Page 649 - A Little Life: A Novel

often could he really be expected to repeat himself, when with each telling
he was stripping the clothes from his skin and the flesh from his bones, until
he was as vulnerable as a small pink mouse? He knows, then, that he will

never be able to go to another doctor. He will go to Andy for as long as he
can, for as long as Andy will let him. And after that, he doesn’t know—he
will figure out what to do then. For now, his privacy, his life, is still his. For
now, no one else needs to know. His thoughts are so occupied with Willem
—trying to re-create him, to hold his face and voice in his head, to keep him
present—that his past is as far away as it has ever been: he is in the middle
of a lake, trying to stay afloat; he can’t think of returning to shore and

having to live among his memories again.
He doesn’t want to go to dinner with Andy that night, but they do, telling
Linus goodbye as they leave. They walk to the sushi restaurant in silence,
sit in silence, order, and wait in silence.
“What’d you think?” Andy finally asks.
“He kind of looks like Willem,” he says.

“Does he?” Andy says, and he shrugs.
“A little,” he says. “The smile.”
“Ah,” Andy says. “I guess. I can see that.” There’s another silence. “But
what did you think? I know it’s sometimes hard to tell from one meeting,
but does he seem like someone you might be able to get along with?”
“I don’t think so, Andy,” he says at last, and can feel Andy’s
disappointment.

“Really, Jude? What didn’t you like about him?” But he doesn’t answer,
and finally Andy sighs. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I hoped you might feel
comfortable enough around him to at least consider it. Will you think about
it anyway? Maybe you’ll give him another chance? And in the meantime,
there’s this other guy, Stephan Wu, who I think you should maybe meet.
He’s not an orthopod, but I actually think that might be better; he’s certainly

the best internist I’ve ever worked with. Or there’s this guy named—”
“Jesus, Andy, stop,” he says, and he can hear the anger in his voice, anger
he hasn’t known he had. “Stop.” He looks up, sees Andy’s stricken face.
“Are you so eager to get rid of me? Can’t you give me a break? Can’t you
let me take this in for a while? Don’t you understand how hard this is for
me?” He knows how selfish, how unreasonable, how self-absorbed he is
being, and he is miserable but unable to stop himself, and he stands,