Page 446 - A Little Life: A Novel

“And why did it end?”
He thinks of how to answer this. “He didn’t like me very much,” he says
at last.

He can feel Willem’s anger before he hears it. “So he was a moron,”
Willem says, his voice tight.
“No,” he says. “He was a very smart guy.” He opens his mouth to say
something else—what, he doesn’t know—but he can’t continue, and he
shuts it, and the two of them lie there in silence.
Finally, Willem prompts him again. “Then what happened?” he asks.
He waits, and Willem waits with him. He can hear them breathing in

tandem, and it is as if they are bringing all the air from the room, from the
apartment, from the world, into their lungs and then releasing it, just the
two of them, all by themselves. He counts their breaths: five, ten, fifteen. At
twenty, he says, “If I tell you, Willem, do you promise you won’t get mad?”
and he feels Willem shift again.
“I promise,” Willem says, his voice low.

He takes a deep breath. “Do you remember the car accident I was in?”
“Yes,” says Willem. He sounds uncertain, strangled. His breathing is
quick. “I do.”
“It wasn’t a car accident,” he says, and as if on cue, his hands begin to
shake, and he plunges them beneath the covers.
“What do you mean?” Willem asks, but he remains silent, and eventually
he feels, rather than sees, Willem realize what he’s saying. And then Willem

is flopping onto his side, facing him, and reaching beneath the covers for
his hands. “Jude,” Willem says, “did someone do that to you? Did
someone”—he can’t say the words—“did someone beat you?”
He nods, barely, thankful that he’s not crying, although he feels like he’s
going to explode: he imagines bits of flesh bursting like shrapnel from his
skeleton, smacking themselves against the wall, dangling from the

chandelier, bloodying the sheets.
“Oh god,” Willem says, and drops his hands, and he watches as Willem
hurries out of bed.
“Willem,” he calls after him, and then gets up and follows him into the
bathroom, where Willem is bent over the sink, breathing hard, but when he
tries to touch his shoulder, Willem shrugs his hand off.
He goes back to their room and waits on the edge of the bed, and when

Willem comes out, he can tell he’s been crying.