The Book of Jonah (14 page)

“I'm so fucked,” he groaned, lighting another cigarette. He was feeling nauseous from all the smoking—but at least nausea was familiar. He picked up the Scotch from under the couch, drank the last, vaporous drops, tossed the empty bottle onto the cushions.

Then his phone chimed: the sound so innocent and unchanged that he was almost touched—the synthesized
tink
like the cry of nostalgia itself. He picked it up off the coffee table. He had a text message from Sylvia: “Just landed. Cu @ Corcoran offices @ 8. xo.” He reread the message several times before he could comprehend it. He looked at the row of windows running across his living room wall: a grayish light, more a thinning of night than dawn, filled the sky. He looked at his phone again. It was 7 in the morning.

He moved closer to the windows. As on the previous day, tiny figures, tiny cars, were bustling about the sidewalks, the streets. Only today he saw something so gentle and toylike about it all. He envied everything uniformly for the privilege of not being him.

He had a sudden urge to tell Sylvia—about Zoey, about the cheating. This would be, he felt, a great relief—the true relief he'd sought, it seemed now, when he'd broken up with Zoey. He had never cheated before—at least, never so pathologically. And he'd felt guilty from the first lie, the first shower before seeing her. But the guilt was intermittent; it could be ignored, or suppressed. Guilt, it turned out, was really no more powerful than doubt: The trick was to commit oneself to a truth even though you knew it was false—hold the hand, get under the covers, brush away the eyelash as if there were only one woman with whom you shared these intimacies. He'd been surprised to find how easy it was to exist in a reality to which his feelings did not subscribe.

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.