Book of Numbers: A Novel (6 page)

“The investors lacked confidence in Tetration or in the
market?”

“Confidence is liability packaged as like asset, and asset packaged
as like liability. Only we were sure how it would play, going public.”

“I missed out on it totally—what was your stake,
again?”

“Nobody noticed that the 14,142,135 shares we equitized ourselves
was a reference to √2.”

“What?”

“The square root of 2: 1.414213562373—stop us when you have
had enough.”

“I will.”

“095048801688724209698078569671875376—stop us
whenever—where were we?”

“5376?”

“7187537694?”

“If I dial that, I’m calling your aunt in the
Bronx?”

“We do not have an aunt in the Bronx.”

“What about the name?”

“The name of what?”

“Joshua Cohen.”

“We invented that too?”

“Not at all, too unoriginal. That’s why they have me writing
this, you realize? I’m trying to work in something about the future of identity,
something about names linking, or mislinking. Two Joshua Cohens becoming one, or
becoming you, how it makes us feel?”

“We have the same name?”

“That wasn’t mentioned?”

“No.”

“No?”

Pause for a blush: “Dumb—it makes us feel dumb.”

“Dumb because you have me beat in the rankings? Or dumb because you
hadn’t been privy to what we’ve been sharing?”

But he’d gone dumb like mute. Dumb like no comment.

“I mean, we even resemble each other? The nose?”

Principal pinched his nose. Rigidified.

I leaned against a wall, between magicmarker scribbles labeling imminent
workstation emplacement: “A unit,” “B unit.” The dictaphone
clicked, time to flip.

Remember that? the dictaphone?

I went back to Ridgewood and typed it all up, doubled my 2000 word limit
but figured with this material they’d have to accommodate: how he hadn’t
wanted to meet, but had been compelled, how I hadn’t wanted to meet, but had been
compelled. I demarcated our respective pressures: his partners and shareholders, my rent
and ConEd.

I delineated the effect of Principal’s affect, the texture of his
flatness, how he’d left a better impression on the chair, how the chair had left
a better impression on the carpet, and concluded like the session had concluded with an
account and analysis of the one thing that’d converted his format, from .autism
to .rage—his ignorance.

Anything he missed didn’t exist for him, and whoever pointed it out
to him was destroyed. The reader was supposed to be that person—standing around,
like I’d stood around, gaping at the chutzpah.

I emailed it in—[email protected], back then. The site was pleased.
But then Tetration got in touch and requested quote approval. The site, without
consultation, agreed. Then Tetration requested nonpublication. They were expecting
doublefisted puffycheeked blowjob hagiography. I was expecting to be protected. But
no.

The writeup was killed, it was murderized. The only commission of mine
ever dead, stopped at .doc.

The site paid me half fee, and then another envelope arrived in the mail
containing a copy of my book, with an inscription on the flyleaf, “great
read!!” and an impostor’s signature, “Joshua Cohen.” The
bookmark was a blank check likewise signed, made payable to me from
Tetration, which I filled in and cashed for $1.41—proud of my
selflessness, proud of my ignorance—all endeavor is the square root of two.

\

Nothing of mine has appeared since “in
print”—rather it has, just anonymously, polyonymously, under every
appellation but my own. I spent mid to late 2004 through early to mid 2006 responding to
job listings online, falsifying résumés to get a job falsifying
résumés, fabricating degrees to get a job fabricating papers for degrees,
undergrad and grad, becoming a technical writer, a medical and legal writer, an
expatriate American lit term paper writer, a doctoral dissertation on the theological
corollaries to the Bakhtinian Dialogue writer: Buber, Levinas, Derrida, references to
Nishida tossed in at no additional cost.

I edited the demented terrorism at the Super Bowl screenplay of a former
referee living on unspecified disability in Westchester. I turned the halitotic
ramblings of a strange shawled cat lady in Glen Cove into a children’s book about
a dog detective. I wrote capsule descriptions of hotels and motels in cities I’d
never visited, posted fake consumer reviews of New England B&Bs I wasn’t
able to afford but still, two thumbs up, four and a half stars more convincing than
five, A− more conniving than +, “the deskclerk, Caleb, was just
wonderfully polite and accommodating.” Or else I posted as “Cal,”
dropping his name to assert that the B&Bs were closer to attractions, or farther
from garbage dumps, more amenitized, or less pest infested, than otherwise claimed,
while for rating car rental businesses I trended toward black, posting with
interpolations of the names of dead presidents, “Washington Roosevelt,”
and for spas and pampering ranches I tended dickless as a
“Jane”—Dear John, Sincerely, Doe.

