Page 425 - A Little Life: A Novel

what he was going to do to celebrate, and Harold would remind him of how
old he was getting. At Christmas, they always sent him something—a book,
along with a jokey little gift, or a clever toy that he would keep in his

pocket to fiddle with as he talked on the phone or sat in the makeup chair.
At Thanksgiving, he and Harold would sit in the living room watching the
game, while Julia kept Jude company in the kitchen.
“We’re running low on chips,” Harold would say.
“I know,” he’d say.
“Why don’t you go get more?” Harold would say.
“You’re the host,” he’d remind Harold.

“You’re the guest.”
“Yeah, exactly.”
“Call Jude and get him to bring us more.”
“You call him!”
“No, you call him.”
“Fine,” he’d say. “Jude! Harold wants more chips!”

“You’re such a confabulator, Willem,” Harold would say, as Jude came in
to refill the bowl. “Jude, this was completely Willem’s idea.”
But mostly, he knew that Harold and Julia loved him because he loved
Jude; he knew they trusted him to take care of Jude—that was who he was
to them, and he didn’t mind it. He was proud of it.
Lately, however, he had been feeling differently about Jude, and he
wasn’t sure what to do about it. They had been sitting on the sofa late one

Friday night—he just home from the theater, Jude just home from the office
—and talking, talking about nothing in particular, when he had almost
leaned over and kissed him. But he had stopped himself, and the moment
had passed. But since then, he had been revisited by that impulse again:
twice, three times, four times.
It was beginning to worry him. Not because Jude was a man: he’d had

sex with men before, everyone he knew had, and in college, he and JB had
drunkenly made out one night out of boredom and curiosity (an experience
that had been, to their mutual relief, entirely unsatisfying: “It’s really
interesting how someone so good-looking can be such a turnoff,” had been
JB’s exact words to him). And not because he hadn’t always felt a sort of
low-key hum of attraction for Jude, the way he felt for more or less all his
friends. It was because he knew that if he tried anything, he would have to