Page 661 - A Little Life: A Novel

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HE DIDN’T BEGIN it consciously, he really didn’t, and yet when he comprehends
what he is doing, he doesn’t stop it, either. It is the middle of November,
and he is getting out of the pool after his morning swim, and as he’s lifting
himself up on the metal bars that Richard had had installed around the pool
to help him get in and out of his wheelchair, the world disappears.
When he wakes again, it’s only ten minutes later. One moment it was six
forty-five a.m., and he was pulling himself up; the next it is six fifty-five

a.m., and he is prone on the black rubber floor, his arms reaching forward
for the chair, his torso leaving a wet splotch on the ground. He groans,
moving into a sitting position, and waits until the room rights itself again,
before attempting—and this time, succeeding—to hoist himself up.
The second time comes a few days later. He has just gotten home from

the office, and it is late. Increasingly, he has begun to feel as if Rosen
Pritchard supplies him with his very energy, and once he leaves its
premises, so too does his strength: the moment Mr. Ahmed shuts the back
door of the car, he is asleep, and he doesn’t wake until he is delivered to
Greene Street. But as he walks into the dark, quiet apartment that night, he
is overcome by a sense of displacement, one so debilitating that for a
moment he stops, blinking and confused, before he moves to the sofa in the

living room and lies down. He means to just rest, just for a few minutes,
just until he can stand again, but when he opens his eyes next it is day, and
the living room is gray with light.
The third time is Monday morning. He wakes before his alarm, and
although he is lying down, he feels everything around and within him
roiling, as if he is a bottle half filled with water set adrift on an ocean of

clouds. In recent weeks, he hasn’t had to drug himself at all on Sundays: he
gets home from dinner with JB on Saturday, and climbs into bed, and only
wakes when Richard comes to find him the next day. When Richard doesn’t
come—as he hadn’t this Sunday; he and India are visiting her parents in
New Mexico—he sleeps through the entire day, through the entire night. He
dreams of nothing, and nothing wakes him.