Book of Numbers: A Novel

by Joshua Cohen

  I’d been aroused by a woman wearing a sweaty tent, a woman I don’t know, can’t ever touch to know Biblically let alone get proximal to for a chat in a neutral language—it’s absurd. With a husband too. To whose swart cheek I’d delivered democracy. Four fingers of unrequited democracy, not even the thumb opposable.

  Her husband? who else? Next corridor please let it be a widow I encounter. A cripple. May the next corridor be so empty I can only save myself.

  I was desked again, chaired again—the primal scene.

  It’s difficult to concentrate—difficult to pay attention, though it accepts any currency current.

  I downed trou, tried to get a honker. Tried to beat my cock like it was leukemia. Twisted my scrotum like the wallsafe knob. Then I switched to stroke my shaft with the hand that bled and throbbed. I managed a half honk, a sputter. A corpse’s lean on the wheel.

  If only I could shrink like my hair into a single follicle. If only I could zip into my wheelie and mail myself flatrate, at email rates, on home.

  I rooted around the nethercompartment of my wheelie, surfaced with my smut—these pages too glossy to gloss. I surrounded myself with the porn, flicked, flipped, unstuck the pages to loosen me up.

  I knew as much about these women as I did about that girl. I knew more about “Agnès,” pp. 20-22 her spread, in French. At least I know “her name.” Better to know her name than her herpes.

  Masturbation feels different with different hands and without a ring, which I’d left behind in Ridgewood, jarred in clay with the clamps and clips, Moms’s cloying amber glaze. To compensate, then, I rolled the pages around me, positioning their binding staple just at the seam the ring once touched, and stroked, as if I were scraping away a model’s hipbone mole or removing jiggle from her thighs.

  With this I managed a bit of length, of longness. A width that wouldn’t flatter girth. Trying for an elevator shaft, straight up and down, getting the incline of a stairwell. Trying for Rach’s shape, narrow and hard, but getting that girl’s—a swerving curviness.

  The lamp stood straight in the corner, its metal stanchion staunch, incorruptible. The table with the ice bucket rose immovably, stiff. Two glasses erectly stemmed, unbreakable bottles of booze. Cigarettes, matches, undisturbed smooth. Her bawdy chaudey lips léchouille, bouchey coochie coo. Her khaki hands cupping my sac.

  But then the imam interrupted and the call for Isha was all that arose: Allah hu akhbar, chafing, Allah hu akhbar, chapping, Allah hu—my cock bowed over my thumb.

 

  I went for my Tetbook, dented and loosed of a Return key, which went chattering around the tote like a tooth. Everything was running slower. Walking, crawling, load. Its cord, its powercable, raveling, unraveling. I weaved it between my fingers to make four insulated rings for the friction, for the frictive pleasure, and wrapped the rest snug around my base—what to call the connection of cock to scrotum along that seam like a perforation on old printer paper with the holes? Don’t tetrate, resist the urge to tetrate (“what to call the connection of cock to scrotum along that seam like a perforation on old printer paper with the holes”)—and, while I’m at it, what’s the difference between raveling and unraveling?

  No, memory will not be, cannot be, refreshed—is it the Chinese or the Japanese socket that has the slitty slanted eyes and slashes for ears? or is the proper term not socket but outlet?

  The computer’s coolant fan was squealing at pitch with the room fan, with an equal frequency of rotation.

  I thought I had to have some porn in storage, some neglected impulse stuff I hadn’t called upon in forever, and, according to tech, according to psychoanalysis, everything transferred. Metaphor, its literal meaning is transference, but tech doesn’t think in metaphors. In similes, maybe, which are like or as math. Regardless, the originals, if ever originated, would’ve remained from my former setup. Time to rouse the past. Raise the clotheless ghosts.

  I opened a window—not a real actual window, rather an otherness or alterity—a sill for my filth. I browsed internally by all the cumskein verbiage that occurred to me—blowjob pov, reverse cowgirl, reverse cowgirl Arabian Indian Pakistani teen, curry pussy, spicy biryani pussy, French maid proctolgia purring barky British boardingschool accent—no results. Then browsed by types of files—.avi, .flv, .mpeg, .mpe, .mpg, .mov, even went for the .jpegs, .jpgs, .tiffs and .gifs, .pngs and .raws—zero (0) results. I’d modernized too precipitously, adopted too early, never saved my vulgarity to memory, relied too much on streaming—how much I had to stream.

