Joshua Cohen - Book of Numbers

Achsa shrugged on her straps and said, “Hairy vederci”—to me.

Aar said, “No cutting.”

But she’d already turned away — from a shelfy front to a shelf of rear, enough space there for all the books she had, jiggling.

“Blessed art Thou, Lord our God,” I said, “Who Hath Prevented me from Reproducing.”

“Amen.”

“But also she resembles her mother.”

“My sister,” Aar said, “the African.”

East, we went east again — away from fancy au pairland, the emporia that required reservations. Toward the numbered streets, to the street before the numbers, not a 0 but a York — Ave.

Pointless bungled York, a bulwark. Manipedi and hair salons. Drycleaning. Laundry.

Outside, the doublesided sandwichboard spread obscenely with the recurring daily specials still daily, still special, the boardbreaded sandwiches and soups scrawled out of scraps, the goulash and souvlaki and scampi, leftover omelets and spoiled rotten quiches, the menus inside unfolding identically — greasy. The vinyls were grimy and the walls were chewed wet. A Mediterranean grove mural was trellised by vines of flashing plastic grape. A boombox was blatting la mega se pega, radio Mexicano.

The methadone girl was working, and so the methadone was working on the girl. Our counter guy wiped the counter.

In this diner as in life, nothing came with anything, there were no substitutions — it was that reminder we craved. A salad wasn’t just extra, but imponderable. A side of potatoes was fries. We always went for a #13 and a 15—which was cheaper than getting the #s 2, 3, 4, and 5—a booth in the back like we were waiting for the bathroom.

Aar ordered from the methadone girl, “The usual,” and then explained again what that was, and then explained the job: “Just your average lives of the billionaires vanity project, the usual.”

I didn’t even have water in me — nothing to spit or sinuose through the nose. Just: “This is the guy who haunts me?”

“Who called me directly and Lisabeth put him through, saying it’s you, and straight off he’s proposing a memoir.”

“He wants me to be his ghost?”

The caffeines came, and the juices — an OJ agua fresca.

Aar went for his giftbox trimmed in ribbons. An expertly tied bow resembling female genitalia.

He took his knife and deflowered it all to tinsel, tissue—“You’re the only one he wants.” Champagne.

“We’re popping bottles?”

“What do you suppose they charge for corkage?” He held the magnum under the table, until the radio repeated its forecast, a chance of showers onomatopoeia — no fizz, no froth, just a waft at the knees — and he took both juice cups down and poured them brimming and then setting the magnum at his side offered to clink chevronated plastics:

“To the JCs! The one and the only!”

“But which am I?” though I was sipping.

“We’re dealing either with a dearth of imagination,” Aar swallowed. “Or an excess.”

“I thought he hated me — I thought he’d forgotten me before we even met.”

“May we all be hated for such money — Creator of the World and of all the Universe, Creator — may we too be forgotten under such munificent terms.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s already sold.”

“A stranger’s autobiography I haven’t agreed to write yet has already been sold how? To whom?”

“I wasn’t sure you’d agree so I went ahead,” and he reached for his pocket, for a napkin, a placemat.

A contract stained with waiver, disclaimer.

\

Sign and date here and here and here and here, initial. I have to fill them in — the what else to call them? the blanks?

By now I’m through saying that my book changed everything for everyone around it, around me — I’d recognize the smell of burning ego anywhere.

Not even the events — the explosions — changed everything for everyone. But still it’s unavoidable. He is, Finnity. After my book, he never went back to editing lit — meaning, he never again worked on a book I respected.

Out of favor with the publisher — a press founded as if a civic trust by dutiful WASPs, operated as if a charity by sentimental Jews, whose intermarried heirs were bought out by technocrats from Germany — Finnity transferred, Aar said Finnity told him, or was transferred, Aar maintained, to another imprint, a glossier less responsible imprint where he acquired homeopathic cookbookery, class-actionable self-help, and a glossy, Strasbourg-born associate editor who also happened to be the only daughter of the chairman of the parent multinational, the top of not just the Verlagsgruppe but of the whole entire media conglomerate, getting intimate with the business from the bottom (missionary position).

Two children by now, a house in New Canaan.

He’s become a revenue dude — a moneymaker.

Anyway, Aar — vigilantly sensitive to the vengeance of others — had gone to him first, and Finnity hadn’t believed him.

“I’ll be straight with you,” Aar said to me. “First he tried to talk me out of you, then we both got on the phone to conference JC2, let’s say, and Finnity went naming all my other clients.”

“But you insisted?”

“He insisted — your double.”

“He doesn’t assume from that dead assignment I know anything about online?”

“What’s to know? You go, you hunt and peck, what comes up?”

“Twin lesbians? My bank balance?”

“Words, just words. You know this.”

“Did you know he read my book?”

“Joshua Cohen is always interested in books written by Joshua Cohen.”

“Joshua Cohens or Joshuas Cohen?”

“Or maybe his hobby’s the Holocaust — why not? Whose isn’t?”

“Or maybe it’s another gimmick, like to keep it out of the press that he’s not writing it himself — or like for marketing.”

“Actually the contract provides for that: strictly confidential. He worked it out himself, no agent on his behalf. You’re nondisclosured like a spook. Like a spy. You can forget about any duple credit on the covers, or the two of you breaking names up the spine. No ‘As told to,’ no ‘In collaboration with’—we’re talking no acknowledgment, not even on copyright.”

“Actually that makes the offer compelling.”

Aar went for my bagel, caved it. Laid on the creamcheese, waxy mackerel, frozen sewerlids of tomato and onion. To eat one bagel he had to have two, because he only ate the tops. The tops had all the everything seasonings.

Poppy, sesame, garlic, gravel salt: his breath as he said, “What compels, my friend, is the money.”

“It’s a lot of fucking money.”

“What we’d be getting paid is a lot, what the publisher would be paying is a fucking lot — for him it’s just snot in a bucket.”

“How much would he get?”

“How much I can’t say,” but Aar took up his knife again, pierced one of my yolks, and scribbled in the yellow.

A dozen times my fee.

The waitress came by not to clear us — we weren’t through yet — rather to plunk down two styro cups, and so the magnum was brought up and poured, settled on the table.

She smiled to demonstrate her braces — all there was between the trackmarks at her jugulars and her bangs held back with bandaids — and took the full cups and gave one to our cash register guy and they ¡saluded! each other and us from the takeout window and drank and sparked a swisher cigarillo and passed it. Enjoy.

Aar was in the middle of saying, “Even them—¿comprende? ¿me entiendes? you can’t tell anyone — anything.”

“I get it.”

“Not a word, he was adamant about that,” and Aar was too. “He wanted to contact you directly, wanted to do this without me, represent you himself — he’s even insisting that the publisher not announce the deal.”