That night, once he was alone, he cried as well: not because of what he had done but because he hadn't been successful, because he had lived after all.

His mind grew a little clearer with every day. Every day, he was awake a little longer. Mostly, he felt nothing. People came to see him and cried and he looked at them and could register only the strangeness of their faces, the way everyone looked the same when they cried, their noses hoggy, rarely used muscles pulling their mouths in unnatural directions, into unnatural shapes.

He thought of nothing, his mind was a clean sheet of paper. He learned little pieces of what had happened: how Richard's studio manager had thought the plumber was coming at nine that night, not nine the following morning (even in his haze, he wondered how anyone could think a plumber would come at nine in the evening); how Richard had found him and called an ambulance and had ridden with him to the hospital; how Richard had called Andy and Harold and Willem; how Willem had flown back from Colombo to be with him. He did feel sorry that it had been Richard who'd had to discover him-that was always the part of the plan that had made him uncomfortable, although at the time he had remembered thinking that Richard had a high tolerance for blood, having once made sculptures with it, and so was the least likely among his friends to be traumatized-and had apologized to Richard, who had stroked the back of his hand and told him it was fine, it was okay.

Dr. Solomon came every day and tried to talk to him, but he didn't have much to say. Most of the time, people didn't talk to him at all. They came and sat and did work of their own, or spoke to him without seeming to expect a reply, which he appreciated. Lucien came often, usually with a gift, once with a large card that everyone in the office had signed-"I'm sure this is just the thing to make you feel better," he'd said, dryly, "but here it is, anyway"-and Malcolm made him one of his imaginary houses, its windows crisp vellum, which he placed on his bedside table. Willem called him every morning and every night. Harold read The Hobbit to him, which he had never read, and when Harold couldn't come, Julia came, and picked up where Harold had left off: those were his favorite visits. Andy arrived every evening, after visiting hours had ended, and had dinner with him; he was concerned that he wasn't eating enough, and brought him a serving of whatever he was having. He brought him a container of beef barley soup, but his hands were still too weak to hold the spoon, and Andy had to feed him, one slow spoonful after the next. Once, this would have embarrassed him, but now he simply didn't care: he opened his mouth and accepted the food, which was flavorless, and chewed and swallowed.

"I want to go home," he told Andy one evening, as he watched Andy eat his turkey club sandwich.

Andy finished his bite and looked at him. "Oh, do you?"

"Yes," he said. He couldn't think of anything else to say. "I want to leave." He thought Andy would say something sarcastic, but he only nodded, slowly. "Okay," he said. "Okay. I'll talk to Solomon." He grimaced. "Eat your sandwich."

The next day Dr. Solomon said, "I hear you want to go home."

"I feel like I've been here a long time," he said.

Dr. Solomon was quiet. "You have been here a little while," he said. "But given your history of self-injury and the seriousness of your attempt, your doctor-Andy-and parents thought it was for the best."

He thought about this. "So if my attempt had been less serious, I could have gone home earlier?" It seemed too logical to be an effective policy.

The doctor smiled. "Probably," he said. "But I'm not completely opposed to letting you go home, Jude, although I think we have to put some protective measures in place." He stopped. "It troubles me, however, that you've been so unwilling to discuss why you made the attempt in the first place. Dr. Contractor-I'm sorry: Andy-tells me that you've always resisted therapy, can you tell me why?" He said nothing, and neither did the doctor. "Your father tells me that you were in an abusive relationship last year, and that it's had long-term reverberations," said the doctor, and he felt himself go cold. But he willed himself not to answer, and closed his eyes, and finally he could hear Dr. Solomon get up to leave. "I'll be back tomorrow, Jude," he said as he left.

Eventually, once it was clear that he wasn't going to speak to any of them and that he was in no state to hurt himself again, they let him go, with stipulations: He was to be released into Julia and Harold's care. It was strongly recommended that he remain on a milder course of the drugs that he'd been given in the hospital. It was very strongly recommended that he see a therapist twice a week. He was to see Andy once a week. He was to take a sabbatical from work, which had already been arranged. He agreed to everything. He signed his name-the pen wobbly in his grip-on the discharge papers, under Andy's and Dr. Solomon's and Harold's.

Harold and Julia took him to Truro, where Willem was already waiting for him. Every night he slept, extravagantly, and during the day he and Willem walked slowly down the hill to the ocean. It was early October and too cold to get into the water, but they would sit on the sand and look out at the horizon line, and sometimes Willem would talk to him and sometimes he wouldn't. He dreamed that the sea had turned into a solid block of ice, its waves frozen in mid-crest, and that Willem was at a far shore, beckoning to him, and he was making his way slowly across its wide expanse to him, his hands and face numb from the wind.

