The Book of Jonah

by Joshua Max Feldman

  “You won’t need surgery, so that’s something,” she said as she worked on him. “Though there may be some crookedness. But that’s what plastic surgeons are for.” She placed a splint over his nose and began to wrap it into place. “Leave the splint on for at least twenty-four hours,” she said. “Try not to get it wet.” She spoke with a lovely accent, British with Southeast Asian inflections—reminded Jonah of a reporter on the BBC. “I’ll write you a scrip for the pain. Have you ever taken any prescription pain medication?”

  “No,” he answered.

  “I’ll make it mild, then. The nurse said someone hit you? With a stapler?”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “You should file a police report,” she said perfunctorily, and began to write the prescription.

  She was a little plain, maybe—but with her precise elocution, the small silver-framed glasses she wore, she had an undeniable librarian cuteness. “Where are you from originally?” he asked her.

  She glanced up from writing and scrunched her brows behind her glasses, as if she didn’t quite follow. “India,” she answered.

  A doctor was just the sort of person he should have in his life now, he thought. And considering the fact that he was single as of this morning, he said, “I know with the nose I’m probably not looking my best, but when this comes off, maybe we could have dinner sometime?” He was feeling liberated indeed.

  She gave him a witheringly disinterested look. Maybe this happened to her often. “I’m married,” she said. “Take the Adonine once every four hours, no more.” She handed him the prescription and left.

  He didn’t take the rejection too much to heart. For all he knew, she really was married—and besides, his nose was broken. In any event, he’d just been exercising new freedoms, rather than making an earnest attempt to pick her up. And if he did decide he felt any lack of companionship in the wake of breaking up with Sylvia, he could always try to resurrect things with Zoey. Maybe this time it would even work out.

  He picked up his prescription and went home. He showered with his bandaged face stuck out on the other side of the curtain, put on a clean suit, took an Adonine, went into work. He’d left early the day before, he was coming in late today, but those facts dovetailed nicely into a single lie he’d devised in the shower: that he’d slipped and fallen on the subway stairs and broken his nose. As he rode the elevator up to the twenty-ninth floor, he thought about the changes he would make in his career. Going forward, he would work exclusively on cases in which clients were trying, say, to protect themselves from ongoing patent infringement, or to redress brazen acts of intellectual property theft—cases, in other words, in which Cunningham Wolf was helping an indisputably wronged client obtain justice. There weren’t many of those cases, of course. But he was willing to accept a more humble career in order to adhere to his new values.

  As the elevator doors opened, he felt a sudden twinge of anxiety, and realized that at least some of this thinking had been preemptive bargaining. But as he stepped out of the elevator, the first person he saw was a summer associate he’d worked with over the last several months—and he was dressed in charcoal suit and polished brown shoes. The associate said hello to Jonah, and Jonah responded with a de rigueur nod—and he was satisfied that he had finally found his way back to the right side of things, that his sacrifices had been acceptable.

  Then, as he walked down the hall, his phone chirped with a voice-mail message, caller unknown. He experienced a new foreboding over this—but dismissed it as maybe an effect of the pain med he’d taken. He listened to the message. “You are a terrible person, Jonah,” the caller said—a male voice he didn’t recognize. “You are a terrible, terrible person. Just remember, one day you will stand before Jesus and answer for all you have done.” That was it. Only on the third listen did he realize that it was Danny.

  He supposed this meant the wheels were in motion. This reaction, however, surprised him—though obviously it shouldn’t have. But somehow he’d assumed his email would just—dissolve the whole issue. Regardless, Jonah reminded himself, Danny was the one responsible, and if Danny was angry, he should be angry with himself. Jonah was only the messenger. And as for Jesus, well, Jonah felt he was a greater authority on such subjects than Danny was.