  I emailed Aaron: email me some porn. I emailed Caleb: email me some porn. I emailed Finnity: email me some porn. I emailed them all again, not cc: but bcc:, my preferences. Tried some social profiles, the Tetsets: Lana’s square, which featured just professional headshot pics and shaky footage of her lecturing, was socialized with the square of a Patagonian preservationist at the Met, who though she was too old to get me up was coupled virtually with the square of her darkfeatured daughter, who though she was too young to keep me up was coupled virtually with the squares of maybe cousins or friends of intermediate ages whose unprotected images extended from last springbreak to last weekend’s MDMA excursion culminating in a mass makeout in the middle of the Pulaski Bridge.

  I tugged my wire, charged myself.

  But then another window opened, to shut my own—the prayer of Fajr. There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is His slayer of boners.

  I clicked away, to Rach’s blog.

  What was new wasn’t the vid of a client picnic—Governors Island, all leis and tikis, account execs wattlenecked sweating the BBQ, multistrawed canisters of daiquiri and piña colada sweating pixels—I sat through all of it but Rach never made an appearance. Neither was it the pic of the rental condo we’d had in the Hamptons, “Steatite counters!” “Miele appliances!” shelves of salty cookbook, the landlord’s romance and detective novels, the only thing human a suede docksider shoe disembodied on the maple—Adam’s, it had to be.

  Rather what was new was a comment. If I can call a thing a comment that has nothing to do with an original. Rach’s blog is offered for free, which must be taken to mean: only at the price of reaction. But I wouldn’t react—not yet.

  I scrolled down below the dross:

  uy387456: “perfect post!! 2 increase yr traffic click here.”

  therightfootfwd: “i subscribed to this feed and will check new posts. for bargain footwear and related content click here.”

  StrongL80s: “happiness happens. be yourself today tenaciously.”

  I’d always presumed StrongL80s—and Nokiddushing, and Challahatyourgirl, and others—were all just Rach, cheerleading herself tenaciously.

  The next and last was it: the only comment I hadn’t already read, the only comment I hadn’t already reread, was another from “KORDIE”:

  “wtf? taking my plane leaving me behind in ras alkhaimah ummmm alquwain wtf? im just concerned 4 the both of u. the truth must not be evaded. trust me yre in waaaay over yr head. download this 2 contact me now.”

 

  I got up out of the chair, tried to find the remote—where was it? if I were a remote where would I be? Wriggling myself across pins and needles to the entertainment system, to switch it on manually, then reembedding myself, constantly switching my alignment to face the east that was west, the west that was—comfort.

  Insomniac, I defaced every direction—every qibla, or mihrab. All prayers point to the Saudis.

  Each time the muezzin came through the curtains—sounding throughout the city, resounding and vibrating—each time he pronounced, I heard Rach. Her old ringtone.

  That voice. It wasn’t recorded, but live. Both bodiless and hoarse. Arabesque. The voice that turns lattices to speakers. That speaks the very fretwork. While rising and falling like an arch. The sound of calligraphy, of cacography.

  I listened, I lay and listened while watching the default channel, as the face of the sheikh wiped onscreen—a screensaver, a sheikhsaver.
>
  Then a dissolve, to a stock image of Medina. Minarets around a vert dome. The sheikh returned, superimposed. A dissolve again, to a stock image of Mecca: caravanserai encircling the Kaaba, that brute granite tabernacle that holds paradise inside it and grants wisdom to all—in its big black squareness it even looked like a datacenter.

  Again with “the sheikh”—or “king”—the lexicon kept changing, or else the man himself refused to be defined. Ruler of the petrols we’re passing for flight. Ruler of the electrified high celestials. Guardian of freon, and of the urinals that flush in the sky.

  I wondered how he’d receive Principal: desert hospitality mandates feetwashing, the watering of camels, a meal (the guests served first and best), the best bed and first choice of concubine (supplies limited). A prudent host would also provide the translation.

