Page 437 - A Little Life: A Novel

fine, and over lunch he reads the obituary one last time before stuffing the
entire paper into the shredder and turning back to his computer.
In the afternoon he gets a text from Willem saying that the director he’s

meeting with about his next project has pushed back their dinner, so he
doesn’t think he’ll be home before eleven, and he is relieved. At nine, he
tells his associates he’s leaving early, and then drives home and goes
directly to the bathroom, shucking his jacket and rolling up his sleeves and
unstrapping his watch as he goes; he’s almost hyperventilating with desire
by the time he makes the first cut. It has been nearly two months since he’s
made more than two cuts in a single sitting, but now he abandons his self-

discipline and cuts and cuts and cuts, until finally his breathing slows and
he feels the old, comforting emptiness settle inside him. After he’s done, he
cleans up and washes his face and goes to the kitchen, where he reheats
some soup he’d made the weekend before and has his first real meal of the
day, and then brushes his teeth and collapses into bed. He is weak from the
cutting, but he knows if he rests for a few minutes, he’ll be fine. The goal is

to be normal by the time Willem comes home, to not give him anything to
worry about, to not do anything else to upset this impossible and delirious
dream he’s been living in for the past eighteen weeks.
When Willem had told him of his feelings, he had been so discomfited,
so disbelieving, that it was only the fact that it was Willem saying it that
convinced him it wasn’t some terrible joke: his faith in Willem was more
powerful than the absurdity of what Willem was suggesting.

But only barely. “What are you saying?” he asked Willem for the tenth
time.
“I’m saying I’m attracted to you,” Willem said, patiently. And then, when
he didn’t say anything, “Judy—I don’t think it’s all that odd, really. Haven’t
you ever felt that way about me, in all these years?”
“No,” he said instantly, and Willem had laughed. But he hadn’t been

joking. He would never, ever have been so presumptuous as to even picture
himself with Willem. Besides, he wasn’t what he had ever imagined for
Willem: he had imagined someone beautiful (and female) and intelligent for
Willem, someone who would know how fortunate she was, someone who
would make him feel fortunate as well. He knew this was—like so many of
his imaginings about adult relationships—somewhat gauzy and naïve, but
that didn’t mean it couldn’t happen. He was certainly not the kind of person