Joshua Cohen - Book of Numbers

A girl bordelloized to impress asked, “When’s Lady Gaga showing?” A ranchhanded guy said, “It’s Dylan & Jagger,” and the girl asked, “Who’s that?”

I waited for my hooch behind a pornstached chillionaire and his two brogrammer friends, by which I mean his coworkers at #Summerize, according to their shirts and shorts and hats.

One said, “You can’t change the scale without scaling the change.”

Another said, “Evoke transcendence.”

The chillionaire said, “Will you stop reading that neurolinguistic reinforcement pickup artist shit? This party’s got mad fucking latency to it.”

His coworkers nodded up from their Tethelds and the transcendence guy said, “All paradigms can be realigned, modulo a pussy deficit. Because if we don’t count the nontech women, who don’t count us, we’re dealing with 6s, the same as always, mid 6s.”

“Get positivized,” the scalar change guy said. “Or just get beyond the systems integration analysts — the ad rep girls are 8s for def.”

The chillionaire said, “For me, this birthday’s all about trying to get an audience with the boss. I mean, he bought us without even meeting us, who does that?”

His coworkers clenched smiles at me. The chillionaire noticed and answered himself, “A fucking genius is who. What are you guys feeling — the no carbs rum horchata punch? Or the Red Bull Añejo Paloma?”

But his coworkers’ faces shone expressionlessly rapt again in the glows of their Tethelds until the chillionaire said, “Before your batteries are cashed, are you guys checking in with your Tetsets?”

They keyed, and the scalar change guy said, “This says there’s a quidditch game for new acqhires happening over by the stables.”

The transcendence guy said, “This says if anyone finds a yellow/black GoreTex GoreBike windstopper cycling shell, please reply, reward negotiable.”

“There’s a capture the flag tourney for vest & resters that’s voting now on team captains.”

“This says P Diddy’s taking all the ad rep pussy to the sweat lodge.”

“Hey, sorry, disruption incoming,” and the chillionaire was talking to me now. “Can you just take a square of us?”

He handed me his Tetheld, the only one I’ve ever held, and it was anodized cool. I tried to get them all onscreen. But I wasn’t sure what to press, or if there was anything to press. Or even whether the recording was still or in motion, with sound. An Asian, an Arab, and an Indian, all speaking together in questionmarks like white girls. Such were my unspoken thoughts, which only I can record, I think.

The Asian thanked me and posted the groupsquare crossplatform from his Tetset and the Arab and Indian reposted to their own Tetsets, and read the replies as they blipped in: “giddyup you cutie cowboys,” “fuck u and fuck the startup u rode in on.”

It was their turn to order from the Conestoga. They ordered waters with electrolytes.

I had the fringey coonskincapped hipster pour me an artisanal vodka with artisanal rocks.

As I went for a cig he said, “No smoking.”

“Where?”

“Nowhere on property.”

They didn’t need a sign. They needed a sign for everything else.

“La Bano?” I pointed, “the toilets?” and while the frontierster was pointing them out, I swiped a bottle, biomash rye.

I headed away, swerved for the trees. Forgive me. Fine me for tossing my lighter. It was empty but I still had matches.

I staggered, rolled like a stone. It was all a ball of feints, disguises. Power masquerading as responsibility, stewardship. Excess but slim, trim. Spiritual emaciation in good citizen costume. Wastefulness spun as ethical consumption. A party in honor of health, which improved health. Nothing could fool me, or could fool me enough.

Still, I couldn’t get no satisfaction — the leaves rasping hey hey hey. Cause I tried, and I tried, and I tried, and I tried — to distinguish between the rustic and the epic style art: a Calder stabile like a girdered ferruginous rhododendron, and what was either a Richard Serra or a Donald Judd or a boulder.

I couldn’t shake a certain bumpkinish feeling, that sense of being a hick, a rube, an unacceptable regression. I spurred myself sloppy, smoked and drank with the roots.

Just ahead was a stand of trees, just tremendous trees, mossy antennas, redwood but pulsing black — their monitors were black, and their bark was livid brown, quakefissured. They too had to acclimate after being transplanted. Weldmesh fence prevented my touch. The path went around them and pebbled away and was panned into sand by the grass.

It was a spit of beach along a salina bayscape. A dimidiate moon, and stars falling darkly pacific.

From out of the nebula and down the beach, a desperado was approaching. I didn’t have a weapon, I was freelance. I dug in, sparked the pack’s penultimate cig, contemplated another message for the bottle besides breaking it. On his skull, on mine.

He swayed, wary, rolledup pants, rolled shirtsleeves, suitjacket looped around neck, a sockstuffed shoe in each hand, whiteness, Finn.

“Can I get a taste?”

“Taste the empty?” I tipped the bottle to grains.

“Then a smoke?”

I passed the butt, “Why not share?”

He dragged, “You’ve been making the rounds?”

“I’ve had people to meet — putting faces to names and names to faces. The next round I’m putting bodies to bodies.”

Finn ashed, returned what was left, for me to snuff.

He said, “I’m not keeping tabs.”

“I am?”

“But Aaron just happened to mention — something about the wife? She got you down?”

“Mine or yours?”

Finn clapped his heels, “You want some advice, Josh?”

“About what — always be a friend to your friends? Never go swimming on a full stomach?”

Finn grinned, “The book: it can’t be a book — it has to be an option. Write it for the screen. The game version. Whatever.”

“That’s it?”

“I need a property,” he mooned. “I need an adaptation.”

\

I felt it the next morning. Noon, after. Nothing but hangover fog, a lukewarm front of quit throat. Giving way by evening to arrogance.

Nobody came.

I checked my new account: one email, my first. Jcohen19712@tetmail.com. An invitation to yesterday, a link to a dietary survey. Made another resolution: quit drinking and smoking, check email more or less often.

Drag. Dump Trash. An empty inbox, an empty outbox. A pure, an impeccable, soul.

I went out to get something to eat, and some head analgesia. Just when I had my hand on the handle, a voice said, “Hungry?”

I turned.

The voice said, “Aspirin or ibuprofen?”

“What?”

Voice circumambient, modulated with viperish reverb, then a panel withdrew, the monition of a monitor face. Just opposite my cot. Principal’s face. But frozen, cryogenized.

I assumed a malfunction, a fritz.

“It is just a still,” the voice said. “Official as like for a book.”

“As like what?”

“Or perhaps this one is better?” and the monitor regressed: a Founder’s shot, him next to a — I’m just going to call it a server. “Or this one?” a yearbook shot — highschool? college? — teeth agleam amid pleiades of acne. “Or maybe this?” a newborn frame, squashed and jaundiced, clawmarks at the cheeks. “Or?”

“Whichever the fuck,” and again, the first familiar image was restored.

“Come back toward the cot — hang out.”

“You can see me?”

“Confirmative.”

“You can hear me?”

“Confirmative, though on the cot is better — hang loose.”

“You’re fucking snooping on me?”

“We are doing no such thing. We are offering naproxen? Acetaminophen? Depends how your stomach is — you should not need an anti-inflammatory.”