Page 447 - A Little Life: A Novel

For several long minutes they sit next to each other, their arms touching,
but not saying anything. “Was there an obituary?” Willem asks, finally, and
he nods. “Show me,” Willem says, and they go to the computer in his study

and he stands back and watches Willem read it. He watches as Willem reads
it twice, three times. And then Willem stands and holds him, very tightly,
and he holds Willem back.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Willem says into his ear.
“It wouldn’t have made a difference,” he says, and Willem steps back and
looks at him, holding him by the shoulders.
He can see Willem trying to control himself, and he watches as he holds

his long mouth firm, his jaw muscles moving against themselves. “I want
you to tell me everything,” Willem says. He takes his hand and walks him
to the sofa in his study and sits him down. “I’m going to make myself a
drink in the kitchen, and then I’m coming back,” Willem says. He looks at
him. “I’ll make you one, too.” He can do nothing but nod.
As he waits, he thinks of Caleb. He never heard from Caleb after that

night, but every few months, he would look him up. There he was, for
anyone to see: pictures of Caleb smiling at parties, at openings, at shows.
An article about Rothko’s first freestanding boutique, with Caleb talking
about the challenges a young label encounters when trying to break out in a
crowded market. A magazine piece about the reemergence of the Flower
District, with a quote from Caleb about living in a neighborhood that,
despite its hotels and boutiques, still felt appealingly rough-edged. Now, he

thinks: Did Caleb ever look him up as well? Did he show a picture of him
to Nicholas? Did he say, “I once went out with him; he was grotesque”? Did
he demonstrate to Nicholas—whom he imagines as blond and neat and
confident—how he had walked, did they laugh with each other about how
terrible, how lifeless, he had been in bed? Did he say, “He disgusted me”?
Or did he say nothing at all? Did Caleb forget him, or at least choose never

to consider him—was he a mistake, a brief sordid moment, an aberration to
be wrapped in plastic and shoved to the far corner of Caleb’s mind, with
broken toys from childhood and long-ago embarrassments? He wishes he
too could forget, that he too could choose never to consider Caleb again.
Always, he wonders why and how he has let four months—months
increasingly distant from him—so affect him, so alter his life. But then, he
might as well ask—as he often does—why he has let the first fifteen years

of his life so dictate the past twenty-eight. He has been lucky beyond