Page 371 - A Little Life: A Novel

ground, he had tried to find the energy to beg them to leave, to reassure
them that he was fine, that he just needed to be left alone. But they hadn’t
left, and Lucien had wiped the vomit from his mouth, tenderly, and then sat

on the floor near his head and held his hand and he had been so
embarrassed he had almost cried. Later, he had told them again and again
that it was nothing, that this happened all the time, but they had made him
take the rest of the week off, and the following Monday, Lucien had told
him that they were making him go home at a reasonable hour: midnight on
the weekdays, nine p.m. on the weekends.
“Lucien,” he’d said, frustrated, “this is ridiculous. I’m not a child.”

“Believe me, Jude,” Lucien had said. “I told the rest of the management
committee I thought we should ride you like you were an Arabian at the
Preakness, but for some strange reason, they’re worried about your health.
Also, the case. For some reason, they think if you get sick, we won’t win
the case.” He had fought and fought with Lucien, but it hadn’t made a
difference: at midnight, his office lights abruptly clicked off, and he had at

last resigned himself to going home when he had been told.
Since the Caleb incident, he had barely been able to talk to Harold; even
seeing him was a kind of torture. This made Harold and Julia’s visits—
which were increasingly frequent—challenging. He was mortified that
Harold had seen him like that: when he thought of it, Harold seeing his
bloody pants, Harold asking him about his childhood (How obvious was
he? Could people actually tell by talking to him what had happened to him

so many years ago? And if so, how could he better conceal it?), he was so
sharply nauseated that he had to stop what he was doing and wait for the
moment to pass. He could feel Harold trying to treat him the same as he
had, but something had shifted. No longer did Harold harass him about
Rosen Pritchard; no longer did he ask him what it was like to abet corporate
malfeasance. And he certainly never mentioned the possibility that he might

settle down with someone. Now his questions were about how he felt: How
was he? How was he feeling? How were his legs? Had he been tiring
himself out? Had he been using the chair a lot? Did he need help with
anything? He always answered the exact same way: fine, fine, fine; no, no,
no.
And then there was Andy, who had abruptly reinitiated his nightly phone
calls. Now he called at one a.m. every night, and during their appointments

—which Andy had increased to every other week—he was un-Andyish,