He sits. He stands. He hears a small sound, too small to even be named as sound, and then he turns and sees the bathroom door, closed. But all is dark. He goes to the door anyway, and fiercely turns the knob, slams it open, and the towel that’s been jammed under the door to blot out the light trails after it like a train. And there, leaning against the bathtub, is Jude, as he knew he would be, fully dressed, his eyes huge and terrified.
“Where is it?” he spits at him, although he wants to moan, he wants to cry: at his failing, at this horrible, grotesque play that is being performed night after night after night, for which he is the only, accidental audience, because even when there is no audience, the play is staged anyway to an empty house, its sole performer so diligent and dedicated that nothing can prevent him from practicing his craft.
“I’m not,” Jude says, and Willem knows he’s lying.
“Where is it, Jude?” he asks, and he crouches before him, seizes his hands: nothing. But he knows he has been cutting himself: he knows it from how large his eyes are, from how gray his lips are, from how his hands are shaking.
“I’m not, Willem, I’m not,” Jude says—they are speaking in whispers so they won’t wake Julia and Harold, one flight above them—and then, before he can think, he is tearing at Jude, trying to pull his clothes away from him, and Jude is fighting him but he can’t use his left arm at all and isn’t at his strongest anyway, and they are screaming at each other with no sound. He is on top of Jude, then, working his knees into his shoulders the way a fightmaster on a set once taught him to do, a method he knows both paralyzes and hurts, and then he is stripping Jude’s clothes off and Jude is frantic beneath him, threatening and then begging him to stop. He thinks, dully, that anyone watching them would think this was a rape, but he isn’t trying to rape, he reminds himself: he is trying to find the razor. And then he hears it, the ping of metal on tile, and he grabs the edge of it between his fingers and throws it behind him, and then goes back to undressing him, yanking his clothes away with a brutal efficiency that surprises him even as he does it, but it isn’t until he pulls down Jude’s underwear that he sees the cuts: six of them, in neat parallel horizontal stripes, high on his left thigh, and he releases Jude and scuttles away from him as if he is diseased.
“You—are—crazy,” he says, flatly and slowly, after his initial shock has lessened somewhat. “You’re crazy, Jude. To cut yourself on your legs, of all places. You know what can happen; you know you can get infected there. What the hell are you thinking?” He is gasping with exertion, with misery. “You’re sick,” he says, and he is recognizing, again as if Jude is a stranger, how thin he really is, and wondering why he hadn’t noticed before. “You’re sick. You need to be hospitalized. You need—”
“Stop trying to fix me, Willem,” Jude spits back at him. “What am I to you? Why are you with me anyway? I’m not your goddamned charity project. I was doing just fine without you.”
“Oh yeah?” he asks. “Sorry if I’m not living up to being the ideal boyfriend, Jude. I know you prefer your relationships heavy on the sadism, right? Maybe if I kicked you down the stairs a few times I’d be living up to your standards?” He sees Jude move back from him then, pressing himself hard against the tub, sees something in his eyes flatten and close.
“I’m not Hemming, Willem,” Jude hisses at him. “I’m not going to be the cripple you get to save for the one you couldn’t.”
He rocks back on his heels then, stands, backs away, scooping up the razor as he does and then throwing it as hard as he can at Jude’s face, Jude bringing his arms up to shield himself, the razor bouncing off his palm. “Fine,” he pants. “Fucking cut yourself to ribbons for all I care. You love the cutting more than you love me, anyway.” He leaves, wishing he could slam the door behind him, banging off the light switch as he goes.
Back in the bedroom, he grabs his pillows and one of the blankets from the bed and flings himself down on the sofa. If he could leave altogether, he would, but Harold and Julia’s presence stops him, so he doesn’t. He turns facedown and screams, really screams, into the pillow, hitting his fists and kicking his legs against the cushions like a child having a tantrum, his rage mingling with a regret so complete that he is breathless. He is thinking many things, but he cannot articulate or distinguish any of them, and three successive fantasies spool quickly through his mind: he will get in the car and escape and never talk to Jude again; he will go back into the bathroom and hold him until he acquiesces, until he can heal him; he will call Andy now, right now, and have Jude committed first thing in the morning. But he does none of those things, just beats and kicks uselessly, as if he is swimming in place.