They ate dinner early, because he went to bed so early. The meals were always something simple, easy to digest, and if there was meat, one of the three of them would cut it up for him in advance so he wouldn't have to try to wield a knife. Harold poured him a glass of milk every dinner, as if he was a child, and he drank it. He wasn't allowed to leave the table until he had eaten at least half of what was on his plate, and he wasn't allowed to serve himself, either. He was too tired to fight this; he did the best he could.

He was always cold, and sometimes he woke in the middle of the night, shivering despite the covers heaped on top of him, and he would lie there, watching Willem, who was sharing his room, breathing on the couch opposite him, watching clouds drift across the slice of moon he could see between the edge of the window frame and the blind, until he was able to sleep again.

Sometimes he thought about what he had done and felt that same sorrow he had felt in the hospital: the sorrow that he had failed, that he was still alive. And sometimes he thought about it and felt dread: now everyone really would treat him differently. Now he really was a freak, a bigger freak than he'd been before. Now he would have to begin anew in his attempts to convince people he was normal. He thought of the office, the one place where what he had been hadn't mattered. But now there would always be another, competing story about him. Now he wouldn't just be the youngest equity partner in the firm's history (as Tremain sometimes introduced him); now he would be the partner who had tried to kill himself. They must be furious with him, he thought. He thought of his work there, and wondered who was handling it. They probably didn't even need him to come back. Who would want to work with him again? Who would trust him again?

And it wasn't just Rosen Pritchard who would see him differently-it was everyone. All the autonomy he had spent years accumulating, trying to prove to everyone that he deserved: now it was gone. Now he couldn't even cut his own food. The day before, Willem had had to help him tie his shoes. "It'll get better, Judy," he said to him, "it'll get better. The doctor said it's just going to take time." In the mornings, Harold or Willem had to shave him because his hands were still too unsteady; he looked at his unfamiliar face in the mirror as they dragged the razor down his cheeks and under his chin. He had taught himself to shave in Philadelphia when he was living with the Douglasses, but Willem had retaught him their freshman year, alarmed, he later told him, by his tentative, hacking movements, as if he was clearing brush with a scythe. "Good at calculus, bad at shaving," he'd said then, and had smiled at him so he wouldn't feel more self-conscious.

Then he would tell himself, You can always try again, and just thinking that made him feel stronger, although perversely, he was somehow less inclined to try again. He was too exhausted. Trying again meant preparation. It meant finding something sharp, finding some time alone, and he was never alone. Of course, he knew there were other methods, but he remained stubbornly fixated on the one he had chosen, even though it hadn't worked.

Mostly, though, he felt nothing. Harold and Julia and Willem asked him what he wanted for breakfast, but the choices were impossible and overwhelming-pancakes? Waffles? Cereal? Eggs? What kind of eggs? Soft-boiled? Hard? Scrambled? Sunny-side? Fried? Over easy? Poached?-and he'd shake his head, and they eventually stopped asking. They stopped asking his opinion on anything, which he found restful. After lunch (also absurdly early), he napped on the living-room sofa in front of the fire, falling asleep to the sound of their murmurs, the slosh of water as they did the dishes. In the afternoons, Harold read to him; sometimes Willem and Julia stayed to listen as well.

After ten days or so, he and Willem went home to Greene Street. He had been dreading his return, but when he went to his bathroom, the marble was clean and stainless. "Malcolm," said Willem, before he had to ask. "He finished last week. It's all new." Willem helped him into bed, and gave him a manila envelope with his name on it, which he opened after Willem left. Inside were the letters he had written everyone, still sealed, and the sealed copy of his will, and a note from Richard: "I thought you would want these. Love, R." He slid them back into the envelope, his hands shaking; the next day he put them in his safe.

The next morning he woke very early, creeping past Willem sleeping on the sofa at the far end of his bedroom, and walked through the apartment. Someone had put flowers in every room, or branches of maple leaves, or bowls of squashes. The space smelled delicious, like apples and cedar. He went to his study, where someone had stacked his mail on his desk, and where Malcolm's little paper house sat atop a stack of books. He saw unopened envelopes from JB, from Asian Henry Young, from India, from Ali, and knew they had made drawings for him. He walked past the dining-room table, letting his fingers skim along the spines of the books lined up on their shelves; he wandered into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator and saw that it was filled with things he liked. Richard had started working more with ceramics, and at the center of the dining table was a large, amorphous piece, the glaze rough and pleasant under his palms, painted with white threadlike veins. Next to it stood his and Willem's Saint Jude statue, which Willem had taken with him when he moved to Perry Street, but which had now found its way back to him.