  Well-being thus preserved, Jonah continued to his office. Dolores was at her desk—made a show of busily typing as soon as he approached. “Good morning, Dolores,” he said. She didn’t answer. “I want to apologize again for yesterday.” She seemed only to type harder. It made him uneasy, though, to think that she remained unhappy with him, so he said, “Again, I really am sorry, and it won’t happen again. I promise.” Still she didn’t acknowledge him—and finally he went into his office and closed the door.

  He looked to the corner where the BBEC files had been stacked—they were gone. He turned and saw that his desk was empty, too: the computer, papers, books that had covered it all missing. For a terrified instant he thought he was having another vision, this one more thorough in the bareness of things it exposed—but he recognized almost immediately that the suffocating intensity of the other visions was lacking. More, his phone was still on his desk, his law school diploma was still on the wall. But the immediate terror only gave way to sinking dread—which was not much of a relief. He didn’t need the instincts he’d developed over 17,500 hours to know what was happening here. As omens went, a cleaned-out office was as bad as it got. He opened his office door—now Dolores was gone, too. He saw her hurrying down the hallway toward the bathroom.

  “Oh—” and before he could say “fuck,” the phone on his desk was ringing. He considered not answering it—but not answering wouldn’t change anyone’s mind, wouldn’t undo anything that had been done. “Hello?” he said into the phone.

  “Hi, Jonah, it’s Scott Baker,” the man on the phone said affably. “Why don’t you come over to Doug Chen’s office so we can talk.” Scott Baker was a partner, but he never took cases, he never met with clients, he never appeared in court. He was, as the hallway knew well, Cunningham Wolf’s internal fixer. A phone call from Scott Baker: That was as bad as omens got.

  “Will there be an … HR representative there?” Jonah asked, his nose suddenly aching.

  Scott Baker laughed. “Seriously, Jonah?”

  “What I’m asking is, do I need an attorney?”

  “Well, there are lots of them in the building. See if anybody wants to come with you.”

  You will stand before Jesus and answer for all you have done, he thought as he hung up the phone.

  What the fuck had he been thinking?

  It had been only a few days since he last visited Doug Chen’s office, and the scene inside was nearly identical: the Mondrian, the stone sculpture, Doug Chen silently typing at his spotless desk—everything pristine and spare and smooth. The only difference—not an inconsequential one, unfortunately—was that Scott Baker was perched on Doug Chen’s windowsill, swinging his legs insouciantly. He was dressed in khakis, a shirt with no tie, sneakers. You had to be a very, very good lawyer to get away with charging tens of thousands of dollars in lap dances on your firm’s credit card; you had to be an even better one to be a Cunningham Wolf partner and get away with wearing that. I am so fucked, Jonah thought.

  But Scott Baker smiled pleasantly as Jonah came in. He had a puffy face and a doughy build, his cheeks and nose very red—like a hapless middle-aged man who always comes back from vacation sunburned. “Have a seat,” he said, gesturing to the chair across from Doug Chen’s desk. Jonah did; Doug Chen went on typing.

  “Well, first things first, you’re fired,” Scott Baker began, swinging his legs. Jonah nodded grimly. He had his hands folded in his lap—had to make an effort to keep from slumping forward in the chair. “So what happened to your nose?” Scott Baker asked.

  “My ex-girlfriend hit me with a stapler.”

  Scott Baker chuckled with amused sympathy, as if he were hearing this story over drinks at a bar. “Jonah, this is not your
day. So was it before or after you got your nose broken that you emailed Ashley Salomon at the Journal?”

  Jonah sighed heavily. “That was fast,” he said.

  “Next time you’re sending an anonymous email, do it from an iPhone that your employer doesn’t own. Jonah, if you had been Deep Throat, Richard Nixon would still be president.” And he chuckled again good-naturedly.

  The phone, Jonah thought. Of course. “You really track all of that?”

  “I don’t know what you mean by ‘all of that,’ but put ‘BBEC’ into an email and send it to the Wall Street Journal, and yeah, we’ll take a look. So anyway. You wrote the email, and then your ex broke your nose?”

