Joshua Cohen - Book of Numbers

I rolled over wallward and read — I read her passport. Which I mean in the idiomatic sense of “getting a read on that person,” “taking a read on the situation,” but also in the sense of “reading” being something even the inanimate can do, “the pass’s ID flap ‘read’ Sultanate of Oman, ” “it ‘read’ Izdihar al-Maribi ”—examples that should give some notion of how automatic and pointless “reading” has become.

So pointless that even paper can do it. Paper can do it for us.

Here’s how to read: take all the things that are on the page and apply them to all the things that are not on the page, and if that ever stops working, reverse it.

Place of birth/Lieu de naissance: Yemen. Date of birth/Date de naissance: whatever it was she was 20 years old. Sex, yes, please. I’m not sure height was listed, I’m sure, however, that weight was not. Eye color, brown? Hair color, brown? Married name: Albadi, which is how Omanis with Continental business pretensions spell al-Badi. Domicile: She had a Schengen Eurozone visa and French residency permit, titre de sejour temporaire but with an accent, de séjour, 76 Rue des Forges, 13010 Marseille.

Below it all the blank for her signature was blank.

I flipped it through — she’d flown only twice before this, or they’d only stamped her twice. Muscat — Paris. Paris — Abu Dhabi. Her marriage had been a layover. After wedding a wife you sweeten your nights by taking her on what’s called a honeymoon. I wonder what it’s called in Arabic, that trip you take your first wife on just before you marry your second. Because that’s what this was. Because that’s what her husband was doing.

I couldn’t let her go back to him. But then I couldn’t take her with me or even explain why. We weren’t happening as a couple. One of us was going to fail us.

The ultimate page of the passport was unreadable with handwriting. Childish fistwriting, the Arabic script of a tongue thrust in concentration through the knuckles. It must’ve been the transliteration of an address, which only partially explained the slow deliberate heavy strokes. I got the numbers at least, the numerals, though they were Arabic too.

Iz dropped the walleted jeans and my vilest madras shirt atop me, pointed a nail at the page and said, “Unfrerch a Viend. Monfrerch a Viend.”

That, combined with the only words in this alphabet, ÖSTERREICH/AUSTRIA, confirmed it: she was telling me she had a brother (un frère) who lived in Vienna (à Vienne). This was how to contact him.

Stupey of me not to jot anything down.

I got dressed so as not to be fat in her presence, got up out of bed and noticed that my wheeliebag had already been packed — everything folded, suit at the creases, shoes stinking up the nethercompartment. I mussed around for my undies and socks, displacing the twin Korans and even the porn she must’ve riffled from the endtable.

I went into the bathroom to cool shower myself and piss and not take my plane trepidation shit, not with her present.

I came back redressed just as she was raveling my Tetbook in its wire — I jumped at her—“No, non.”

She huddled again until I was whispering, “OK, it’s OK,” and as I packed my tote myself I said, “You go à Vienne? Not me. You. Pas moi. Vous. I pay — comprendre?”

She said, “Oui.”

I said, “L’aéroport we go together — ensemble?”

She said, “Oui. Mon passeport?”

I pinched into my jeans and returned it and then she went for the waistband of her sweatsuit for two other passports — Americans — mine and Principal’s, warmed by her belly. We traded.

She said, “Avanty l’aéroport, lemall?”

“Le what?” I said.

“Boutiques.”

But this wasn’t romantic, or nostalgia for the site of our meeting — this backtracking of ours to the Khaleej mall, Iz in Tetgear and heels and me wheeling both my bag and her aluminum rocket case just as the boutiques were raising their grates.

We were in such a hurry and it was all so unplanned that I’m not going to describe it fairly. If I say (write) that it was Iz who led us into every outlet and down every aisle choosing the wardrobe I’d be buying for her, I’d be making her out to be greedy, acquisitive. If I say (write) that because I was doing the buying I did the leading and choosing too, I’d be deprivileging her, depriving her of agency. Either way, I’d be a monster.

Anyway, in terms of appearances it didn’t matter what I thought — it mattered what everyone else thought, though this early the only other people on the concourse were maintenance Filipinos riding EV tilescrubbers. I told myself Iz was Egyptian, or Jordanian, one of the liberals, and I wasn’t her west but her center. We would convey our Christianity by paying retail. I posed between fittingrooms and tried to look like I wasn’t looking. And tried not to hear as the poised blithe clerks — Caucasians but like from the Caucusus, the Khanates, who’d been addressing Iz in an uppity Arabic — cackled amongst themselves in Q train Russian about my “zhena,” my “wife,” my “doch,” my “daughter,” whom I’d struck raw and now owed for the damages.

A budget is a soiled outfit that has to be squeezed into. I was suggesting drawstrung leisurewear of her own, for her plane comfort, from Aéropostale (Fit & Flare Bottoms, €38, Sequined Fullzip Hoodie Top, €38).

But Iz wasn’t interested, and she wasn’t even trying to communicate why — whether her legs were feeling smothered, or she intuited that a transition as drastic as hers required glamour. Iz pointed to a dress in the window. Regardless of any outfits she found in the interior Iz seemed to prefer what was in the window. The clerks must’ve said there weren’t any left or in her size, though — Chechens still lag in the customer service department — so Iz just teetered up to the display and nudged the dress down herself.

I splurged (Hugo Boss Metallic Two Tone Sheath, €790).

Skirts were next and priced equally though half the length to her dimpled kneelessness. And tighter than her own skin. Her walk runnethed over down the runway of aisle. She was showing off for me, but also not only for me, and I was doing the same just by letting her try the stuff on. And by buying it. We were showing off for the fellow shoppers so mortified they were pretending to be clerks and the clerks so mortified they were pretending to be fellow shoppers. Iz, it appeared, had that tacky rhiney sequiney taste that I’d always assumed, from Aaron’s experience with the girls of NY’s postcommunist boroughs, was Slavic, but was evidently common to new arrivals of every ambition. Blouses in endangered antelope prints that Iz must’ve considered sexy, but that I thought could only be worn ironically and Rach would’ve thought could only be worn cynically. Immigrant fashion. Social mores as brands. It’s about finally having some money to flaunt. Money, which buys them the body they already own, or at least something of the body they’ve sold. Iz held the lovehandles of herself between mirrors. Don’t go dressing for the passport you have, but for the passport you deserve.

Chanel Lambskin Leather Hamptons Bag (purse), €2,188. La Senza Microfiber Low Rise Lace Trim Thong, Medium, three for €20, La Senza Pushup Plunge Bra With All Over Geo Lace, 80D EU/36D USA, three for €28.

To the next man who’ll be with her — you’re welcome.

And though I tried telling her how cold it’d be in Vienna, she wouldn’t even try the jacket, would only let them wrap it. A €340 Belted Puffer Jacket from Armani Exchange, but nonreturnable.