I wrote catalog copy: “Don this classic tartan wool driving cap and
suddenly you’re transported to the greenest backroad in County Donegal. You stop
to let a shepherd get his flock across—is he wearing the same Royal Stewart as
you?”

“The time is yours and the weather is balmy. You settle into the
Arawak Hammock. You don’t notice the mesh—it’s handwoven, not
knotted, using the highest-grade cotton twill—you
don’t notice the staves—they’re handcrafted seasoned oak, providing
maximum stability, and preventing bunching and coiling. You just notice: the waves. You
sway along with the tide. Have you ever been so comfortable? (Mount and chains incl.)
(4′ W × 6 ½′ L, 16 lbs).”

I responded to an ad posted by a MetLife jr. manager seeking a
speechwriter for a banquet honoring a sr. manager on his retirement, and when the
superior told the inferior he’d enjoyed the speech, the inferior told the
superior he’d had a professional write it and the superior congratulated the
inferior on his honesty, emailed for my email, and commissioned a toast for his
granddaughter’s baptism.

Menu tweaks came in cycles, booms and busts, from fancying up to fancying
down, from overselling the Continental to underselling the American, both culinarily and
linguistically. If it wasn’t mille-feuille, it was a millennial reduction of
simple proteins, grains, and greens. The NY Landmarks Conservancy was giving some medal
to someone, a donor who lived in a landmark no doubt, and wanted to get a second
opinion, wanted a clause or two trimmed to fit the citation. Then there was that spate
of unusually tricky translations from the Hebrew, everything from subtitling a
documentary about the Jenin refugee camp (“Why was the UN factfinding mission
denied entrance? was it because after the Israelis massacred the women and children,
they still had to massacre the evidence?”), to a promotional brochure for Ben
Anak Defense Systems’ Dual-Mission Counter-Rocket, -Artillery and -Mortar
Midrange Defense System (“Shield the skies from foreign threats, now and
tomorrow, day and night, all weather”).

I responded to an ad posted by an ad agency, which was
ridiculous—how boring, brief, the ad was, yet how clumsily cumbrously phrased, it
was, misspellt? mis-punctuated!

It sought a copywriter, with special experience in the tourism sector. I
wrote a letter, telling the truth: I’m the author of (I forget what number of)
fake reviews for travel sites, which have generated (I forget what sum) in
revenue—to be sure, I made up the number, and made up the sum, but only because
I’d lost track when I tried to count all my postings, and when I called the
coordinator of the compliment firm to ask after
the revenue generated
she answered that under no circumstances would I be paid by the click and hung up on me
and never hired me again and I have to admit, being paid by the click had never occurred
to me.

I wrote up Anguilla, an island—a BOT, or British Overseas
Territory—I’d never been to, whose tourism board was eager to promote it
as a vacation destination. The salient point was that it had survived hurricanes with
its tax shelters intact. The board was so generous they flew the agency over, the agency
was so generous they gave my ticket to an intern. They returned and described, provided
photos. Big money tourism requires big history. The expense of recreation justified by
indigenous settlement (native dwellings to visit), colonial presence (churches),
frigatebirds, barracudas, whose narratives I plagiarized from nononline sources, for an
account that appeared in two periodicals I once wrote for, inside the promotional
box.

That job got me recommended for another, and that for another,
more—it feels like I’m giving a testimonial for myself. I consulted on
brandings, renamings (what to call a convertible child safety seat/pram for the Latino,
rather Latina 18–40 demographic? what to call a cunt of a Hispanic boss who
claimed my “Buggé” as her own?).

I never accepted offers to stay on, never worked at an agency on more than
one account.

Once I showed up to the same building, the same floor, but to a different
agency—in the neighborhood’s last tunnelward sewer to have resisted
redevelopment, Hell’s Kitchenette. My boss this time, the sr. creative to my jr.,
was—I’ll sell her:

Imagine taking home this beautiful young paleskinned blackhaired
late-model Jewess. Into fitness, healthy living. Raised good in better Yonkers. Mother a
Hebrew School teacher, which means for her a traditional education. Father a chief risk
officer for an energy provider in the Midwest. They’re not in touch, but still he
makes his payments. Imagine getting to know this girl, a recently promoted sr. creative
who’ll stay jr. by a decade forever. Think of the investment opportunity. NYU
grad, very oral.

