Hanya Yanagihara - A Little Life

“Not like that,” he said.

Jude looked at him. “ Now who can’t see themselves for who they are?” he asked, because that was what Willem was always telling him: that Jude’s vision, his version of himself was singular to the point of being delusional.

He sighed, too. “I should call him,” he said.

“Leave him alone tonight,” Jude said. “He’ll call you when he’s ready.”

And so he had. That Sunday, JB had come over to Greene Street, and Jude had let him in and then had excused himself, saying he had work to do, and closed himself in his study so Willem and JB could be alone. For the next two hours, Willem had sat and listened as JB delivered a disorganized roundelay whose many accusations and questions were punctuated by his refrain of “But I really am happy for you.” JB was angry: that Willem hadn’t told him earlier, that he hadn’t even consulted him, that they had told Malcolm and Richard — Richard! — before him. JB was upset: Willem could tell him the truth; he’d always liked Jude more, hadn’t he? Why couldn’t he just admit it? Also, had he always felt this way? Were his years of fucking women just some colossal lie that Willem had created to distract them? JB was jealous: he got the attraction to Jude, he did, and he knew it was illogical and maybe a tiny bit self-involved, but it wouldn’t be truthful if he didn’t tell Willem that part of him was miffed that Willem had picked Jude and not him.

“JB,” he said, again and again, “it was very organic. I didn’t tell you because I needed time to figure it out in my own head. And as for being attracted to you, what can I say? I’m not. And you aren’t attracted to me, either! We made out once, remember? You said it was a huge turnoff for you, remember?”

JB ignored all this, however. “I still don’t understand why you told Malcolm and Richard first,” he said, sullenly, to which Willem had no response. “Anyway,” JB said, after a silence, “I really am happy for you two. I am.”

He sighed. “Thank you, JB,” he said. “That means a lot.” They were both quiet again.

“JB,” said Jude, coming out of his study, looking surprised that JB was still there. “Do you want to stay for dinner?”

“What’re you having?”

“Cod. And I’ll roast some potatoes the way you like them.”

“I guess,” JB said, sulkily, and Willem grinned at Jude over JB’s head.

He joined Jude in the kitchen and began making a salad, and JB slumped to the dining-room table and started flipping through a novel Jude had left there. “I read this,” he called over to him. “Do you want to know what happens in the end?”

“No, JB,” said Jude. “I’m only halfway through.”

“The minister character dies after all.”

“JB!”

After that, JB’s mood seemed to improve. Even his final salvos were somewhat listless, as if he were delivering them out of obligation rather than true depth of feeling. “In ten years, I’ll bet you two will have made the full transition to lesbiandom. I predict cats,” was one, and “Watching you two in the kitchen is like watching a slightly more racially ambiguous version of that John Currin painting. Do you know what I’m talking about? Look it up,” was another.

“Are you going to come out or keep it quiet?” JB asked over dinner.

“I’m not sending out a press release, if that’s what you mean,” Willem said. “But I’m not going to hide it, either.”

“I think it’s a mistake,” Jude added, quickly. Willem didn’t bother answering; they had been having this argument for a month.

After dinner, he and JB lounged on the sofa and drank tea and Jude loaded the dishwasher. By this time, JB seemed almost appeased, and he recalled that this was the arc of most dinners with JB, even back at Lispenard Street: he began the evening as something sharp and tart, and ended it as something soothed and gentled.

“How’s the sex?” JB asked him.

“Amazing,” he said, immediately.

JB looked glum. “Dammit,” he said.

But of course, this was a lie. He had no idea if the sex was amazing, because they hadn’t had sex. The previous Friday, Andy had come over, and they’d told him, and Andy had stood and hugged them both very solemnly, as if he was Jude’s father and they had told him that they had just gotten engaged. Willem had walked him to the door, and as they were waiting for the elevator, Andy said to him, quietly, “How’s it going?”

He paused. “Okay,” he said at last, and Andy, as if he could discern everything he wasn’t saying, squeezed his shoulder. “I know it’s not easy, Willem,” he said. “But you must be doing something right — I’ve never seen him more relaxed or happier, not ever.” He looked as if he wanted to say something else, but what could he say? He couldn’t say, Call me if you want to talk about him, or Let me know if there’s anything I can help you with, and so instead he left, giving Willem a little salute as the elevator sank out of sight.

That night, after JB had gone home, he thought of the conversation he and Andy had had in the café that day, and how even as Andy had been warning him how difficult it would be, he hadn’t fully believed him. In retrospect, he was glad he hadn’t: because believing Andy might have intimidated him, because he might have been too scared to try.

He turned and looked at Jude, who was asleep. This was one of the nights he’d taken off his clothes, and he was lying on his back, one of his arms crooked near his head, and Willem, as he often did, ran his fingers down the inside of this arm, its scars rendering it into a miserable terrain, a place of mountains and valleys singed by fire. Sometimes, when he was certain Jude was very deeply asleep, he would switch on the light near his side of the bed and study his body more closely, because Jude refused to let himself be examined in daylight. He would uncover him and move his palms over his arms, his legs, his back, feeling the texture of the skin change from rough to glossy, marveling at all the permutations flesh could take, at all the ways the body healed itself, even when attempts had been made to destroy it. He had once shot a film on the Big Island of Hawaii, and on their day off, he and the rest of the cast had trekked across the lava fields, watching the land change from rock as porous and dry as petrified bone into a gleaming black landscape, the lava frozen into exuberant swirls of frosting. Jude’s skin was as diverse, as wondrous, and in places so unlike skin as he had felt or understood it that it too seemed something otherworldly and futuristic, a prototype of what flesh might look like ten thousand years from now.

“You’re repulsed,” Jude had said, quietly, the second time he had taken his clothes off, and he had shaken his head. And he hadn’t been: Jude had always been so secretive, so protective of his body that to see it for real was somehow anticlimactic; it was so normal, finally, so less dramatic than what he had imagined. But the scars were difficult for him to see not because they were aesthetically offensive, but because each one was evidence of something withstood or inflicted. Jude’s arms were for that reason the part of his body that upset him the most. At nights, as Jude slept, he would turn them over in his hands, counting the cuts, trying to imagine himself in a state in which he would willingly inflict pain on himself, in which he would actively try to erode his own being. Sometimes there were new cuts — he always knew when Jude had cut himself, because he slept in his shirt on those nights, and he would have to push up his sleeves as he slept and feel for the bandages — and he would wonder when Jude had made them, and why he hadn’t noticed. When he had moved in with Jude after the suicide attempt, Harold had told him where Jude hid his bag of razors, and he, like Harold, had begun throwing them away. But then they had disappeared entirely, and he couldn’t figure out where Jude was keeping them.