Joshua Cohen - Book of Numbers

“You make $60K.”

“OK, $60.”

“Just help me out, Lis. I promise I’m good for it.”

She held her purse, both hands. That’s it. Nothing else and no deeper meaning. Lisabeth held onto her purse with both hands. She pallbore toward the rear of the hall — heels icepicking past the newest electroflex displays and penputing and fingerink platforms, then wading sullen through crumpled snowballs of epaper — to a temporary slidewall set with fussy ATMs. As we waited our turn she went on a pillage for the appropriate card — tampon, aloe handsanitizer, lipstick, gums, cherry suckers — verlag businesscards origamized or anxiously twisted, laundryoom passkey, Tetheld, lists, personal debit, platinum Visa, its frosty hologram unmistakable.

“Just use that one,” I said. “That has to be your parents’. ”

To be desperate is to live off what others let you have — I wonder if Aar ever met, and if so what his impressions were of, her parents.

She snorted and did the hairtuck behind the ears, what loyalty. Pathic girl, ticridden girl, who typed with nibbled nails and left voicemails with bruxism. She’d tolerated so much, so many clients reliant, and Aar, who’d insisted on salutations on email, phone honorifics, smoking indoors, rye in the drawer, regular drycleaning. He’d preferred the place 10 blocks south unless he’d needed the suit same day, in which case there was a place two blocks north, though he’d always leave it up to her to intuit which he’d needed. This was what I wanted to tell her, how grateful Aar’d been, how appreciative. How freeing but how guiltily freeing it was now that he wasn’t around to stop me from deceit.

With our turn I hung back, pointlessly because Lisabeth faced fully machineward, screening me from the screen and the keypad, her mouthbreathing fogging the prompts but not her compliance. To both sides other patrons swiped, tapped, scifi luminance and blare, sci-nonfi. The units were teleporters, timemachines. This wasn’t Frankfurt anymore, but Whitehall Street 2002. This was Miri’s bookstore, but in its afterlife as bank, and not even a fullservice bank, just machined, a Chase, which anytime I visited Aar’s office above it I took as command, chase the past forever. This was Achsa’s first time back since the space’s conversion. Aar, who had to work, and had no babysitter, and had to get cash anyway, had turned it into a lesson. Achsa knew what she stood in, tile, plateglass, she knew what’d happened to her mother’s books, the same thing that’d happened to her mother. They’d gone away and been turned into money. She’d asked how the cash got into the machine and Aar’d asked her back, just guess. Achsa’d said maybe it was printed, like a printer was housed inside each unit. Try again. Maybe it was like a sewer, she’d said, or like with trees, the roots of trees, the money was always just flowing through tubes, which routed it to blossom at locations of customer request. Aar’d loved that explanation. On the way home they’d passed a produce stand, he’d said, and Achsa hadn’t known what to make of an apple whose stem still had its leaf. It was news to her and shared delicious.

Choose English. I snagged the first two digits of Lisabeth’s PIN. 8, 0. Choose the cash advance.

“How much?”

“How much’s the max?”

Her $500/withdrawal limit rounded to €360, apparently, which we went for four times, and I even went in for scolding her, made her wait around for the last receipt to spit, while her Tetheld quaked with calls, msgs, txts, Momcell, Daddygreenwichwork, and fraud alert premonitions, and she ignored them.

What mystified, though, and heartened, was her holding out the bills and saying, “How are you going to convince me to expense this?”

“I’m a client, aren’t I? Haven’t we been discussing me?”

She shelled shut her wallet and pursed it. “Just don’t lose it.”

“All spending is losing, but sure.”

She yelled, “I don’t mean the money. Get drunk again, get a prostitute. You dick. I mean Cal’s novel — we can’t have it floating around.”

The envelope, which I’d been carrying. “Confirmative.”

A sigh. “Josh, tell me — why aren’t writers invited to Frankfurt?”

“Why?”

“Because they can’t deal with the fact that this is a business.”

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a-bintel-b.tlog.tetrant.com/2011/01/07/thedumpydump2

expectancy. life comes first in semesters for school second in quarters for career and third in trimesters after which life ends and no one hangs with friends. but when i got pregs all my friends had become mothers already and they hadnt had time for me in semesters quarters my first trimester where they finally surfaced because i was finally becoming their peer. babyclothes and cribs and strollers and just about every other type of castoff handmedown bottle bootie were arriving by mail or being dropped off and explained over wheatgrass juice and muffintop brownies.

moom wanted to know how long i intended to nurse before she told me how long was recommended but her recommendation was shorter than anything in books or on weaner.org. its def a girl or boy i can tell moom was always telling me and “emi” said wed want to know before and that was the best decision and “tal” said we absolutely wouldnt want to know before and that was the best decision. hospital drugs and the nosocomical infections had to be weighed against the risk of homebirth and if homebirth a decision had to be made whether to purchase a tub or borrow a friends and disinfect it. like if you go to do what your parents did if you cursed as a kid you washed the kids mouth out but now that was considered abuse and if you did that you had to be concerned with whether what you washed with contained toxins.

but $@#! it was $@#!ing exhilarating. i was glowing healthy and even smelled nice like a bakery of pearls j said i wasnt showing just yet. the fertility docs each recommended their own gynobstetrician so we went browsing and still to doc meanley who was encouraging. he said we were doing better than ever until he pressed j to share and j who never liked being pressed said that he considered a child like a book like hed get to write a child but doc meanley dispproved and asked what happens if you get blocked dont books end up writing you and though j was peeved doc meanley pressured more by claiming that j was being “aversive.” He asked why did you try for a baby if you dont actually want a baby to which j asked “why did i get married if i didnt actually want a marriage” and the doc said it was enough with the “aversives” but then j said “i got married and am having a baby with her so that no one else would [have to????] because i love her so much” what a schmuck if youre reading this having you in my life was already like having a child.

work was so great to me too that already just the moment i told my boss “ben itkowitz” (reread my pseudo/anonymity policy) he was jumping up and down with me saying bubele take all the leave you need. which in ben language meant you best square everything away before you pop one. which meant training my templacement just personable enough that s/he would get on as comfy as sportswear with the clients but also just shoddy and incompatent enough for dealing with coworkers officeside that s/hed get fired if they didnt consult me on every single detail throughout my maternity. that was the only move to make according to “emi” and “tal” for u&i to beg me back to acct mgmt and beyond that promote me. also i needed to prepare clientside transitions for all the open accts though i have to be careful what im typing “net bank of new england ii” “manic webisode” “hellacopter: da game” “pomegranate” “beverage” all while brainstorming a campaign for the alarm system thing and planning the probono.