Joshua Cohen - Book of Numbers

Then he was in the closet and hatching the roomsafe, at the window taking down the blackout shades. He straddled a clubchair and vented his crotch, dejacked the phone with a boot.

This was my thought, with him just across: this is what my children’s children I’ll never have will look like, will sound like, will be. From nowhere, from everywhere, edged up against crisp cropped skin in desert digifatigues whirring with muscle or device.

Not even his scars were humanizing: the 12 seared bars I counted just told other machines his price.

He unsnapped a pannier, dug out like a black snowglobe, set it on the table between us and dialed around until its northern antipode was palpitating red and on TV the contestants did the fizzle shimmy, dead.

“Gute nacht to you too,” I said.

“You say that only to sleep,” he said. “You must say instead guten abend.”

“What fucking toy is that — an evil baseball?”

“We have here the yammer,” he said. “It is yamming for us all wireless wave frequency and electromagnetic transmission. On multiband level to 1500 MHz for 30m radius. Including all remote neural dragnet spying on human brainwave.”

“Here I was trying to keep my thoughts to myself. It’s a jammer, by the way.”

He tried to wrest a smile, from either of us. “It is very dumb that you left Berlin.”

“Blame yourself,” I said, “I left because I was broke. All you had to do was bring me my cash and still you fucked that up.”

“How is that happening? Do you not get money?”

“Not from you. Not from Balk.”

“I mean from Aaron Szlay, mate. That is why you come here. He gives you money you give to him files? But are they a copy on drive or your computer?”

“What’s it to you? Haven’t you fucked with enough of my technology?”

Maleksen juggled the dark globe, then repanniered it.

“Your trip to NY — breaking into my office? I was waiting for you to bring it up.”

“They let me in, mate — you have no security. b-Leaks is only ensuring there is no copying of files.”

“Why not just ask?”

“Because if we ask we have to trust. You know about this visit to your dumb office as you call it only because you go online, and you are ordered not to do that.”

“I’m not in the Swiss Army, you fuck. I don’t do orders.”

“You must explain this to Thor. To me you must explain your addiction to Zionism. I like only the writings about your wife and the film script, because it is about space travel. The rest of the documents on that computer, no — I think your experiences are maybe not as important as you think they are.”

“Maybe you weren’t supposed to read them?”

“The videos,” he said. “You must turn them over.”

“What?”

“The videos of the interviews, mate.”

“The interviews I did were audio.”

“Any format is acceptable. Just turn them over.”

“The recordings are only on my computer, and my computer’s only in Berlin. Anyway, I don’t do anything without authorization.”

“Thor authoritates.”

“I don’t mean Balk — I mean the man whose life I’d be duping away. We have the same name, they’re on the same contract.”

“He is gridless. We have no coordinates.”

“Writing himself barefoot in the dust of an interior Pradesh. That’s convenient.”

Maleksen stood—“But they are not secure, mate. The recordings. They can be wiped. Or corrupt.”

“The plan was that I hold the recordings until deadline. If I fuck up the deadline and don’t hand a book in, b-Leaks gets the recordings and goes live. Only then, though. And I have time.”

Maleksen went over to the dresser. Pulled a drawer. The next drawer he pulled off its tracks. He capsized the table there’s no name for.

“What the fuck? This isn’t even my room.”

He went for that shelf that ran opposite the bathroom. His hands under it, frisking. Pushing up on the bolts, shaking the snackbasket, mantelclock. A History of Frankfurt .

“Fuck, stop — will you? I didn’t bring anything with me — the computer’s in Berlin.”

“No,” and he turned, a hand lingering on the shelf. “In Berlin is a flat b-Leaks assigns you. In the flat are insects from the trash of shit hydrogenated cornsyrup America suppers, all over the antiques of senior b-Leaks allies. But in the flat there are no computers.”

“You were there?”

“I am there at times you are not.”

Neighbors, if people in adjacent hotelrooms can be neighbors, were smacking at the walls to quiet down.

I got up from the bed, it took me standing to realize how halfnaked I was. I had one hand to gesture with if I wanted to keep my modesty, or appendages.

I said, “I’ll be back in Berlin — I don’t need to tell you when — I’m sure you’ll find out when before I do. Then we can arrange to talk this out with Balk.”

Maleksen went for the door, but then aboutfaced, took my towel in hand and yanked it clear off. Then he left.

And there it was, my prick.

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There was no way I was going back to dreamlessness after that — there was no Aar. It was 8:00 on the restored TV and the tickers scrummed the rugby scores. I went fisting my socks prolapsed, and my skidmarked tightywhities. By the time they’d dry frühstück would be over. Petit déjeuner, desayuno, breakfast. The Frankfurter Hof’s laundry service takes 24 hours. I habilimented myself all stiff, retrieved my Tetbook. I left Sky News on for a ruse, left everything in the halogenic heated bathroom on, left the mirror on, left.

I elevatored down to the lobby, lined up behind my nose and became the garnish to a salad of Spanish, Italian, Greek, all propping menus I didn’t have. Printer paper spiralized between clear covers, mss. I made the buffet, filled a plate with what was left of the healthies, fruitsnvegs, before staking out the carbohydrate troughs. Then it was all a matter of doing the school or employee cafeteria dance, whom to sit with, but none of the tables were empty enough, rather any that were just as I approached them were being whisked and stripped.

Some situations were meetings of four people reading and some situations weren’t meetings but also four people reading. Still other business transpired, like the two bedheads blanking their faces above a twotop whose snidely gliding linens suggested footsie, legwork, crotching. Man with a hirsute Mediterranean goat vibe slumped low to gain traction, woman this pale Dutch scullery maid all gyral and shifting her sheath, neither of them speaking too good the English, the only language besides the shoelessness between them. They’d been adulterating everything. Their pdas mated vibrationally amid cutleries, their respective spouses calling — I had to resist picking up. I had to resist removing their footgear from the surrounding chairs and sitting to offer advice — it’s always better to pick up, feign static.

Then toward the pastryside of the buffet in the middle of the room was this big burl of a guy by himself, tunic of a tshirt held together by electrical tape, baggy jeans from the nuclear winter collection, sneaks blatantly inspired by better sneaks, fingerless gloves he pounded into the pockets of a skanky nylon windbreaker. Wiccan roadkill hair parted sparsely in the middle hanging limp like two wimpy black anarchist flags. As I passed I noticed the catalog he was reading, the selfie, his, he was studying below his name, and I stopped without even proceeding into the accompanying bionote. There are no words, there is no word, for having translated my own translator.