Jonathan Unleashed

by Meg Rosoff

  ‘Aren’t you at all interested in how our wedding’s going?’

  The wedding! Jonathan clapped a hand to his mouth. ‘Of course!’ he said. ‘Of course I’m interested. It’s going to be the happiest day of our lives! You in celadon, me in burnt chocolate! Do we get to write our own vows? I’d like to make a small speech about forever, you know, in geological terms.’

  Her expression stopped him.

  ‘No?’

  A small seed of doubt had taken root in her heart. Lorenza gave their viability as a couple the lowest possible rating – not that she trusted Lorenza exactly, but zero out of ten felt dispiriting. And yet, didn’t she love Jonathan? What, besides love, could explain this feeling of desperate inevitability?

  ‘No geological themes,’ she said. ‘No fossils. No use of the word funeral. No jokes. Non-negotiable, Jonathan.’

  Jonathan experienced a rush of passion for his wife-to-be. He loved her most when she was at her most implacable.

  ‘Are you sure you want to marry me?’ His eyes searched hers, looking for, for what?

  ‘Of course I want to marry you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Yes. Why do you want to marry me?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘No, I mean it. You could find someone better. Someone who was more organized and made more money and didn’t have dogs.’

  Her eyes filled with tears. ‘I don’t want someone else. I’m used to you.’

  Which was true. After four years he knew how she reacted to things, he knew she hated mess and change and upset. There was bound to be someone out there better suited to her than him, but was that really so important? If this were an arranged marriage, would they obsess about whether they were perfect for each other? Or would they make the best of what they had, and get on with the rest of their lives? There seemed to be a good deal of merit in that approach.

  He looked at her, and was moved, as he had been so many times in the past, by her vulnerability. Her carefully controlled approach to life kept chaos at bay.

  ‘Julie?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  She nodded and put one hand to his face. He kissed her and for one moment she was everything he needed in life, everything he most loved and feared.

  It was good they’d had this talk. They both felt better for it.

  Their funeral was going to be amazing.

  21

  The morning of the big Broadway Depot presentation, Dante awoke with a cough. He stood swaying, nose an inch off the ground, eyes watery. A worried Jonathan took both dogs around the block but by the time they made it to the corner, Dante had stopped walking and just coughed. The noise was horrible, a grating rasp that was painful even to hear. Jonathan bundled him up in his jacket, gathered him into his arms, hailed a cab and went straight to the vet.

  Dr Clare ushered them in. ‘I don’t like the sound of that.’

  ‘He’s been coughing like that all morning. I think it might be bird flu.’

  ‘Good boy,’ she said to Dante. ‘Can you get him up on to the table, please?’

  Jonathan lifted him up. ‘Do you think he’s OK?’ The idea of Dante succumbing to something awful – cancer, heart disease, a neurological condition – was intolerable. In a flash, he realized how much he had come to depend on his dogs. ‘Could it be distemper? Isn’t that usually fatal?’ He felt like crying.

  ‘He hasn’t got distemper. He’s been vaccinated.’ Dr Clare slipped a light over her forehead. ‘Can you hang on to him for a minute? He won’t like this much.’ She gently took hold of his lower and upper jaws. ‘Come on, sweetheart,’ she murmured, ‘open wide.’

  Dante didn’t want to open wide. From the floor, Sissy whined in sympathy.

  ‘You don’t think I have Munchausen’s by proxy, do you?’

  ‘No, I don’t. There’s a good lad.’ Dr Clare had opened Dante’s mouth and was peering into his throat. ‘Hmm.’ She freed one hand to press her intercom. ‘Iris? I need some help.’ Dante squirmed and she released him as Iris entered.

  ‘If you can keep his mouth open,’ Dr Clare said, ‘and, Jonathan, hold him steady. I won’t have to sedate him if I can do this quickly.’

  With all hands on dog, Dr Clare picked up a pair of forceps and reached into Dante’s throat. A second later she removed them, attached to a large rubber-coated pink neon Broadway Depot paperclip. Dante gagged once, sat down on the table and looked calmly around the room.

  ‘What a brave boy,’ said Dr Clare, ruffling his ears.

  Jonathan looked on in horror. A Broadway Depot paperclip?

