The Book of Jonah: A Novel

by Feldman, Joshua Max

  He understood clearly now the daily cruelty of this, and wanted very badly to apologize. But it was as he found Sylvia’s number in his contacts—as he was about to press his thumb against the button to call—that it occurred to him: He didn’t have to. He didn’t have to tell her, didn’t have to break their plans to meet this morning—didn’t have to give up his life. He could still move in with her, still become a partner, still get his blow job at Le Bernardin—each of these prospects now breaking forth in his mind like an individual gulp of air after surfacing from the water. He actually started to laugh.

  He had been grappling all night with his vision—forgetting that he could simply not grapple with it at all. He could ignore it: ignore what he’d seen, ignore its consequences, ignore whatever explanation it might have. He was free—he specifically remembered from Hebrew school that in Judaism humans had free will! He was free to ignore whatever he wanted.

  He was even giddy as he wrote back to Sylvia: “Ok, cu. Bagel?” He hurried into the kitchenette, still clutching his phone, and turned on the tap at the sink, filled his coffeepot, turned on the coffeemaker, watched as it buzzed and gurgled to life. He would have to hurry—hurry to shower and shave and drink coffee in order to make it on time and in the guise of someone who had slept for at least an hour or two. But he knew how to hurry. Didn’t he always make it when he hurried?

  His phone chimed again: “No thx,” Sylvia had written. Here it was, he thought, as the kitchenette now filled with the pleasing odor of steaming fair-trade Ethiopian coffee: his life, right where he had left it—a weekend morning of coffee and Sylvia and apartment hunting—and he could still make of it whatever he chose to make of it. It was a tremendously joyous thought—tremendously powerful, too—in that it achieved the reverse-alchemical miracle of reducing the world back to what could be known and comprehended.

  4. A MIGHTY STORM CAME UPON THE SEA

  Jonah didn’t have to dodge any lightning bolts as he walked to the deli a few avenues from his apartment; the aproned Hispanic man who sliced and smeared cream cheese onto his bagel didn’t gape in fear and yank out a rosary upon seeing him; the bagel itself didn’t turn to dust and ashes in his mouth. It was the purest and simplest vanity, Jonah thought, to have imagined some change in his place in the world. Greater men had surely ignored more profound revelations—and the earth had kept on spinning.

  He was almost cheerful as he boarded the taxi for the Corcoran offices—would have been but for the lack of sleep, the assorted physical consequences of all he had drunk and smoked the night before. His head felt as if the skin were stretched too tightly across his forehead; his mouth—even after the coffee and bagel—tasted of a dry and tongue-swollen sootiness, like he had chewed up and swallowed the three packs of cigarettes. But the rush of air from the open taxi window helped keep the nausea at bay—allowed him the benefit of the bright August morning, the temperature today much cooler.

  As the cab pulled up, Sylvia was standing beside the entrance to Corcoran, sipping an iced coffee. She looked, as she always took care to look, well put together, despite the fact that she had probably been up since four: dressed in gray chinos and a tank top that showed off toned arms, her short blond hair parted neatly with a bobby pin, the natural prettiness of her features accentuated with makeup applied just so. She carried a large beige shoulder bag that would have her laptop and phone and charger and book for the plane and whatever else she would need for twelve hours in New York. Jonah found something greatly reassuring in the sight of this bag on her shoulder—physical confirmation that life as he’d known it still went on. As they met on the sidewalk, they kissed on the lips—briefly, but not unaffectionately. Observing his face, she ran her finger across the thick, dark line of his left eyebrow. “Babe, you have to remember to trim these,” she said.

  And he told her with sincerity, “It’s really good to see you.”

  She smiled suspiciously at his tone. “How much sleep did you get?”

  “Let’s just leave it at less than eight hours. But I’m okay.” She nodded, a bit uneasily. “I just got a little carried away celebrating BBEC,” he told her. “Really, I’m fine.”

