Page 419 - A Little Life: A Novel

everywhere. The only time men with power ever looked at him was at
premieres, when he was being presented to the studio head and they were
shaking his hand and making small talk even as he could see them

examining him, calculating how well he’d tested and how much they’d paid
for him and how much the film would have to earn in order for them to look
at him more closely.
Perversely, though, as this began happening more and more—he would
enter a room, a restaurant, a building, and would feel, just for a second, a
slight collective pause—he also began realizing that he could turn his own
visibility on and off. If he walked into a restaurant expecting to be

recognized, he always was. And if he walked in expecting not to be, he
rarely was. He was never able to determine what, exactly, beyond his
simply willing it, made the difference. But it worked; it was why, six years
after that lunch, he was able to walk through much of SoHo in plain sight,
more or less, after he moved in with Jude.
He had been at Greene Street since Jude got home from his suicide

attempt, and as the months passed, he found that he was migrating more and
more of his things—first his clothes, then his laptop, then his boxes of
books and his favorite woolen blanket that he liked to wrap about himself
and shuffle around in as he made his morning coffee: his life was so
itinerant that there really wasn’t much else he needed or owned—to his old
bedroom. A year later, he was living there still. He’d woken late one
morning and made himself some coffee (he’d had to bring his coffeemaker

as well, because Jude didn’t have one), and had meandered sleepily about
the apartment, noticing as if for the first time that somehow his books were
now on Jude’s shelves, and the pieces of art he’d brought over were
hanging on Jude’s walls. When had this happened? He couldn’t quite
remember, but it felt right; it felt right that he should be back here.
Even Mr. Irvine agreed. Willem had seen him at Malcolm’s house the

previous spring for Malcolm’s birthday and Mr. Irvine had said, “I hear
you’ve moved back in with Jude,” and he said he had, preparing himself for
a lecture on their eternal adolescence: he was going to be forty-four, after
all; Jude was nearly forty-two. But “You’re a good friend, Willem,” Mr.
Irvine had said. “I’m glad you boys are taking care of each other.” He had
been deeply rattled by Jude’s attempt; they all had, of course, but Mr. Irvine
had always liked Jude the best of all of them, and they all knew it.

“Well, thanks, Mr. Irvine,” he’d said, surprised. “I’m glad, too.”