The Book of Jonah (7 page)

She turned to him, and smiled in a way that was not entirely convincing, but strived for sincerity. “I'm happy for you, Yonsi. You've worked really hard for that.” She moved the cigarette toward her mouth, then stopped. “The thing is,” she said, “I get it. She does seem like the kind of girl a partner in a law firm would want to marry. And no, that is not entirely a compliment, but it's a much nicer thing than you've ever said about Evan. And yes, he is kind of my boyfriend, and I suppose there's even a chance he'll ask to marry me. It's just that…” She returned the cigarette to her mouth, expelled its smoke in a sigh. Her expression was tired now—forlorn. “I thought things were going really good this time.”

“They were, they were, it's…”

“How come you never wanted to live with me?”

He was grappled with a powerful tenderness toward her—an urge to take her in his arms, tell her he hadn't meant any of it. And whether it was fueled by guilt or nostalgia or pain avoidance or genuine affection: It was still tenderness. “It's not that, y'know, I at any point rejected the idea of us living together.”

“You sound so lawyerly these days,” she muttered.

Luckily, or so he would think later, at this moment his phone chimed with a reminder for his meeting. “I'm sorry, Zoey. I have to go.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she said. “Don't think I don't have five hundred words to write about two closeted TV stars groping each other. Meanwhile you and
Schlampe
ride off into the sunset.” She flicked her cigarette in the general direction of his shoes. “In the past when you've done this to me, my phone rings at one in the morning, you're a little slurry, and
Schlampe
or whoever it is isn't around, and you're wondering if I maybe want to re-create that time at the W.”

“That won't happen this time.” She pursed her lips dubiously, as though she'd heard it all before—which she probably had. In an effort to convince her of his seriousness, he added, “It was really wrong what we were doing, Zoey.”

She studied his face very carefully for a moment. “
Vai all'inferno e restaci
, Yonsi
,
” she said.

“I'm assuming that wasn't very nice.”

“What do you care? I'm just the girl you were cheating with, right?” She pulled her purse up onto her shoulder. “I look forward to not hearing from you.” And she walked away and into the building.

He watched her as she crossed the lobby, disappeared into an elevator. For another moment he stood in the heat—wishing he'd somehow been able to communicate that, while he did in fact intend to never see her again, he nevertheless cared about her very much. The longer he thought about this, though, the more frustrated it made him—and he finally concluded that any attempt to communicate such a plainly self-contradictory idea was doomed from the start. He wiped the sweat from his face once more, annoyed at the heat, at how the conversation had gone, and most of all annoyed that he'd run into her six months earlier on St. Mark's Place outside a theater where Evan was performing, which was the only reason they'd started talking again and having sex again and any of this had ever happened again—and he mumbled a “damn it” in the direction of this unlucky happenstance. But then he was on the move, mercifully departing the plaza, heading toward the street, where several open cabs were stopped at a light. It had been shitty, but not as shitty as it could have been. And, more important, it was done.

*   *   *

To become a partner at Cunningham Wolf—and that had been Jonah's goal from his first day as a summer associate at the firm—you had to bill an average of 3,000 hours a year. The rule wasn't written down anywhere, and for that was all the more reliable. Billing 3,000 hours a year generally meant working at least 3,500. That was an average of 9.5 hours a day, 365 days a year. Practically speaking, though—because even ambitious associates took off the occasional holiday, birthday, hungover Monday—that meant most days were twelve or fourteen hours long, not excepting Saturdays, plus a half day most Sundays. All told, Jonah figured he had worked at least 17,500 hours since graduating from law school five years before. That was more than two continuous years of briefs, memos, depositions, filings, emails, meetings, takeout, two-faced colleagues, abusive partners, hysterical clients, incompetent assistants, flame-out first-years, senile judges, gossip, rumors, motions, dismissals, settlements, conference calls, and four (or more) cups of coffee a day. And now partnership was just one more case away.