  It was reflexive discomfort—a learned instinct that had nothing to do with him, she’d explained. Her father had created all manner of negative associations with heavy drinking in her mind. He knew she trusted him—and she knew it, too—and now she gave him the half-amused half smile she often did when she judged him to have done something boyishly foolish but maybe for that also charming. “Why am I not surprised?” she said. “I guess celebration was in order.” She kissed him again. “I’m so proud of you, Jonah.” And he was so grateful that he had not ruined this happiness—their happiness—by telling her—anything. They went into the Corcoran offices to meet their broker.

  Jonah had expected the broker to have the skittish-eyed, harried look he’d found in every broker he’d worked with—whatever bravado they evinced edged, like the eyes of abused dogs in ASPCA commercials, in a persistent anxiety that someone was about to beat them with a stick. But, to his surprise, the broker greeted them with seemingly genuine pleasure, happily sat at his desk and chitchatted with them for ten minutes about topics other than apartment listings. His name was Brett, he was about Jonah’s age, he was dressed casually in khakis and a polo.

  “I was at Lehman for six years,” Brett told them amiably. “I loved my bonus but hated everything else about my life. Whole weeks would go by and I’d never see the sun—at my desk before five, home in a cab at night. I was pretty depressed when it all fell apart, but really, it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I don’t make as much, but I do yoga four times a week and have a dog. A buddy called me the other day and asked if I wanted to come over with him to work at B of A. Fifteen-hour days, plus everyone who knows what you do looks at you like a child molester? Honestly, I’d rather work on commission.”

  Jonah found this story enormously pleasing for some reason, though Sylvia told him later she thought it both highly implausible and somewhat insulting. Regardless, they both liked Brett well enough—and, again in contrast to the other brokers Jonah had worked with, he was actually competent when it came to the business of showing apartments to rent: The interiors of the spaces matched his descriptions; he didn’t unlock doors to residents reading the Times in their underwear; and nothing he showed them was patently unlivable on first sight. Jonah sustained himself with Advil and multiple trips to Starbucks; Sylvia was patient with this, sympathetic. And while he knew that on the other side of all the gel caps and caffeine was a severe physical crash, he figured he could delay it until Sylvia headed to the airport after dinner, and then it wouldn’t matter if he collapsed facedown on his couch and fell back asleep until noon. He would still have time the next day, Sunday, to read enough of the BBEC files to be prepared for Monday morning. In short, all things considered (or, more precisely, not considered), the day was going great.

  They saved the best for last: the listing Sylvia was most excited about, the loft on Bond Street. The building was five stories, white brick, faced in arched windows bordered with columns in bas-relief, elaborate molding on the roof completing the neoclassical motif. Brett entered a security code at the door—from memory, Jonah noted—and led them down a narrow entry corridor to a freight elevator. “There are probably less than a dozen successfully gut-renovated buildings in this neighborhood,” he said, pulling the elevator’s folding metal door closed. “And you’ll see what I mean by successfully when we get inside.” He pushed a fat black 5 button—the car trembled gently and began to rise. “This building is landmarked,” he went on, “which always makes things tricky in terms of renovation. The developer wanted to replace this freight elevator, for instance, but that violated code. But just listen.” He held a finger aloft. “You notice how you don’t hear any clanking or grinding? What he was able to do was replace the motor and cables of the original with hydraulics. So you get industrial character without industrial noise
. Pretty ingenious, right? That’s the kind of work-around you need to create luxury amenities in this area.

  “I actually learned something very interesting the other day,” Brett continued. “Do you know why there are so many townhouses and low-rise apartment buildings down here? How before 9/11 you could stand on Lafayette and see all the way to the Twin Towers? Do you know why that is?” He paused for a beat. “Shallow bedrock,” he revealed with a satisfied smile. “You just can’t build tall down here. That’s what allows the neighborhood to keep its charm—the cobbled streets and brownstones and everything else we all love about it. Now,” he said, as the elevator came to a noiseless halt. “Here we are.” He took hold of a brass-handled lever and pulled the folding door aside, let Jonah and Sylvia walk out first.