  The sheikh would speak, would describe an immense palace of utterance, and only when finished, only when utterly finished, would he let the interpreter render. A dictatorial practice, Koranic in a sense. Unless the totality has been communicated, nothing has been communicated. A single misunderstanding flaws it all.

  Or else maybe the sheikh would break his speech into units, bits and bytes and girih tiles, pausing between each to demonstrate his authority, in the guise of generosity—pausing between each to allow his interpreter, scrounging on hands and knees, tongue thrust in concentration, to clean it up. To lick the words up from the limen, and spit out again a perfect reproduction mosaic.

  But then perhaps the sheikh would say nothing at all, and just sit enthroned, while his interpreter stood and spoke for him: either words the sheikh supplied the interpreter with prior to this audience, or words the sheikh never supplied—the interpreter recast as a prophet and the sheikh becoming an oracle or dream.

  Then again, the ultimate would be if there were no sheikh whatsoever: the sheikh could pose as his own interpreter, or the interpreter could pose as the sheikh, who was absent from this audience because too important, or too senile, or even deceased, and so the interpreter who claimed to represent him was just representing himself.

  I wrapped my hand in a washcloth, prepped for my next sessh with Principal. Stretched for the ascent.

  There were a lot of steps ahead of me. And each vital to mastering the next.

  ://

  9/10

  To fall for this Arabess is forbidden, but nowadays to fall for any woman you can’t search up online is forbidden. How else to snoop her? how else to send her around?

  Her life had been set to Private.

  Her mouth, a pool of jewel set in bodied blackness. The modesty mullahs sure know what they’re doing, insisting that the less I know of a woman, the more I want to know, I need to know.

  She’d reserved a full floor in my memory, without giving a number, without giving a name. I had no wasta, and only this chance. Though even if I’d manage to baksheesh the compjockeys at resort IT, it’d be too suspicious to ask after her, I’d have to ask after him, the rolypoly ayatollah, the offensive effendi. Claim him a prospective investment partner. Invest him in my claim. Either that or I’d appeal to Principal to hack the Khaleej dbase and ransack the records. No other sources to cultivate. Just desert.

  Instead of excavating around the site, exposing its ramparts, I decided to go down, foundationally. I dug myself into the lobby, and sifted through the drifters, the dunes motioned around me—humpy dumps in full hijab.

  The women who passed compelled attention by tighter fits, which were pregnancies, and heelless shoes, so as not to slight their escorts. Kitchen slippers, or wrung through the laundry slippers and then, open toes.

  Hints of tint from the fingers. Ten drips of an esoteric ultramarine.

  The purdah population must’ve boomed overnight (or else I’ve just grown the appropriate antenna).

  I was muftied again in my predistressed jeans, flannel over I heart NY tee, sitting on a tulipary divan between the elevatorbanks and pretending to compute. I clicked for a speech I’d consulted on for the mayor’s office: New Urbanism & the Future of Energy. But energy has an unlimited future, and it’s humanity that doesn’t have even a horizon on the horizon: “The city seeks Albany’s pledge to develop solar, wind, and hydroelectric capabilities in both the Hudson and East Rivers within the next decade”—this was laughable, rather, depressing, reading this in a Gulfside palace powered not by sun, wind, or water but by fossils, whose government ownership would go sustainable only if that meant going nuclear. Scrolled through a few old journo squibs: reviews of books about homosexuality and Cubism, about German dodecaphonists in America, and then a profile of an Israeli novelist dedicated to answering “The Palestinian Question,” a kaddish eulogy overpraising an overpriced deli upon its shuttering.

  Went through my résumé, exaggerating credentials for the main search—the job search—to come. I rattled the filechains, unfettered the inbox. Wrote: draft emails to two lawyers Lana had recommended, ridiculous (one Levin, the other Levine), to decline a Rosh Hashanah dinner and/or Yom Kipper break fast invite from the managing ed of jewe.com, to thank Cal and Finn for the porn. Loaded the porn. Cal—gratitude retracted—had sent a pic of a grossly obese man having his foreskin licked by a dog having its foreskin licked by a cat. Finn—apologies in order—had sent a vid. Long. Loading. Taking so long to load the old me could’ve buffered twice already (the new me couldn’t fathom ever buffering again).

