The Book of Jonah (42 page)

“Jesus Christ,” she breathed quietly—not at any one aspect of what she'd seen or heard, but rather at all of it: at the scale of this
ex nihilo
creation.

“What I am offering you is an opportunity,” he told her. “You can go on nursing your secret sadness until you end up as an old woman buying a week's worth of cat food at the grocery store because you don't like leaving the house. Or you can help build a city.”

She was hardly unwilling—but a practical problem presented itself to her. “But I don't know anything about … the gambling industry. What would I do for you?”

“First of all, it's the gaming industry,” he corrected her roughly. “Gambling is something the Mafia runs and you can get your thumbs broken doing it. Gaming is fun for the whole family. And in the future, you never have to tell me any of the long list of things you know nothing about. I'm well aware. For starters,” he continued, “you'll buy art for my casinos. I may actually be able to get some return on your $150,000 degree, believe it or not. If nothing else, there are dealers who'll be impressed by the sound of the word ‘Yale.' After that,” he said with a loose shrug, “we'll see. Not everyone has the stomach for Las Vegas real estate. But I have a feeling you just might.” Already he was artful in pulling the threads of her emotions—yanking her with an insult, drawing her back with a compliment—playing herself against herself. And already, too, she was aware he was doing it—but found she didn't have it in her to resist. “To begin with, I'm going to move you out of your one-bedroom off Highland and into one of my properties in Las Vegas. I'll have one of my personal shoppers work with you to create a look that won't remind people of an Oreo cookie. If you're going to represent me, you need to look expensive. I'll also set you up with a financial planner to do something real with your parents' money. I'll even pay you a salary. But what I'm really giving you is an education. Not the one you got from your history of modern whateverthefuck professor, or from your parents. A real education. Think of it as enlightenment.”

He picked up the paper, returned it to his briefcase; he stood up—she did, too. He surveyed her again, with a certain finality now: standing in the rooftop garden, wearing the butterfly necklace he'd given her, having agreed to go to Las Vegas and enter his employ. “Not many people would have turned down the deal I offered you,” he told her—and his smile spread across his face. “Even a lot of men would have at least tried to negotiate a little. Maybe you think that proves something. But someday you're going to suck my dick for free. Because that's just the way the world works. And when that happens, I'm going to remind you of this conversation.” He extended his hand, she shook it; he seemed to make a point of surrounding hers completely with his own. “I'm glad to have you,” he told her. She was blushing again when he let go. He picked up his briefcase and left.

She stayed in the garden for a long time—felt the need to pay for an eighteen-dollar cocktail. She sat at the table until the sun began to dip behind the rarefied real estate of the Hollywood Hills, and watched the light of the sunset on the Buddha's face—sparkling orange and red withdrawing down the profile before shadow. Then she stood up and left. She had not been able to resolve a question she had posed to herself—couldn't resolve it then, or any of the other times it came to her mind over the following months: not as she watched her belongings packed once again into cardboard boxes, this time by movers he'd hired, for her relocation to Las Vegas; not as she flew on his private jet to Berlin, or to Hong Kong, or to Art Basel in Switzerland, to purchase art for him; not as she sat in the waiting room before the surgery on her nose—which she was made to understand was a condition of her employment—or as she was wheeled around in the salon chair to see her new hair in the mirror. She didn't know the answer on the night they slept together for the first time, and when she awoke to see him standing naked before the full-length mirror, staring at himself with an almost savage rigor. And she didn't know when she flew back from Amsterdam, and landed in McCarran Airport, felt the blast of dry, desert air as she came outside, and got into the car that was waiting for her—the Polaroid left crumpled in the pocket of the seat in front of her on the airplane.

In none of these moments, or in all the time she worked for the Colonel, was Judith ever certain whether what she had consented to was more like captivity, or liberation.