The days slipped by and he let them. In the morning he swam, and he and Willem ate breakfast. The physical therapist came and had him practice squeezing rubber balls, short lengths of rope, toothpicks, pens. Sometimes he had to pick up multiple objects with one hand, holding them between his fingers, which was difficult. His hands shook more than ever, and he felt sharp prickles vibrating through his fingers, but she told him not to worry, that it was his muscles repairing themselves, his nerves resetting themselves. He had lunch, he napped. While he napped, Richard came to watch him and Willem went out to run errands and go downstairs to the gym and, he hoped, do something interesting and indulgent that didn't involve him and his problems. People came to see him in the afternoon: all the same people, and new people, too. They stayed an hour and then Willem made them leave. Malcolm came with JB and the four of them had an awkward, polite conversation about things they had done when they were in college, but he was glad to see JB, and thought he might like to see him again when he was less cloudy-headed, so he could apologize to him and tell him he forgave him. As he was leaving, JB told him, quietly, "It'll get better, Judy. Trust me, I know," and then added, "At least you didn't hurt anyone in the process," and he felt guilty, because he knew he had. Andy came at the end of the day and examined him; he unwrapped his bandages and cleaned the area around his stitches. He still hadn't looked at his stitches-he couldn't bring himself to-and when Andy was cleaning them, he looked elsewhere or closed his eyes. After Andy left, they ate dinner, and after dinner, after the boutiques and few remaining galleries had shuttered for the night and the neighborhood was deserted, they walked, making a neat square around SoHo-east to Lafayette, north to Houston, west to Sixth, south to Grand, east to Greene-before returning home. It was a short walk, but it left him exhausted, and he once fell on the way to the bedroom, his legs simply sliding out from beneath him. Julia and Harold took the train down on Thursdays and spent all day Friday and Saturday with him, and part of Sunday as well.

Every morning, Willem asked him, "Do you want to talk to Dr. Loehmann today?" And every morning he answered, "Not yet, Willem. Soon, I promise."

By the end of October, he was feeling stronger, less shaky. He was managing to stay awake for longer stretches at a time. He could lie on his back and hold a book up without it trembling so badly that he had to roll over onto his stomach so he could prop it against a pillow. He could butter his own bread, and he could wear shirts with buttons again because he was able to slip the button into its hole.

"What're you reading?" he asked Willem one afternoon, sitting next to him on the living-room couch.

"A play I'm thinking of doing," Willem said, putting the pages down.

He looked at a point beyond Willem's head. "Are you going away again?" It was monstrously selfish to ask, but he couldn't stop himself.

"No," said Willem, after a silence. "I thought I'd stick around New York for a while, if that's okay with you."

He smiled at the couch's cushions. "It's fine with me," he said, and looked up to see Willem smiling at him. "It's nice to see you smile again," was all he said, and went back to reading.

In November he realized that he had done nothing to celebrate Willem's forty-third birthday in late August, and mentioned it to him. "Well, technically, you get a pass, because I wasn't here," said Willem. "But sure, I'll let you make it up to me. Let's see." He thought. "Are you ready to go out into the world? Do you want to have dinner? An early dinner?"

"Sure," he said, and they went the next week to a little Japanese place in the East Village that served pressed sushi and where they'd been going for years. He ordered his own food, although he had been nervous, worried that he was somehow choosing incorrectly, but Willem was patient and waited as he deliberated, and when he had decided, he'd nodded at him. "Good choice," he said. As they ate, they spoke of their friends, and the play Willem had decided he was going to do, and the novel he was reading: anything but him.

"I think we should go to Morocco," he said as they walked slowly home, and Willem looked at him.

"I'll look into it," Willem said, and took his arm to move him out of the path of a bicyclist who was zooming down the street.

"I want to get you something for your birthday," he said, a few blocks later. Really, he wanted to get Willem something to thank him, and to try to express what he couldn't say to him: a gift that would properly convey years of gratitude and love. After their earlier conversation about the play, he had remembered that Willem had, in fact, committed the previous year to a project that would be shooting in Russia in early January. But when he mentioned this to him, Willem had shrugged. "Oh, that?" he'd asked. "Didn't work out. It's fine. I didn't really want to do it anyway." He had been suspicious, though, and when he had looked online, there were reports that Willem had pulled out of the film for personal reasons; another actor had been cast instead. He had stared at the screen then, the story blurring before him, but when he had asked Willem about it, Willem had shrugged again. "That's what you say when you realize you and the director really aren't on the same page and no one wants to lose face," he said. But he knew that Willem wasn't telling him the truth.

"You don't need to get me anything," Willem said, as he knew he would, and he said (as he always did), "I know I don't need to, but I want to." And then he added, also as he always did, "A better friend would know what to get you and wouldn't have to ask for suggestions."

"A better friend would," Willem agreed, as he always did, and he smiled, because it felt like one of their normal conversations.

