Hanya Yanagihara

Their friend Lionel used to say that Willem must have been a fisherman in a past life, because he couldn’t help but attract pussy.

friend Lionel used to say that Willem must have been a fisherman in a past life, because he couldn’t help but attract pussy.

He was fatherless, and he knew that fatherless children mourned the absence in their lives.

Of course, they both craved beauty, but that would have to wait. Or rather, they would have to wait for it.

But somewhere inside you, whether you were making out with someone in a bar or having dinner with your friends, was always your canvas, its shapes and possibilities floating embryonically behind your pupils.

Tonight, I am a camera, he told himself, and tomorrow I will be JB again.

He felt dizzy, as if his body was pumped with helium; food tasted like rot to him, and he stopped eating unless he had to. He stayed at the office until the night shift of cleaners began moving through the hallways, noisy as mice, and then stayed awake at home; he woke with his heart thudding so fast that he had to gulp air to calm himself

He talked and talked, and Andy listened, his face expressionless. There was no one else in the café but the two of them, and outside, the snow fell faster and thicker, and he felt, despite his anxiety, deeply calm, and glad he was telling somebody, and that that somebody was a person who knew him and Jude both, and had for many years.

Once again, they rejoined the slipstream of life; once again, they learned to obey the calendar

best strategy was to treat Willem like an eclipse and simply not look at him at all.