by Joshua Cohen
This was a private beach, then, and not cheap. Barbicans segregated it from the public beaches, which segregated themselves by gender—you have to pay for equality.
I stomped to an unclaimed chaiselounge, and ratcheted it back to an obtuse degree, sat, lay—washed up.
I tugged down the visor, repositioned the shades. More Tetration freebies, more items lettered with corporate glyph.
No one around me was doing anything, even making conversation. They were all just perfectly inert, laid out prone or supine as if submitting to autopsy or dissection. Only the dead or the lowest of species can bask, I’m convinced. That basking was making me suspicious—and turning me into my father: Why don’t you diddle a racquet? go fly a kite?
I rummaged through my Tetote—also company complimentary, brimming with brandwater, brandpretzels and chips, “fresh” dates and figs, that commonest variety of nut called “mixed,” yogurt or no, that’s sunscreen—for my Tetbook.
But nothing else was getting written.
Just like it’s impossible to be around words without reading—try not to read the next words as they turn—it’s impossible to be around the naked without gawking.
As I closed my Tetbook on a .doc unsaved—it was replaced by another mirage. A bland white guy whiteguying up to me, in flipflops.
He was familiar, but I wasn’t sure how. He had this ambling and amiable coach demeanor, and the agglutinated fatness of the entire Eastern Division of pro football, American football. He was in slumpy trunks and a tanktop from a Beat Leukemia!! 5K race he definitely hadn’t run, and then the tanktop was off, and was over his head like a kaffiyeh. As he settled into the lounger beside mine, his flab extruded between the slats.
He grinned buckteeth and said, “Hiyo,” aggressively genial, content with his content. He produced an identical Tetbook from an identical Tetote, set it in what had to be his lap.
He showed me his, I showed him mine—or just went to remind myself whose was whose: I reopened and, angling my screen away from the glare, and from his glare, went toggling through files.
Kori Dienerowitz, in the copious flesh—Kor Memory—Tetration President, and presidentially sized. What’d prevented me from an immediate ID wasn’t the context, but the dread of him. He was all clicketyclackety, “Crap connection,” dug out the same tube of sunscreen. “Would I be interrupting you to ask a favor?”
“Yes?”
“I have a tough time reaching my back, my shoulders and neck—it’s fine, you can laugh, but would you mind giving me a slather? Strictly hetero, one patriot to another?”
“I’d rather not.”
“Don’t burn me.”
“You’re not going to lie stomach up the whole time?”
“You’re right—a true American would choose a side, but this is a matter of survival.”
“How?”
“Allegiances have changed—tides and times. We live at the pale, the fade of the unmelanized. The white man’s hegemony is over. The future belongs to those who tan, or those so dark they never tan.”
“Doesn’t that leave out the Asians?”
He closed and toted his unit, “If I have to try myself, I won’t be able to work—you have any idea how annoying it is, typing with slick fingers?”
I closed and stowed too, toed my tote closer, as Kor stretched over a shoulder and squirted a lump—a thick chunky load leaking down his back’s already medium rare hairless center and it wasn’t that I wanted to help him, it’s just that I couldn’t bear to witness the trickle. The sheer smooth presence was the goad, that dollop dribbling fusiform, taunting, luridly viscid.
No, not any secretion: the lotion was like a perspiring prophylactic, a condom he wanted me to tug over his pudging—and I tugged, I applied my fingers and thumb, put my wrists behind it. I rolled, twisted, pinched, slapped at his spinelessness, went for the deepest tissue—rubbing whiteness into whiteness as the glabrous pores absorbed, until I couldn’t tell what was zinc and what was just Caucasian.
“Obliged.”
I wiped my hands on the sand, the sand on my shorts, and mentally waded. Pretended to study the lifeguard’s bunker. No lifepreservers, no rowers, but gathered around the bunk the guards chattered into walkietalkies, prodded jellyfish with Kalashnikovs.
“Tell me,” Kor wasn’t asking, “has he mentioned me yet?”
“Who?”
“You’re the genealogist, you figure it out.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Are you sure?”
“I am.”