More days passed. Willem moved back into his suite at the other end of the apartment. Lucien called him a few times to ask him about one thing or another, apologizing as he did, but he was happy to get his calls, and happy that Lucien now began their conversations by complaining about a client or a colleague instead of asking how he was. Aside from Tremain and Lucien and one or two other people, no one at the firm knew the real reason he'd been absent: they, like his clients, had been told he was recovering from emergency spinal cord surgery. He knew that when he returned to Rosen Pritchard, Lucien would immediately restart him on his normal caseload; there would be no talk of giving him an easy transition, no speculation about his ability to handle the stress, and he was grateful for that. He stopped taking his drugs, which he realized were making him feel dopey, and after they had left his system, he was amazed by how clear he felt-even his vision was different, as if a plate-glass window had been wiped clean of all grease and smears and he was finally getting to admire the brilliant green lawn beyond it, the pear trees with their yellow fruit.

But he also realized that the drugs had been protecting him, and without them, the hyenas returned, less numerous and more sluggish, but still circling him, still following him, less motivated in their pursuit but still there, his unwanted but dogged companions. Other memories came back to him as well, the same old ones, but new ones too, and he was made much more sharply aware of how severely he had inconvenienced everyone, of how much he had asked from people, of how he had taken what he would never, ever be able to repay. And then there was the voice, which whispered to him at odd moments, You can try again, you can try again, and he tried to ignore it, because at some point-in the same, undefinable way that he had decided to kill himself in the first place-he had decided he would work on getting better, and he didn't want to be reminded that he could try again, that being alive, as ignominious and absurd as it often was, wasn't his only option.

Thanksgiving came, which they once again had at Harold and Julia's apartment on West End Avenue, and which was once again a small group: Laurence and Gillian (their daughters had gone to their husbands' families' houses for the holiday), him, Willem, Richard and India, Malcolm and Sophie. At the meal, he could feel everyone trying not to pay too much attention to him, and when Willem mentioned the trip they were taking to Morocco in the middle of December, Harold was so relaxed, so incurious, that he knew that he must have already thoroughly discussed it with Willem (and, probably, Andy) in advance, and given his permission.

"When do you go back to Rosen Pritchard?" asked Laurence, as if he'd been away on holiday.

"January third," he said.

"So soon!" said Gillian.

He smiled back at her. "Not soon enough," he said. He meant it; he was ready to try to be normal again, to make another attempt at being alive.

He and Willem left early, and that evening he cut himself for the second time since he was released from the hospital. This was another thing the drugs had dampened: his need to cut, to feel that bright, startling slap of pain. The first time he did it, he was shocked by how much it hurt, and had actually wondered why he had been doing this to himself for so long-what had he been thinking? But then he felt everything within him slow, felt himself relax, felt his memories dim, and had remembered how it helped him, remembered why he had begun doing it at all. The scars from his attempt were three vertical lines on both arms, from the base of his palm to just below the inside of his elbow, and they hadn't healed well; it looked as if he had shoved pencils just beneath the skin. They had a strange, pearly shine, almost as if the skin had been burned, and now he made a fist, watching them tighten in response.

That night he woke screaming, which had been happening as he readjusted to life, to an existence with dreams; on the drugs, there were no dreams, not really, or if there were, they were so strange and pointless and meandering that he soon forgot them. But in this dream he was in one of the motel rooms, and there was a group of men, and they were grabbing at him, and he was desperate, trying to fight them. But they kept multiplying, and he knew he would lose, he knew he would be destroyed.

One of the men kept calling his name, and then put his hand on his cheek, and for some reason that made him more terrified, and he pushed his hand away, and then the man poured water on him and he woke, gasping, to see Willem next to him, his face pale, holding a glass in his hand. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Willem said, "I couldn't get you out of it, Jude, I'm sorry. I'm going to get you a towel," and came back with a towel and the glass filled with water, but he was shaking too badly to hold it. He apologized again and again to Willem, who shook his head and told him not to worry, that it was all right, that it was just a dream. Willem got him a new shirt, and turned around as he changed and then took the wet one to the bathroom.

"Who's Brother Luke?" asked Willem, as they sat there together in silence and waited for his breathing to return to normal. And then, when he didn't answer, "You kept screaming 'Help me, Brother Luke, help me.' " He was quiet. "Who is he, Jude? Was he someone from the monastery?"

"I can't, Willem," he said, and he yearned for Ana. Ask me one more time, Ana, he said to her, and I'll tell you. Teach me how to do it. This time I'll listen. This time I'll talk.

That weekend they went to Richard's house upstate and took a long walk through the woods that backed the property. Later, he successfully completed the first meal he'd cooked since he was released. He made Willem's favorite, lamb chops, and although he'd needed Willem's help carving the chop itself-he still wasn't agile enough to do it on his own-he did everything else by himself. That night he woke again, screaming, and again there was Willem (though without the glass of water this time), and him asking about Brother Luke, and why he kept begging for his help, and again, he wasn't able to answer.

