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

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