Page 434 - A Little Life: A Novel

Every morning he gets up and swims two miles, and then comes back
upstairs and sits down and has breakfast and reads the papers. His friends
make fun of him for this—for the fact that he actually prepares a meal

instead of buying something on the way to work; for the fact that he
actually still gets the papers delivered, in paper form—but the ritual of it
has always calmed him: even in the home, it was the one time when the
counselors were too mild, the other boys too sleepy to bother him. He
would sit in the corner of the dining area and read and eat his breakfast, and
for those minutes he would be left alone.
He is an efficient reader, and he skims first through The Wall Street

Journal, and then the Financial Times, before beginning with The New York
Times, which he reads front to back, when he sees the headline in
Obituaries: “Caleb Porter, 52, Fashion Executive.” Immediately, his
mouthful of scrambled eggs and spinach turns to cardboard and glue, and he
swallows hard, feeling sick, feeling every nerve ending thrumming alive.
He has to read the article three times before he can make sense of any of the

facts: pancreatic cancer. “Very fast,” said his colleague and longtime friend.
Under his stewardship, emerging fashion label Rothko saw aggressive
expansion into the Asian and Middle Eastern markets, as well as the
opening of their first New York City boutique. Died at his home in
Manhattan. Survived by his sister, Michaela Porter de Soto of Monte Carlo,
six nieces and nephews, and his partner, Nicholas Lane, also a fashion
executive.

He is still for a moment, staring at the page until the words rearrange
themselves into an abstraction of gray before his eyes, and then he hobbles
as fast as he can to the bathroom near the kitchen, where he vomits up
everything he’s just eaten, gagging over the toilet until he’s coughing up
long strands of saliva. He lowers the toilet seat and sits, resting his face in
his hands, until he feels better. He wishes, desperately, for his razors, but he

has always been careful not to cut himself during the day, partly because it
feels wrong and partly because he knows he has to impose limits upon
himself, however artificial, or he’d be cutting himself all day. Lately, he has
been trying very hard not to cut himself at all. But tonight, he thinks, he will
grant himself an exception. It is seven a.m. In around fifteen hours, he’ll be
home again. All he has to do is make it through the day.
He puts his plate in the dishwasher and walks quietly through the

bedroom and into the bathroom, where he showers and shaves and then gets