The Book of Jonah by Joshua Max Feldman Page B

until she had another cigarette between her lips. As she clicked her lighter before it, she said, “Would it never work out because of my A cups? Or because I didn’t go Hah-vahd like Schlampe ?”
    â€œC’mon, Zoey, we aren’t even dating,” he said, guilt giving way a little to irritation.
    â€œTherefore I shouldn’t mind that you’re dumping me to live with another woman?”
    â€œI’m not dumping you—we aren’t dating!”
    â€œI guess I’m not aware of the legal definition of getting dumped. But then again, we didn’t all go to Columbia Law School—”
    â€œYou have a boyfriend! You’re talking about getting married!”
    She lifted the hand holding the cigarette, flapped her bare ring finger. “You were the one who said it didn’t mean anything until he got me a ring.”
    â€œI never said that,” though he knew he had.
    â€œNo really, it’s fine,” she said, with mock breeziness. “I was looking forward to a joyless marriage with a man who can’t support me. Maybe I’ll see Schlampe pushing one of your blond babies around Prospect Park someday.”
    She turned away, stared off toward the traffic on Seventh Avenue, her forehead still trembling a little, but her mouth now set in a hard, tight frown. Jonah glanced at his phone—a bead of sweat dropped from his forehead onto its face. If he didn’t get in a cab in the next three minutes, he would be late. And there was, he told himself, no point to this conversation anymore. He’d learned from his past breakups—with her, with anyone—that everything beyond the delivery of the hard, essential message was only a sort of ritualistic airing of grievances: kabuki theater in which the aggrieved party tried to elicit as much guilt as possible, while the person doing the aggrieving made parrying attempts to end the conversation without giving any new cause for being thought an asshole, or at minimum, to escape before the crying started.
    â€œZoey, you were late, I’ve got to go.…”
    â€œMy therapist says I have a problem with patterns,” she responded, taking another drag on her cigarette and exhaling smoke from the corner of her mouth. “Dr. Popper explains that my anxiety makes me do what’s familiar, even when it’s bad for me. Your name came up. Shocking, I know. Thanks for making her look so smart.” She punched him—hard—on the arm.
    â€œJesus,” he said. But he knew the punch was, if not exactly affectionate, then at least not entirely hostile, either. If nothing else, it was an acknowledgment of something. “Look, I feel really shitty about this,” he told her.
    â€œThat’s nice of you to say.” She was standing perpendicular to him now, and this lessened the translucence of her dress—which was a relief—but allowed him the full profile of her nose—which was not. It was not that Zoey was prettier than Sylvia; by conventional reckoning she wasn’t. There was simply a lot more going on in Zoey’s face than in Sylvia’s neat, all-American-by-way-of-Ireland features. Zoey glanced over at him, her brown iris filling the corner of her right eye. “Tell me the truth. Does it mean anything if there’s no ring?”
    Jonah rubbed some sweat from the back of his neck. “I was being a dick. Of course it means something.”
    Whether she was comforted by this or further distressed, he couldn’t tell. She couldn’t tell, either, was his guess. Profound ambivalence had always been a hallmark of her feelings toward Evan. “But she’ll see a ring from you, is that the idea?” Zoey asked. “It’ll be you and Schlampe ?”
    He didn’t answer. He didn’t know the answer—and he wouldn’t have known how to phrase any answer, given who was asking. But his best guess was yes—him and Schlampe.