Joshua Cohen - Book of Numbers

The game was held outside Portola, on a foreclosed duderanch this Amazon lady from Amazon.com had bought just to flip, an egregious driveway to a villa, cardtable and saddlechairs the only furnishings. Already we were down in the hole thanks the taxi.

We went with the Fresca, left the other players to their single malt doubles. Let them read us or try to.

Vishnu Vaidya, Vishnu Fernandes, Muwekma Ohlone — Moe — he came in late, a groundless current bursting from this just heinous flasher trenchcoat. His teeth were all caried crowded funk mesiodental, his tongue as like a pinkslip splotched white.

He stunk, reeked to tell the truth foul.

The game was Texas hold em, 2/4 no limit, which dealt from the top suggests the obfuscation at stake because to win most of time is to fold em. We were better than most but worse than him, tight.

Moe had half the table buying in seconds by the second full deal rotation, and immediately post antemeridian the other half just left.

By last Fresca it was just us and a scruffy cruft of simoleoned emotionals, who played not too strong not too weak, but unpredictably predictably reckless. The type to wait out, let them cope, come senses or tantrum.

But Moe did not wait, shuffling a pocket pair as like a toolbar. He did not even take off the trench.

His play had been tame wild until it suddenly became wild tame, without bluff, which was the bluff, but not. Basically any bid to define strategy yielded tactics, any attempt to refine his decisions into levels or stages, degrees of the mind, was the biggest mistake an opponent could make. Rather the biggest mistake after not cashing out or not being Moe himself. Or boozing between pots. Moe might have been Hindu but for poker he had Buddha face. He bet low on big hands either because they were not big enough or just to keep us or him still cur. He went all in 44 times. He was little blind holding A-J just anteing up until the J-6-4 flop had him going in as like gangbusters, which left only this dotcomster comedian still in the game miraculously seeing not raising, the turn was 10, which meant a straight or flush could still be in the cards because both the J and 10 were of some manly finance suit, some clubs or spades flushed straight away in an ace cascade and fuck you, Yahoo from Yahoo.com, $8K for an ace high on the river two pair.

Moe quit approx $10K up at the end of the night that was morning, while we had managed, just, to make exactly $3.379K, though that was nothing because he still had not acknowledged — you will not laugh? Promise?

He still had not acknowledged us.

Our self.

Not until we were both outside amid spring 97.

Moe popped his collar. “So we are square?”

We said, “The name is Tetration.”

“We are money square, that is my meaning. Tell your Tetration bros — I have lent back to you what I have borrowed from them.”

We stopped our slog through the driveway clay and dung hung in the air. “You think you let us win in there?”

“I think I let you win a profit.”

“What about the DAS Capital associate or that Gaymer GM who folded on queens over eights?”

“It was queens over nines.”

“Eights or nines.”

He poked his ignition key between our ribs and said, “What about we settle this in Los Angeles, Joshua Cohen?”

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The best thing about search is you always find what you want. The worst thing about search is you never find what you do not want. As like Los Angeles, as like a drive to Los Angeles. But we were helpless. We were in a dustbrown dump of a soccer parent van with a fluorescent red bindi decal on the hood and a back bay lending library of leaflets and pamphlets as like “Cellphone Brain Tumors Exposed!” and “Beware the Monoculture: the PC virus and the viruses that can bring down the system!” A lot stub from Vegas was wedged between spring coils in a gash in the upholstery. The talkradio was tuned to Republican. Moe drove not toward I5 but stayed on the 101. He chainsmoked a figment cigarette, just bringing fingers to lips and pinching the lips and breathing in, breathing out, windows fogging. It was dewy and cold and he could not figger the defroster. We will repeat that. He was a trained genius engineer who could not figger the defroster, so he rolled down his window to the breezes, route scenics.

He knew everything about us, knew everything about Tetration. He referred to Cull and Qui as like our “bros,” and to us as like his “rakhi bro.” Everyone at the game had called him Moe, and that was the only name he ever mentioned having. Moe picked among his toothcrowd with our businesscard.

His driving was not erratic if we followed his thoughts, because his driving followed his thoughts and veered and passed. Cut off. He was telling us about India, which had invented online. The Vedas, the Upanishads. He rehashed the Ramayana, stalled, the Mahabharata, stalled. Rather, he said, Hinduism had invented the cosmology that had been plagiarized online. The net, the web, just a void and in the void a wilderness, a jungle of hardware sustaining a diversity of software, of sites, of all out of order pages, a pantheon to be selectively engaged, an experience special to each user. Each click was a dedicated worship, an act of mad propitiation that hazarded destruction.

Altogether, never altogether, online comprised a religion of bespoke blue plural gods that could also be goddesses that could also be customized in any alternative to gender and blueness, not a religion but a flux of cults, temporary sects, routing allegiances, provider alliances. The user as like the Hindu can ping whatever divinity is best convenient for whatever purpose, can ping the deity of the specific moment or location, or the one pertinized to a particular task, without any core theology, without any central control, anything goes.

What guaranteed this access was search. No one understood search as like an Indian.

We stopped at a tarpit outside Paso Robles and Moe got out and pumped gas and went into the conmart and returned with a carton of menthol cigarettes, buckled up, then unbuckled and conmarted again and returned with a tank of gin in plastic. He put his incisors to the carton, a pack, bit a menthol and struck a strike anywhere match anywhere, breathed in and out and swore he had quit. He uncapped the gin to wash down two whitepink pills whose pharmcalls we noted, M575, do the detectivework, go sleuth it. When he swallowed it was with the Gayatri, that mantra that clears the astral nerve tubes. We have no clue how to drive. We have never had a license.

We got into LA around 18:00 and went to get some dinner. After our steaks he gave us a pill. We took another after our sundae. The steaks were gushing in that rare to raw style that homophobe kitchens hash out to men on dates who request medium. The icecream was brownbutter lardon nut brittle berry. We had never eaten as like that in our lives, but had no guilt.

Though we had two, but only one each, martinis. Because Moe was taking us along to his regular game, and we had to stay upright to knock it over.

“You go in and just ask the reception for Rosebud,” Moe said, “who will tell you the room. Come in calm and be yourself. Sit how you are told to sit and get your cash out. Pretend you might have met them all before but you cannot remember. Pretend with me just the same.”

The waiter offered cappuccino, espresso, and Moe said, “You are awake enough?”

We said, “Are you asking us or just the waiter?”