Page 555 - A Little Life: A Novel

convenience but because of the neighborhood’s surplus of doctors. “Ah,”
Jude had said, studying the directory of the building’s tenants as they waited
for the estate agent to show them the apartment Willem had settled on,

“look at what’s downstairs from the unit: an orthopedic surgeon’s clinic.”
He looked at Willem, raised an eyebrow. “That’s an interesting coincidence,
isn’t it?”
He had smiled. “Isn’t it?” he asked. But beneath their joking was
something that neither of them had been able to discuss, not just in their
relationship but almost in their friendship as a whole—that at some point,
they didn’t know when but that it would happen, Jude would get worse.

What that might mean, specifically, Willem wasn’t certain, but as part of his
new dedication to honesty, he was trying to prepare himself, themselves, for
a future he couldn’t predict, for a future in which Jude might not be able to
walk, might not be able to stand. And so finally, the fourth-floor Harley
Street space had been the only possible option; of all the flats he had seen,
this had been the one that had best approximated Greene Street: a single-

story apartment with large doors and wide hallways, big square rooms, and
bathrooms that could be converted to accommodate a wheelchair (the
downstairs orthopedist’s office had been the final, unignorable argument
that this apartment should be theirs). They bought the flat; he had moved
into it all the rugs and lamps and blankets that he had spent his working life
accumulating and that had been packed in boxes in the Greene Street
basement; and before he returned to New York after the shoot ended, one of

Malcolm’s young former associates who had moved back to London to
work in Bellcast’s satellite office would begin renovating it.
Oh, he thought whenever he looked at the plans for Harley Street, it was
so difficult, it was so sad sometimes, living in reality. He had been
reminded of this the last time he had met with the architect, when he had
asked Vikram why they weren’t retaining the old wood-framed windows in

the kitchen that overlooked the brick patio, with its views of the rooftops of
Weymouth Mews beyond it. “Shouldn’t we keep them?” he’d wondered.
“They’re so beautiful.”
“They are beautiful,” Vikram agreed, “but these windows are actually
very difficult to open from a sitting position—they demand a good amount
of lift from the legs.” He realized then that Vikram had taken seriously what
he had instructed him to do in their initial conversation: to assume that