  The loft was vast, spacious and spare, buffed and shining hardwood floors stretching off toward newly painted white walls topped by a high white ceiling. Three exposed beams stood roughly a third of the way from the entrance, giving the space an expansiveness that was almost forestlike. Opposite a kitchenette recessed into the wall were double-height windows, the glass at the arched top faintly blue-hued, the sunlight coming in reflecting in lustrous yellow off the floors.

  “Fifteen hundred square feet, Australian cypress flooring, eighteen-foot ceilings,” Brett said as Jonah and Sylvia wandered around the room, their heads slightly raised, as if in continuous disbelief at the height of the ceiling. “Kohler in the bathroom, Bulthaup in the kitchen, satellite on the roof serves the whole building. You’ve got central air and a washer/dryer hookup, all the usual utilities included, a storage unit in the basement, and they’re giving you free Equinox membership. And, obviously, quiet, tree-lined street, landmarked building with southern exposures giving natural light all year.” Brett recited this litany of virtues without referencing any notes, and as if each trait had not only aesthetic but even moral resonance. Whatever Brett had done in his past life, Jonah imagined he had been very good at it.

  “Oh my God,” said Sylvia. She had disappeared through a closet door and now reappeared again from the bathroom. “Jonah, come look.” He walked over to her and she led him by the hand through the door: They entered a walk-in closet, with shelves to the right, three levels of closet rods to the left, and then she led him out an opposite door into the bathroom. She looked into his face with delight and laughed, in an uncharacteristically childlike way.

  As they came out of the bathroom, Brett, leaning against the wall by the elevator, said, “Sylvia, you think you can find a way to fill that?”

  “I’m not even clothes-obsessed,” she said. “But that is…”

  “A true walk-through closet, put in in 2008. Frankly, this apartment has a lot of wow features. Now,” he said, “what they’ll do if you want is put up a wall extending from the closet east.” He drew a line in the air with his finger. “So then you’ve got a true one-bedroom, with the walk-through connecting the bathroom and the bedroom, which is optimal. Now, also, when or if you start to think about children, or even just a second bedroom or study, you extend another wall through the back of the bedroom”—he drew another line in the air—“and you get the nursery or guest room or office. Simple.”

  Sylvia glanced at Jonah—and he shrugged. Generally they restricted discussions of children to the realm of hypothetical possibilities for an undefined time in the future. But considering how well everything was going, why not affirm it as a more concrete prospect? He could always say he thought she’d been alluding to a guest bedroom.

  In any event, it was clear to him that she had been entirely seduced by the loft: Her smile was in full bloom, the lower lip extending away from the upper as if to swallow up joy floating in the air. Apparently the seduction was clear to Brett, too. He made a show of looking at his phone and said, “I’m going to go downstairs and call the owner just to confirm everything in terms of deposit. But look around, turn on all the burners, flush the toilet, check the water pressure in the shower, and call me if you have any questions. I’ll be right back up.” He walked into the elevator—it descended with no more clanking or grinding than seemed to exist in his personality.

  When Brett was gone, Sylvia gave Jonah a kiss—lips parted, lascivious and lingering—and then she drew away, skipped across the floorboards to the center of the room. “I love it,” she said, spinning and swinging her bag.

  “I do, too,” he answered—though this love was more theoretical than felt. He could recognize the New York–real-estate-porn characteristics of the place: the high-end appliances, the exposed beams, the double-height windows, and the rest. But he couldn’t quite gather these features together to form a coherent reaction to them. What he really loved was how happy Sylvia was.

  “We could put those walls up,” she said, this time leaving no room for doubt about what she alluded to. “Jonah,” she said to him. “Can’t you picture our life here?”

