Page 352 - A Little Life: A Novel

I woke to a creaking. The kitchen floorboards were noisy, and I sat up in
the dark, willing myself to stay silent, and listened to his walk, the
distinctive soft stamp of his left foot followed by the swish of his right, and

then a drawer opening and, a few seconds later, shutting. Then another
drawer, then another, until he had opened and shut every drawer, every
cupboard. He hadn’t turned on the light—there was moonlight enough—
and I could envision him standing in the newly blunt world of the kitchen,
understanding that I’d taken everything from him: I had even taken the
forks. I sat, holding my breath, listening to the silence from the kitchen. For
a moment it was almost as if we were having a conversation, a conversation

without words or sight. And then, finally, I heard him turn and his footsteps
retreating, back to his room.
When I got home to Cambridge the next night, I went to his bathroom
and found another bag, a double of the Truro one, and threw it away. But I
never found another of those bags again in either Cambridge or Truro. He
must have found some other place to hide them, someplace I never

discovered, because he couldn’t have carried those blades back and forth on
the plane. But whenever I was at Greene Street, I would find an opportunity
to sneak off to his bathroom. Here, he kept the bag in his same old hiding
place, and every time, I would steal it, and shove it into my pocket, and then
throw it away after I left. He must have known I did this, of course, but we
never discussed it. Every time it would be replaced. Until he learned he had
to hide it from you as well, there was not a single time I checked that I

failed to find it. Still, I never stopped checking: whenever I was at the
apartment, or later, the house upstate, or the flat in London, I would go to
his bathroom and look for that bag. I never found it again. Malcolm’s
bathrooms were so simple, so clean-lined, and yet even in them he had
found somewhere to conceal it, somewhere I would never again discover.
Over the years, I tried to talk about it with him. The day after I found the

first bag, I called Andy and started yelling at him, and Andy,
uncharacteristically, let me. “I know,” he said. “I know.” And then: “Harold,
I’m not asking sarcastically or rhetorically. I want you to tell me: What
should I do?” And of course, I didn’t know what to tell him.
You were the one who got furthest with him. But I know you blamed
yourself. I blamed myself, too. Because I did something worse than
accepting it: I tolerated it. I chose to forget he was doing this, because it

was too difficult to find a solution, and because I wanted to enjoy him as the