“Malcolm, thank you,” he says. “But should we look at them later?” He’d had to schedule an appointment with the tailor; he doesn’t want to be late.
“It’ll be fast,” Malcolm says, “and I’ll leave them with you.” He sits next to him and smooths out the sheaf of pages, giving him one end to hold, explaining things he’s changed and tweaked. “Counters back up to standard height,” says Malcolm, pointing at the kitchen. “No grab bars in the shower area, but I gave you this ledge that you can use as a seat, just in case. I swear it’ll look nice. I kept the ones around the toilet—just think about it, okay? We’ll install them last, and if you really, really hate them, we’ll leave them off, but … but I’d do it, Judy.” He nods, reluctantly. He won’t know it then, but years later, he will be grateful that Malcolm has prepared for his future, even when he hadn’t wanted to: he will notice that in his apartment, the passages are wider, that the bathroom and kitchen are oversize, so a wheelchair can make a full, clean revolution in them, that the doorways are generous, that wherever possible, the doors slide instead of swing, that there is no cabinetry under the master bathroom sink, that the highest-placed closet rods lower with the touch of a pneumatic button, that there is a benchlike seat in the bathtub, and, finally, that Malcolm won the fight about the grab bars around the toilet. He’ll feel a sort of bitter wonderment that yet another person in his life—Andy, Willem, Richard, and now Malcolm—had foreseen his future, and knew how inevitable it was.
After their appointment, where Malcolm is measured for a navy suit and a dark gray one, and where Franklin, the tailor, greets him and asks why he hasn’t seen him for two years—“I’m pretty sure that’s my fault,” Malcolm says, smiling—they have lunch. It’s nice taking a Saturday off, he thinks, as they drink rosewater lemonade and eat za’atar-dusted roasted cauliflower at the crowded Israeli restaurant near Franklin’s shop. Malcolm is excited to start work on the apartment, and he is, too. “This is such perfect timing,” Malcolm keeps saying. “I’ll have the office submit everything to the city on Monday, and by the time it’s approved, I’ll be done with Doha and be able to get started right away, and you can move into Willem’s while it’s being done.” Malcolm has just finished the final pieces of work on Willem’s apartment, which he has supervised more of than Willem has; by the end of the process, he was making decisions for Willem on paint colors. Malcolm did a beautiful job, he thinks; he won’t mind at all staying there for the next year.
It is early when they finish lunch, and they linger on the sidewalk outside. For the past week it’s been raining, but today the skies are blue and he is still feeling strong, and even a little restless, and he asks Malcolm if he wants to walk for a bit. He can see Malcolm hesitate, flicking his gaze up and down his body as if trying to determine how capable he is, but then he smiles and agrees, and the two of them start heading west, and then north, toward the Village. They pass the building on Mulberry Street that JB used to live in before he moved farther east, and they are quiet for a minute, both of them, he knows, thinking about JB and wondering what he’s doing, and knowing but also not knowing why he hasn’t answered their and Willem’s calls, their texts, their e-mails. The three of them have had dozens of conversations with one another, with Richard, with Ali and the Henry Youngs about what to do, but with every attempt they have made to find JB, he has eluded them, or barred their way, or ignored them. “We just have to wait until it gets worse,” Richard had said at one point, and he fears that Richard is correct. It is, sometimes, as if JB is no longer theirs at all, and they can do nothing but wait for the moment in which he will have a crisis only they can solve, and they will be able to parachute into his life once again.
“Okay, Malcolm, I’ve got to ask you,” he says, as they walk up the stretch of Hudson Street that is deserted on the weekends, its sidewalks treeless and empty of people, “are you getting married to Sophie or not? We all want to know.”
“God, Jude, I just don’t know,” Malcolm begins, but he sounds relieved, as if he’s been waiting to be asked the question all along. Maybe he has. He lists the potential negatives (marriage is so conventional; it feels so permanent; he’s not really interested in the idea of a wedding but fears Sophie is; his parents are going to try to get involved; something about spending the rest of his life with another architect depresses him; he and Sophie are cofounders of the firm—if something happens between them, what will happen to Bellcast?) and the positives, which also sound like negatives (if he doesn’t propose, he thinks Sophie will leave; his parents have been bothering him about it nonstop and he’d like to shut them up; he really does love Sophie, and knows he won’t be able to do better than her; he’s thirty-eight, and feels he has to do something). As he listens to Malcolm, he tries not to smile: he has always liked this about Malcolm, how he can be so decisive on the page and in his designs, and yet in the rest of his life so in a dither, and so unself-conscious about sharing it. Malcolm has never been someone who pretended he was cooler, or more confident, or silkier than he actually is, and as they grow older, he appreciates and admires more and more his sweet guilelessness, his complete trust in his friends and their opinions.