“Good, very good—we can trust you.”
“Who’s we?”
“You know—I’m one of the guys with the creditcard. What’s your beverage—seltzer?”
A beachboy abjected himself, and the order came, “Two big waters with bubbles—975, no, 976 bubbles in each.”
As he scampered I decided, “What brings you to the Emirates?”
“You.”
“Me?”
“We have similar interests,” he said, going through his Tetgear, putting on the shades, the visor.
Just what I needed, another clone. “I guess we have a thing or two in common.”
“Though you’d prefer vodka, and I’m sober. You smoke and I’d never. You’re about to be divorced, or are you trying to reconcile by telecuddle? Making passes at your lady by wifi?”
“Fuck off.”
“Fair enough.”
The resort was a blade that cast darkness to the dial, that clocked. But now there was no time. Now there was no shadow. It was noon, and that great incandescent beachball was directly above. Behind us, far on the elevated concourse, a crowd went about its static, like spray spumed from an unattuned screen. Men in robes, white terry. Women blacked between them. In front of us, the abyss lapped at the corniche, as if gorging out of boredom.
The beachboy brought the seltzers, and Kor tapped the charge away.
“So what’s the point?” to let him sip.
“I’m only trying to stress confidentiality, reminding you how important it is to keep whatever you’re doing to yourself.”
“Genealogy.”
“And just generally making myself available.”
“And you do this by intimidation?”
He burped, let him.
“I’ve been trying to convince the FTC that any protocol we develop that allows our devices to communicate with those of our competitors doesn’t have to allow those of our competitors to also communicate with ours, and so must be regarded as free and clear not just proprietary, but benevolent. I’m hiring an operations guy in Johannesburg, firing an operations girl in Belgrade, mediating a discrimination suit in Ottawa, monitoring coups throughout the Maghreb. China’s about to embargo my ass. Japan has two, count them, two, national intelligence agencies, and they don’t get along, and yet what I’m telling you is, I’ll make time for you.”
“I got it.”
“Tough for the both of us.”
“Yes.”
“Your wife, that actor—stupes.”
Then—I’d like to report an air raid, but no: it was the muezzin. Cutting us off, an ululating breeze.
It was the call to prayer, Dhuhr, and one person, but only one, turned over on his towel to face Mecca. Not east but west.
It’s disgusting, how I’ve been managed: the surveillance hut and passport, then this moment’s notice trip—and now to be lubbered up against an intertidal watercooler for office chitchat with Kori Dienerowitz.
That was the straw that broke this camel’s back, to get all local about it.
Roomed again, I opened my Tetbook for the nth time to ensure he hadn’t switcherooed his for mine, and it was automatic—it’s in my hands, or like how my hands breathe—I typed in the address.
Tetra—I didn’t even have to type it fully. The addy autocompleted: tetration.com.
I have, I admit, visited before. It knows me like a good conciergeri
e, knows me better than my wife.
I checked in on camels (no spitting for them, they “gleet,” and it’s the bactrians that have two backs to break—two humps—while dromedaries have only one), checked up on Rach, who she linked to, who linked to her and left comments and what their comments were and the comments on the comments—We’re always trying to improve our service, Tell us how we’re doing.
The latest post’s latest reaction wasn’t to Rach’s choice of curry joint (a takeout I’d found, which she was claiming she’d found), nor was it an opinion as to whether the best thing about breaking up was that now she was getting a pet (but which? vote below: guinea pig or fuzzy lop bunny, a chinchilla or mink?). Rather, it was just a fuzzy irrelevancy, a spamcurry bot sequitur or whatever, courtesy of username “KORDIE”:
“if yre not 2 busy genealogizing & if yre down 2 continue our convo im hosting recept 4 prince @ 20:00 bani yas suite”
Fuck you in your Bani Yas, Kor Dienerowitz.