The next day he was tired, and his arms ached, and his body ached as well, and on their walk, he said very little, and Willem didn't say much himself. In the afternoon they reviewed their plans for Morocco: they would begin in Fez, and then drive through the desert, where they'd stay near Ouarzazate, and end in Marrakech. On their way back, they'd stop in Paris to visit Citizen and a friend of Willem's for a few days; they'd be home just before the new year.

As they were eating dinner, Willem said, "You know, I thought of what you could give me for my birthday."

"Oh?" he said, relieved to be able to concentrate on something he could give Willem, rather than having to ask Willem for yet more help, thinking of all the time he had stolen from him. "Let's hear it."

"Well," said Willem, "it's kind of a big thing."

"Anything," he said. "I mean it," and Willem gave him a look he couldn't quite interpret. "Really," he assured him. "Anything."

Willem put down his lamb sandwich and took a breath. "Okay," he said. "What I really want for my birthday is for you to tell me who Brother Luke is. And not just who he is, but what your-your relationship with him was, and why you think you keep calling out his name at night." He looked at him. "I want you to be honest, and thorough, and tell me the whole story. That's what I want."

There was a long silence. He realized he still had a mouthful of food, and he somehow swallowed it, and put down his sandwich as well, which he was still holding aloft. "Willem," he said at last, because he knew that Willem was serious, and that he wouldn't be able to dissuade him, to convince him to wish for something else, "part of me does want to tell you. But if I do-" He stopped. "But if I do, I'm afraid you're going to be disgusted by me. Wait," he said, as Willem began to speak. He looked at Willem's face. "I promise you I will. I promise you. But-but you're going to have to give me some time. I've never really discussed it before, and I need to figure out how to say the words."

"Okay," Willem said at last. "Well." He paused. "How about if we work up to it, then? I ask you about something easier, and you answer that, and you'll see that it's not so bad, talking about it? And if it is, we'll discuss that, too."

He inhaled; exhaled. This is Willem, he reminded himself. He would never hurt you, not ever. It's time. It's time. "Okay," he said, finally. "Okay. Ask me."

He could see Willem leaning back in his chair and staring at him, trying to determine which to choose of the hundreds of questions that one friend should be able to ask another and yet he had never been allowed to do. Tears came to his eyes, then, for how lopsided he had let their friendship become, and for how long Willem had stayed with him, year after year, even when he had fled from him, even when he had asked him for help with problems whose origins he wouldn't reveal. In his new life, he promised himself, he would be less demanding of his friends; he would be more generous. Whatever they wanted, he would give them. If Willem wanted information, he could have it, and it was up to him to figure out how to give it to him. He would be hurt again and again-everyone was-but if he was going to try, if he was going to be alive, he had to be tougher, he had to prepare himself, he had to accept that this was part of the bargain of life itself.

"Okay, I've got one," Willem said, and he sat up straighter, readying himself. "How did you get the scar on the back of your hand?"

He blinked, surprised. He wasn't sure what the question was going to be, but now that it had come, he was relieved. He rarely thought of the scar these days, and now he looked at it, its taffeta gleam, and as he ran his fingertips across it, he thought of how this scar led to so many other problems, and then to Brother Luke, and then to the home, and to Philadelphia, to all of it.

But what in life wasn't connected to some greater, sadder story? All Willem was asking for was this one story; he didn't need to drag everything else behind it, a huge ugly snarl of difficulties.

He thought about how he could start, and plotted what he'd say in his head before he opened his mouth. Finally, he was ready. "I was always a greedy kid," he began, and across the table, he watched Willem lean forward on his elbows, as for the first time in their friendship, he was the listener, and he was being told a story.

He was ten, he was eleven. His hair grew long again, longer even than it had been at the monastery. He grew taller, and Brother Luke took him to a thrift store, where you could buy a sack of clothes and pay by the pound. "Slow down!" Brother Luke would joke with him, pushing down on the top of his head as if he were squashing him back to a smaller size. "You're growing up too fast for me!"

He slept all the time now. In his lessons, he was awake, but as the day turned to late afternoon, he would feel something descend upon him, and would begin yawning, unable to keep his eyes open. At first Brother Luke joked about this as well-"My sleepyhead," he said, "my dreamer"-but one night, he sat down with him after the client had left. For months, years, he had struggled with the clients, more out of reflex than because he thought he was capable of making them stop, but recently, he had begun to simply lie there, inert, waiting for whatever was going to happen to be over. "I know you're tired," Brother Luke had said. "It's normal; you're growing. It's tiring work, growing. And I know you work hard. But Jude, when you're with your clients, you have to show a little life; they're paying to be with you, you know-you have to show them you're enjoying it." When he said nothing, the brother added, "Of course, I know it's not enjoyable for you, not the way it is with just us, but you have to show a little energy, all right?" He leaned over, tucked his hair behind his ear. "All right?" He nodded.

