He thinks of the conversations he will need to have, the explanations he will need to give: about his back, his arms, his legs, his diseases. He is so sick of his own fears, his own trepidations, but as tired as he is of them, he also cannot stop himself from indulging them. He thinks of Linus paging slowly through his chart, of seeing the years, the decades, of notes Andy has made about him: lists of his cuts, of his wounds, of the medications he has been on, of the flare-ups of his infections. Notes on his suicide attempt, on Andy’s pleas to get him to see Dr. Loehmann. He knows Andy has chronicled all of this; he knows how meticulous he is.
“You have to tell someone,” Ana used to say, and as he had grown older, he had decided to interpret this sentence literally: Some One. Someday, he thought, somehow, he would find a way to tell some one, one person. And then he had, someone he had trusted, and that person had died, and he didn’t have the fortitude to tell his story ever again. But then, didn’t everyone only tell their lives—truly tell their lives—to one person? How often could he really be expected to repeat himself, when with each telling he was stripping the clothes from his skin and the flesh from his bones, until he was as vulnerable as a small pink mouse? He knows, then, that he will never be able to go to another doctor. He will go to Andy for as long as he can, for as long as Andy will let him. And after that, he doesn’t know—he will figure out what to do then. For now, his privacy, his life, is still his. For now, no one else needs to know. His thoughts are so occupied with Willem—trying to re-create him, to hold his face and voice in his head, to keep him present—that his past is as far away as it has ever been: he is in the middle of a lake, trying to stay afloat; he can’t think of returning to shore and having to live among his memories again.
He doesn’t want to go to dinner with Andy that night, but they do, telling Linus goodbye as they leave. They walk to the sushi restaurant in silence, sit in silence, order, and wait in silence.
“What’d you think?” Andy finally asks.
“He kind of looks like Willem,” he says.
“Does he?” Andy says, and he shrugs.
“A little,” he says. “The smile.”
“Ah,” Andy says. “I guess. I can see that.” There’s another silence. “But what did you think? I know it’s sometimes hard to tell from one meeting, but does he seem like someone you might be able to get along with?”
“I don’t think so, Andy,” he says at last, and can feel Andy’s disappointment.
“Really, Jude? What didn’t you like about him?” But he doesn’t answer, and finally Andy sighs. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I hoped you might feel comfortable enough around him to at least consider it. Will you think about it anyway? Maybe you’ll give him another chance? And in the meantime, there’s this other guy, Stephan Wu, who I think you should maybe meet. He’s not an orthopod, but I actually think that might be better; he’s certainly the best internist I’ve ever worked with. Or there’s this guy named—”
“Jesus, Andy, stop,” he says, and he can hear the anger in his voice, anger he hasn’t known he had. “Stop.” He looks up, sees Andy’s stricken face. “Are you so eager to get rid of me? Can’t you give me a break? Can’t you let me take this in for a while? Don’t you understand how hard this is for me?” He knows how selfish, how unreasonable, how self-absorbed he is being, and he is miserable but unable to stop himself, and he stands, bumping against the table. “Leave me alone,” he tells Andy. “If you’re not going to be here for me, then leave me alone.”
“Jude,” Andy says, but he has already pushed past the table, and as he does, the waitress arrives with the food, and he can hear Andy curse and see him reach for his wallet, and he stumbles out of the restaurant. Mr. Ahmed doesn’t work on Fridays because he drives himself to Andy’s, but now instead of returning to the car, which is parked in front of Andy’s office, he hails a taxi and gets in quickly and leaves before Andy can catch him.
That night he turns off his phones, drugs himself, crawls into bed. He wakes the next day, texts both JB and Richard that he’s not feeling well and has to cancel his dinners with them, and then re-drugs himself until it is Monday. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. He has ignored all of Andy’s calls and texts and e-mails, all of his messages, but although he is no longer angry, only ashamed, he cannot bear to make one more apology, cannot bear his own meanness, his own weakness. “I’m frightened, Andy,” he wants to say. “What will I do without you?”
Andy loves sweets, and on Thursday afternoon he has one of his secretaries place an order for an absurd, a stupid amount of chocolates from Andy’s favorite candy shop. “Any note?” his secretary asks, and he shakes his head. “No,” he says, “just my name.” She nods and starts to leave and he calls her back, grabs a piece of notepaper from his desk, and scribbles Andy—I’m so embarrassed. Please forgive me. Jude, and hands it to her.
But the next night he doesn’t go to see Andy; he goes home to make dinner for Harold, who is in town on one of his unannounced visits. The previous spring had been Harold’s final semester, which he had failed to register until it was September. He and Willem had always spoken of throwing Harold a party when he finally retired, the way they had done for Julia when she had retired. But he had forgotten, and he had done nothing. And then he remembered and he still did nothing.
He is tired. He doesn’t want to see Harold. But he makes dinner anyway, a dinner he knows he will not eat, and serves it to Harold and then sits down himself.
“Aren’t you hungry?” Harold asks him, and he shakes his head. “I ate lunch at five today,” he lies. “I’ll eat later.”
He watches Harold eat, and sees that he is old, that the skin on his hands has become as soft and satiny as a baby’s. He is ever-more aware that he is one year older, two years older, and now, six years older than Harold was when they met. And yet for all these years, Harold has remained in his perceptions stubbornly forty-five; the only thing that has changed is his perception of how old, exactly, forty-five is. It is embarrassing to admit this to himself, but it is only recently that he has begun considering that there is a possibility, even a probability, that he will outlive Harold. He has already lived beyond his imaginings; isn’t it likely he will live longer still?
He remembers a conversation they’d had when he turned thirty-five. “I’m middle-aged,” he’d said, and Harold had laughed.
“You’re young,” he’d said. “You’re so young, Jude. You’re only middle-aged if you plan on dying at seventy. And you’d better not. I’m really not going to be in the mood to attend your funeral.”
“You’re going to be ninety-five,” he said. “Are you really planning on still being alive then?”
“Alive, and frisky, and being attended to by an assortment of buxom young nurses, and not in any mood to go to some long-winded service.”
He had finally smiled. “And who’s paying for this fleet of buxom young nurses?”
“You, of course,” said Harold. “You and your big-pharma spoils.”
But now he worries that this won’t happen after all. Don’t leave me, Harold, he thinks, but it is a dull, spiritless request, one he doesn’t expect will be answered, made more from rote than from real hope. Don’t leave me.
“You’re not saying anything,” Harold says now, and he refocuses himself.
“I’m sorry, Harold,” he says. “I was drifting a little.”
“I can see that,” Harold says. “I was saying: Julia and I were thinking of spending some more time here, in the city, of living uptown full-time.”
He blinks. “You mean, moving here?”
“Well, we’ll keep the place in Cambridge,” Harold says, “but yes. I’m considering teaching a seminar at Columbia next fall, and we like spending time here.” He looks at him. “We thought it’d be nice to be closer to you, too.”