Read the smallprint: too tall for me. Fit, healthy: orthorexia, multiple
gym memberships. Jewish means “babycrazy.” Maternally bonded.
Daddy issues. CV relative to youth indicates a stop at nothing
ambition. Potential for growth is immaturity. Oral means “communications
major.”

Still, I was 35, 36, and life was tighter than the plaids and jeans I
still wore from college.

The time for redress had come—bachelors buy on impulse.

If it’s too bad to be true—it’s worse, it’s
Rach. Contrary to her blog we didn’t wait until “[my] stint was
finished.” Even when I was still working under her, I was atop her. Contrary too,
I hadn’t been pleading to be kept on when she, “putting career before
[her] heart,” refused me. “i made the choice 2 fire a colleague but hire a
boyfriend”—please. “U&I,” as she refers to the
agency, is “Y&B”—clever. The Y I never met, but the B stands
for Bernoff, feely in the office. He spanked Rach once, promoted her again. Account
management. Rach always omits the spanking. We went to Italy and Greece on her new
salary, and for a business thing to amorous Detroit, where I proposed at that shisha and
arak joint she’s forgotten. I didn’t have a diamond, that’s true,
but her “he gave me his fathers dud pinkie ring” is bullshit. That was
Dad’s wedding band. Moms has never worn one (jewelry, confinement, makes her
nervous).

Rach encouraged me to write again, but encouragement has always been best
expressed in joint accounts. We were married at City Hall, 2008. “he wouldnt even
let me have a wedding, or rabbi”—but it was more like her mother wanted
Rach’s childhood rabbi and my mother wanted my childhood rabbi and I was more
interested in peace than in shattering circles under a chuppah. “he refused to
have a party because i wasnt smart enough for his friends and he didnt have any friends
left anyway”—but she can’t have it both ways, or can.

“he refused to have a honeymoon,” but we’d just put a
payment down, or Rach had just put a payment down, and we were owned by a mortgage, on a
two bedroom on 92nd & Broadway. “when my father had business in the city
he wouldnt meet him,” but who’s the “he” and who’s
the “him”? and wasn’t Rach the one who’d nixed it,
ultimately with some mad insane passive-aggressive, codependent gambit, something like
how we both have to stay home waiting for when the new dishwasher’s
delivered?

“he never wanted a kid.” Didn’t I try not just to
want one but to have one?
“before we tried 4 a kid we were
never unhappy.” Now you’re speaking for me too, like Principal, in
plural?

“he hated therapy.” But didn’t I go? “and
couldnt be faithful.” To whom?

“he was never writing,” “hell never write
again.”

Not like you I wasn’t, not like you I won’t.

“but this is all just too rushed and emotionul,” “im
trying to serve him papers but cant track him down and trying to benefit the doubt if i
cant im just gonna have to shame with embarasment.”

Please, Rach—humiliate me with your pettiness, your money mania,
your body/mind volatilities, your typos.

“2 put down everything,” “all. of. it.”

://

I couldn’t complain, or have been
more unemployed, insured, or domesticated—even a jaunt to the postoffice could
feel like a fulltime job.

Between 9/11 and 2009, Aar and I had drifted, and the drift was my fault
and then it was his and I was a failure and he a success and I spent more time mentally
recording what I took to be his snubs and negs than I did manually recording any serious
writing—I spent so much time imagining blame and resentment that if I’d
laid it out all plain on the page, it would’ve been another book, another
scuppered friendship.

But now, by having gotten married, it was as if I’d
become—acceptable. Not socially—because Aar had never cared for niceties
and still did his share of uglybumping with the underprivileged and Green
Cardless—but psychologically, maybe, I’d become psychologically tamed.

I wasn’t this demonstrably disgruntled troll anymore, living under
an overpass in the ghetto woods and pawing at an aimless compass—I’d
become an equal, an adult, equally unhappy but undramatic in adulthood—I was
trying to salvage something of myself, and maybe if this more stable, more functional
blame and resentment lasted, something literary would be makeable too. This, at least,
was one explanation, and though it was harsh, the other explanation was harsher:
laziness, on both our parts. I’d drifted out of my boroughed burrow and into
Manhattan, settling just across the park, which became our adjoining backyard: west
side, east side, Aar and I were neighbors. We could be close now in every sense, we
could have our rapprochement—all relationships are cheats of convenience, but
NYers are cruel enough to neglect a bond due only to trackwork on the L.