Page 328 - A Little Life: A Novel

It is Caleb, of course, and he can hear and smell his breath even before
Caleb flicks the master switch and the apartment is illuminated, dazzlingly,
into something brighter than day, and he looks up and sees Caleb above

him, peering down at him. Even drunk, he is composed, and now some of
his drunkenness has been clarified by rage, and his gaze is steady and
focused. He feels Caleb grab him by his hair, feels him hit him on the right
side of his face, the good one, feels his head snapping backward in
response.
Caleb still hasn’t said anything, and now he drags him to the sofa, the
only sounds Caleb’s steady breaths and his frantic gulps. He pushes his face

into the cushions and holds his head down with one hand, while with the
other, he begins pulling off his clothes. He begins to panic, then, and
struggle, but Caleb presses one arm against the back of his neck, which
paralyzes him, and he is unable to move; he can feel himself become
exposed to the air piece by piece—his back, his arms, the backs of his legs
—and when everything’s been removed, Caleb yanks him to his feet again

and pushes him away, but he falls, and lands on his back.
“Get up,” says Caleb. “Right now.”
He does; his nose is discharging something, blood or mucus, that is
making it difficult for him to breathe. He stands; he has never felt more
naked, more exposed in his life. When he was a child, and things were
happening to him, he used to be able to leave his body, to go somewhere
else. He would pretend he was something inanimate—a curtain rod, a

ceiling fan—a dispassionate, unfeeling witness to the scene occurring
beneath him. He would watch himself and feel nothing: not pity, not anger,
nothing. But now, although he tries, he finds he cannot remove himself. He
is in this apartment, his apartment, standing before a man who detests him,
and he knows this is the beginning, not the end, of a long night, one he has
no choice but to wait through and endure. He will not be able to control this

night, he will not be able to stop it.
“My god,” Caleb says, after looking at him for a few long moments; it is
the first time he has ever seen him wholly naked. “My god, you really are
deformed. You really are.”
For some reason, it is this, this pronouncement, that brings them both
back to themselves, and he finds himself, for the first time in decades,
crying. “Please,” he says. “Please, Caleb, I’m sorry.” But Caleb has already

grabbed him by the back of his neck and is hurrying him, half dragging