Page 448 - A Little Life: A Novel

measure; he has an adulthood that people dream about: Why, then, does he
insist on revisiting and replaying events that happened so long ago? Why
can he not simply take pleasure in his present? Why must he so honor his

past? Why does it become more vivid, not less, the further he moves from
it?
Willem returns with two glasses of ice and whiskey. He has put on a
shirt. For a while, they sit on the sofa, sipping at their drinks, and he feels
his veins fill with warmth. “I’m going to tell you,” he says to Willem, and
Willem nods, but before he does, he leans over and kisses Willem. It is the
first time in his life that he has ever initiated a kiss, and he hopes that with it

he is conveying to Willem everything he cannot say, not even in the dark,
not even in the early-morning gray: everything he is ashamed of, everything
he is grateful for. This time, he keeps his eyes closed, imagining that soon,
he too will be able to go wherever people go when they kiss, when they
have sex: that land he has never visited, that place he wants to see, that
world he hopes is not forbidden to him forever.

When Kit was in town, they met either for lunch or dinner or at the

agency’s New York offices, but when he came to the city in early
December, Willem suggested they meet instead at Greene Street. “I’ll make
you lunch,” he told Kit.
“Why?” asked Kit, instantly wary: although the two of them were close
in their own way, they weren’t friends, and Willem had never invited him
over to Greene Street before.
“I need to talk to you about something,” he said, and he could hear Kit

making his breaths long and slow.
“Okay,” said Kit. He knew better than to ask what that something might
be, and whether something was wrong; he just assumed it. “I need to talk to
you about something” was not, in Kit’s universe, a prelude to good news.
He knew this, of course, and although he could have reassured Kit, the
slightly diabolical part of him decided not to. “Okay!” he said, brightly.

“See you next week!” On the other hand, he thought after he hung up,
maybe his refusal to reassure Kit wasn’t just childishness: he thought what
he had to tell Kit—that he and Jude were now together—wasn’t bad news,
but he wasn’t sure Kit would see it the same way.