Page 306 - A Little Life: A Novel

“I thought you were looking for legal representation,” he says at last, and
the words are so idiotic that he can feel his face get hot.
But Caleb doesn’t laugh. “No,” he says. There is another long silence,

and it is Caleb who speaks next. “Aren’t you going to invite me up?” he
asks.
“I don’t know,” he says, and he wishes, suddenly, for Willem, although
this is not the sort of problem that Willem has helped him with before, and
in fact, probably not the sort of problem that Willem would even consider a
problem at all. He knows what a stolid, careful person he is, and although
that stolidity and sense of caution guarantee he will never be the most

interesting, or provocative, or glittery person in any gathering, in any room,
they have protected him so far, they have given him an adulthood free of
sordidness and filth. But sometimes he wonders whether he has insulated
himself so much that he has neglected some essential part of being human:
maybe he is ready to be with someone. Maybe enough time has passed so it
will be different. Maybe he is wrong, maybe Willem is right: maybe this

isn’t an experience that is forbidden to him forever. Maybe he is less
disgusting than he thinks. Maybe he really is capable of this. Maybe he
won’t be hurt after all. Caleb seems, in that moment, to have been conjured,
djinn-like, the offspring of his worst fears and greatest hopes, and dropped
into his life as a test: On one side is everything he knows, the patterns of his
existence as regular and banal as the steady plink of a dripping faucet,
where he is alone but safe, and shielded from everything that could hurt

him. On the other side are waves, tumult, rainstorms, excitement:
everything he cannot control, everything potentially awful and ecstatic,
everything he has lived his adult life trying to avoid, everything whose
absence bleeds his life of color. Inside him, the creature hesitates, perching
on its hind legs, pawing the air as if feeling for answers.
Don’t do it, don’t fool yourself, no matter what you tell yourself, you

know what you are, says one voice.
Take a chance, says the other voice. You’re lonely. You have to try. This is
the voice he always ignores.
This may never happen again, the voice adds, and this stops him.
It will end badly, says the first voice, and then both voices fall silent,
waiting to see what he will do.
He doesn’t know what to do; he doesn’t know what will happen. He has

to find out. Everything he has learned tells him to leave; everything he has