mostly, he tries to avoid him, and when
Richard calls him to have dinner or asks to stop by, he always says he is too

busy, too tired.
“I couldn’t remember how you felt about my famous seitan stir-fry, so I
actually got scallops,” Richard says, and places a dish before him.
“I like your famous stir-fry,” he says, although he can’t remember what it
is, and if he likes it or not. “Thank you, Richard.”
Richard pours them both a glass of wine, and then holds his up. “Happy

birthday, Jude,” he says, solemnly, and he realizes that Richard is right:
today is his birthday. Harold has been calling and e-mailing him all this
week with a frequency that is unusual even for him, and except for the most
cursory of replies, he has not spoken to him at all. He knows Harold will be
worried about him. There have been more texts from Andy as well, and
from some other people, and now he knows why, and he begins to cry: from
everyone’s kindness, which he has repaid so poorly, from his loneliness,

from the proof that life has, despite his efforts to let it, gone on after all. He
is fifty-one, and Willem has been dead for eight months.
Richard doesn’t say anything, just sits next to him on the bench and holds
him. “I know this isn’t going to help,” he says at last, “but I love you too,
Jude.”
He shakes his head, unable to speak. In recent years he has gone from

being embarrassed about crying at all to crying constantly to himself to
crying around Willem to now, in the final falling away of his dignity, crying
in front of anyone, at any time, over anything.
He leans against Richard’s chest and sobs into his shirt. Richard is
another person whose unstinting, unwavering friendship and compassion
for him has always perplexed him. He knows that some of Richard’s
feelings for him are twined with his feelings for Willem, and this he

understands: he had made Willem a promise, and Richard is serious about