Joshua Cohen - Book of Numbers

The time/distance required for luxuries to become staples, wants to become needs. London’s just around the corner, Paris can be ordered, ensuite. Our access is bewildering, not just beyond imagination, but becoming imagination. We can only search the found, find the searched, and charge it to our room.

The time/distance required for luxuries to become staples, wants to become needs. London’s just around the corner, Paris can be ordered. Our access is bewildering. We can only search the found, find the searched, and charge it to our room.

Principal thrives on consistency.

Every accommodation, each site of a sessh, has quartered his Buddhas, and patchouli wafters, the tantra appurtenances: vajra and ghanta, mandala.

Vajra: a small bolt capped with pins like an antique mainframe’s vacuum tube. Ghanta: a small bell that dinged histrionically. Both objects of contemplation. Brass.

Mandala: a large papyruslike scroll psychedelically emblazoned with a square pierced by four gateways shaped like Ts that grant access to a circle of four subsidiary squares whose plenitude of applications and meanings — including directing meditation and symbolizing the universe — I can only slight by explanation.

Anyway, responsibility for this domestic Dharma fell to Myung.

She was our prepper, and her mysterious tesseractical talent was for already being at every destination before us, despite leaving after us — having all of Principal’s surroundings broken down in one country, only after he’d departed, and set up in another country, before he’d even arrived — as if she’d transcended aircraft for teleportation.

She was in Dubai before us, she was in Paris and London before they were founded — it was like she had multiple Buddhas, it was like she was multiple Myungs. Each with her own white bodystocking, ballet flats, the lobes dangling unattached, which is rare for an Asian, the epicanthic folds enclosed in aviators with barely a nose to hang them on, @ stud in a nare, arachnidan henna across the hands, hair granted extensions hanging coaxial to the waist, clipped at the sides with barrettes of memorysticks.

An advancewoman, front female, avant of the entourage, a vanguard of one, furnishing Principal’s life just a leg ahead of its living, ensuring that anything he would have to adjust to, instead adjusted to him.

Never once since I’ve been with Principal has he commented on his immediate surroundings — nothing about transit facilities, or life beyond windows, climates and biota of disparate timezones. But then it was Myung’s job to ensure he wouldn’t have to. She enabled his detachments. Whether they were from religious principle, or developmental disability, or just the preference of his richness. She was the caretaker of his temples, his travel agent along the autism spectrums, specifying to the relevant guestologists his linen requirements (Mitetite® sheets, 1200 sateen, 2.6 micron pore size, no pillows, no comforters), conforming lighting fixtures to house style (Ecoxenon® bulbs, which would outlast the combined lifespans of all subsequent occupants). Consult attached specs on installing alkalizing purifiers on the taps, bath/shower inclusive, Alqua®, on installing the airfilter of choice, Hepass®. Arrange Gaston’s salt block, spiralizer, dehydrator, soak/sprout set. Arrange Lavra’s resistance bands, plyo harness, quigong bolster, tabata stool. Even unpacking, herself, Doc Huxtable’s protein machine, the vial valise of cytokine boosters. Move all media outroom (no draping). Remove telephones/computers (remove jacks, no draping). Just so that with Principal’s appearance he’d be able to function as if he had no preferences, no demands, whatsoever.

A bustling recreatrix — who’d left in each one of my rooms a fresh pack of appropriate adapters/converters.

The UK plugs are bulky, rigid, threepronged with two up top, that absurdly big grounding knob at bottom — indicative of a bulky, rigidly grounded country? or a country ridiculously overcompensating, seeking to overpenetrate, for lost power? The French plugs are expectedly more attractive, softer, rounder, twopronged but with a hole at bottom because the grounder, in France, is not incorporated into the plug itself but into the socket — indicative of a more attractive, softer, rounder country? or a country that surrenders its hole and enjoys it?

The Emirates are equipped for both.

The time was a beseechment between Isha, the prayer to be said after the sun’s red recording light has faded from the sky, and Fajr, the prayer to be said at the pulsing return of its luminance.

I kept getting roused out of sleep by a dream or a line memory, which had me backtracking all the way to Palo Alto — through tracks I never imagined having to Play, I can’t imagine transcribing, rewriting, being read. Rewinding and Playing again: “[…] the time/distance required for luxuries to become staples, wants to become needs. London is just around the corner, Paris can be ordered,” “[…] wants to become needs. London is just around the corner, Paris can be ordered. Bewildering. We can only search the found, find the searched, and charge it to our room.”

A knock at the door interrupted, and Jesus let himself in like in an extraordinary rendition, which it was. Except there wasn’t any chloroform towel, the pillowcases stayed on the pillow, under my head and smothering it “in quotes.”

He wouldn’t let me pack myself, but it wasn’t a security measure, it was a haste thing. He rolled my bag for me.

Feel was in the lobby with a single suitcase.

Principal had either ditched, or forgotten, his toupee. In his hand was a begging bowl from the buffets.

\

I’m not sure I understood what, but something got screwed up with our transport: something about how we were supposed to leave from an auxiliary garage, but how as an extra precaution Jesus and Feel had waited until now to inform the Burj concierge, who was apologizing that our transfer had already been routed out front and the auxiliaries all reserved for the impending visit of the ruler of whichever nation had a white flag with a crown and a serrated edge, waving.

So while Feel and Jesus tried to hash out a compromise in a way that kept the concierge from alerting his supervisor, and I turned my head for just a moment to rustle for my drugs — Principal got impatient and wandered unattended.

The dudes in turbans and S&M leather and chains slouching across the lobby must’ve been affiliated with that visiting ruler as like valet dungeonmasters, or executioners. Because they weren’t doormen: the doors were automatic, sliding glass.

Principal was heaving himself over the gul rug and Burj medallion until, just as he was about to crash into the glass, he stopped — the panes wouldn’t part for him, his presence wasn’t sensed, and he was shocked. He barely even had a reflection, just the ghost of a ghost, of an insatiable paling, and an amniotic and alien baldness.

Then the sadomaso dudes mobbed him, and bowed to him, and their bows were detected, and the doors stood aside. Jesus and Feel, just sprinting up, dropped their hands from their holsters.

Outside, and into the heatblast. Convoys of Range Rovers and Escalades were idling, and whether Feel or Jesus or the dispatch itself was to blame, ours was the black tacky stretch prom limo.

The chauffeur — Afric, vitiliginous — tried to wheel my wheelie but Jesus refused him. He tried to take the suitcase from Feel and Feel handed it over with a palmful of dollars that if they didn’t buy the limo itself bought the right to drive it.

Jesus rode shotgun reading directions off his Tetheld.

We had no sirened escort or motorbike gang — just speed, lanechanges without a signal, tires bucking us unpaved.