Jonathan Unleashed

by Meg Rosoff

  He took a deep breath. You couldn’t be horrid if you tried.

  An even longer pause.

  And then, Thank you. And, Goodnight Jonathan.

  Goodnight Dr Vet.

  A minute or two later, another text came through. Zoe, it read.

  Zoe, he thought. Zoe Clare. Zoe Zoe. Clare Clare Clare.

  He read and reread the texts. After a few seconds, a nose nudged at him and he wrapped his hand around it gently.

  ‘Good dogs,’ he said to his dogs. ‘You’re such good dogs.’

  And they wagged their tails calmly because they knew this to be true.

  36

  On Monday morning Jonathan took the dogs for a long walk in the woods and down to the lake, where they all three swam and shivered and shook themselves dry, had a huge breakfast of fresh-baked bread, local fruit, organic yoghurt and Fairtrade coffee. Jonathan drew all the characters he’d met over the past twenty-four hours in his notebook, along with annotations and snatches of dialogue, and finally, having played it cool for as long as he was physically able, he phoned her. It was not yet 7am.

  ‘My worst thing is getting into bad situations, like agreeing to marry someone I don’t really get along with.’

  ‘You’re not selling yourself,’ she said, yawning.

  ‘Did I wake you?’

  ‘No. Yes. But I have to get up anyway.’ He heard Wilma bark once in the background. ‘Coming, tyrant,’ she said to Wilma, and to him: ‘I’ve got to go.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’

  ‘OK, bye.’

  ‘Bye.’

  He didn’t hang up. ‘Are you still there?’ he asked, after a minute.

  ‘No,’ she said, and laughed, and was gone.

  He thought about her every minute of the day. He texted her at last at 4pm, his self-control having collapsed hours earlier.

  HIM:

  I’m sorry my girlfriend broke up your relationship.

  HER:

  I’m not.

  HIM:

  Were you ever in love with Mark?

  HER:

  Were you ever in love with Julie?

  He stopped texting and called her. ‘To be honest,’ he said when she answered, ‘I was kind of relieved when it went wrong.’

  ‘I’m with a patient,’ she said.

  ‘Oh,’ he said.

  ‘But since you ask, I was outraged,’ she said. ‘When it went wrong.’

  ‘That’s not quite the same as being devastated. Is it?’

  ‘No.’

  Jonathan closed his eyes and thought of her expressive mouth and long nose and thatch of choppy dark hair. Then he took a deep breath.

  ‘I wouldn’t have left you for Julie,’ he said.

  ‘Really?’ she said, and then, ‘I have to go.’

  The practice closed at seven. At 7:02 he texted her again. Do you walk Wilma now that Mark doesn’t?

  She replied a minute later: Yes.

  Would you like to meet for a dog walk sometime?

  There was a pause before her answer came through. When were you thinking?

  I’m in upstate New York, he wrote. But I’m back late tonight.

  After what seemed like aeons, she answered. Sometime this week?

  OK, he wrote. And then, Tomorrow?

  Call me, she wrote.

  He wanted to call her every minute of every day for the rest of his life.

  ‘You seem more resolved,’ Greeley said, squinting slightly at him.

  ‘I might have sorted out one thing,’ Jonathan said.

  Greeley nodded.

  ‘It’s a start,’ Jonathan said. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For being my spirit guide. You turned out to be right about things. Well, some things anyway.’

  ‘Good,’ said Greeley.

  As they packed up the cabin, Jonathan felt sad. He loved it here in the silent swishing woods, with owls and fishes and loam made from composted pine needles and leaves and centuries of organic detritus. Before they left it rained, and he could smell it coming before it began, a cold sharp smell he’d never noticed in New York City, followed by a series of tiny rustles as each separate drop bounced through twigs and leaves. He imagined himself snuggled up under Hudson Bay blankets with Dr Clare, the whole length of him pressed up against the whole long length of her.

