Page 309 - A Little Life: A Novel

than usual. Part of this is attributable to Malpractice and Bastard, and the
frantic preparations they had demanded; but the other part is attributable to
his ongoing confusion over Caleb, about whom he has not told Willem.

This weekend, though, Caleb is in Bridgehampton, and he is glad of the
time alone.
He still doesn’t know how he feels about Caleb, even three months later.
He is not altogether certain that Caleb even likes him. Or rather: he knows
he enjoys talking to him, but there are times when he catches Caleb looking
at him with an expression that borders on disgust. “You’re really
handsome,” Caleb once said, his voice perplexed, taking his chin between

his fingers and turning his face toward him. “But—” And although he
didn’t finish, he could sense what Caleb wanted to say: But something’s
wrong. But you still repel me. But I don’t understand why I don’t like you,
not really.
He knows Caleb hates his walk, for example. A few weeks after they had
started seeing each other, Caleb was sitting on the sofa and he had gone to

get a bottle of wine, and as he was walking back, he noticed Caleb staring at
him so intently that he had grown nervous. He poured the wine, and they
drank, and then Caleb said, “You know, when I met you, we were sitting
down, so I didn’t know you had a limp.”
“That’s true,” he said, reminding himself that this was not something for
which he had to apologize: he hadn’t entrapped Caleb; he hadn’t intended to
deceive him. He took a breath and tried to sound light, mildly curious.

“Would you not have wanted to go out with me if you’d known?”
“I don’t know,” Caleb said, after a silence. “I don’t know.” He had
wanted to vanish, then, to close his eyes and reel back time, back to before
he had ever met Caleb. He would have turned down Rhodes’s invitation; he
would have kept living his little life; he would have never known the
difference.

But as much as Caleb hates his walk, he loathes his wheelchair. The first
time Caleb had come over in daylight, he had given him a tour of the
apartment. He was proud of the apartment, and every day he was grateful to
be in it, and disbelieving that it was his. Malcolm had kept Willem’s suite—
as they called it—where it had been, but had enlarged it and added an office
at its northern edge, close to the elevator. And then there was the long open
space, with a piano, and a living-room area facing south, and a table that

Malcolm had designed on the northern side, the side without windows, and