Page 320 - A Little Life: A Novel

shattering on the floor. And then, moving as swiftly as if he’d anticipated it,
there is Caleb, yanking him up by his hair and punching him in the face
with his fist, so hard that he is airborne, and when he lands, he does so

against the table, knocking the base of his skull against its edge. His fall
makes the bottle of wine jump off the surface, the liquid glugging onto the
floor, and Caleb makes a roar, and snatches at the bottle by its throat and
hits him on the back of his neck with it.
“Caleb,” he gasps, “please, please.” He was never one to beg for mercy,
not even as a child, but he has become that person, somehow. When he was
a child, his life meant little to him; he wishes, now, that that were still true.

“Please,” he says. “Caleb, please forgive me—I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
But Caleb, he knows, is no longer human. He is a wolf, he is a coyote. He
is muscle and rage. And he is nothing to Caleb, he is prey, he is disposable.
He is being dragged to the edge of the sofa, he knows what will happen
next. But he continues to ask, anyway. “Please, Caleb,” he says. “Please
don’t. Caleb, please.”

When he regains consciousness, he is on the floor near the back of the
sofa, and the house is silent. “Hello?” he calls, hating the quaver in his
voice, but he doesn’t hear anything. He doesn’t need to—he knows,
somehow, that he is alone.
He sits up. He pulls up his underwear and pants and flexes his fingers, his
hands, brings his knees to his chest and back down again, moves his
shoulders back and forward, turns his neck from left to right. There is

something sticky on the back of his neck, but when he examines it, he’s
relieved to see it’s not blood but wine. Everything hurts, but nothing is
broken.
He crawls to the bedroom. He quickly cleans himself off in the bathroom
and gathers his things and puts them in his bag. He scuttles to the door. For
an instant he is afraid that his car will have disappeared, and he will be

stranded, but it is there, next to Caleb’s, waiting for him. He checks his
watch: it is midnight.
He moves his way across the lawn on his hands and knees, his bag slung
painfully over one shoulder, the two hundred feet between the door and the
car transforming themselves into miles. He wants to stop, he is so tired, but
he knows he must not.
In the car, he doesn’t look at his reflection in the mirror; he starts the

engine and drives away. But about half an hour later, once he knows he is