  He spent the drive back half-dreaming, half-waking, wishing her with him, excited and anxious all at once. What if what if what if, he thought, and then he stopped wondering and just thought about her in a thousand different ways but mainly how it would feel to have permission to run his hands through her hair, to hold her face while he kissed her, to have a tall stern kind Dr Vet person of his very own.

  He didn’t talk about her with Greeley because he couldn’t bear to hear any warning Greeley might have, any wisdom that contraindicated what he hoped might be true, but for which he had no evidence and no experience to guide him.

  They arrived home after midnight and he resisted the urge to call her, but only just.

  37

  It was a late summer evening like most late summer evenings in New York – full of heat and light and noise and bars and conversations with beginnings and endings and taxis and sidewalks and people and dogs walking out together, including people and dogs who had never walked together before.

  ‘Why did you leave London?’ Jonathan asked.

  She thought for a moment. ‘I lived my entire life in west London; everyone I ever met lived there. It was like coming from a small village. So where would you go? New York seemed more exciting than Leeds.’

  ‘Will you stay?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It’s early days. But there’s the buzz and the people and the food, obviously. And everyone forgot to tell me how beautiful New York is. It’s crowded and noisy and expensive and the healthcare’s appalling and all the homeless people . . .’ She looked at him. ‘But also friendly and neighbourhoody and glorious to look at. And thrilling. You feel as if anything could happen in New York.’

  Jonathan considered this for a minute. ‘It helps that you’re English. Everyone in New York would rather be English.’

  She smiled. ‘Is that why people give me free drinks in bars? Though not so much with Mark.’

  ‘No one ever gave me free drinks with Julie.’

  Zoe raised a meaningful eyebrow. ‘Speaking of which, I was thinking I might do something different, just to get horrid Mark and simpering Julie out of my head.’ She glanced at Jonathan. ‘I shouldn’t say simpering. Though let’s face it, she is.’

  ‘Simpering’s fine.’

  ‘I thought I might climb a mountain.’

  ‘Mountains are good,’ he said. ‘Any one in particular?’

  She shook her head. ‘A tall one maybe.’

  ‘What’s your position on loam?’

  ‘Loam?’ Zoe frowned. ‘I’m not sure I know what it is. Should I have a position?’

  ‘Never mind.’ They matched strides for a bit. ‘Do you know what today is?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s the three-week anniversary of my non-wedding.’

  ‘You were getting married on a Tuesday?’

  Jonathan shrugged. ‘That’s when the film crew was free.’

  ‘The film crew?’ She started to laugh, then put a hand over her mouth. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s obviously not funny.’

  He looked pained. ‘Not yet.’

  ‘How do you feel about it now?’

  ‘About my wedding? Stupid.’

  ‘You had a lucky escape.’

  ‘I’m pretty sure I have post-traumatic stress, like people who’ve been through terrorist kidnappings.’ He stopped. ‘Zoe?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Would it be OK to kiss you?’

  She turned to face him. ‘Yes,’ she said after a moment, adopting a serious expression. ‘Go on then.’

  And so he kissed her, holding her face in his hands as h
e’d imagined, and wishing they might never stop.

  When at last he stepped back, she smiled. ‘Well.’

  ‘Well, well,’ he said happily, looking at her as if he’d never really seen her before. She wore a white T-shirt and bright green jeans with green sneakers. She looked to him like a rare and wonderful type of woodland creature who might have enjoyed burrowing in loam. There were two spots of pink in her cheeks and when he met her eyes she didn’t turn away.

  He slipped his arm through hers and they walked a couple of blocks in silence. At the junction of Fifth Avenue, Dante stood on the kerb, staring at the little red hand on the crossing signal. When it turned into a striding man, he stepped into the road. Zoe watched him.

  ‘That is one intelligent dog. Even for a collie. We had a dog like him where I did my veterinary placement. Half-poodle half-shepherd. His eyes looked completely human.’ Dante glanced back over his shoulder at her. ‘Like that.’ She paused. ‘Not that being human is such a great indicator of intelligence.’

  ‘He’s way smarter than I am.’