  “She broke my nose, then I wrote the email.”

  For the first time, Scott Baker glanced at Doug Chen, who continued typing as if the room were empty, silent. Scott Baker looked back at Jonah. “And you didn’t actually send anything, right? I mean, that would make this all a lot simpler.” Jonah shook his head. “We figured that,” Scott Baker answered. “By which I mean, we didn’t find anything missing. You can’t Xerox those files, by the way. Special paper. They won’t scan, either. Did they put you on any pain meds or anything like that?”

  “Adonine,” he answered.

  “You took one of those and wrote the email?”

  “No, I actually wrote it before I…” Jesus, he thought, as Scott Baker glanced again at Doug Chen—why didn’t he just plead guilty to breach of contract right now? “I don’t think I should say anything else.”

  Scott Baker made a waving gesture with his hand. “We’ll assume you didn’t send anything. That’s really the most important point.” He hopped up, took a manila folder he’d been sitting on from the windowsill, handed it to Jonah. There were two stapled documents inside. “So here’s how this works,” Scott Baker said. “In the first document you attest that you didn’t send any material documents, BBEC or otherwise, to anybody in the media, or anybody not in the media, for that matter—you know, anybody sentient or otherwise—and we’ll agree to refrain from jumping on you with both feet for violating your NDAs, which, incidentally, have bite, and I know because I drafted them. Of course, if it turns out you did send anything…”

  “I didn’t,” Jonah insisted, actually offended by this—and for no good reason, he recognized, because this had been exactly what he’d planned to do.

  “Like I said, we more or less believe you,” Scott Baker replied. “But sign that and we’ll feel a lot better. And then the other document is a fairly standard severance: three months paid, never darken our doorway again, and so forth. From our end we’d be much happier to give you nothing, but you know how this works: It’s all a little neater if it looks mutual. Juries do the damnedest things.”

  “I’m not going to sue,” he muttered.

  “We don’t think you will, either, but it’s signatures that help us sleep at night,” he replied. “Also, Jonah, this is one of those offers where we expect you to accept right now. Otherwise, well, let’s just say this has gone to some of the very highest people in the firm, and those are always the last people you want jumping on you with both feet.”

  Jonah noticed Doug Chen had stopped typing—was staring at him, his face passionless, inscrutable as ever. Jonah knew he ought to at least read the two documents. But he also knew that his best chance of getting out of the room without being the subject of a lawsuit he could neither win nor afford would be to sign these papers as fast as fucking possible. He took out a pen he found in his pocket—realized it was the uni-ball Vision (Micro) from Corcoran—allowed no further consideration, and signed the BBEC document. He flipped to the last page of the severance—couldn’t stop himself from stopping. His eyes had again fallen on the blankness above the line on which he was supposed to write.

  “If I sign this, I’ll never work in a New York firm again, will I?”

  “Nope!” said Scott Baker cheerily, and somehow without malice. “And I wouldn’t get your hopes up for L.A. or Chicago, either.”

  He lifted his hand, but it was trembling. This was it: his career, every one of 17,500 hours—of his life!—all his plans. “I can’t do it,” he said.

  “You really should,” Scott Baker responded.

  He looked at the stark black line, the tip of the pen shaking weakly over it. He imagined this was the same difficulty he would have had if he’d been asked to sever one of his limbs with these pen strokes. “Can we…”

  “Afraid not,” Scott Baker answered. “You sent the email.”

  Again he made a motion to sign, but his hand was trembling embarrassingly. He tried to steady it with his other hand. This didn’t help. He finally put the pen down and rested it on top of the paper. He saw that Doug Chen was still watching him.

  “Bear in mind, the firm made a significant investment in you,” Doug Chen said, with all his usual emptiness of intonation. “Perhaps, while recognizing your promise, we paid insufficient attention to other of your qualities.” Jonah could only stare back uncomprehendingly.