  She had settled beside one of the beams, her bag hanging from the bend in her elbow, one foot in a black ballet flat tucked behind the other, was staring toward the back wall, the longest in the loft, with her index finger resting lightly on her nose—silent and smiling, as though even the bare wall was a source of delight. She rarely assumed such moods, such poses. Her job required seriousness: She worked on deals involving billions of dollars, thousands of jobs, international parties. That seriousness—the hours and the effort of it—inevitably bled into the rest of her life, made the moments such as these, when her whole attention was captured by a seemingly undisturbed happiness, fewer, and harder to sustain. He recognized the same in himself.

  He was struck now by an entirely new feeling toward her: compassion. He felt, so strongly, that she deserved ease, contentment, glee—wow features and children and whatever else she imagined of an orgiastic future she could see as if projected on the long blank wall she stared at. He loved her. He felt the truth of this with such simple and perfect clarity. And in the same moment of inarguable lucidity, he understood that they had no future—here or anywhere—together.

  They had been set up by mutual friends on a blind date: strolled through an exhibition at the Whitney called “Metaphysics and the Modern,” and then ate dinner at a Middle Eastern fusion restaurant. It had surprised both of them how well it went: to find the other attractive, and successful career-wise, and intelligent, and funny at times, and not possessed of any ruinous quality that torpedoed most blind dates. Maybe merely that surprise had been enough to inspire a second date, and then a few more—and then the ball was rolling and here they were.

  It seemed to him now, though, that each time they increased the seriousness of their relationship, it had been done with the expectation that at this point—at last—things would be truly good between them. Because from the start there had been fights: the petty squabbles and skirmishes of their early days evolving into the open brawling of recent months. And, of course, up until the day before, he had been cheating. They weren’t stupid, they both knew something was wrong. But it was as if they believed they could find a solution if only they burrowed deeply enough within their relationship: if they only saw more of each other; saw only each other; if they lived together.

  Jonah now understood that this was false hope—a sustaining myth between them. They didn’t struggle on account of a failure to find the solution to their problems: There was not some mode of togetherness that would make her feel secure in his respect for her upbringing (rich and Republican), properly supported in her career; would make him feel that her love had depth and warmth, that she wanted to be with him and not a version of him she might fashion. Their problems were a fact of their togetherness itself.

  It made him nauseous again, to understand—with the sudden force of revelation—that for all the fighting, for all the relationship work, for all the efforts of two very capable people, for whatever they might ignore, tolerate, learn to live with, for all the nights on the couch, the takeout and delivery and movies and restaurants and exhibits and cocktails and morni
ngs shopping in SoHo and afternoons lazing in Central Park, for all the thoughtful gifts, vacations, orgasms—for the time in Cape Cod when she had emerged from the water in her red bikini and flopped beside him on the sand and in that moment his heart had almost overflowed with a sense of undiluted contentment—for all the luxuries of any loft they might share: Something would always be missing.

  “This would be our home,” she said.

  Now was the time to tell her: about Zoey, about what he’d seen, all of it. Didn’t he owe her the truth when he recognized it? “Sylvia,” he said.

  She had her hands behind her head, elbows in the air, adjusting the bobby pin in her hair—she twisted at the waist and their eyes met. She had caught something in his tone—already there was a tension, the anticipation of disappointment, in her face. But hadn’t he decided—that he would ignore— The thought seemed to stumble into pieces as it formed. What, exactly, did this have to do with God?

  “You don’t like it,” she said, her hands dropping, her smile closing.

  The nausea was growing. “No,” Jonah said defiantly. “No, I love it. And I love you. And I want it—I want to live here with you.” He was hurrying toward the elevator as he said this, pushed the button. “I’m going to tell him.”

  “You—really?”

  Still not looking at her—wanting to avoid the dubious look he knew she was giving him, wanting to avoid the doubts of his own—he pulled open the elevator door as it arrived, said, “Just need some air, but I’ll—security deposit.”