Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer(60)
The waiter approached.
“A couple of glasses of white?” Mark suggested.
“Sounds great,” Julia said. “Are you going to have one, too?”
Mark laughed and held up two fingers.
“How is Irv? Seems like he’s stirred up a lot of shit.”
“He’s a human plunger. But it beats being ignored.”
“Being universally reviled?”
“Talking about him is exactly what he’d want us to be doing right now. Let’s not give him the satisfaction.”
“Moving along.”
“So how’s it going?”
“What? The divorce?”
“The divorce, your rediscovered interior monologue, the whole thing.”
“It’s a process.”
“Isn’t that how Cheney described torture?”
“You know that old joke: ‘Why are divorces so expensive?’?”
“Why?”
“Because they’re worth it.”
“I thought that’s what they said about chemo.”
“Well, both make you bald,” he said, holding back his hair.
“You aren’t bald.”
“Please, God, not distinguished.”
“Not even distinguished.”
“Just taller than my hair.”
“You’re all the same: endlessly experimenting with facial hair configurations, obsessed with thinning hair where there isn’t any. And yet indifferent to the paunch spilling over your belt.”
“I am a very bald man. But that’s not the point. The point is, divorce is profoundly expensive—emotionally, logistically, financially—and it’s worth it. But just.”
“Just?”
“It’s no landslide. It just barely ekes it out.”
“But you eke it out with your life, right?”
“Better to get out of the building with burns over ninety percent of your body than perish inside. But best to have left before the fire.”
“Yeah, but it’s cold outside.”
“Where’s your burning house? Nunavut?”
“I always imagine house fires in winter.”
“And you?” Mark asked. “What’s the news on Newark Street?”
“You’re not the only one in a process.”
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” she said, unfolding the napkin.
“Nunavut?”
“What?”
“You’ll be sharing none of it?”
“It’s truly nothing,” she said, refolding it.
“So, fine.”
“I shouldn’t talk about it.”
“You probably shouldn’t.”
“But even though we haven’t started drinking, I’ve got a psychosomatic buzz.”
“This is going to be a bomb, isn’t it?”
“I can trust you, right?”
“I suppose it depends.”
“Seriously?”
“Only a trustworthy person would admit to his unreliability.”
“Forget it.”
“I cheated on my taxes last year, OK? Badly. I deducted an office I don’t even have. Now you can blackmail me, if it comes to that.”
“Why would you cheat on your taxes?”
“Because it’s an honor to contribute to our functioning society, but only to a point. Because I’m a schmuck. Because my accountant is a schmuck and told me I could. I don’t know why.”
“The other day I was at home and heard a buzzing. There was a cell phone on the floor.”
“Oh shit.”
“What?”
“There is not a single story about a cell phone that ends well.”
“I opened it up and there were some pretty sexually explicit messages.”
“Texts, or images?”
“Does it make a difference?”
“An image is what it is. A text could be anything.”
“Licking cum out of *s. That kind of stuff.”
“Image?”
“Words,” Julia said. “But if you ask for the context, I’m going to call the IRS.”
The drinks arrived, and the waitress scurried off. Julia wondered how much, if anything, she had heard, what she might tell the hostess, what young, unencumbered women might have a laugh that night at the expense of the Bloch family.
“I confronted Jacob about it, and he said it was just talk. Just some seriously overheated flirting.”
“Overheated? Licking cum out of *s is Dresden.”
“It’s not good.”
“And who was at the other end of them?”
“A director he works with.”
“Not Scorsese…”
“That’s too soon.”
“Seriously, Julia, I am so very sorry to hear this. And shocked.”
“Maybe it’s for the best. Like you said, the door has to open to light up the dark room.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Didn’t you?”
“Do you believe him?”
“In what sense?”