  “I think the idea is, we’re sorry this happened, too,” Scott Baker said. “After all,” he continued, making a circle in the air with his finger, suggesting the outline of Jonah’s face, “we had you sized up for partner.”

  “Regardless, at this point it is in your best interest to sign,” Doug Chen told him. “It is in all of our best interests.”

  Jonah knew he was right, and—in what he realized would likely be the last demonstration of his “promise” as an attorney who might one day ascend to partnership in an elite New York law firm—he understood the argument that was being made: He owed it to them. He took a deep breath—he chopped off his leg at the knee. He handed Scott Baker the documents and started to cry. The tears were so pure in their sadness, in their remorse: For the second time that day he felt like a child—now one crouching in the living room beside a broken lamp. To the humiliation of this was added the pain he felt in his nose with every sob. When he’d pulled himself together enough to look up, Doug Chen was typing again; Scott Baker had hopped back up on the sill, was swinging his legs. “Don’t worry,” Scott Baker said. “We won’t tell anyone. But out of curiosity. Were you going to try to sell the documents to the Journal? They don’t really pay for that sort of thing, not enough to make it worth it, anyway. Or was it you imagined yourself testifying before Congress and going on 60 Minutes? Some guys do get that when they’re your age. They have to prove how much smarter they are than the rest of us.”

  “I just … I was trying to do the right thing.”

  “Conscience!?” Scott Baker cried, in parodic shock. “Didn’t you have that removed in law school?” He glanced at Doug Chen, but he continued typing. Scott Baker looked almost disappointed that Doug Chen hadn’t laughed. “In any event, Jonah,” he went on, “there’s only one more thing. You know the scene in the movie where the cop has to turn in his badge and gun?”

  “Yeah,” Jonah said, not getting it. Then he got it. Scott Baker nodded in confirmation. Jonah reached into his pocket and opened his wallet, took out his firm credit card and his building ID, put them on the spotless surface of Doug Chen’s desk.

  “There’s nothing hinky on the card, right?” Scott Baker asked.

  “No. I mean, no, my assistant does my receipts…”

  “No one’s accusing you, just curious. We’ll check anyway.” There was a pause. “And the phone,” Scott Baker said. Jonah reached into his pocket and placed the iPhone on the desk—hesitated a moment, then removed his hand.

  “So that’s it!” Scott Baker said. “Now if you’ll permit me a personal suggestion. What with the broken nose and the attempted illegal dissemination of documents and the getting fired, you seem like a man who could use a vacation. So take the three months, get out of Dodge, drink a few mai tais, and try to adjust yourself to the way things are, rather than how you’d like them to be. And when you have your head screwed on straight again, maybe take another run at a less ambitious law career. The feds are al
ways hiring.”

  Jonah was still looking at his phone. It was as if the amputation he’d imagined earlier had been made literal, and he was left to stare forlornly at the abandoned limb. “I’m really sorry,” Jonah said. “I’m really sorry.” And he had to fight off another bout of tears.

  “Well,” Scott Baker said, “remember that the next time someone tells you to do the right thing.” Then he laughed, and maybe even Doug Chen’s mouth moved a half inch.

  * * *

  When Jonah returned to his office, Dolores was still not there. He supposed this was for the best; he figured she was the one who’d called Scott Baker or whomever when he came in, and he couldn’t help but see this as a kind of betrayal. But of course, she had only been doing her job—and what had they been to one another, really, besides two people doing their job in the same place, who had never liked each other very much?

  Someone had placed on his desk a single Post-it note. On it, in handwriting he didn’t recognize, was written, “People are waiting for you at reception.” This, he supposed, would be security. They might have spared themselves the trouble. After all, they’d already cleaned out his office; they already had his signature on the documents of castration, assigning to them anything of his career at Cunningham Wolf they could make assignable. Did they really think, after he’d signed that, he had it in him to make some sort of scene?