It was also around then that he began throwing himself into walls. The motel they were staying in-this was in Washington-had a second floor, and once he had gone upstairs to refill their bucket of ice. It had been a wet, slippery day, and as he was walking back, he had tripped and fallen, bouncing the entire way downstairs. Brother Luke had heard the noise his fall made and had run out. Nothing had been broken, but he had been scraped and was bleeding, and Brother Luke had canceled the appointment he had for that evening. That night, the brother had been careful with him, and had brought him tea, but he had felt more alive than he had in weeks. Something about the fall, the freshness of the pain, had been restorative. It was honest pain, clean pain, a pain without shame or filth, and it was a different sensation than he had felt in years. The next week, he went to get ice again, but this time, on his way back to the room, he stopped in the little triangle of space beneath the stairwell, and before he was conscious of what he was doing, he was tossing himself against the brick wall, and as he did so, he imagined he was knocking out of himself every piece of dirt, every trace of liquid, every memory of the past few years. He was resetting himself; he was returning himself to something pure; he was punishing himself for what he had done. After that, he felt better, energized, as if he had run a very long race and then had vomited, and he had been able to return to the room.

Eventually, however, Brother Luke realized what he was doing, and there had been another talk. "I understand you get frustrated," Brother Luke said, "but Jude, what you're doing isn't good for you. I'm worried about you. And the clients don't like seeing you all bruised." They were silent. A month ago, after a very bad night-there had been a group of men, and after they had left, he had sobbed, wailed, coming as close to a tantrum as he had in years, while Luke sat next to him and rubbed his sore stomach and held a pillow over his mouth to muffle the sound-he had begged Luke to let him stop. And the brother had cried and said he would, that there was nothing more he'd like than for it to be just the two of them, but he had long ago spent all his money taking care of him. "I don't regret it for an instant, Jude," said the brother, "but we don't have any money now. You're all I've got. I'm so sorry. But I'm really saving now; eventually, you'll be able to stop, I promise."

"When?" he had sobbed.

"Soon," said Luke, "soon. A year. I promise," and he had nodded, although he had long since learned that the brother's promises were meaningless.

But then the brother said that he would teach him a secret, something that would help him relieve his frustrations, and the next day he had taught him to cut himself, and had given him a bag already packed with razors and alcohol wipes and cotton and bandages. "You'll have to experiment to see what feels best," the brother had said, and had shown him how to clean and bandage the cut once he had finished. "So this is yours," he said, giving him the bag. "You let me know when you need more supplies, and I'll get them for you." He had at first missed the theatrics, the force and weight, of his falls and his slams, but he soon grew to appreciate the secrecy, the control of the cuts. Brother Luke was right: the cutting was better. When he did it, it was as if he was draining away the poison, the filth, the rage inside him. It was as if his old dream of leeches had come to life and had the same effect, the effect he had always hoped it would. He wished he was made of metal, of plastic: something that could be hosed down and scrubbed clean. He had a vision of himself being pumped full of water and detergent and bleach and then blasted dry, everything inside him made hygienic again. Now, after the final client of the night had left, he took Brother Luke's place in the bathroom, and until he heard the brother telling him it was time to come to bed, his body was his to do with what he chose.

He was so dependent on Luke: for his food, for his protection, and now for his razors. When he needed to be taken to the doctor because he was sick-he got infections from the clients, no matter how hard Brother Luke tried, and sometimes he didn't properly clean his cuts and they became infected as well-Brother Luke took him, and got him the antibiotics he needed. He grew accustomed to Brother Luke's body, his mouth, his hands: he didn't like them, but he no longer jolted when Luke began to kiss him, and when the brother put his arms around him, he obediently returned the embrace. He knew there was no one else who would ever treat him as well as Luke did: even when he did something wrong, Luke never yelled at him, and even after all these years, he had still never hit him. Earlier, he had thought he might someday have a client who would be better, who might want to take him away, but now he knew that would never be the case. Once, he had started getting undressed before the client was ready, and the man had slapped his face and snapped at him. "Jesus," he'd said, "slow down, you little slut. How many times have you done this, anyway?" And as he always did whenever the clients hit him, Luke had come out of the bathroom to yell at the man, and had made the man promise to behave better if he was going to stay. The clients called him names: he was a slut, a whore, filthy, disgusting, a nympho (he had to look that one up), a slave, garbage, trash, dirty, worthless, a nothing. But Luke never said any of those things to him. He was perfect, said Luke, he was smart, he was good at what he did and there was nothing wrong with what he did.