  Dr Clare held the offender at the end of her forceps. ‘That’s it,’ she said. ‘Nasty thing.’

  Jonathan shook his head. ‘The bastards,’ he said. ‘They will not stop at killing my dog.’

  The vet blinked. ‘Jonathan? Who’s they? The television hasn’t started talking to you, has it?’

  ‘No, Dr Vet. I am not that crazy, not yet, though I suspect it’s just a matter of time.’ He met her eyes. ‘You wouldn’t understand. You, who restore and tend the wounded like a saint. A person of your qualities would not understand what it’s like to dwell on the dark side.’

  She frowned. ‘Are you OK, Jonathan? You seem a bit . . .’

  ‘Unravelled?’ Jonathan nodded. ‘I know.’ For a moment he gazed at her. ‘I’m so grateful that you saved my dog’s life. You are a glimmer of light in the vast indifferent darkness of the universe.’ He hugged Dante and then, after a second’s hesitation, hugged Dr Clare. Hugging her made him feel good. Safe. More good than safe.

  After a decent interval, she carefully disengaged herself. ‘Jonathan?’

  He wiped a hand across his eyes. ‘Thank you, Dr Vet. Thank you for all your many kindnesses.’

  ‘Jonathan? Have you thought of taking some time off?’

  ‘Don’t worry. It’s not as bad as it looks. Everything’s going just a tad . . .’ He waggled his hands around in the air and goggled his eyes. ‘But, you’re not a psychiatrist and I’m not a dog, so you and I have come to an impasse.’

  Iris looked from one to the other. ‘Am I done here?’

  ‘Yes. Thank you, Iris.’ Dr Clare opened the door for her.

  Feeling that their time was coming to an end, Jonathan scrambled to change the subject. ‘You never said what you thought of the Fideaux Hotel.’

  ‘It was ghastly. I couldn’t wait to get away.’ She smiled a worried smile at him, a smile so full of concern it made him want to lie down next to her in a meadow and hold her warm and claspy hand. He felt full of wonder for her clinical skill, her choppy hair, her accent, her face, her choice of profession, her conspicuously large feet. He knew about people falling in love this way. It was a cliché. Florence Nightingale syndrome. An actual syndrome.

  ‘So, what will you do with Wilma when you go away with your boyfriend?’

  Her smile faded. ‘We’re not going anywhere just now.’

  He peered at her closely and she turned away, mouth set.

  Did this mean that her relationship was in trouble? He would like to have asked, but he was getting married very soon and, under the circumstances, the question seemed wrong. He knew that asking an attractive female vet why she looked so sad was just the sort of thing that was no longer allowed now that he was marrying Julie, and despite the fact that Dr Clare had neither shown any interest in having a relationship with him, nor was in any sense single, this thought depressed him.

  ‘Well, I’d better go now. A million thanks for taking such good care of my dog. I hope . . . I hope I’ll see you very soon,’ he said, realizing as he spoke that it was not the appropriate farewell to an emergency vet. He made no move to go. ‘Dr Vet?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Do you like your job?’

  She looked startled. ‘Yes, of course I do.’

  ‘Really like it?’

  She nodded. ‘I always wanted to be a vet. From the time I was five
.’

  ‘And was it worth it?’

  ‘Worth what?’

  ‘All the hard work. And now, living in New York. Leaving behind the ducks.’

  She smiled. ‘And the herons?’

  ‘And the herons! Yes! Is it worth everything you had to give up?’

  She nodded once more. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s worth it.’

  ‘You’re very lucky.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘So am I,’ he said. ‘To know you, I mean.’

  I’d like to hug you again, he thought. I’d like to rub my face against your neck but I’m fairly sure it’s not allowed.

  Then her hand was on his arm, her face inches from his. ‘Jonathan,’ she whispered and he half-closed his eyes, his head tipping back as she leaned in, her breath warm, her lips brushing his.

  ‘Jonathan?’

  He opened his eyes and looked up to where she stood across the room, frowning a little, puzzled. He tried to hold on to the moment but failed.

  She closed the door behind him.

  It was a few minutes past nine when they reached Le Grand Pain and Clémence handed him his coffee, just as he liked it. Luc emerged from the back (bored so soon of Paris?), spoke to his wife in a stream of barely audible French, then kissed her on the lips. Jonathan felt invisible.

