A Little Life (54 page)

“Jude?” Harold asks him, but he can’t speak.

“Caleb Porter,” says Caleb, and slides into the semicircular booth, pressing against his side. “Your son and I are dating.”

Harold looks at Caleb, and then at him, and opens his mouth, speechless for the first time since he has known him.

“Let me ask you something,” Caleb says to Harold, leaning in as if
delivering a confidence, and he stares at Caleb’s face, his vulpine handsomeness, his dark, glinting eyes. “Be honest. Don’t you ever wish you had a normal son, not a cripple?”

For a moment, no one says anything, and he can feel something, a current, sizzle in the air. “Who the fuck are you?” hisses Harold, and then he watches Harold’s face change, his features contorting so quickly and violently from shock to disgust to anger that he looks, for an instant, inhuman, a ghoul in Harold’s clothing. And then his expression changes again, and he watches something harden in Harold’s face, as if his very muscles are ossifying before him.

“You did this to him,” he says to Caleb, very slowly. And then to him, in dismay, “It wasn’t tennis, was it, Jude. This man did this to you.”

“Harold, don’t,” he begins to say, but Caleb has grabbed his wrist, and is gripping it so hard that he feels it might be breaking. “You little liar,” he says to him. “You’re a cripple and a liar and a bad fuck. And you’re right—you’re disgusting. I couldn’t even look at you, not ever.”

“Get the fuck out of here,” says Harold, biting down on each word. They are all of them speaking in whispers, but the conversation feels so loud, and the rest of the restaurant so silent, that he is certain everyone can hear them.

“Harold, don’t,” he begs him. “Stop, please.”

But Harold doesn’t listen to him. “I’m going to call the police,” he says, and Caleb slides out of the booth and stands, and Harold stands as well. “Get out of here right now,” Harold repeats, and now everyone really is looking in their direction, and he is so mortified that he feels sick.

“Harold,” he pleads.

He can tell from Caleb’s swaying motion that he is really very drunk, and when he pushes at Harold’s shoulder, Harold is about to push back when he finds his voice, finally, and shouts Harold’s name, and Harold turns to him and lowers his arm. Caleb gives him his small smile, then, and turns and leaves, shoving past some of the waiters who have silently gathered around him.

Harold stands there for a moment, staring at the door, and then begins to follow Caleb, and he calls Harold’s name again, desperate, and Harold comes back to him.

“Jude—” Harold begins, but he shakes his head. He is so angry, so furious, that his humiliation has almost been eclipsed by his rage.
Around them, he can hear people’s conversations resuming. He hails their waiter and gives him his credit card, which is returned to him in what feels like seconds. He doesn’t have his wheelchair today, for which he is enormously, bitterly grateful, and in those moments he is leaving the restaurant, he feels he has never been so nimble, has never moved so quickly or decisively.

Outside, it is pouring. His car is parked a block away, and he shuffles down the sidewalk, Harold silent at his side. He is so livid he wishes he could not give Harold a ride at all, but they are on the east side, near Avenue A, and Harold will never be able to find a cab in the rain.

“Jude—” Harold says once they’re in the car, but he interrupts him, keeping his eyes on the road before him. “I was
begging
you not to say anything, Harold,” he says. “And you did anyway. Why did you do that, Harold? You think my life is a joke? You think my problems are just an opportunity for you to grandstand?” He doesn’t even know what he means, doesn’t know what he’s trying to say.

“No, Jude, of course not,” says Harold, his voice gentle. “I’m sorry—I just lost it.”

This sobers him for some reason, and for a few blocks they are silent, listening to the sluice of the wipers.

“Were you really going out with him?” Harold asks.

He gives a single, terse nod. “But not anymore?” Harold asks, and he shakes his head. “Good,” Harold mutters. And then, very softly, “Did he hit you?”

He has to wait and control himself before he can answer. “Only a few times,” he says.

“Oh, Jude,” says Harold, in a voice he has never heard Harold use before.

“Let me ask you something, though,” Harold says, as they edge down Fifteenth Street, past Sixth Avenue. “Jude—why were you going out with someone who would treat you like that?”

He doesn’t answer for another block, trying to think of what he could say, how he could articulate his reasons in a way Harold would understand. “I was lonely,” he says, finally.

“Jude,” Harold says, and stops. “I understand that,” he says. “But why him?”

