Hanya Yanagihara - A Little Life

When he woke again, Willem was gone, but Andy was awake, and staring at him.

“Jude, you’ve got to get the fuck out of this apartment,” he said, quietly.

“I know,” he said.

“Jude, what were you thinking?” Willem asked him later, after he had returned from the grocery store and Andy had helped him into the bathroom — he couldn’t walk: Andy had had to carry him — and then put him back into bed, still in his clothes from the day before, and left. Willem had gone to a party after the show and hadn’t heard his phone ring; when he had finally listened to his messages, he had rushed home and found him convulsing on the floor and had called Andy. “Why didn’t you call Andy? Why didn’t you go to a diner and wait for me? Why didn’t you call Richard? Why didn’t you call Philippa and make her find me? Why didn’t you call Citizen, or Rhodes, or Eli, or Phaedra, or the Henry Youngs, or—”

“I don’t know,” he said, miserably. It was impossible to explain to the healthy the logic of the sick, and he didn’t have the energy to try.

The following week, he contacted Lucien Voigt and finalized the terms of the job with him. And once he had signed the contract, he called Harold, who was silent for a long five seconds before taking a deep breath and beginning.

“I just don’t get this, Jude,” he said. “I don’t. You’ve never struck me as a money-grubber. Are you? I mean, I guess you are. You had — you have — a great career at the U.S. Attorney’s. You’re doing work there that matters. And you’re giving it all up to defend, who? Criminals. People so entitled, so certain they won’t be caught that being caught — that very concern — doesn’t even occur to them. People who think the laws are written for people who make less than nine figures a year. People who think the laws are applicable only by race, or by tax bracket.”

He said nothing, just let Harold become more and more agitated, because he knew Harold was right. They had never explicitly discussed it, but he knew Harold had always assumed that he would make his career in public service. Over the years, Harold would talk with dismay and sorrow about talented former students he admired who had left jobs — at the U.S. Attorney’s, at the Department of Justice, at public defender offices, at legal aid programs — to go to corporate firms. “A society cannot run as it should unless people with excellent legal minds make it their business to make it run,” Harold often said, and he had always agreed with him. And he agreed with him still, which was why he couldn’t defend himself now.

“Don’t you have anything you want to say for yourself?” Harold asked him, finally.

“I’m sorry, Harold,” he said. Harold said nothing. “You’re so angry at me,” he murmured.

“I’m not angry, Jude,” Harold said. “I’m disappointed. Do you know how special you are? Do you know what a difference you could make if you stayed? You could be a judge if you wanted to — you could be a justice someday. But you’re not going to be now. Now you’re going to be another litigator in another corporate firm, and all the good work you could have done you’ll instead be fighting against. It’s just such a waste, Jude, such a waste.”

He was silent again. He repeated Harold’s words to himself: Such a waste, such a waste . Harold sighed. “So what is this about, really?” he asked. “Is it money? Is this what this is about? Why didn’t you tell me you needed money, Jude? I could’ve given you some. Is this all about money? Tell me what you need, Jude, and I’m happy to help you out.”

“Harold,” he began, “that’s so — that’s so kind of you. But — I can’t.”

“Bullshit,” said Harold, “you won’t . I’m offering you a way to let you keep your job, Jude, to not have to take a job you’re going to hate, for work you will hate — and that’s not a maybe, that’s a fact — with no expectations or strings attached. I’m telling you that I’m happy to give you money for this.”

Oh, Harold, he thought. “Harold,” he said, wretchedly, “the kind of money I need isn’t the kind of money you have. I promise you.”

Harold was silent, and when he spoke next, his tone was different. “Jude, are you in any kind of trouble? You can tell me, you know. Whatever it is, I’ll help you.”

“No,” he said, but he wanted to cry. “No, Harold, I’m fine.” He wrapped his right hand around his bandaged calf, with its steady, constant ache.

“Well,” said Harold. “That’s a relief. But Jude, what could you possibly need so much money for, besides an apartment, which Julia and I will help you buy, do you hear me?”

He sometimes found himself both frustrated and fascinated by Harold’s lack of imagination: in Harold’s mind, people had parents who were proud of them, and saved money only for apartments and vacations, and asked for things when they wanted them; he seemed to be curiously unaware of a universe in which those things might not be givens, in which not everyone shared the same past and future. But this was a highly ungenerous way to think, and it was rare — most of the time, he admired Harold’s steadfast optimism, his inability or unwillingness to be cynical, to look for unhappiness or misery in every situation. He loved Harold’s innocence, which was made more remarkable considering what he taught and what he had lost. And so how could he tell Harold that he had to consider wheelchairs, which needed to be replaced every few years, and which insurance didn’t wholly cover? How could he tell him that Andy, who didn’t take insurance, never charged him, had never charged him, but might want to someday, and if he did, he certainly wasn’t not going to pay him? How could he tell him that this most recent time his wound had opened, Andy had mentioned hospitalization and, maybe, someday in the future, amputation? How could he tell him that if his leg was amputated, it would mean a hospital stay, and physical therapy, and prostheses? How could he tell him about the surgery he wanted on his back, the laser burning his carapace of scars down to nothing? How could he tell Harold of his deepest fears: his loneliness, of becoming the old man with a catheter and a bony, bare chest? How could he tell Harold that he dreamed not of marriage, or children, but that he would someday have enough money to pay someone to take care of him if he needed it, someone who would be kind to him and allow him privacy and dignity? And then, yes, there were the things he wanted: He wanted to live somewhere where the elevator worked. He wanted to take cabs when he wanted to. He wanted to find somewhere private to swim, because the motion stilled his back and because he wasn’t able to take his walks any longer.

But he couldn’t tell Harold any of this. He didn’t want Harold to know just how flawed he was, what a piece of junk he’d acquired. And so he said nothing, and told Harold he had to go, and that he would talk to him later.

Even before he had talked to Harold, he had prepared himself to be resigned to his new job, nothing more, but to first his unease, and then his surprise, and then his delight, and then his slight disgust, he found that he enjoyed it. He’d had experience with pharmaceutical companies when he was a prosecutor, and so much of his initial caseload concerned that industry: he worked with a company that was opening an Asia-based subsidiary to develop an anticorruption policy, traveling back and forth to Tokyo with the senior partner on the case — this was a small, tidy, solvable job, and therefore unusual. The other cases were more complicated, and longer, at times infinitely long: he mostly worked on compiling a defense for another of the firm’s clients, this a massive pharmaceutical conglomerate, against a False Claims Act charge. And three years into his life at Rosen Pritchard and Klein, when the investment management company Rhodes worked for was investigated for securities fraud, they came to him, and secured his partnership: he had trial experience, which most of the other associates didn’t, but he had known he would need to bring in a client eventually, and the first client was always the hardest to find.