The brother still talked of their being together, although now he talked of a house on the sea, somewhere in central California, and would describe the stony beaches, the noisy birds, the storm-colored water. They would be together, the two of them, like a married couple. No longer were they father and son; now they were equals. When he turned sixteen, they would get married. They would go on a honeymoon to France and Germany, where he could finally use his languages around real French and Germans, and to Italy and Spain, where Brother Luke had lived for two years: once as a student, once the year after he graduated college. They would buy him a piano so he could play and sing. "Other people won't want you if they knew how many clients you'd been with," the Brother said. "And they'd be silly to not want you. But I'll always want you, even if you've been with ten thousand clients." He would retire when he was sixteen, Brother Luke said, and he had cried then, quietly, because he had been counting the days until he was twelve, when Brother Luke had promised he could stop.

Sometimes Luke apologized for what he had to do: when the client was cruel, when he was in pain, when he bled or was bruised. And sometimes Luke acted as if he enjoyed it. "Well, that was a good one," he'd say, after one of the men left. "I could tell you liked that one, am I right? Don't deny it, Jude! I heard you enjoying yourself. Well, it's good. It's good to enjoy your work."

He turned twelve. They were now in Oregon, working their way toward California, Luke said. He had grown again; Brother Luke predicted he would be six foot one, six foot two when he stopped-still shorter than Brother Luke, but not by much. His voice was changing. He wasn't a child anymore, and this made finding clients more difficult. Now there were fewer individual clients and more groups. He hated the groups, but Luke said that was the best he could do. He looked too old for his age: clients thought he was thirteen or fourteen, and at this age, Luke said, every year counted.

It was fall; September twentieth. They were in Montana, because Luke thought he would like to see the night sky there, the stars as bright as electrical lights. There was nothing strange about that day. Two days earlier, he'd had a large group, and it had been so awful that Luke had not only canceled his clients for the day after but had let him sleep alone for both nights, the bed completely his. That evening, though, life had returned to normal. Luke joined him in bed, and began kissing him. And then, as they were having sex, there was a banging at their door, so loud and insistent and sudden that he had almost bitten down on Brother Luke's tongue. "Police," he could hear, "open up. Open up right now."

Brother Luke had clamped his hand over his mouth. "Don't say a word," he hissed.

"Police," shouted the voice again. "Edgar Wilmot, we have a warrant for your arrest. Open the door right now."

He was confused: Who was Edgar Wilmot? Was he a client? He was about to tell Brother Luke that they had made a mistake when he looked up and saw his face and realized that they were looking for Brother Luke.

Brother Luke pulled out of him and motioned for him to stay in the bed. "Don't move," he whispered. "I'll be right back." And then he ran into the bathroom; he could hear the door lock click.

"No," he'd whispered wildly, as Luke left him. "Don't leave me, Brother Luke, don't leave me alone." But the brother had left anyway.

And then everything seemed to move very slowly and very fast, both at the same time. He hadn't moved, he had been too petrified, but then there was the splintering of wood, and the room was filled with men holding flashlights high by their heads, so that he couldn't see their faces. One of them came over to him and said something to him-he couldn't hear for the noise, for his panic-and pulled up his underwear and helped him to his feet. "You're safe now," someone told him.

He heard one of the men swear, and shout from the bathroom, "Get an ambulance right now," and he wrestled free from the man who was holding him and ducked under another man's arm and made three fast leaps to the bathroom, where he had seen Brother Luke with an extension cord around his neck, hanging from the hook in the center of the bathroom ceiling, his mouth open, his eyes shut, his face as gray as his beard. He had screamed, then, screamed and screamed, and then he was being dragged from the room, screaming Brother Luke's name again and again.

He remembers little of what followed. He was questioned again and again; he was taken to a doctor at a hospital who examined him and asked him how many times he had been raped, but he hadn't been able to answer him: Had he been raped? He had agreed to this, to all of this; it had been his decision, and he had made it. "How many times have you had sex?" the doctor asked instead, and he said, "With Brother Luke, or with the others?" and the doctor had said, "What others?" And after he had finished telling him, the doctor had turned away from him and put his face in his hands and then looked back at him and had opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out. And then he knew for certain that what he had been doing was wrong, and he felt so ashamed, so dirty that he had wanted to die.

They took him to the home. They brought him his things: his books, the Navajo doll, the stones and twigs and acorns and the Bible with its pressed flowers he had carried with him from the monastery, his clothes that the other boys made fun of. At the home, they knew what he was, they knew what he had done, they knew he was ruined already, and so he wasn't surprised when some of the counselors began doing to him what people had been doing to him for years. Somehow, the other boys also knew what he was. They called him names, the same names the clients had called him; they left him alone. When he approached a group of them, they would get up and run away.

They hadn't brought him his bag with razors, and so he had learned to improvise: he stole an aluminum can lid from the trash and sterilized it over the gas flame one afternoon when he was on kitchen duty and used that, stuffing it under his mattress. He stole a new lid every week.