But then without intending to I was tetrating that. The Bani Yas were “among the founding tribes of the trucial United Arab Emirates”—another window—I clicked, and kept clicking through the autoloading Burj site if only to keep from tetrating for sites that have never existed: what-do-you-know-about-my-sexual-history.com, which would tell me how intimate Kor had gotten with Rach’s raving, do-you-think-theres-a-pattern.biz, which would tell me whether Kor had been tracking me all along or was just taking a chance on this invitation—if-he-had-been-tracking-me.org might explain why, then-why-invite-me-to-realize-this-so-blatantly.org might explain itself (but there’s always the chance that I was totally misaligned and that somehow msging someone through their estranged spouse’s blog had become a newly permissible mode of communication).
It was the heat on me, it had me clicking through the Burj surveillance feeds: out_beachport, and toggling to where Kor and I had sat, where the sand had no traces of our sitting. Saw the waves. Heard the waves. Streamed the data. The number of miles (km) of beach outside, the number of miles (km) of beach inside. I clicked the in_beachport, to remember an experience I never—membered: the sand set firm under the tanning lights, a gunite wadingpool of water piped in and then waved into froth by machine.
Another toggle, to the four chlorinated lap pools beyond its negative edge, each the size of four Olympics, veritably.
Next, soothing myself, I connected to a tour of the golfcourses both outdoor and indoor, linked around the links. I splitscreened between them and the volley with a robot tennis pavilion. Cricketcam. Wicketcam. The sports snowglobe. Keyed in my room number to find out if I was eligible for discounts on any XXXtreme bungee/skydiving/kitesurfing/jetski/abseiling/assorted parasports “adventures” (I was).
I, who’d actually been in the lobby, could understand the lobby only now, immersing, submerging, and so discovering its décor with a diligence that in fleshlife would’ve required a dubious protracted loiter by the guest services station consulting reference texts on textile history and rubbing lasciviously against the drapery. I could explore the provenance of the provincial antiquities displayed in the perimeter encasements (one I thought was real was a repro, and another I thought was a repro was—guess).
The restaurants I’d never dine at, serving which cuisines at what hours, locations, with directions—with directions from within the resort.
Stats on all the rooms not mine, inclusive of their rates I’d never pay, stats also on their interior design with links to the sites of their interior designers, the furnishings’ brands listed with multicurrency pricing and even the option to “add to my cart” (delivery options, next page).
My experience was beyond the vicarious—I myself was autocompleted (I don’t recall getting dressed and out of the room).
The elevators were each the size of an Emirate, each with its own culture, weather, official tree (ebony paneling), official animal (ebony operator). I took a car from the same bank I’d been taking to Principal’s suite—but passed Principal’s, into the open.
The doors withdrew, as if in the presence of majesty, with every guest a royal, and I found myself in what can only be described as a purple passage: literally a passage of purple mirror etched into damask, tossing petals at my steps across a roofdeck—behind me shafty minarets cupolating with moon for the delectation of the sheikh on the jumbotrons—ahead of me the Gulf and its isles, dredged drifting replicas of all the earth’s landmasses, the Antarctic a sandbar of bulldozers and dumptrucks, Greenland a flurry of speedboat launches.
I took a stairwell of chrome and glass up to a helipad, beyond the roundel of which a tent was pitched and inside the tent was a room. A suite double the size of Principal’s, the standard layout zoomed to enlarge, deep into the fabric of night. Hircine, rough, and nothing to knock. The furnishment was all divans draped in antimacassary, pillow pyres obscuring the brocades beneath. A mixed bag showcase, then, as cluttered as Orientalism, as patchwork pastiched as the choice of whether to relish or critique it. Shelves held alcohol distilled by types, within types, by vsop, xo, cigs American and British.
The mess was hubbed by a vast mannered table, marquetried in fractals of pearl but inlaid with an unmohammadian felt swath for games with cards and dice. It was staffed, but also patronized, by cleancut young achievers.
They were natives, though, and so only nepotistically ambitious, twit sycophants attitudinized by privilege: twentyeightsomething, twentyeightandahalfsomething at the far end where the tentflaps were staked to expose the starlessness.
Kor motioned me to a propinquous tassled tuft. A Slav built like a pole flying a blackstriped bandeau swimsuit like a flag laid out the snifters and cohibas.
