Page 691 - A Little Life: A Novel

couldn’t think of anything else. I could see he was getting frustrated and
embarrassed, and finally I let the subject drop.
Now, as we moved through TriBeCa, he mentioned, very casually, that he

had been asked to be the firm’s chairman.
“My god,” I said, “that’s amazing, Jude. My god. Congratulations.”
He nodded, once. “But I’m not going to accept,” he said, and I was
thunderstruck. After all he had given fucking Rosen Pritchard—all those
hours, all those years—he wasn’t going to take it? He looked at me. “I’d
have thought you’d be happy,” he said, and I shook my head.
“No,” I told him. “I know how much—how much satisfaction you get

from your job. I don’t want you to think that I don’t approve of you, that
I’m not proud of you.” He didn’t say anything. “Why aren’t you going to
take it?” I asked him. “You’d be great at it. You were born for it.”
And then he winced—I wasn’t sure why—and looked away. “No,” he
said. “I don’t think I would be. It was a controversial decision anyway, as I
understand it. Besides,” he began, and then stopped. Somehow we had

stopped walking as well, as if speech and movement were oppositional
activities, and we stood there in the cold for a while. “Besides,” he
continued, “I thought I’d leave the firm in a year or so.” He looked at me, as
if to see how I was reacting, and then looked up, at the sky. “I thought
maybe I’d travel,” he said, but his voice was hollow and joyless, as if he
were being conscripted into a faraway life he didn’t much want. “I could go
away,” he said, almost to himself. “There are places I should see.”

I didn’t know what to say. I stared and stared at him. “I could come with
you,” I whispered, and he came back to himself and looked at me.
“Yes,” he said, and he sounded so declarative I felt comforted. “Yes, you
could come with me. Or you two could come meet me in certain places.”
We started moving again. “Not that I want to unduly delay your second
act as a world traveler,” I said, “but I do think you should reconsider Rosen

Pritchard’s offer. Maybe do it for a few years, and then jet off to the
Balearics or Mozambique or wherever it is you want to go.” I knew that if
he accepted the chairmanship offer, then he wouldn’t kill himself; he was
too responsible to leave with unfinished business. “Okay?” I prompted him.
He smiled, then, his old, bright, beautiful smile. “Okay, Harold,” he said.
“I promise I’ll reconsider.”
Then we were just a few blocks from home, and I realized we were

coming upon Lispenard Street. “Oh god,” I said, seeking to capitalize on his