  ‘Clearly.’

  ‘Your dog has webbed feet,’ he said. ‘I looked it up.’

  ‘Did you?’ She half-smiled and this time it was she who kissed him.

  ‘I’ve learned a lot about dogs in the past few months,’ Jonathan said. ‘Hardly anything about humans. Look, why not go mountain climbing or whatever you want and leave Wilma with me? The dogs like each other, it would be fine. Then you don’t have to worry about dog hotels.’

  ‘You’d do that?’

  ‘Of course.’ He paused. ‘Dr Vet?’

  ‘Yes?’

  Jonathan closed his eyes and took a deep breath. ‘I’d do anything for you. I thought about you all weekend. I thought about you before I went away. I’ve been dreaming about you for longer than I even knew I liked you.’

  ‘Your taste in women is definitely improving.’

  He stopped walking. ‘But what if my taste is improving . . . and due to, say, cross-cultural misunderstanding, the object of my taste just thinks it’s a joke or a casual thing or something?’ He turned slightly away from her and pretended to be interested in a mugging taking place across the street.

  She followed his eyes.

  ‘Jesus!’ she said, diving across the road to the opposite side where two men were beating up a third. Jonathan followed shouting, ‘POLICE!’ and all three dogs barked excitedly. The illusion of a mob comprising threatening dogs and angry people caused the perpetrators to drop their fists and flee.

  The victim was young, drunk and well-dressed, his glasses smashed, his nose bleeding. Zoe and Jonathan each took one arm and pulled him to his feet but he shook them off, insisting he could walk. A cross-town bus arrived; he staggered on board and was gone.

  ‘Holy shit,’ Jonathan said, panting. ‘He didn’t seem very grateful.’

  ‘He was drunk,’ Zoe said. ‘Embarrassed, probably. And in shock, by the look of it.’

  Jonathan patted Sissy, who trembled with excitement. Dante had regained his composure. ‘All in a night’s work for the intrepid K9 patrol.’

  Zoe laughed. ‘Let’s go find a place to sit outdoors, have a drink and reminisce about our life in crime.’

  ‘Prevention.’

  ‘Crime prevention.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jonathan. ‘Or we could just sit around and say horrible things about our exes.’

  ‘Even better,’ she said.

  ‘But . . . Dr Vet? My question from before?’

  She took his hand and kissed him again.

  ‘Never mind,’ he said.

  38

  They shared a bottle of wine and then walked around the city, giddy with the feeling that they might be discovering something altogether earth-shattering in each other’s company. They walked and walked and eventually ended up back at his building with three tired dogs, so they went upstairs and called for Chinese take-out because they both suddenly felt hungry and when that arrived they ate it and watched a bad movie and laughed at all the same things and then they started kissing once more, and once more they didn’t want to stop. They managed at last to take the dogs around the block and although Jonathan offered to walk Zoe home, he didn’t insist, and having agreed that it was a very bad idea indeed, they kissed and kissed again, and against both their better judgements she stayed and so did Wilma.

  The dogs were uncharacteristically quiet all night and didn’t scratch at the door or whine to go out, and in fact made themselves almost entirely and appropriately scarce.

  When Jonathan crept out of bed to make coffee the next morning, he took all three dogs out and they didn’t tangle their leashes or all squat at once or chase things in opposite directions, so it was no problem at all.

  ‘Your apartment is nice,’ Zoe said about half an hour later, with a cup of coffee in one hand and the New York Times in the other and the lemony sun sparkling around the room.

  ‘It is,’ Jonathan said glumly. ‘But I haven’t paid any rent in seven weeks now.’

  She looked at him quizzically.

  ‘No one’s collecting it any more. Everyone I know says just shut up, it’s the deal of a lifetime and maybe it’ll be free forever, but I think the guy who owns it is in jail. He could get out any minute and ice me.’

  ‘Ice you?’ She giggled.

  ‘Kill. Whack.’

