Joshua Cohen - Book of Numbers

No one got off with me and walked to my building. We were middle of the block. I walked into a dream sequence. The groundfloor used to be a grocer’s then a stationary store then if you know what this is a notions shop, used broken clocks that customers paid for the repair and got the watch free, or paid for the watch and got the repair free, but now it’s a locksmith but closed, I don’t know whether closed permanently or if it also did a business in Our Lady of Guadalupe or else it had just a lot of plaster virgins and glass votives in its window behind the shutter and the window was shuttered. “Back when I was growing up” the owner of a business all they ever hoped to do was own the building so that downstairs was where they worked and upstairs was where they lived above it but our unit didn’t appear to beinhabited. My father, not Shale but Shulinsky, was a failed grocer then a failed stationary store and notions shop owner then he rented the floor below to my mother’s brother, who was my uncle to run “his junkyard,” from money he had from an injury settlement from constructing the Goethals Bridge. Uncle Sruly who always played the sportsbook went to Aqueduct one Rosh Hashana and didn’t come back not even for Yom Kipper. For my mother this was tough. He won too much or lost too much but they didn’t find the body until I forget until. After. Washed up and leaking through his wounds the Gowanus.

I was standing outside recollecting my flashback from the sidewalk before realizing that someone was behind me on the sidewalk. I don’t want to accuse and say this someone was Hispanic or Latino if there’s a distinction because I couldn’t tell and didn’t want to turn around to tell, because he, I’m just guessing he was he, I could just feel his weight, he was very close to me. I decided to walk. A block. I walk fast and faster and if I was cold before now I was warm and though it was only 20 blocks but it was forever. The blocks are long are very long because industrial. The Mex was just behind me. It was always just an industrial stretch to avoid between the cemeteries of my parents who emmigrated from Warsaw as babies in the 1920s (emmigrated separately, the Shulinskys and Ratschelds — they were cousins and so Uncle Sruly was also my father’s cousin).

I had the directions from my house in my pocket to your office but couldn’t slow down to reach them but could find my way without them anyway. Linden across the intersection and under the L not running still to busier Gates, straight up, Forest, which I had never been on, Metropolitan, neither I had been on this stretch og it. I have to admit this to me is just a mystery what you do. Not what you do in this neighborhood so cruddy and all the clapboard out of vinyl. The halal laundromats and Polish not Jewish but Polish hair salons and Hindu destints, every dentist named Raj. But what you do with writing or used to do. All the time I was going up Gates north this Mex was following me. He was on my heels but that’s difficult to communicate. It’s very difficult how swift he was run. At leats on the screen there is music and sound effects and editing tricks especially to cover the time of the visuals and motion.

(I could already make out a white guy we would have entitled The Aussie in our youth down the block and waved to him and he waved back to me. I was coming closer. I didn’t think this was Bob Onders from Vanderende because I didn’t know how his appearance. Then I was crossing from Forest and on the corner. He was very white, which I will own up to it encouraged. Metropolitan was slow of traffic. Just the diesel tractortrailers and vans. I waved again to make sure he was “with me,” and he waved again and the Mex must have realized I was “with him,” because he just crossed Metropolitan toward the Carvel and either went inside or didn’t. Your rep Daniel Makelsen couldn’t even notice him.

I hope you are nice to this nice Dan Makelsen. Though isn’t he too slightly old to be an assistant? He is so white but in wonderful shape, very worldly, with that politeness you find only in veterans. But isn’t that a fascinating biography he has coming from Russia and not Sydney at all? He was giving me tips on postwalk postrun limbering out on the curb waited to be let in. He has the charm to be an actor so it’s a pity how his neck’s deformed. I told him that about the charm only and about my concept for a book series for children about the adventures of Dabb the lizard from that Dabb franchise I was did and he urged me to put together a proposal and then delinated how to put together a proposal. And we will work together hopfully.

And then in a flawless Chrysler Imperial Bob Onders arrived.

Bob Onders who shook hands with me and Dan Makelsen is bald with limited sharp blonde stubble and his head is red, and the rest is eminently freckled. It is either a tan from working outdoors or hypertension, his head. He dons thick black plastic glasses and a gray jacket that says Vanderende Management, under which he dons an Islanders tshirt and careworn light blue jeans by Levi. His boots are Timberland. He chews tobacco and spits into the bottom sliced out of a plasticbottle I’m not sure was for water or soda but also smelled of vodka. He does not come off as the kind of guy who’d spend his cash on water. When he let me in with Dan Makelsen he held the bottle bottom in his mouth to hold the door, took the bottle bottom back in his hand and ushered me up the stairs, it’s a lot of flights but we’re in better shape and at the door to your unit he put the bottom back in his huffing mouth and took a keyring from his pocket and found the key marked with black electrical tape and put it in the lock and turned and turned the knob, held the door and stood around and spit (stage direction).

I can’t believe it, Josh. I can’t believe you put up with a place so unheated and where the light won’t turn off, the light’s always on and makes such a rattling and above all 40 watt. And you have so many books, so many that you by default don’t want, by default. Such a goddamn mess. But then we were also shocked. Dan Makelsen packed up the computer. I have no doubt you won’t be shocked. Because as we poked around I caught myself realizing how absurd this was but I was apologizing to Dan Makelsen, for you. The cartons, the fucking cardboard cartons, of pornography. Disgusting! I don’t want to tell Rach but I’m not sure I have a choice for full disclosure. So much porn you have. The sluttiest! Reels, photos, dittos stripclubs hand out for the whore ads. Fistfucking, chestshitting, cornholing, pissdrink. True vintage collectibles. Shit only an officionado would own. The labels were W (black) w/ Stallion (black), W (white) w/ Pony (skewbald), M on M cow (costume), M on M on F Dwarf “speakeasy 1929,” which were disgusting for what they were but also for how antique and unlike your other piles organzied by theme, Bestiality, Gangbang, Minstrel, Red Army Sexual Hygiene Instructional Materials. I confess I was emphafically not going to sift this. I enraged at you. I we’d given you a chance. Rach had given you so many chances that I wanted to toss it out. Then I wanted to just take it all and send it to you COD. Send it to you COD destroyed. Take it and fence it immediately, one lot (though Rach’s correct in that we’d get better prices on the other belongings from auction houses that will have to appraise and by putting the other belongings online).

But no, I became calmed down.

I have followed every law and then be courteous like a cherry on top.

Yes also I would know where to send it now. Or at least Rach has a knowledge as to your whereabouts approximately. Because her therapy blog has a stat counter that’s counted traffic from throughout the United Arabic Emirates but also from Palo Alto, California, which neighbors San Francisco. Dhubai. Abu Dhaubi. Daily for a while. Consistent with Amex conditions.