Page 69 - A Little Life: A Novel

The night before the party was unseasonably warm, warm enough that
Willem walked the two miles from Ortolan to the apartment, which was so
thick with its rich butter scents of cheese and dough and fennel that it made

him feel he had never left work at all. He stood in the kitchen for a while,
pinching the little tumoric blobs of pastry off their cooling racks to keep
them from sticking, looking at the stack of plastic containers with their
herbed shortbreads and cornmeal gingersnaps and feeling slightly sad—the
same sadness he felt when he noticed that Jude had cleaned after all—
because he knew they would be devoured mindlessly, swallowed whole
with beer, and that they would begin the New Year finding crumbs of those

beautiful cookies everywhere, trampled and stamped into the tiles. In the
bedroom, Jude was already asleep, and the window was cracked open, and
the heavy air made Willem dream of spring, and trees afuzz with yellow
flowers, and a flock of blackbirds, their wings lacquered as if with oil,
gliding soundlessly across a sea-colored sky.
When he woke, though, the weather had turned again, and it took him a

moment to realize that he had been shivering, and that the sounds in his
dream had been of wind, and that he was being shaken awake, and that his
name was being repeated, not by birds but by a human voice: “Willem,
Willem.”
He turned over and propped himself up on his elbows, but was able to
register Jude only in segments: his face first, and then the fact that he was
holding his left arm before him with his right hand, and that he had

cocooned it with something—his towel, he realized—which was so white in
the gloom that it seemed a source of light itself, and he stared at it,
transfixed.
“Willem, I’m sorry,” said Jude, and his voice was so calm that for a few
seconds, he thought it was a dream, and stopped listening, and Jude had to
repeat himself. “There’s been an accident, Willem; I’m sorry. I need you to

take me to Andy’s.”
Finally he woke. “What kind of accident?”
“I cut myself. It was an accident.” He paused. “Will you take me?”
“Yeah, of course,” he said, but he was still confused, still asleep, and it
was without understanding that he fumblingly dressed, and joined Jude in
the hallway, where he was waiting, and then walked with him up to Canal,
where he turned for the subway before Jude pulled him back: “I think we

need a cab.”