  ‘I know what it means.’ She considered him critically, ticking off his assets on her fingers. ‘Job, no. Wife, no. Apartment, not really. Independently wealthy?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Shame. Still. Young, ambitious, yes, and not desperately unattractive. You might still pull it out of the fire.’

  ‘You forgot beautiful Dr Vet in my bed.’

  ‘That doesn’t count as one of your assets.’

  ‘Does to me,’ he said, nuzzling her ear.

  A little while later, gazing at the beautiful Dr Vet in his bed, Jonathan wondered how it was possible that what he mostly felt was calm, as if he’d been waiting for her to appear all along so that things could return to a kind of normal they’d never actually been.

  She stretched luxuriously, like a tabby. If she’d had a tail, he thought, she would swish it. ‘What shall we do now?’

  ‘We could,’ Jonathan barely dared say what seemed absurdly obvious to him. ‘We could just stay like this.’

  ‘In bed?’

  ‘Not necessarily in bed.’

  She waited.

  ‘What I meant was.’ He paused. ‘We could stay happy.’

  ‘Hmm,’ she said.

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘It’s a good idea. Only, I have to go to work.’ She folded her arms up behind her head. ‘I work long hours.’

  ‘I don’t mind you working any hours you want.’

  ‘And what about you?’

  Jonathan’s face fell. ‘I’ll get another job.’

  ‘Any ideas?’

  ‘Not really.’ Depression seeped through him like poison.

  ‘Haven’t you always wanted to be something?’

  ‘Comics,’ he said. ‘I like comics. I’ve drawn Dante’s Inferno, starring Dante the dog as Virgil.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘But you can’t make a living drawing comics.’

  ‘You can’t?’

  ‘No.’

  She shrugged and swept the hair out of her eyes. ‘OK. What else?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Jonathan looked downcast. ‘You probably want a boyfriend who’s rich and powerful and has a real job.’ He glanced at her sideways. ‘Like a lawyer.’

  ‘When did you get to be my boyfriend?’

  ‘I’m speaking hypothetically.’

  She humphed. ‘Well then, hypothetically? No.’

  ‘But you probably want one who at least does something.’ He sighed. ‘To be honest, I don’t know what to do next.’

  She sipped her coffee, shifted her long bare legs and lay back on his pillows. His heart flipped over in his chest.

 
‘Not advertising,’ she said.

  He nodded. ‘Not advertising.’

  ‘Show me Dante’s Inferno.’

  ‘Don’t you have to go to work?’

  ‘Soon.’

  He crawled under the bed and dragged out a large box, from which he handed her a pile of notebooks with INFERNO written on the front.

  She opened the first and began to read. ‘You don’t mind?’

  He shook his head.

  And so she flipped slowly through the first chapter, mostly serious, but occasionally snorting with laughter.

  He leaned over to see what she was laughing at. ‘The stuff about the wedding and Julie and Mark doesn’t come till near the end.’

  ‘I can’t wait,’ she said, and turned the page.

  39

  ‘You are not without talents,’ Dr Vet said the following night, as they watched the dogs play in the park.

  ‘Flatterer.’

  ‘Talent’s useless on its own, though.’

  ‘I know. I need a life.’

  ‘You don’t just get one,’ she said. ‘As far as I understand the rules, you make a choice here and a choice there and one day you find yourself on a path.’

  ‘You sound like my spirit guide. He says stuff like that.’

  She frowned. ‘You have a spirit guide?’

  ‘It’s an unofficial relationship.’

  They were silent for a moment.

  ‘The whole situation with the apartment is giving me panic attacks.’

  ‘Start there, then.’

  He nodded.

  The next morning, he called Comrade and asked for Greeley.

  ‘Is today your last day?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Greeley?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Were you serious about me coming to the forest with you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Would it have to be as anything in particular?’

  ‘We need someone to run the kitchen. And I sometimes need help with data.’

  ‘Could I do that?’

  Greeley paused. ‘I don’t know. Could you?’

  ‘I could learn. Just till I figure out what to do next.’