  Black. She emerged from the car. I knew it was her, because she knew it was me. She startled—facelessly—turned away, turned back but clung to her guide.

  She was being minded not by her husband but by a more voluminous rotundity—a floating dome, like of a mosque, but undergoing reconstruction. An old woman scaffolded with a cervical collar, and an ungainly plastic and titanium orthotic—a bootcast.

  I shirked my Tetbook into the tote, approached. Sidled up alongside.

  “Hello.”

  Closer than would be considered normal even if she weren’t a she, or Arab.

  They made a show of ignoring me, her most of all.

  “Speak German? Speak French?”

  She said nothing and her escort was just a gentle dumb hemisphere orbiting gravely.

  I said, “Pretend no one else is in this lobby—you with me?” I tried to hold her pace, her general area of face. “It’s just the two of us, remember?” I gestured at my chest, sashed by the totestrap in the getup of a eunuch.

  She whispered what I took to be “English.”

  I said, “What are you up to today?”

  The equatorial plumpness next to her shushed, Arabized a spate comprehensible internationally as disapproval.

  I said, “Today?”

  “No English,” she said, mine.

  “Mari?”

  “No.”

  “Frau oder Mädchen?”

  “Jaloux jaloux mon mari.”

  This was like a Russian novel already, this French, this German—excessive, dumm, imbécile.

  The chaperoning mother—or mother inlaw? or an eldest prima wife who’d been hurt in an unpreventable domestic accident of her own?—scolded in gutturals, tsks, and sped them ahead, her boot’s clunkery punctuating my failure.

 

  No matter how much they’ve traveled, most whites have had this experience abroad—especially in the darker countries. These people—these dimnesses, darknesses—are interchangeable, the white tourist thinks, they’re cognate, coincident, synonymical. The inner life as impenetrable as its outer pigmentation. Black is bad, the color of evil, a stain or taint. A cancer. Red is bestial. Brown is shit. Yellow is piss timid.

  But then inevitably our traveler comes to know someone—maybe only his waiter, maybe only his maid. He might even, let’s hope, come to have sex with someone, for love or money, for both, and—when the fascination ends, when the package tour ends—is either confirmed or disabused, ashamed of his initial bias or not.

  I followed—what should I dub her? should I set up an online presence for her, ha
ve Aar and Cal vote on a name?

  Like her, dislike her, track her as favorite—through the Khaleej’s lobby, through a garish consecution of kufic script scannables and projected ads that connected practically and thematically the resort complex with the mall.

  Gaudy antiseptic fountains, cacti to deter loitering, boulders whose size trafficked toward sales. Palms marked the passageways fronding radially from the central bourse. The mall had planted only species native to the Americas, as if to boast, to brag, to demonstrate what was feasible—not just the acquisition but the thriving. The trees grew, amid the frigidity, they prospered and grew, and the abayas were their fruit, ripely contused—the proper plural of abaya? abayat?

  Their color scheme was basic black. The fall collection, also the winter, spring, and summer collections in this desert without season. They were bolts of black cloth unrolling. Items strayed off the rack. Some silk, some chenille. All blended.

  The women made a hajj to a windowdressed concourse, whose mannequins matched them in chador before lightening up and becoming hysterical, gruesomely festooned in chiffon plastron and crape carapace, billowing with metalline polyester, lycra strapped to masks—garments that called attention to the fact that their wearers weren’t supposed to be calling attention to themselves. Fashion was taking chances so these ladies wouldn’t have to—these ladies swathed in pockets to be worthy by comparison, still devaluing themselves by comparison.

  If a girl was just in an abaya and shayla, she judged the girls who were in veils too, who judged others of their retinue for having veils with more or less stylish coverage.

  My girl’s covering was just some bag. Some upsidedown insideout unadorned bag. She was wearing its reflection in every display. She was wearing the windows that reflected her and the vain commerce behind them and then instead of a face, my own.

  Her old woman companion finished unbunching her beardy niqab from her collar, and swiveled her head around its scant range—but I stepped behind a kiosk.