Hanya Yanagihara - A Little Life

As Willem spoke, he was thinking of how Caleb had called him deformed, and only Willem’s silence had reminded him it was his turn to respond. “Sure, Willem,” he said. “That sounds great.”

The restaurant was in the Flatiron District, and after they paid, they walked for a while, neither of them saying anything, when suddenly, he saw Caleb coming toward them, and in his panic, he grabbed Willem and yanked him into the doorway of a building, startling them both with his strength and swiftness.

“Jude,” Willem said, alarmed, “what are you doing?”

“Don’t say anything,” he whispered to Willem. “Just stay here and don’t turn around,” and Willem did, facing the door with him.

He counted the seconds until he was certain Caleb must have passed, and then looked cautiously out toward the sidewalk and saw that it hadn’t been Caleb at all, just another tall, dark-haired man, but not Caleb, and he had exhaled, feeling defeated and stupid and relieved all at once. He noticed then that he still had Willem’s shirt bunched in his hand, and he released it. “Sorry,” he said. “Sorry, Willem.”

“Jude, what happened?” Willem asked, trying to look him in the eyes. “What was that?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I just thought I saw someone I didn’t want to see.”

“Who?”

“No one. This lawyer on a case I’m working on. He’s a prick; I hate dealing with him.”

Willem looked at him. “No,” he said, at last. “It wasn’t another lawyer. It was someone else, someone you’re scared of.” There was a pause. Willem looked down the street, and then back at him. “You’re frightened,” he said, his voice wondering. “Who was it, Jude?”

He shook his head, trying to think of a lie he could tell Willem. He was always lying to Willem: big lies, small lies. Their entire relationship was a lie — Willem thought he was one person, and really, he wasn’t. Only Caleb knew the truth. Only Caleb knew what he was.

“I told you,” he said, at last. “This other lawyer.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“Yes, it was.” Two women walked by them, and as they passed, he heard one of them whisper excitedly to the other, “That was Willem Ragnarsson!” He closed his eyes.

“Listen,” Willem said, quietly, “what’s going on with you?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I’m tired. I need to go home.”

“Fine,” Willem said. He hailed a cab, and helped him in, and then got in himself. “Greene and Broome,” he said to the driver.

In the cab, his hands began to shake. This had been happening more and more, and he didn’t know how to stop it. It had started when he was a child, but it had happened only in extreme circumstances — when he was trying not to cry, or when he was in extraordinary pain but knew that he couldn’t make a sound. But now it happened at strange moments: only cutting helped, but sometimes the shaking was so severe that he had difficulty controlling the razor. He crossed his arms against himself and hoped Willem wouldn’t notice.

At the front door, he tried to get rid of Willem, but Willem wouldn’t leave. “I want to be alone,” he told him.

“I understand,” Willem said. “We’ll be alone together.” They had stood there, facing each other, until he had finally turned to the door, but he couldn’t fit the key into the lock because he was shaking so badly, and Willem took the keys from him and opened the door.

“What the hell is going on with you?” Willem asked as soon as they were in the apartment.

“Nothing,” he said, “nothing,” and now his teeth were chattering, which was something that had never accompanied the shaking when he was young but now happened almost every time.

Willem stepped close to him, but he turned his face away. “Something happened while I was away,” Willem said, tentatively. “I don’t know what it is, but something happened. Something’s wrong. You’ve been acting strangely ever since I got home from The Odyssey . I don’t know why.” He stopped, and put his hands on his shoulders. “Tell me, Jude,” he said. “Tell me what it is. Tell me and we’ll figure out how to make it better.”

“No,” he whispered. “I can’t, Willem, I can’t.” There was a long silence. “I want to go to bed,” he said, and Willem released him, and he went to the bathroom.

When he came out, Willem was wearing one of his T-shirts, and was lofting the duvet from the guest room over the sofa in his bedroom, the sofa under the painting of Willem in the makeup chair. “What’re you doing?” he asked.

“I’m staying here tonight,” Willem said.

He sighed, but Willem started talking before he could. “You have three choices, Jude,” he said. “One, I call Andy and tell him I think there’s something really going wrong with you and I take you up to his office for an evaluation. Two, I call Harold, who freaks out and calls Andy. Or three, you let me stay here and monitor you because you won’t talk to me, you won’t fucking tell me anything, and you never seem to understand that you at least owe your friends the opportunity to try to help you — you at least owe me that.” His voice cracked. “So what’s it going to be?”

Oh Willem, he thought. You don’t know how badly I want to tell you. “I’m sorry, Willem,” he said, instead.

“Fine, you’re sorry,” said Willem. “Go to bed. Do you still have extra toothbrushes in the same place?”

“Yes,” he said.

The next night he came home late from work, and found Willem lying on the sofa in his room again, reading. “How was your day?” he asked, not lowering his book.

“Fine,” he said. He waited to see if Willem was going to explain himself, but he didn’t, and eventually he went to the bathroom. In the closet, he passed Willem’s duffel bag, which was unzipped and filled with enough clothes that it was clear he was going to stay for a while.

He felt pathetic admitting it to himself, but having Willem there — not just in his apartment, but in his room — helped. They didn’t speak much, but his very presence steadied and refocused him. He thought less of Caleb; he thought less of everything. It was as if the necessity of proving himself normal to Willem really did make him more normal. Just being around someone he knew would never harm him, not ever, was soothing, and he was able to quiet his mind, and sleep. As grateful as he was, though, he was also disgusted at himself, by how dependent he was, how weak. Was there no end to his needs? How many people had helped him over the years, and why had they? Why had he let them? A better friend would have told Willem to go home, told him he would be fine on his own. But he didn’t do this. He let Willem spend the few remaining weeks he had in New York sleeping on his sofa like a dog.

At least he didn’t have to worry about upsetting Robin, as Willem and Robin had broken up toward the end of the Odyssey shoot, when Robin discovered that Willem had cheated on her with one of the costume assistants. “And I didn’t even really like her,” Willem had told him in one of their phone calls. “I did it for the worst reason of all — because I was bored.”

He had considered this. “No,” he said, “the worst reason of all would’ve been because you were trying to be cruel. Yours was just the stupidest reason of all.”

There had been a pause, and then Willem had started laughing. “Thanks for that, Jude,” he said. “Thanks for making me feel both better and worse.”

Willem stayed with him until the very day he had to leave for Colombo. He was playing the eldest son of a faded Dutch merchant family in Sri Lanka in the early nineteen-forties, and had grown a thick mustache that curled up at its tips; when Willem hugged him, he felt it brushing against his ear. For a moment, he wanted to break down and beg Willem not to leave. Don’t go , he wanted to tell him. Stay here with me. I’m scared to be alone . He knew that if he did say this, Willem would: or he would at least try. But he would never say this. He knew it would be impossible for Willem to delay the shoot, and he knew that Willem would feel guilty for his inability to do so. Instead, he tightened his hold on Willem, which was something he rarely did — he rarely showed Willem any physical affection — and he could feel that Willem was surprised, but then he increased his pressure as well, and the two of them stood there, wrapped around each other, for a long time. He remembered thinking that he wasn’t wearing enough layers to really let Willem hug him this closely, that Willem would be able to feel the scars on his back through his shirt, but in the moment it was more important to simply be near him; he had the sense that this was the last time this would happen, the last time he would see Willem. He had this fear every time Willem went away, but it was keener this time, less theoretical; it felt more like a real departure.