Read Online The Book of Jonah by Joshua Max Feldman - Free Book Online

Wasn’t that the whole point of doing this?
    â€œI got a BBEC case,” he told her. “I’ll be working with Doug Chen—y’know, the one with the strippers. It puts me in good shape for partner.” He realized it was unfair to tell her—to dump her and in the same breath mention how great his life was going. But it was important to him that she know, for some reason.
    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.”
    â€œThey were, they were, it’s…”
    â€œHow 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.”
    â€œYou 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.”
    â€œYeah, 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.”
    â€œThat 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.
    â€œI’m assuming that wasn’t very nice.”
    â€œWhat 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