Joshua Cohen - Four New Messages

I looked you up globally, suckers!

What have you ever done? Your website hasnt been updated in two years [hyperlink to website]!

Who designed it, a retardy chimpanzee [hyperlink to vid of chimp, unclear as to whether retarded but still slurping its own feces]?

This email of yours is just a smear of yours truly. Funded by a desperate assaulter of women named Richard Monomian.

Who is also a dealer!

Whose coke is also BAD!

And you Mrs. J. K. M. Jorie, LA — l.egal a.ssistant requires an abbreviation, are you queerious?

This is amateur hour, yo.

By that later Thursday afternoon, the last waning work hours when bored deskbounds log on and comment to do anything but improve their own existences, tidy the file chains, or disburden the inbox, this post had racked up over 350 responses like:

MunchieZ: right on girl!

anonymous: u tell it!

anonymous: I am a practicing lawyer in the city and you Em are correctamundo as always.

jd: Im with u. I call bullshit.

m@jd: Bullshit!

bullshit: Bullshit! (first!)

anonymous: this letter is not even worth the paper it is not printed on.

( Hugger89 and go_deep like that comment.

That comment had a comment— see one reply: monomaniacal wtf!?)

Friday morning after googling himself and finding that post Mono called Majorie and got a voicemail that said: You’ve reached Broken Wings: Last-Minute Frequent-Flyer Miles Broker to the Bereaved.

He waited for the beep, Call me. This is unbereavable.

He lay back in bed perusing a magazine he’d found weathered wet and unsubscribed to in the hallway last week, read from the cover in a whisper— revista feminina —as if a foreign language had the power to save him from what he did understand (was the internet as virulent in Spanish or Italian, in German or French?).

He flipped the pages, past the makeup styles and recipe tips — what Mexicans had the kitchens for this? had the flatware, stemware, and jobless hours? — heading into an article headlined ¿qué es la depilación láser?

Mono wondered if he’d ever be able to masturbate again. Not above a sleeping stranger and not even to the internet, which had been sexually ruined for him — but perhaps to this revista, that tan woman of thumb proportions depilating herself on page 34?

The phone rang and Mono picked up.

It wasn’t Majorie but Methyl.

Which was good news — Mono having had no income in over a week. Had all of Jersey stopped getting — depilated?

I’m coming over, Methyl said.

Under the cashmere overcoat Methyl wore only a wifebeater, the chest hair coming in spirals like @ signs. Below were baggy jeans and between the jeans and beater was a full foot of red boxers exposed.

He came swaggering into the apartment, sat on the bed — there was nowhere to sit but alongside Mono, Methyl waiting as the TV was repositioned, returned to the floor.

This all? he asked.

Mono asked, That mean you’re giving me a raise?

Methyl had in his hands a gaming console as gray as a desiccated brain strangulated in black cords attached to two controllers.

It’s a new game, he said, still in development. I gave these city guys some tips on how to make it rawer, they gave me a copy of the beta.

He bent to fit plugs into sockets.

Balancing the console on top of the screen.

The TV showed a brick wall.

A man walked past the wall. Another man passed by the wall in a car. The man in the car lowered his window, yelled something indiscernible— Hooooooo!?!? — pumped one shotgun round that struck the walking man in the no longer walking head. The car continued, drove offscreen. The man’s head broke apart, spattering the wall in seven spots of sanguinary graffiti that dripped down to form a word with seven letters: Corners.

Kids crept up to the corpse, pulled spraycans from the pockets of puffies and tearaway trainers and tagged the brick.

One wrote 1 Playa —effective aerosol sound effect — the other scrawled 2 Playas.

I play the dealer, Methyl said, you play the snitch.

The screen was splitscreen so there wasn’t one wall now but two and they were different.

I’m gonna let you walk free for a while, Methyl said. Try and get a feel for the controls.

Mono the snitch walked to the end of the wall, which was the end of the sidewalk. He walked to the end of the screen but there was more screen. The next block was crowded with bodegary. Fat mamas pushed pushcarts stacked fat with bags of laundry, bags of rice. Hot mamacita hissed. Stolid old guy swept a stoop. Kids, rather trainee cholos, junior bangers.

A red blur burst from behind a tenement’s billboard — pigeon graphics flying wildly out of frame as Methyl lunged at his controls, pressed Pause.

This billboard’s trying to kill you. Playa’s from a rival gang.

Mono asked, What gang am I in?

You used to be in my gang but you snitched me out so I’m trying to kill you too. But also the red niggas want to kill us both. And then the cops. You stay away from cops. I’m taking us off Pause. The second I do just cross the street. Red nigga won’t get a clear shot.

Where’s the map? Mono asked.

Ain’t no map. Just gotta memorize the streets.

Memorize them how?

Lady Liberty knish take the A train, motherfucker! Don’t you know New York?

Not the outer boroughs.

We in Manhattan — me uptown, you down. I have it saved in memory to start my every game on 145th and Amsterdam — Playa 2 starts by default down at Delancey but you can program any block.

Then Methyl quieted and said, Ain’t like we in Staten Island.

Snitch heading north up Orchard.

Trendoid gastronomes. Theme outlets that had paid to be included in the game.

Methyl spinning sewer lids like record platters. The soundtrack robotic cucaracha.

Then the snitch stood and did nothing because Mono was watching Methyl’s screen half. The dealer was covering major blocks at a major clip shooting everything that moved — everything that moved that was malevolent. He took out pimps in parked cars, slaughtered whole drug deals and arms sales in dumpstered alleys and basements. Wasted lookouts execution-style. Then stole the drugs and arms for later resale. He stopped by a restaurant, ate soul food. He helped himself to seconds, a double order of biscuits to go. He stole a Mercedes coupe and drove off his half of the screen until the two screens converged with the car pulling up on Mono’s block.

Mono managed to turn around, fumbled.

Methyl, stepping from the Merc, held his gun sidewise, shot Mono in the face (button A to draw, B to cock to tricksy side, C to pull the trigger).

Screen nasty black with game blood.

You dead, Methyl said.

Me?

You fired too.

I am? I thought you’d come with work.

Methyl sat up, turned to him and said, Any other business you survive this. But the cops today, they online all the time.

People don’t know I’m him.

They will.

I’m fucking broke, bro.

The internet says you just that guy who whips it out. But I say you an onus.

Instead of unplugging the gaming console Methyl unplugged the TV, put the controllers atop the console on top, boosted the entire package.

Then he stood on the bed while Mono, getting the silence, got up to get the door.

With the TV’s powercord pocketed, Methyl stepped to the floor and walked out to the hall, saying without turning around, I was you I’d start thinking about how to change your name. Bro.

Without the television Mono’s apartment seemed both bigger and smaller, and worse.