2.
JONAH UPON THE DRY LAND

Ash-colored mountains, stark and jagged and still, stood in the far distance before a cloudless sky of dilute blue. From these mountains, unfurling like a carpet or seeking the foreground like ocean to shore, were miles and miles of uncultivated valley, murky yellow-green in color—interrupted at some unremarkable point by the farthest sloped, cracked curb, the final chain-link fence that represented the outer edge of the exploded sprawl of Las Vegas across the desert. And several miles of asphalt and strip mall and tract of identical ranch-style house and body shop and windowless strip club and billboard (gun show, restaurant, divorce attorney) inward from this was the corner on which Jonah found himself—standing beside a telephone pole to which was taped a handwritten sign on yellow paper, with a phone number and the words,
WE BUY HOUSES! CASH!

Heading down the street from the bus stop where he'd disembarked, he passed several homeless men—hunched on the curbs, or standing near the middle of the sidewalk amidst overstuffed plastic shopping bags. The homeless tended to congregate in this part of the city, as this was where most of the city's homeless services were located: the soup kitchens, the shelters, the food pantries. The neighborhood was for this reason called the “Corridor of Hope”—though whom this epithet was meant to impress or encourage, Jonah couldn't guess.

He arrived at the church that was his destination this morning. Before he'd come to Las Vegas, he'd thought of churches as ornate European cathedrals, or quaint New England steepled structures, or the gaudy-luxe megachurches in California. The Greater Love Hath No Man Church was one story of painted red concrete, L-shaped around an empty parking lot, surrounded by a wrought-iron fence, a cinder block holding open the front door. Jonah pressed a button at the gate; after a moment he heard it unlock with a clack. He pushed it open, crossed the parking lot, and went inside.

He'd learned also not to expect long rows of wooden pews, an altar beneath a cross flanked by stained-glass windows. The interior here was entirely white—painted white walls, white ceiling, white vinyl floors—fluorescently lit, with a few rows of folding chairs set up toward the front, more folding chairs stacked in a corner. There was a cross, but it had a rather perfunctory appearance: two slats of polished metal bolted to the front wall. The overall effect put him in mind of a waiting room in a dentist's office—but he'd seen worse. If it was antiseptic, it was also clean.

As he came in, a Hispanic woman—short, plump, in a turquoise sweater and slacks—appeared through a door in the front of the room. “Oh, sorry,” he said—not sure what he was apologizing for, but he always felt uncomfortable when he first walked into these churches. “I'm looking for Pastor Keith, I called yesterday.…”

“Mr. Jacobs?” the woman said in a thick Spanish accent.

“Jacobstein.”

“You called, talk to Pastor Keith,” she affirmed.

“Yes, that's me.”

She gave him a look he'd gotten used to: bemused, curious—the “how did he end up here?” look. Not that he wasn't generally welcomed in the churches he visited; indeed, he was often greeted by a sincere squeeze of his two hands, an assurance that “everyone” was glad he'd come. He understood, however, that he didn't fit the profile of the person who typically wandered into a downtown Las Vegas church, seeking time with the pastor. And, to be fair, if she had questions about what a young, white, conservatively dressed, now clean-shaven former corporate lawyer was doing in her church—he did, too.

She led him down into the church's basement—a much more inviting space, in Jonah's opinion: the vinyl floors a woody brown color, the walls papered in orange. One half of the room was occupied by furniture covered in dust cloths, bookcases stacked with worn prayer books, a refrigerator that buzzed tinnily. Across from all this was a door, a piece of masking tape stuck to it with the words “Pastor Keith's Office” written in red Sharpie. The woman knocked and said something in rapid Spanish; a male voice answered back in Spanish, and the woman opened the door, smiled, and gestured for Jonah to go inside.

The room Jonah entered was so small he suspected it had been built as a closet. The floor was piled with leaflets, sheaves of paper bound in rubber bands, more broken-spined prayer books. The small metal desk toward the back was similarly cluttered, the computer monitor sitting on it no less than ten years old. Above the desk on the back wall was a purple cloth banner stitched with the words
JESUS SAVES!

Pastor Keith stood up as Jonah came in. He was a heavyset African American man, stooped, with bottle-bottom-thick glasses, wore a tie and a sweater vest, had a cell phone clipped to his belt. He came around the desk to shake Jonah's hand.

