Page 66 - A Little Life: A Novel

He fancied himself already half in love with Willem, and at various
points in love with Jude too, and at work he would sometimes find himself
staring at Eduard. Sometimes he noticed Dominick Cheung staring at

Eduard as well, and then he would stop himself, because the last person he
wanted to be was sad, forty-five-year-old Dominick, leering at an associate
in a firm that he would never inherit. A few weekends ago, he had been at
Willem and Jude’s, ostensibly to take some measurements so he could
design them a bookcase, and Willem had leaned in front of him to grab the
measuring tape from the sofa, and the very nearness of him had been
suddenly unbearable, and he had made an excuse about needing to get into

the office and had abruptly left, Willem calling after him.
He had in fact gone to the office, ignoring Willem’s texts, and had sat
there at his computer, staring without seeing the file before him and
wondering yet again why he had joined Ratstar. The worst thing was that
the answer was so obvious that he didn’t even need to ask it: he had joined
Ratstar to impress his parents. His last year of architecture school, Malcolm

had had a choice—he could have chosen to work with two classmates,
Jason Kim and Sonal Mars, who were starting their own firm with money
from Sonal’s grandparents, or he could have joined Ratstar.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Jason had said when Malcolm had told
him of his decision. “You realize what your life is going to be like as an
associate at a place like that, don’t you?”
“It’s a great firm,” he’d said, staunchly, sounding like his mother, and

Jason had rolled his eyes. “I mean, it’s a great name to have on my résumé.”
But even as he said it, he knew (and, worse, feared Jason knew as well)
what he really meant: it was a great name for his parents to say at cocktail
parties. And, indeed, his parents liked to say it. “Two kids,” Malcolm had
overheard his father say to someone at a dinner party celebrating one of
Malcolm’s mother’s clients. “My daughter’s an editor at FSG, and my son

works for Ratstar Architects.” The woman had made an approving sound,
and Malcolm, who had actually been trying to find a way to tell his father
he wanted to quit, had felt something in him wilt. At such times, he envied
his friends for the exact things he had once pitied them for: the fact that no
one had any expectations for them, the ordinariness of their families (or
their very lack of them), the way they navigated their lives by only their
own ambitions.