Free The Book of Jonas by Stephen Dau

her, and being surprised to find himself on her sofa with the sun streaming through the window, and then walking home in the early light, not wanting to wake her. The rest of the night, though, is a blur. But there is a detail, an image from the night before that he does remember, that stands out in his mind, and he tells this to Shakri, explains it to her. Then he tells her that you have a choice about how you react to things.
    They sit for a while longer in their silence. Jonas is not too distressed by the hangover, and in fact he takes a certain pleasure in the distance it gives him from reality, the tingling fingers, the vague light-headedness, which somehow seems to heighten his other senses. He is fascinated by the intricate dance of waiters to and from the kitchen, the busy clink of plates and glasses in his good left ear, the sunlight falling through the large window and into his sparkling teacup, the hum of conversation and New Agey music. For just a second he thinks that he might be able to hear something out of his right ear, high and distant, like someone whistling, or birds singing on the wind.
    “Jonas!” says Shakri, and it is apparent from her tone that this is the second or possibly third time she has called to him.
    “Sorry,” he says, turning to meet her eyes.
    “Over here, man,” she says, snapping her fingers up next to her head. “What did Paul say yesterday?”
    Jonas thinks back to his session the previous afternoon, which seems a very long time ago. “He said my mental health is surprisingly good.”
    “He always says that.”
    “He said I might want to consider not drinking for a while.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “He said I might think about going to see her, this lady, this soldier’s mother, thinks it might help me fit things together,” he says, realizing even as he does so that to say it out loud is to give shape to something he had wanted to remain formless.
    “And what do you think?”
    They sit there for a moment, Shakri looking at him ex-pectantly,and then he is certain that in the middle of their silence he can hear something in his deaf right ear, some kind of signal coming through, like strings faintly plucked.
    “He said it might give me a sense of closure.”
    “So you’ll do it?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe.”
    “I’ll drive you, if you want.”
    “Maybe,” he says.
    “You should do it.”
    “I don’t know.”
    The noise fades in and out, the soft, high song, and he turns to look out the windows, convinced he’ll see some mysterious musician strumming a sitar, but there is only the street, filled with afternoon light and bustling pedestrians.
51
    It was supposed to have been a mellow evening.
    Hakma, Trevor, and Jonas take the crosstown bus to listen to jazz on the South Side. They are going to relax. They meet up with a few other people, acquaintances more than friends, who seem to converge every time they go out. Mike, or maybe Mark, from Philadelphia. Luca, who just broke up with his girlfriend. The weekend unfurls like so many weekends among people who might be known to one another by a first name and a single personal detail, these details providing the basis for an evening’s lurching conversation, more fluid as the nightand the drinks carry on, forgotten by morning until the next weekend, or maybe the next, when the same conversation rolls around again, fresh.
    The jazz is modern stuff, which is usually not really Jonas’s thing, but the trumpeter is particularly good, playing high and wailing off the piano’s depth in unexpected ways, here a mass of unrelated notes, there a perfectly balanced chord progression, unexpected, discordant when they expect harmony, harmonious when they least expect that, alternately keeping them on edge, then lulling them.
    They drink. By the end of the set they are convinced that they have just witnessed the future of musical expression: subversive, glorious, embodying all to which music should aspire.
    When it ends they cross