The natives were Arabizing and I didn’t understand—anything beyond, they were freaked by the Slav.
“This is Josh,” Kor said. “He’s a biographer, a writer—can any of you name any writers?”
Each member of the fraternity auditioned his own laugh.
“He didn’t mean just American,” I said. “Any Emiratis or Emiris or whatever? Anyone in Arabic?”
Nothing, so I named a few—a few poets, ghazal guys. That gal Scheherazade.
“And these,” Kor intervening, “these are the programmers we were hoping for.”
“Programmers?”
“Apparently we’re negotiating a server facility, and this is the local talent.”
“Is that why we’re here?”
“You tell me.”
“That’s why we’re here.”
“Just us and the fauxgrammers—their English gets a D, and I’d bet even that’s better than their C++.”
“And now I’m apparently a biographer?”
Kor patted their cheeks like valets pet the sleek sides of cars, soothing assurance for a smooth ride: “You tell me.”
“Do they at least know how to update a résumé?”
Menus, rivetbound, were passed around, listing not the fare but the etiquette: everything would be sampled. Shareware soup, cybersalad of packetsniffed florettes dusted with a terabyte of truffles. Herbes de POP Palmiers. Tarte à l’Terminal et aux apps.
The fauxgrammers studied, breaking off their fastidiousness only with Kor’s foray: “Any of you familiar with orthogony? Orthonormality?”
They weren’t—they were brainless. They grinned.
“What about mengineering?” Kor pressed on. “Are any of you mengineers? Smellecom experience? B.O.-tech?”
I raised a glass and toasted Kor and the fauxgrammers gladhanded at their glasses to toast him too, or else to keep him from pouring them Krug Brut—only the best for them to abstain from. With his blubbering jollity and tonsure Kor now seemed like a wily friar brewer, like the mascot off a label for cider or ale.
“Did you know our programmers back in the States do all their consumption from a vendingmachine?” he said.
I said, “Did you know they’re also forcibly neutered?”
“Guess who else is staying at the Burj?”
The fauxgram
mers kept murmuring, “Burj?”
Kor said that current guests included a girlgroup called Broadband, a catalogue raisonné of Biennial curators. The fauxgrammers were blanking.
“Jerry?” I said. “George? Elaine? Kramer? Omar Sharif? Batman?”
Half the fauxgrammers chinned excitably, “Spidey?”
Kor said, “Stupes.”
A whole roasted lamb—stuffed with lamb sausages, organ and glandbreads, dried fruits and currants, tomato/garlic/onion mush, the entirety cardamomated, corianderized, cumined, cloved—was brought out on a spit, danced around. The carcassbearers were women, further gorgeous bursting Slavs, just as anorexstretched tall as Rach but otherwise her bulimically inverted opposite—modified, with satellite dish breasts of an antennary perkiness. Globoid, global. When a woman’s loveliness was through and the Burj would cast her out to sea to drown into bait or chum anew, only her tits would survive her, nonbiodegradable pouches of saline floating loose to bob in saline, silicone buoys choking dolphins and sharks.
Some Ukes, some Poles, Czechs and Slovaks, Yugos, but the lingua prostituta was Russian. There were only a handful, at first—one for each of the fauxgrammers? leaving two for me given that Kor would go for the drove of slaveboy fauxgrammers themselves?—eventually over a dozen, as women I’d never been around offscreen and without masturbating unfolded their limbs in scopic sections like the stands that steadied amateur A/V equipment.
Their English was better than the fauxgrammers’, was better than any of our Russian—if anyone can ever speak universally, it’s whores: Sveta, Svetka, Svetichka, names getting diminutively girlish by the toast, the dregs upended. Throughout, their protuberances were immovable, their faces paused impassive. A despondent lover might jump from their cheekbones, noosing ropes of waistlength straight hair peroxidized or crude black dyed or both. Sharp stilettos under the vexillological twosies, in the national colors: Abbasid black, Umayyad white, Fatimid green, red spilled of al-Andalus—each piece of each twopiece no bigger than a napkin, stained and tenting in my lap.