  They made a beautiful couple, he thought morosely. He had to admit that her children with Luc would be as beautiful as Celeste, Raoul and Alouette. He hated the idea of the two sets of offspring in competition and glared at Luc, who didn’t notice.

  All the women he liked loved someone else. Except for Julie, of course.

  At work, the conference room was decorated with Broadway Depot products. Jonathan’s campaign was hung sequentially around the walls, covered in tracing paper to be torn aside for dramatic effect. He wore his new blue linen jacket, lime-green T-shirt and Japanese jeans and looked, if he did say so himself, unimpeachably hipster.

  He hadn’t eaten much over the past forty-eight hours. Food had stopped appealing to him days ago. The sleep situation wasn’t much better, but he was delighted to discover that the thinner and hungrier he became, the sharper he felt. Whoosh.

  The entire team mustered for the morning run-through: Jonathan and Wes, Eduardo for executive weight, Greeley as official witness, Patterson the account man, Dora the researcher and Dante and Sissy, dogsbodies. Wes insisted they practise every detail till it ran like clockwork, and by lunchtime it did.

  ‘Well done, everyone,’ he said. ‘See you at three.’

  At five minutes to three, the Broadway Depot team filed in led by Louise Crimple who sought Jonathan out, put a hand on his arm and whispered, ‘Take me to paradise, you crazy fool,’ in his ear. Jonathan looked up, startled, but she merely winked at him and skipped away to the coffee bar. Over coffee and macadamia white-chocolate brownies, pleasantries were exchanged and the BD team seemed happy to be attending their monthly annual meeting yet again. Every time Jonathan looked for her, Louise wrinkled her nose at him like a rabbit. He began to hyperventilate.

  ‘Right,’ said Wes. ‘I know all agencies tell all clients that each new campaign represents a major breakthrough, and I’m sure you’re as tired of hearing it as we are saying it. But in this case, in this case, ladies and gentlemen, introducing your new campaign as anything other than a work of genius would be selling it short.’ Jonathan wondered whether he really was a genius, and if so, what he was doing working for Ed.

  Dora got up first and anaesthetized the room with a PowerPoint presentation of such stunning banality that Jonathan felt his nervous system shutting down in protest.

  Stay alive, stay alive! His pulse felt weak and thready; five more minutes and everyone in the room would be flatlining. Across the table, Wes’s final thought before his cerebral cortex clocked off was that he needed to buy toothpaste. Louise Crimple was halfway through her third brownie and didn’t appear to be listening.

  Patterson picked up the baton and wrestled everyone back from the brink of extinction, explaining that the Broadway Depot business needed booster rockets if it wasn’t going to burn up on re-entry into the over-heated office-supply atmosphere.

  Patterson’s ability to spin a metaphor out long beyond its natural lifespan impressed Jonathan, who had begun to feel weirdly hot.

  ‘But here’s the man you really want to hear from. The genius behind your new campaign, Jonathan Trefoil.’

  He was a genius. He must be. People kept saying it.

  Jonathan stood up slowly. Why was it so hot in this room? He looked at Louise, who held his eyes for an uncomfortably long time, then ground to a complete halt, seeming to forget what he was doing in the conference room or even on Planet Earth. He smiled a beatific smile and began to hum ‘Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do’.

  Wes shot a nervous glance at Greeley, who looked straight ahead, expressionless.

  At the last possible instant, Jonathan began to speak. An audible gasp arose from his fellow Comrades as he gazed straight into the eyes of Louise Crimple and told her exactly how soul-destroying it was to work on her account. He spoke tenderly and with great care, explaining that there were days when eternal nothingness seemed preferable to working on Broadway Depot.

  ‘No offence, Louise,’ he said, and smiled at her. She smiled back.

  Murmurs eddied around the room. Dante pricked an ear at his master. With his extraordinarily fine hearing, he could detect an avalanche rumbling in the distance.