“Harold,” he says, and he hears how awful, how wretched, he sounds, “when you look like I do, you have to take what you can get.”

They are quiet again, and then Harold says, “Stop the car.”

“What?” he says. “I can’t. There are people behind me.”

“Stop the damn car, Jude,” Harold repeats, and when he doesn’t, Harold reaches over and grabs the wheel and pulls it sharply to the right, into an empty space in front of a fire hydrant. The car behind passes them, its horn bleating a long, warning note.

“Jesus, Harold!” he yells. “What the hell are you trying to do? You nearly got us into an accident!”

“Listen to me, Jude,” says Harold slowly, and reaches for him, but he pulls himself back against the window, away from Harold’s hands. “You are the most beautiful person I have ever met—ever.”

“Harold,” he says, “stop, stop. Please stop.”

“Look at me, Jude,” says Harold, but he can’t. “You are. It breaks my heart that you can’t see this.”

“Harold,” he says, and he is almost moaning, “please, please. If you care about me, you’ll stop.”

“Jude,” says Harold, and reaches for him again, but he flinches, and brings his hands up to protect himself. Out of the edge of his eye, he can see Harold lower his hand, slowly.

He finally puts his hands back on the steering wheel, but they are shaking too badly for him to start the ignition, and he tucks them under his thighs, waiting. “Oh god,” he hears himself repeating, “oh god.”

“Jude,” Harold says again.

“Leave me alone, Harold,” he says, and now his teeth are chattering as well, and it is difficult for him to speak. “Please.”

They sit there in silence for minutes. He concentrates on the sound of the rain, the traffic light turning red and green and orange, and the count of his breaths. Finally his shaking stops, and he starts the car and drives west, and north, up to Harold’s building.

“Come stay in the apartment tonight,” Harold says, turning to him, but he shakes his head, staring straight ahead. “At least come up and have a cup of tea and wait until you feel a little better,” but he shakes his head again. “Jude,” Harold says, “I’m really sorry—for everything, for all of it.” He nods, but still can’t say anything. “Will you call me if you need anything?” Harold persists, and he nods again. And then Harold reaches his hand up, slowly, as if he is a feral animal, and strokes the back of his head, twice, before getting out, closing the door softly behind him.

He takes the West Side Highway home. He is so sore, so depleted: but now his humiliations are complete. He has been punished enough, he thinks, even for him. He will go home, and cut himself, and then he will begin forgetting: this night in particular, but also the past four months.

At Greene Street he parks in the garage and rides the elevator up past the silent floors, clinging to the cage-door mesh; he is so tired that he will slump to the ground if he doesn’t. Richard is away for the fall at a residency in Rome, and the building is sepulchral around him.

He steps into his darkened apartment and is feeling for the light switch when something clots him, hard, on the swollen side of his face, and even in the dark he can see his new tooth project itself into the air.

It is Caleb, of course, and he can hear and smell his breath even before Caleb flicks the master switch and the apartment is illuminated, dazzlingly, into something brighter than day, and he looks up and sees Caleb above him, peering down at him. Even drunk, he is composed, and now some of his drunkenness has been clarified by rage, and his gaze is steady and focused. He feels Caleb grab him by his hair, feels him hit him on the right side of his face, the good one, feels his head snapping backward in response.

Caleb still hasn’t said anything, and now he drags him to the sofa, the only sounds Caleb’s steady breaths and his frantic gulps. He pushes his face into the cushions and holds his head down with one hand, while with the other, he begins pulling off his clothes. He begins to panic, then, and struggle, but Caleb presses one arm against the back of his neck, which paralyzes him, and he is unable to move; he can feel himself become exposed to the air piece by piece—his back, his arms, the backs of his legs—and when everything’s been removed, Caleb yanks him to his feet again and pushes him away, but he falls, and lands on his back.

“Get up,” says Caleb. “Right now.”

He does; his nose is discharging something, blood or mucus, that is making it difficult for him to breathe. He stands; he has never felt more naked, more exposed in his life. When he was a child, and things were happening to him, he used to be able to leave his body, to go somewhere else. He would pretend he was something inanimate—a curtain rod, a ceiling fan—a dispassionate, unfeeling witness to the scene occurring beneath him. He would watch himself and feel nothing: not pity, not
anger, nothing. But now, although he tries, he finds he cannot remove himself. He is in this apartment, his apartment, standing before a man who detests him, and he knows this is the beginning, not the end, of a long night, one he has no choice but to wait through and endure. He will not be able to control this night, he will not be able to stop it.