So, back in his apartment, Jonah had opened a three-hundred-dollar bottle of Scotch he'd bought on a trip with some law school friends to the Scottish Highlands. The man who'd sold it to him—rich-brogued, bronze-sideburned, stereotypically Scottish in every way but for lack of a kilt—had put three bottles on the table before him and his friends and, passing his hand over each one, said, “This is what y'drink with the father of your wife on your wedding day. This is what y'drink when your first child is born. And lads, this is what y'drink when your first son is born.” It was a good line, got a good laugh from the group of American law school students on what would likely be the last summer vacation of their lives. Of course, they all bought.

He poured the golden-amber liquid into a glass from the dishwasher. He'd never intended to wait for the birth of a son; fatherhood wasn't something he thought much about. He figured he'd eventually open the bottle in celebration of something in his career, and over the years that something had naturally become fixed as Cunningham Wolf partnership. True, he was not a partner yet, it could still all go wrong. He could fuck up his work with BBEC, an asteroid could strike 813 Lexington. But neither event was very likely. Indeed, the asteroid seemed the more probable. He'd learned what it took to succeed as a lawyer: It took intelligence, which he'd been born with; it took diligence, which, ultimately, was really just a question of deciding to be diligent; it took a modicum of interpersonal skills, a high tolerance for bullshit, a passion for being proven right—he had it, he'd acquired it, he seemed to find more of it every day. So leaving aside the possibility that BBEC operated differently from any other Fortune 100 company with turf to protect (and he knew it didn't), and barring the asteroid or whatever—he would within a few years be a partner at one of the oldest, most prestigious law firms in the city.

He carried the glass from his kitchenette into his living room. He had lived in this apartment for three years and somehow had managed not to have completely unpacked yet; bulging cardboard boxes were still stacked behind the couch. Pre-Sylvia, it had been even worse: Boxes had functioned as the dresser in his bedroom, as an impromptu entryway table by his door. She'd imposed some order, as was her way, and as for these last few behind the couch, they both felt there was no point bothering. He would soon be moving again.

Outside the living room windows, a purplish dusk was descending over the city—windows on the faces of buildings brightening into little squares of gold. It looked as if the city were putting on its showier, colorful clothing, too, for the Friday night ahead. The bars would be filling up, the lines at restaurants forming, opening acts starting their sets. Ordinarily he didn't mind spending Friday nights at home, alone. He was usually more than content to order in and get drunk on his couch, watching whatever on TV—unwinding. But tonight he could sense on the other side of his windows the great inhalation of breath before the city dove into the night ahead. He took his first sip of the three-hundred-dollar Scotch. During the Highlands trip, he'd become adept at the jargon of Scotch: malty, peaty, finish, nose. He'd forgotten all that by now; the best he could come up with by way of description was that this Scotch tasted really fucking great.

He took out his phone and called Sylvia. She was a senior analyst for Ellis–Michaels, and for the last two months had spent her weeks and the majority of her weekends in Chicago working on a deal, the details of which she couldn't divulge. It was only 7:00 there, she would almost certainly still be working, but he hadn't talked to her all day—hadn't told her the good news.

After several rings she answered. “Hey, we're still at it. Can I call you back in three hours?”

“Maybe,” he said. “I think I might go out.”

“I'll call you while you're out,” she replied.

“It won't be late, though. I might go in before we meet the broker tomorrow.”

“This could take until midnight.”

They both agreed her frequent travel to Chicago had put stress on their relationship. Already he could sense the implicit competition in their words: Who worked more? Who had less time for whom? Who put unfair demands on the other? Tonight he wasn't in a position to ask for much: She was flying back the next morning to look at apartments with him; they would have dinner, and then she would fly back to Chicago that night to be in the office Sunday morning. Of course, he hadn't asked her to, but she had made no secret of the inconvenience of it all, of the effort she was putting in, for their sake.

“Look, do you have thirty seconds?” he asked. “There's something I want to tell you.”

He heard some shuffling, a closing door. “What's going on?”

“I got a BBEC case. We're going to trial maybe next month.”

“Really?” she said. “So that means partner?”

“In a couple more years, but, yeah—that's what it means.”

“That is fantastic news. Congratulations, Jonah.”

“A lot of work went into it, so.”