He thought of Brother Luke every day. At the school, he skipped four grades; they allowed him to attend classes in math, in piano, in English literature, in French and German at the community college. His teachers asked him who had taught him what he knew, and he said his father had. "He did a good job," his English teacher told him. "He must have been an excellent teacher," and he had been unable to respond, and she had eventually moved on to the next student. At night, when he was with the counselors, he pretended that Brother Luke was standing right behind the wall, waiting to spring out in case things got too awful, which meant that everything that was happening to him were things Brother Luke knew he could bear.

After he had come to trust Ana, he told her a few things about Brother Luke. But he was unwilling to tell her everything. He told no one. He had been a fool to follow Luke, he knew that. Luke had lied to him, he had done terrible things to him. But he wanted to believe that, through everything, in spite of everything, Luke really had loved him, that that part had been real: not a perversion, not a rationalization, but real. He didn't think he could take Ana saying, as she said of the others, "He was a monster, Jude. They say they love you, but they say that so they can manipulate you, don't you see? This is what pedophiles do; this is how they prey on children." As an adult, he was still unable to decide what he thought about Luke. Yes, he was bad. But was he worse than the other brothers? Had he really made the wrong decision? Would it really have been better if he had stayed at the monastery? Would he have been more or less damaged by his time there? Luke's legacies were in everything he did, in everything he was: his love of reading, of music, of math, of gardening, of languages-those were Luke. His cutting, his hatred, his shame, his fears, his diseases, his inability to have a normal sex life, to be a normal person-those were Luke, too. Luke had taught him how to find pleasure in life, and he had removed pleasure absolutely.

He was careful never to say his name aloud, but sometimes he thought it, and no matter how old he got, no matter how many years had passed, there would appear Luke's face, smiling, conjured in an instant. He thought of Luke when the two of them were falling in love, when he was being seduced and had been too much of a child, too naive, too lonely and desperate for affection to know it. He was running to the greenhouse, he was opening the door, the heat and smell of flowers were surrounding him like a cape. It was the last time he had been so simply happy, the last time he had known such uncomplicated joy. "And here's my beautiful boy!" Luke would cry. "Oh, Jude-I'm so happy to see you."

[ V ].

The Happy Years.

1.

THERE HAD BEEN a day, about a month after he turned thirty-eight, when Willem realized he was famous. Initially, this had fazed him less than he would have imagined, in part because he had always considered himself sort of famous-he and JB, that is. He'd be out downtown with someone, Jude or someone else, and somebody would come over to say hello to Jude, and Jude would introduce him: "Aaron, do you know Willem?" And Aaron would say, "Of course. Willem Ragnarsson. Everyone knows Willem," but it wouldn't be because of his work-it would be because Aaron's former roommate's sister had dated him at Yale, or he had two years ago done a reading for Aaron's friend's brother's friend who was a playwright, or because Aaron, who was an artist, had once been in a group show with JB and Asian Henry Young, and he'd met Willem at the after-party. New York City, for much of his adulthood, had simply been an extension of college, where everyone had known him and JB, and the entire infrastructure of which sometimes seemed to have been lifted out of Boston and plunked down within a few blocks' radius in lower Manhattan and outer Brooklyn. The four of them talked to the same-well, if not the same people, the same types of people at least, that they had in college, and in that realm of artists and actors and musicians, of course he was known, because he always had been. It wasn't such a vast world; everyone knew everyone else.

Of the four of them, only Jude, and to some degree Malcolm, had experience living in another world, the real world, the one populated with people who did the necessary stuff of life: making laws, and teaching, and healing people, and solving problems, and handling money, and selling and buying things (the bigger surprise, he always thought, was not that he knew Aaron but that Jude did). Just before he turned thirty-seven, he had taken a role in a quiet film titled The Sycamore Court in which he played a small-town Southern lawyer who was finally coming out of the closet. He'd taken the part to work with the actor playing his father, who was someone he admired and who in the film was taciturn and casually vituperative, a man disapproving of his own son and made unkind by his own disappointments. As part of his research, he had Jude explain to him what, exactly, he did all day, and as he listened, he found himself feeling slightly sad that Jude, whom he considered brilliant, brilliant in ways he would never understand, was spending his life doing work that sounded so crushingly dull, the intellectual equivalent of housework: cleaning and sorting and washing and tidying, only to move on to the next house and have to begin all over. He didn't say this, of course, and on one Saturday he met Jude at Rosen Pritchard and looked through his folders and papers and wandered around the office as Jude wrote.

"Well, what do you think?" Jude asked, and leaned back in his chair and grinned at him, and he smiled back and said, "Pretty impressive," because it was, in its own way, and Jude had laughed. "I know what you're thinking, Willem," he'd said. "It's okay. Harold thinks it, too. 'Such a waste,' " he said in Harold's voice. " 'Such a waste, Jude.' "