Then he thinks: Why did I never give Willem what I should have? Why did I make him go elsewhere for sex? Why couldn’t I have been braver? Why couldn’t I have done my duty? Why did he stay with me anyway?
He goes back to Greene Street to shower and sleep for a few hours; he will return to the office that afternoon. As he rides home, his eyes lowered against the Life After Death posters, he looks at his messages: Andy, Richard, Harold, Black Henry Young.
The last message is from JB, who calls or texts him at least twice a week. He does not know why, but he cannot tolerate seeing JB. He in fact hates him, hates him more purely than he has hated anyone in a long time. He is fully aware of how irrational this is. He is fully aware that JB is not to blame, not in the slightest. The hatred makes no sense. JB wasn’t even in the car that day; in no way, even in the most deformed logic, does he bear any responsibility. And yet the first time he saw JB in his conscious state, he heard a voice in his head say, clearly and calmly, It should have been you, JB. He didn’t say it, but his face must have betrayed something, because JB had been stepping forward to hug him when suddenly, he stopped. He has seen JB only twice since then, both times in Richard’s company, and both times, he has had to keep himself from saying something malignant, something unforgivable. And still JB calls him, and always leaves messages, and his messages are always the same: “Hey Judy, it’s me. I’m just checking in on you. I’ve been thinking about you a lot. I’d like to see you. Okay. Love you. Bye.” And as he always does, he will write back to JB the same message: “Hi JB, thanks for your message. I’m sorry I’ve been so out of touch; it’s been really busy at work. I’ll talk to you soon. Love, J.” But despite this message, he has no intention of talking to JB, perhaps not ever again. There is something very wrong with this world, he thinks, a world in which of the four of them—him, JB, Willem, and Malcolm—the two best people, the two kindest and most thoughtful, have died, and the two poorer examples of humanity have survived. At least JB is talented; he deserves to live. But he can think of no reason why he might.
“We’re all we have left, Jude,” JB had said to him at some point, “at least we have each other,” and he had thought, in another of those statements that leapt quickly to mind but that he successfully prevented himself from voicing: I would trade you for him. He would have traded any of them for Willem. JB, instantly. Richard and Andy—poor Richard and Andy, who did everything for him!—instantly. Julia, even. Harold. He would have exchanged any of them, all of them, to have Willem back. He thinks of Hades, with his shiny Italian brawn, swooning E. around the underworld. I have a proposition for you, he says to Hades. Five souls for one. How can you refuse?
One Sunday in April he is sleeping when he hears a banging, loud and insistent, and he wakes, groggily, and then turns onto his side, holding the pillow over his head and keeping his eyes closed, and eventually the banging stops. So when he feels someone touch him, gently, on his arm, he shouts and flops over and sees it is Richard, sitting next to him.
“I’m sorry, Jude,” says Richard. And then, “Have you been sleeping all day?”
He swallows, sits up halfway. On Sundays he keeps all the shades lowered, all the curtains drawn; he can never tell, really, whether it is night or day. “Yes,” he says. “I’m tired.”
“Well,” says Richard after a silence. “I’m sorry to barge in like this. But you weren’t answering your phone, and I wanted you to come downstairs and have dinner with me.”
“Oh, Richard, I don’t know,” he says, trying to think of an excuse. Richard is right: he turns off his phone, all phones, for his Sunday cocooning, so nothing will interrupt his slumber, his attempts to find Willem in his dreams. “I’m not feeling that great. I’m not going to be good company.”
“I’m not expecting entertainment, Jude,” Richard says, and smiles at him a bit. “Come on. You have to eat something. It’s just going to be you and me; India’s upstate at her friend’s this weekend.”
They are both quiet for a long time. He looks about the room, his messy bed. The air smells close, of sandalwood and steam heat from the radiator. “Come on, Jude,” Richard says, in a low voice. “Come have dinner with me.”
“Okay,” he says at last. “Okay.”
“Okay,” Richard says, standing. “I’ll see you downstairs in half an hour.”
He showers, and then down he goes, with a bottle of Tempranillo he remembers that Richard likes. In the apartment he is waved away from the kitchen, and so he sits at the long table that dominates the space, which can and has sat twenty-four, and strokes Richard’s cat, Mustache, which has jumped into his lap. He remembers the first time he saw this apartment with its dangling chandeliers and its large beeswax sculptures; over the years it has become more domesticated, but it is still, indisputably, Richard’s, with its palette of bone-white and wax-yellow, although now India’s paintings, bright, violent abstractions of female nudes, hang on the walls, and there are carpets on the floor. It has been months since he’s been inside this apartment, where he used to visit at least once a week. He still sees Richard, of course, but only in passing; mostly, he tries to avoid him, and when Richard calls him to have dinner or asks to stop by, he always says he is too busy, too tired.
“I couldn’t remember how you felt about my famous seitan stir-fry, so I actually got scallops,” Richard says, and places a dish before him.
“I like your famous stir-fry,” he says, although he can’t remember what it is, and if he likes it or not. “Thank you, Richard.”
Richard pours them both a glass of wine, and then holds his up. “Happy birthday, Jude,” he says, solemnly, and he realizes that Richard is right: today is his birthday. Harold has been calling and e-mailing him all this week with a frequency that is unusual even for him, and except for the most cursory of replies, he has not spoken to him at all. He knows Harold will be worried about him. There have been more texts from Andy as well, and from some other people, and now he knows why, and he begins to cry: from everyone’s kindness, which he has repaid so poorly, from his loneliness, from the proof that life has, despite his efforts to let it, gone on after all. He is fifty-one, and Willem has been dead for eight months.
Richard doesn’t say anything, just sits next to him on the bench and holds him. “I know this isn’t going to help,” he says at last, “but I love you too, Jude.”
He shakes his head, unable to speak. In recent years he has gone from being embarrassed about crying at all to crying constantly to himself to crying around Willem to now, in the final falling away of his dignity, crying in front of anyone, at any time, over anything.
He leans against Richard’s chest and sobs into his shirt. Richard is another person whose unstinting, unwavering friendship and compassion for him has always perplexed him. He knows that some of Richard’s feelings for him are twined with his feelings for Willem, and this he understands: he had made Willem a promise, and Richard is serious about his obligations. But there is something about Richard’s steadiness, his complete reliability, that—coupled with his height, his very size—makes him think of him as some sort of massive tree-god, an oak come into human form, something solid and ancient and indestructible. Theirs is not a chatty relationship, but it is Richard who has become the friend of his adulthood, who has become, in a way, not just a friend but a parent, although he is only four years older. A brother, then: someone whose dependability and sense of decency are inviolable.
Finally, he is able to stop, and apologize, and after he cleans himself up in the bathroom, they eat, slowly, drinking the wine, talking about Richard’s work. At the end of the meal, Richard returns from the kitchen with a lumpy little cake, into which he has thrust six candles. “Five plus one,” Richard explains. He makes himself smile, then; he blows out the candles; Richard cuts them both slices. The cake is crumbly and figgy, more scone than cake, and they both eat their pieces in silence.