Page 398 - A Little Life: A Novel

preparation. It meant finding something sharp, finding some time alone, and
he was never alone. Of course, he knew there were other methods, but he
remained stubbornly fixated on the one he had chosen, even though it

hadn’t worked.
Mostly, though, he felt nothing. Harold and Julia and Willem asked him
what he wanted for breakfast, but the choices were impossible and
overwhelming—pancakes? Waffles? Cereal? Eggs? What kind of eggs?
Soft-boiled? Hard? Scrambled? Sunny-side? Fried? Over easy? Poached?—
and he’d shake his head, and they eventually stopped asking. They stopped
asking his opinion on anything, which he found restful. After lunch (also

absurdly early), he napped on the living-room sofa in front of the fire,
falling asleep to the sound of their murmurs, the slosh of water as they did
the dishes. In the afternoons, Harold read to him; sometimes Willem and
Julia stayed to listen as well.
After ten days or so, he and Willem went home to Greene Street. He had
been dreading his return, but when he went to his bathroom, the marble was

clean and stainless. “Malcolm,” said Willem, before he had to ask. “He
finished last week. It’s all new.” Willem helped him into bed, and gave him
a manila envelope with his name on it, which he opened after Willem left.
Inside were the letters he had written everyone, still sealed, and the sealed
copy of his will, and a note from Richard: “I thought you would want these.
Love, R.” He slid them back into the envelope, his hands shaking; the next
day he put them in his safe.

The next morning he woke very early, creeping past Willem sleeping on
the sofa at the far end of his bedroom, and walked through the apartment.
Someone had put flowers in every room, or branches of maple leaves, or
bowls of squashes. The space smelled delicious, like apples and cedar. He
went to his study, where someone had stacked his mail on his desk, and
where Malcolm’s little paper house sat atop a stack of books. He saw

unopened envelopes from JB, from Asian Henry Young, from India, from
Ali, and knew they had made drawings for him. He walked past the dining-
room table, letting his fingers skim along the spines of the books lined up
on their shelves; he wandered into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator
and saw that it was filled with things he liked. Richard had started working
more with ceramics, and at the center of the dining table was a large,
amorphous piece, the glaze rough and pleasant under his palms, painted

with white threadlike veins. Next to it stood his and Willem’s Saint Jude