“My god,” Caleb says, after looking at him for a few long moments; it is the first time he has ever seen him wholly naked. “My god, you really are deformed. You really are.”

For some reason, it is this, this pronouncement, that brings them both back to themselves, and he finds himself, for the first time in decades, crying. “Please,” he says. “Please, Caleb, I’m sorry.” But Caleb has already grabbed him by the back of his neck and is hurrying him, half dragging him, toward the front door. Into the elevator they go, and down the flights, and then he is being dragged out of the elevator and marched down the hallway toward the lobby. By now he is hysterical, pleading with Caleb, asking him again and again what he’s doing, what he’s going to do to him. At the front door, Caleb lifts him, and for a moment his face is fitted into the tiny dirty glass window that looks out onto Greene Street, and then Caleb is opening the door and he is being pushed out, naked, into the street.

“No!” he shouts, half inside, half outside. “Caleb, please!” He is pulled between a crazed hope and a desperate fear that someone will walk by. But it is raining too hard; no one will walk by. The rain drums a wild pattern on his face.

“Beg me,” says Caleb, raising his voice over the rain, and he does, pleading with him. “Beg me to stay,” Caleb demands. “Apologize to me,” and he does, again and again, his mouth filling with his own blood, his own tears.

Finally he is brought inside, and is dragged back to the elevator, where Caleb says things to him, and he apologizes and apologizes, repeating Caleb’s words back to him as he instructs:
I’m repulsive. I’m disgusting. I’m worthless. I’m sorry, I’m sorry
.

In the apartment, Caleb lets go of his neck, and he falls, his legs unsteady beneath him, and Caleb kicks him in the stomach so hard that he vomits, and then again in his back, and he slides over Malcolm’s lovely, clean floors and into the vomit. His beautiful apartment, he thinks, where he has always been safe. This is happening to him in his beautiful apartment, surrounded by his beautiful things, things that
have been given to him in friendship, things that he has bought with money he has earned. His beautiful apartment, with its doors that lock, where he was meant to be protected from broken elevators and the degradation of pulling himself upstairs on his arms, where he was meant to always feel human and whole.

Then he is being lifted again, and moved, but it is difficult to see where he’s being taken: one eye is already swollen shut, and the other is blurry. His vision keeps blinking in and out.

But then he realizes that Caleb is taking him to the door that leads to the emergency stairs. It is the one element of the old loft that Malcolm kept: both because he had to and because he liked how bluntly utilitarian it was, how unapologetically ugly. Now Caleb unslides the bolt, and he finds himself standing at the top of the dark, steep staircase. “So descent-into-hell looking,” he remembers Richard saying. One side of him is gluey with vomit; he can feel other liquids—he cannot think about what they are—moving down other parts of him: his face, his neck, his thighs.

He is whimpering from pain and fear, clutching the edge of the doorframe, when he hears, rather than sees, Caleb move back and run at him, and then his foot is kicking him in his back, and he is flying into the black of the staircase.

As he soars, he thinks, suddenly, of Dr. Kashen. Or not of Dr. Kashen, necessarily, but the question he had asked him when he was applying to be his advisee:
What’s your favorite axiom?
(The nerd pickup line, CM had once called it.)

“The axiom of equality,” he’d said, and Kashen had nodded, approvingly. “That’s a good one,” he’d said.

The axiom of equality states that
x
always equals
x
: it assumes that if you have a conceptual thing named
x
, that it must always be equivalent to itself, that it has a uniqueness about it, that it is in possession of something so irreducible that we must assume it is absolutely, unchangeably equivalent to itself for all time, that its very elementalness can never be altered. But it is impossible to prove. Always, absolutes, nevers: these are the words, as much as numbers, that make up the world of mathematics. Not everyone liked the axiom of equality—Dr. Li had once called it coy and twee, a fan dance of an axiom—but he had always appreciated how elusive it was, how the beauty of the equation itself would always be frustrated by the attempts to prove it. It was the kind of axiom
that could drive you mad, that could consume you, that could easily become an entire life.