“You're welcome here,” he said.

“Thanks, I … appreciate your taking the time,” Jonah answered. He noticed a conspicuous floral odor in the room—a heavy dose of air freshener.

The woman at the door exchanged a few more words of Spanish with the pastor, and then went out and closed the door behind her. “You'll have to excuse Fernanda,” the pastor said. “We begin our daily meal service soon.” His voice was a raspy bass, and he formed his words slowly, as though he had gotten used to talking to people who might not understand what he was saying. He motioned to two folding chairs leaning against the front of his desk. “We'll sit here,” he said. The room was cramped enough that when they sat down their knees were almost touching. “How can I help you, son?” the pastor began.

“There's someone I'm hoping you can help me find,” Jonah answered.

After the many weeks in Las Vegas, the many visits to churches—large and small, rich and (mostly) poor—after all the conversations that had begun just like this one, he'd found this was the most effective way to start. The request seemed not unfamiliar to the heads of Las Vegas churches.

“And who is this person?” the pastor asked.

“She's a friend, and I know she's working in real estate in Las Vegas.”

“You think she might be a parishioner here?”

“No, but I know she's working on a real estate deal that involves a church.” The pastor nodded. “She's tall, maybe five-eight or five-nine, short blond hair. She's sort of … reserved. Her name is Judy, or Judith.…” The pastor waited for him to continue. And he felt ridiculous whenever he came to the end of this meager description of her—but after all the weeks of searching, this was still more or less all he knew about her. He hadn't been able to find out anything, in fact, besides what he'd learned about her in Amsterdam. It was as if when she'd left the bench that day, she'd slammed some sort of door behind her.

“You can't tell me your friend's last name?” the pastor asked.

“I can't,” Jonah admitted.

The pastor pushed his glasses up his nose. “I'm afraid I can't help you with that.”

“You're not working with any real estate companies or anything?”

“I'm sorry, son,” the pastor replied, gently consoling.

By now, though, Jonah had gotten past feeling disappointed when the pastors, the priests, the doctors, the reverends (there were far more forms of address than he would have guessed; far more churches in the greater Las Vegas area, too) told him they didn't know anything about her. All he felt, really, was that he'd heard what he'd expected to hear. “I knew it was a long shot,” he muttered.

“You only came in to see us today because you knew this woman was doing a deal on a church?” Jonah nodded, fully aware how unlikely it sounded. “Why this one and not some other church?”

“I've been trying the other churches,” he said.

The pastor peered at him. “This woman must be important to you.”

“Well … it's important to me that I find her.”

“What are you really looking for, son?” the pastor asked him benignly. “What do you want with this woman you're hoping to find?”

The synthetic floral smell was tickling Jonah's nostrils; he rubbed his still-tender nose carefully with his hand. This was the part of these conversations he always hoped to avoid: the questions of Why. But he had learned they were as inevitable as being told that no Judys or Judiths of that description had ever set foot in the church. “I just want to apologize to her for something.”

“You hurt her?”

“Yeah, maybe, I think so. But really I only—”

“And you want her to forgive you?”

“Look, it's very complicated,” he told the pastor.

“No, son, it isn't.” He pointed a fleshy finger toward the cloth
JESUS SAVES!
banner. “Seek your forgiveness there, and you'll be forgiven for all things. You messed around on her? Got caught up in dope, or booze, or gambling? You beat her? Weren't a father to your child with her?”

“I actually only met her one—”

“Jesus will forgive you for all of it.” The pastor put his hands on his thighs, leaned forward in his chair. “The love you're seeking is the love of Christ.”

He'd thought about wearing a Star of David to these meetings—finding some way to announce from the outset that he was Jewish and therefore not interested in the Christ the Redeemer package. But if he found the evangelizing tiring, awkward, he also sensed—in this case, anyway—there was something sincere in it. This man wanted to help him, and this was the best way he knew how. Unfortunately, it was the wrong help, for the wrong problem. “Look, I'm really only seeking this one woman. Judy, with blond hair?” he tried one last time. “She speaks German…?”