Page 672 - A Little Life: A Novel

upon itself and he will be made to relive his life in sequence. It’ll get better
eventually, he promises himself. Remember, good years followed the bad.
But he can’t do it again; he can’t live once more through those fifteen years,

those fifteen years whose half-life have been so long and so resonant, that
have determined everything he has become and done.
By the time he finally, fully wakes on Monday morning, he knows he has
crossed some sort of threshold. He knows he is close, that he is moving
from one world to another. He blacks out twice while simply trying to get
into his wheelchair. He faints on his way to the bathroom. And yet
somehow he remains uninjured; somehow he is still alive. He gets dressed,

the suit and shirts he’d had recut for him a month ago already loose, and
slides his stumps into the prostheses, and goes downstairs to meet Mr.
Ahmed.
At work, everything is the same. It is the new year; people are returning
from their vacations. During the management committee meeting, he jabs
his fingers into his thigh to keep himself alert. He feels his grip loosen

around the branch.
Sanjay leaves early that evening; he leaves early, too. Today is Harold
and Julia’s move-in day, and he has promised to go uptown to visit them.
He hasn’t seen them in more than a month, and although he feels himself no
longer able to gauge what he looks like, he has dressed in extra layers today
—an undershirt, his shirt, a sweater, a cardigan, his suit jacket, his coat—so
that he’ll appear a little bulkier. At Harold’s, he is waved in by the doorman,

and up he goes, trying not to blink because blinking makes the dizziness
worse. Outside their door, he stops and puts his head in his hands until he
feels strong enough, and then he turns the knob and rolls inside and stares.
They are all there: Harold and Julia, of course, but Andy and JB and
Richard and India and the Henry Youngs and Rhodes and Elijah and Sanjay
and the Irvines as well, all posed and perched on different pieces of

furniture as if they’re at a photo shoot, and for a second he fears he will
start laughing. And then he wonders: Am I dreaming this? Am I awake? He
remembers the vision of himself as a sagging mattress and thinks: Am I still
real? Am I still conscious?
“Christ,” he says, when he is able to speak at last. “What the hell is this?”
“Exactly what you think it is,” he hears Andy say.
“I’m not staying for this,” he tries to say, but can’t. He can’t move. He

can’t look at any of them: he looks instead at his hands—his scarred left