The Book of Jonah: A Novel by Feldman Joshua Max

Author:Feldman, Joshua Max [Feldman, Joshua Max]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Published: 2014-02-04T00:00:00+00:00

9. THEY TOOK UP JONAH AND CAST HIM FORTH INTO THE SEA

Jonah awoke on the floorboards of his apartment. He’d succeeded in getting drunk enough to fall asleep the night before—had methodically made his way through a bottle of Jack Daniel’s he’d bought on the way back from Zoey’s. His phone was ringing from somewhere among the cushions on the couch above him. He sensed, as he lifted his leaden and throbbing head, that it had been ringing for a long time. He reached up for it and studied it: Sylvia was calling him. The phone was unmerciful—to her, to him—in informing him precisely how many times she’d already called, and how many times Brett had called, and how many texts and emails they’d both sent. The gist of what he read was that he needed to be at the Corcoran offices at 9:00 A.M. The clock on the phone’s screen told him it was now 8:30. He looked over toward the windows. Bright canary yellow sunlight spilled in across the floorboards.

He staggered to his feet, went into the bathroom, opened the medicine cabinet so he would not have to look at himself in the mirror, turned on the sink. He was surprised at the minor cacophony the rushing water made in the small room, and he stood there for a few moments, listening to it vacantly. Then he leaned forward, put his lips to the cold stream, drank for a while, then splashed some of the water onto his face. If he’d hoped this would give him a modicum of clarity as to what he was supposed to do now, he was disappointed. He turned off the water and went into his bedroom, closed the door—wasn’t sure what he’d intended to do in there, and then just sat down on the floor.

The light in the room was a deep, murky blue coming in through the closed navy curtains. He couldn’t remember when he’d closed those curtains, when he’d last been in this room. He felt as if the rhythms of time that his life had previously followed, that most everyone’s followed—waking, working, sleeping—had been drowned out in some other, more domineering mode of time. He could no longer muster the anger, the self-pity, of the previous day, though. He understood that all he’d accomplished by swathing himself in these emotions was to humiliate himself, cheat on Sylvia again, and hurt the person he would have least wanted to hurt. But really, he asked himself—what else was there left for him to feel?

His closet door stood open, and before he could look away he saw in the full-length mirror inside the reflection he’d had an instinct to avoid. His face in the mirror looked weary—aged. He still had on the suit Dolores had bought for him—most of it, anyway: The stain-dappled shirt was open to his belly button, the tie was missing, he wore only one shoe, while the other foot was bare. And he thought he could see in

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