  Wes pointed meaningfully to the work on the wall and Jonathan changed direction with the excruciating slowness of the Queen Mary doubling back towards New York Harbour. At long last he launched into the thinking behind his new campaign. He was cogent, articulate, flowing; he spoke with conviction and charm until finally, with a dramatic flourish, he tore the tracing paper off the first story. The BD team, led by a trembly-lipped Louise, stood and approached the work. Jonathan watched their faces, his eyes unnaturally bright, his colour high. When they finished reading, he tore the paper off the next comic. And the next. The team looked to Louise for a lead on how to react.

  Louise said nothing. She squinted at the comics, her face registering a profound and unyielding blankness.

  And then she turned to Jonathan.

  ‘Wow,’ she said. And then, ‘Amazeballs.’

  And immediately, there were wide smiles of appreciation, chuckles of approval, increasing murmurs of ‘wow’, ‘amazeballs’ and ‘wow, amazeballs!’

  Eventually, Jonathan motioned for everyone to sit down. ‘Before you respond formally, I’d like to say a few words about how this campaign will benefit your business.’

  In perfect control now, he paused until the entire room was silent and every eye upon him. He smiled a smile of perfect brilliance at Louise, who sank down in her chair as if she might swoon. And then he began to speak.

  ‘Cordially did existence put suffering over to a lemon,’ he opened with a dramatic flourish. ‘Once a ferret bonanza slept.’

  The smiles on the faces of the clients faded slightly.

  Jonathan moved across to the next ad. ‘Friends enjoy meat. Too many elbow stoops.’ He glanced around the room, gauging the reaction. It wasn’t quite what he’d hoped for. Were his ads not brilliant after all? Was he not truly a genius?

  He ploughed onwards. ‘Did lung augment frenzy? Agreement, gentleman, rapturous balloon feats. Consultation requires bedroom sincerity.’

  They were staring at him open-mouthed. Had he just said bedroom sincerity?

  ‘Mother fulfilled property llama.’ Oh God. He could hear himself now. He was generating random text. In his mind he was composing ordinary, coherent sentences, but they were coming out all wrong.

  Desperate, he continued. ‘These ads . . .’ That was better! ‘These ads deliver cannibal stupor for pony twin.’ Cannibal stupor for pony twin? What did that even mean? ‘New foliage and fingers of luck. Ever the sporadic bean tree, spooning a distant owl. Splat flaps rejoice.’

  He pa
used, setting up his final ace.

  ‘Rat star. Pontoon. Luddite insensate.’ And finally, ‘Amen.’

  He sat down, to frozen silence.

  Greeley stood, walked calmly over to Jonathan and put a hand on his arm. ‘Let’s take five.’ Holding Jonathan firmly by the elbow and nodding reassuringly at the bemused clients, Greeley guided him into Wes’s office, closed the door behind them and sat Jonathan in Wes’s chair.

  ‘Put your head between your knees. That’s right. And breathe.’

  Through the glass wall, they could see Wes helping Louise Crimple, who appeared to be sobbing, out of the conference room.

  Jonathan breathed but it didn’t help. The words in his head made sense but when he opened his mouth to tell Greeley not to worry, he said, ‘Pencil of doom.’

  Wes was dialling 911, gesticulating through the glass door for Max. ‘Ambulance please,’ he said. And gave the address.

  Max came in looking worried. ‘Hey, Jay. What up?’ He put a hand on his friend’s shoulder and Jonathan lifted his head.

  ‘Cyclops,’ he said.

  Max looked at Greeley, whose face was grave.

  Was he having a stroke? Sissy’s head was in his lap and Dante stood by his side. The ambulance took ten minutes to arrive, whereupon medics checked his blood pressure, enquired as to sources of any pain and previous medical conditions including diabetes and stroke, shined a flashlight at his pupils and stuck a needle in his arm. He responded to questions about his name and the year with: ‘Cribbage alarm? Pineapple drear.’

  The medics glanced at each other as they lifted him on to a rolling stretcher. ‘No blows to the head in the past forty-eight hours?’

  ‘None that we know of,’ Greeley said.

  ‘It’s hard to say precisely what’s going on,’ the other medic told Wes as they wheeled Jonathan out the door. ‘We’ll treat him for brain trauma and get some tests done. Can you hang on to the dogs?’

  The dogs did not want to be hung on to. Sissy set up a dreadful howling wail, while Dante tried frantically to reroute the ambulancemen. Max shut them in the supply room.