Page 95 of A Little Life

“You’re home,” he says, and smiles at him, and Willem smiles back.

They lie awake in the dark talking about Willem’s dinner with the director, and the shoot, which begins in late January in Texas. The film,Duets, is based on a novel he likes, and follows a closeted lesbian and a closeted gay man, both music teachers at a small-town high school, through a twenty-five-year marriage that spans the nineteen-sixties through the nineteen-eighties. “I’m going to need your help,” Willem tells him. “I really, really have to brush up on my piano playing. And Iamgoing to be singing in it, after all. They’re getting me a coach, but will you practice with me?”

“Of course,” he says. “And you don’t need to worry: you have a beautiful voice, Willem.”

“It’s thin.”

“It’s sweet.”

Willem laughs, and squeezes his hand. “Tell Kit that,” he says. “He’s already freaking out.” He sighs. “How was your day?” he asks.

“Fine,” he says.

They begin to kiss, which he still has to do with his eyes open, to remind himself that it is Willem he is kissing, not Brother Luke, and he is doing well until he remembers the first night he had come back to the apartment with Caleb, and Caleb’s pressing him against the wall, and everything that followed, and he pulls himself abruptly away from Willem, turning his face from him. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry.” He has not taken off his clothes tonight, and now he pulls his sleeves down over his hands. Beside him, Willem waits, and into the silence, he hears himself saying, “Someone I know died yesterday.”

“Oh, Jude,” says Willem. “I’m so sorry. Who was it?”

He is silent for a long time, trying to speak the words. “Someone I was in a relationship with,” he says at last, and his tongue feels clumsy in his mouth. He can feel Willem’s focus intensify, can feel him move an inch or two closer to him.

“I didn’t know you were in a relationship,” says Willem, quietly. He clears his throat. “When?”

“When you were shootingThe Odyssey,” he says, just as quietly, and again, he feels the air change.Something happened while I was away, he remembers Willem saying.Something’s wrong. He knows Willem is remembering the same conversation.

“Well,” says Willem, after a long pause. “Tell me. Who was the lucky person?”

He can barely breathe now, but he keeps going. “It was a man,” he begins, and although he’s not looking at Willem—he’s concentrating on the chandelier—he can feel him nod, encouragingly, willing him to continue. But he can’t; Willem will have to prompt him, and he does.

“Tell me about him,” Willem says. “How long did you go out for?”

“Four months,” he says.

“And why did it end?”

He thinks of how to answer this. “He didn’t like me very much,” he says at last.

He can feel Willem’s anger before he hears it. “So he was a moron,” Willem says, his voice tight.

“No,” he says. “He was a very smart guy.” He opens his mouth to say something else—what, he doesn’t know—but he can’t continue, and he shuts it, and the two of them lie there in silence.

Finally, Willem prompts him again. “Then what happened?” he asks.

He waits, and Willem waits with him. He can hear them breathing in tandem, and it is as if they are bringing all the air from the room, from the apartment, from the world, into their lungs and then releasing it, just the two of them, all by themselves. He counts their breaths: five, ten, fifteen. At twenty, he says, “If I tell you, Willem, do you promise you won’t get mad?” and he feels Willem shift again.

“I promise,” Willem says, his voice low.

He takes a deep breath. “Do you remember the car accident I was in?”

“Yes,” says Willem. He sounds uncertain, strangled. His breathing is quick. “I do.”

“It wasn’t a car accident,” he says, and as if on cue, his hands begin to shake, and he plunges them beneath the covers.

“What do you mean?” Willem asks, but he remains silent, and eventually he feels, rather than sees, Willem realize what he’s saying. And then Willem is flopping onto his side, facing him, and reaching beneath the covers for his hands. “Jude,” Willem says, “did someone do that to you? Did someone”—he can’t say the words—“did someone beat you?”

He nods, barely, thankful that he’s not crying, although he feels like he’s going to explode: he imagines bits of flesh bursting like shrapnel from his skeleton, smacking themselves against the wall, dangling from the chandelier, bloodying the sheets.

“Oh god,” Willem says, and drops his hands, and he watches as Willem hurries out of bed.

“Willem,” he calls after him, and then gets up and follows him into the bathroom, where Willem is bent over the sink, breathing hard, but when he tries to touch his shoulder, Willem shrugs his hand off.