Then there was a pause, and she said—with a kind of determined enthusiasm—“I really am happy for you.” And he guessed—knew—she was thinking about her own (ostensibly) stalled career. The next rung on the Ellis–Michaels ladder for her was vice president, and the company was notorious for its lack of female vice presidents—for its lack of females in any roles, in fact. As Sylvia explained it, they didn't want to pay someone $500,000 a year to get pregnant.

He had another sip of the wonderful Scotch. It wasn't that he was unsympathetic, but: “Is it impossible for you to be happy for me?”

“I just said I was happy for you.”

“Did you mean it?” She didn't answer.

He could picture her: standing in some hallway—carpeted, fluorescently lit, all the cubicles around her empty for the night—wearing a suit with a sports bra underneath (otherwise, she said, the suits never fit right, her large breasts as much a burden to her as small breasts were to Zoey), her bobbed blond hair parted neatly across the top, the facile frown on her face that she always wore when they disagreed—as if she were neither angry nor culpable, simply tolerating the unpleasantness—her small, symmetrical nose ever so slightly flared at the nostrils. When they argued, it was easy for him to understand her success in a male-dominated industry. She could project formidable intensity in her face, in her five-foot-five frame. He guessed she'd developed this visible toughness from a lifetime of dealings with her father, but that relationship and its consequences she didn't like to talk about. “I am truly happy for you, Jonah,” she finally said. “I am in the middle of a thousand things, but yes, I am truly happy for you. I'll have Linda make us a reservation at Le Bernardin tomorrow night to celebrate.”

The last thing he'd wanted when he called had been to argue, and so he accepted her offer to move the conversation in a more amicable direction. “That sounds great,” he said. “I just wish you were here to celebrate with me tonight.” And before she could start to answer, he added, “And I know it's not by choice. It's only, y'know, too bad.”

“You are an excellent lawyer. You deserve this.”

“We can tell the broker we can look at six-thousand-dollar places.”

“That's true,” she said. “There was the loft on Bond Street, remember? I emailed you?”

Lofts weren't his preference; he had an affinity for closing doors. But he said, “Yeah, I remember. That place was great.”

“It's exciting, Jonah.”

“I'm going to be in Boston a lot.”

“Well,” she said, “it's an hour on the shuttle from LaGuardia.” And this reminded him of something he loved about her: how undaunted she was by circumstance, how adaptive and capable, in such contrast to—well, other people.

“Look, Syl, I know things haven't been perfect lately,” he said.

“I can't talk about that now,” she answered quickly.

“I know, I know, I just. I think we're going to have a great future together.”

She didn't answer for a moment. Then she said, in a hushed, measured tone, “That means a lot to me, Jonah.” Then, more loudly, “Anyway, I should get back.”

“Were you in early, too?”

“On the treadmill at four-thirty, in the conference room at six.”

“Jesus. Hang in there, Syl.”

“I'll see you tomorrow morning.”

“I love you.”

“Ditto. See you tomorrow.”

He hung up—reaffirmed, he felt, in his decision to end things with Zoey. He didn't deny that an affection for her that had lasted nearly a decade would likely always be with him, in some form. But did she have any idea what it took to become a partner at a major New York law firm? Sure, B-girls worked long hours. But there were long hours, and then there were 17,500 hours. Sylvia could tell him he deserved to make partner and it meant something. She worked brutal hours in a brutal industry, too. She was a peer in that sense.

The bottom line was that it really wasn't meant to be with Zoey and him. Maybe it could have been, once—but there were things you couldn't control. For ten years they had been going nowhere, circling around the inescapable fact of their ultimate incompatibility. He and Sylvia, on the other hand, continued to steadily reach recognizable markers of relationship progress: from blind date to weekly dates; from weekly dates to thrice weekly; to (professed) monogamy and exclusivity; and now they were moving in together. No, things between them hadn't been great lately, but they both concluded that that was because they didn't see each other enough, and living together would help. And yes, he had fucked up with Zoey over the last several months. But he could call that the last reflexive twitches of an old habit—fading penile muscle memory, he thought with a smile. He could focus now—fully, and in full sincerity—on Sylvia. He swallowed the last of the Scotch, and in its satisfaction imagined he tasted a satisfaction with life in general. He went into the kitchenette and poured himself another glass.