Page 642 - A Little Life: A Novel

“Mal, forget it,” he’d told him, although he knew exactly what Malcolm
was referring to, “you were upset. It was a long time ago.”
“But it was wrong,” Malcolm had said. “And I was wrong. On every

level.”
As he sat with Mr. Irvine, he thought: I wish Malcolm could have had
this moment. This moment should have been Malcolm’s.
And so now he visits the Irvines after visiting Lucien, and the visits are
not dissimilar. They are both drifts into the past, they are both old men
talking at him about memories he doesn’t share, about contexts with which
he is unfamiliar. But although these visits depress him, he feels he must

fulfill them: both are with people who had always given him time and
conversation when he had needed it but hadn’t known how to ask for it.
When he was twenty-five and new to the city, he had lived at the Irvines’,
and Mr. Irvine would talk to him about the market, and law, and had given
him advice: not advice about how to think as much as advice about how to
be, about how to be a curiosity in a world in which curiosities weren’t often

tolerated. “People are going to think certain things about you because of
how you walk,” Mr. Irvine had once said to him, and he had looked down.
“No,” he’d said. “Don’t look down, Jude. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.
You’re a brilliant man, and you’ll be brilliant, and you’ll be rewarded for
your brilliance. But if you act like you don’t belong, if you act like you’re
apologetic for your own self, then people will start to treat you that way,
too.” He’d taken a deep breath. “Believe me.” Be as steely as you want to

be, Mr. Irvine had said. Don’t try to get people to like you. Never try to
make yourself more palatable in order to make your colleagues more
comfortable. Harold had taught him how to think as a litigator, but Mr.
Irvine had taught him how to behave as one. And Lucien had recognized
both of these abilities, and had appreciated them both as well.
That afternoon his visit at the Irvines’ is brief because Mr. Irvine is tired,

and on his way out he sees Flora—Fabulous Flora, of whom Malcolm was
so proud and so envious—and they speak for a few minutes before he
leaves. It is early October but still warm, the mornings like summer but the
afternoons turning dark and wintry, and as he walks up Park to his car, he
remembers how he used to spend his Saturdays here twenty years ago:
more. Then he would walk home, and on his way he would occasionally
stop by a famous, pricey bakery on Madison Avenue that he liked and buy a

loaf of walnut bread—a single loaf cost as much as he was willing to spend