Page 422 - A Little Life: A Novel

going to be a burden?” And he had said of course it wouldn’t be, that he
wanted to know. He had always wanted to know, but he didn’t say this; he
knew it would sound like criticism.

But as much as he was able to convince himself that Jude had returned to
himself, he was also able to recognize that he had been changed. Some of
these changes were, he thought, good ones: the talking, for example. And
some of them were sad ones: although his hands were much stronger, and
although it was less and less frequent, they still shook occasionally, and he
knew Jude was embarrassed by it. And he was more skittish than ever about
being touched, especially, Willem noticed, by Harold; a month ago, when

Harold had visited, Jude had practically danced out of the way to keep
Harold from hugging him. He had felt bad for Harold, seeing the expression
on his face, and so had gone over and hugged him himself. “You know he
can’t help it,” he told Harold quietly, and Harold had kissed him on the
cheek. “You’re a sweet man, Willem,” he’d said.
Now it was October, thirteen months after the attempt. During the

evening he was at the theater; two months after his run ended in December,
he’d start shooting his first project since he returned from Sri Lanka, an
adaptation of Uncle Vanya that he was excited about and was being filmed
in the Hudson Valley: he’d be able to come home every night.
Not that the location was a coincidence. “Keep me in New York,” he’d
instructed his manager and his agent after he’d dropped out of the film in
Russia the previous fall.

“For how long?” asked Kit, his agent.
“I don’t know,” he’d said. “At least the next year.”
“Willem,” Kit had said, after a silence, “I understand how close you and
Jude are. But don’t you think you should take advantage of the momentum
you have? You could do whatever you wanted.” He was referring to The
Iliad and The Odyssey, which had both been enormous successes, proof, Kit

liked to point out, that he could do anything he wanted now. “From what I
know of Jude, he’d say the same thing.” And then, when he didn’t say
anything, “It’s not like this is your wife, or kid, or something. This is your
friend.”
“You mean ‘just your friend,’ ” he’d said, testily. Kit was Kit; he thought
like an agent, and he trusted how Kit thought—he had been with him since
the beginning of his career; he tried not to fight with him. And Kit had

always guided him well. “No fat, no filler,” he liked to brag about Willem’s