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

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?”
    â€œMaybe,” he said. “I think I might go out.”
    â€œI’ll call you while you’re out,” she replied.
    â€œIt won’t be late, though. I might go in before we meet the broker tomorrow.”
    â€œThis 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.
    â€œLook, 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?”
    â€œI got a BBEC case. We’re going to trial maybe next month.”
    â€œReally?” she said. “So that means partner?”
    â€œIn a couple more years, but, yeah—that’s what it means.”
    â€œThat is fantastic news. Congratulations, Jonah.”
    â€œA 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?”
    â€œI just said I was happy for you.”
    â€œDid 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