Page 347 - A Little Life: A Novel

law school friend, who worked at the D.A.’s office. I would explain what
had happened; I wouldn’t use his name. I would ask how we could have
Caleb Porter arrested.

“But you’re saying the victim won’t report it?” Avi would say.
“Well, yes,” I’d have to admit.
“Can he be convinced?”
“I don’t think so,” I’d have to admit.
“Well, Harold,” Avi would say, perplexed and irritated. “I don’t know
what to tell you, then. You know as well as I do that I can’t do anything if
the victim won’t speak.” I remembered thinking, as I very rarely thought,

what a flimsy thing the law was, so dependent on contingencies, a system of
so little comfort, of so little use to those who needed its protections the
most.
And then I went into his bathroom and felt under the sink and found his
bag of razors and cotton pads and threw it down the incinerator. I hated that
bag, I hated that I knew I would find it.

Seven years before, he had come to the house in Truro in early May. It
had been a spontaneous visit: I was up there trying to write, there were
cheap tickets, I told him he should come, and to my surprise—he never left
the offices of Rosen Pritchard, even then—he did. He was happy that day,
and so was I. I left him chopping a head of purple cabbage in the kitchen
and took the plumber upstairs, where he was installing a new toilet in our
bathroom, and then on his way out asked him if he could come take a look

at the sink in the downstairs bathroom, the one in Jude’s room, which had
been leaking.
He did, tightened something, changed something else, and then, as he
was emerging from the cabinet, handed something to me. “This was taped
under the basin,” he said.
“What is it?” I asked, taking the package from him.

He shrugged. “Dunno. But it was stuck there pretty good, with duct
tape.” He repacked his things as I stood there dumbly, staring at the bag,
and gave me a wave and left; I heard him say goodbye to Jude as he walked
out, whistling.
I looked at the bag. It was a regular, pint-size clear plastic bag, and inside
it was a stack of ten razor blades, and individually packaged alcohol wipes,
and pieces of gauze, folded into springy squares, and bandages. I stood