Page 653 - A Little Life: A Novel

hears Harold walk away from him.
After Harold leaves, he takes the elevator to the roof. Here there is a
stone wall, chest-high, that lines the perimeter of the building, and he leans

against it, swallowing the cool air, placing his palms flat against the top of
the wall to try to stop them from shaking. He thinks of Willem, of how he
and Willem used to stand on this roof at night, not saying anything, just
looking down into other people’s apartments. From the southern end of the
roof, they could almost see the roof of their old building on Lispenard
Street, and sometimes they would pretend that they could see not just the
building, but them within it, their former selves performing a theater of

their daily lives.
“There must be a fold in the space-time continuum,” Willem would say
in his action-hero voice. “You’re here beside me, and yet—I can see you
moving around in that shithole apartment. My god, St. Francis: Do you
realize what’s going on here?!” Back then, he would always laugh, but
remembering this now, he cannot. These days, his only pleasure is thoughts

of Willem, and yet those same thoughts are also his greatest source of
sorrow. He wishes he could forget as completely as Lucien has: that Willem
ever existed, his life with him.
As he stands on the roof, he considers what he has done: He has been
irrational. He has gotten angry at someone who has, once again, offered to
help him, someone he is grateful for, someone he owes, someone he loves.
Why am I acting like this, he thinks. But there’s no answer.

Let me get better, he asks. Let me get better or let me end it. He feels that
he is in a cold cement room, from which prong several exits, and one by
one, he is shutting the doors, closing himself in the room, eliminating his
chances for escape. But why is he doing this? Why is he trapping himself in
this place he hates and fears when there are other places he could go? This,
he thinks, is his punishment for depending on others: one by one, they will

leave him, and he will be alone again, and this time it will be worse because
he will remember it had once been better. He has the sense, once again, that
his life is moving backward, that it is becoming smaller and smaller, the
cement box shrinking around him until he is left with a space so cramped
that he must fold himself into a crouch, because if he lies down, the ceiling
will lower itself upon him and he will be smothered.
Before he goes to bed he writes Harold a note apologizing for his

behavior. He works through Saturday; he sleeps through Sunday. And a new