Page 432 - A Little Life: A Novel

the café but the two of them, and outside, the snow fell faster and thicker,
and he felt, despite his anxiety, deeply calm, and glad he was telling
somebody, and that that somebody was a person who knew him and Jude

both, and had for many years. “I know this seems strange,” he said. “And
I’ve thought about what it could be, Andy, I really have. But part of me
wonders if it was always meant to be this way; I mean, I’ve dated and dated
for decades now, and maybe the reason it’s never worked out is because it
was never meant to, because I was supposed to be with him all along. Or
maybe I’m telling myself this. Or maybe it’s simple curiosity. But I don’t
think it is; I think I know myself better than that.” He sighed. “What do you

think I should do?”
Andy was quiet for a while. “First,” he said, “I don’t think it’s strange,
Willem. I think it makes sense in a lot of ways. You two have always had
something different, something unusual. So—I always wondered, despite
your girlfriends.
“Selfishly, I think it’d be wonderful: for you, but especially for him. I

think if you wanted to be in a relationship with him, it’d be the greatest,
most restorative gift he could ever get.
“But Willem, if you do this, you should go in prepared to make some sort
of commitment to him, and to being with him, because you’re right: you’re
not going to be able to just fool around and then get out of it. And I think
you should know that it’s going to be very, very hard. You’re going to have
to get him to trust you all over again, and to see you in a different way. I

don’t think I’m betraying anything when I say that it’s going to be very
tough for him to be intimate with you, and you’re going to have to be really
patient with him.”
They were both silent. “So if I do it, I should do so thinking it’s going to
be forever,” he told Andy, and Andy looked at him for a few seconds and
then smiled.

“Well,” Andy said, “there are worse life sentences.”
“True,” he said.
He went back to Greene Street. April arrived, and Jude returned home.
They celebrated Jude’s birthday—“Forty-three,” Harold sighed, “I vaguely
remember forty-three”—and he began shooting his next project. An old
friend of his, a woman he’d known since graduate school, was starring in
the production as well—he was playing a corrupt detective, and she was

playing his wife—and they slept together a few times. Everything marched