Book of Numbers: A Novel

by Joshua Cohen

  I was standing outside recollecting my flashback from the sidewalk before realizing that someone was behind me on the sidewalk. I don’t want to accuse and say this someone was Hispanic or Latino if there’s a distinction because I couldn’t tell and didn’t want to turn around to tell, because he, I’m just guessing he was he, I could just feel his weight, he was very close to me. I decided to walk. A block. I walk fast and faster and if I was cold before now I was warm and though it was only 20 blocks but it was forever. The blocks are long are very long because industrial. The Mex was just behind me. It was always just an industrial stretch to avoid between the cemeteries of my parents who emmigrated from Warsaw as babies in the 1920s (emmigrated separately, the Shulinskys and Ratschelds—they were cousins and so Uncle Sruly was also my father’s cousin).

  I had the directions from my house in my pocket to your office but couldn’t slow down to reach them but could find my way without them anyway. Linden across the intersection and under the L not running still to busier Gates, straight up, Forest, which I had never been on, Metropolitan, neither I had been on this stretch og it. I have to admit this to me is just a mystery what you do. Not what you do in this neighborhood so cruddy and all the clapboard out of vinyl. The halal laundromats and Polish not Jewish but Polish hair salons and Hindu destints, every dentist named Raj. But what you do with writing or used to do. All the time I was going up Gates north this Mex was following me. He was on my heels but that’s difficult to communicate. It’s very difficult how swift he was run. At leats on the screen there is music and sound effects and editing tricks especially to cover the time of the visuals and motion.

  (I could already make out a white guy we would have entitled The Aussie in our youth down the block and waved to him and he waved back to me. I was coming closer. I didn’t think this was Bob Onders from Vanderende because I didn’t know how his appearance. Then I was crossing from Forest and on the corner. He was very white, which I will own up to it encouraged. Metropolitan was slow of traffic. Just the diesel tractortrailers and vans. I waved again to make sure he was “with me,” and he waved again and the Mex must have realized I was “with him,” because he just crossed Metropolitan toward the Carvel and either went inside or didn’t. Your rep Daniel Makelsen couldn’t even notice him.

  I hope you are nice to this nice Dan Makelsen. Though isn’t he too slightly old to be an assistant? He is so white but in wonderful shape, very worldly, with that politeness you find only in veterans. But isn’t that a fascinating biography he has coming from Russia and not Sydney at all? He was giving me tips on postwalk postrun limbering out on the curb waited to be let in. He has the charm to be an actor so it’s a pity how his neck’s deformed. I told him that about the charm only and about my concept for a book series for children about the adventures of Dabb the lizard from that Dabb franchise I was did and he urged me to put together a proposal and then delinated how to put together a proposal. And we will work together hopfully.

  And then in a flawless Chrysler Imperial Bob Onders arrived.

  Bob Onders who shook hands with me and Dan Makelsen is bald with limited sharp blonde stubble and his head is red, and the rest is eminently freckled. It is either a tan from working outdoors or hypertension, his head. He dons thick black plastic glasses and a gray jacket that says Vanderende Management, under which he dons an Islanders tshirt and careworn light blue jeans by Levi. His boots are Timberland. He chews tobacco and spits into the bottom sliced out of a plasticbottle I’m not sure was for water or soda but also smelled of vodka. He does not come off as the kind of guy who’d spend his cash on water. When he let me in with Dan Makelsen he held the bottle bottom in his mouth to hold the door, took the bottle bottom back in his hand and ushered me up the stairs, it’s a lot of flights but we’re in better shape and at the door to your unit he put the bottom back in his huffing mouth and took a keyring from his pocket and found the key marked with black electrical tape and put it in the lock and turned and turned the knob, held the door and stood around and spit (stage direction).

  I can’t believe it, Josh. I can’t believe you put up with a place so unheated and where the light won’t turn off, the light’s always on and makes such a rattling and above all 40 watt. And you have so many books, so many that you by default don’t want, by default. Such a goddamn mess. But then we were also shocked. Dan Makelsen packed up the computer. I have no doubt you won’t be shocked. Because as we poked around I caught myself realizing how absurd this was but I was apologizing to Dan Makelsen, for you. The cartons, the fucking cardboard cartons, of pornography. Disgusting! I don’t want to tell Rach but I’m not sure I have a choice for full disclosure. So much porn you have. The sluttiest! Reels, photos, dittos stripclubs hand out for the whore ads. Fistfucking, chestshitting, cornholing, pissdrink. True vintage collectibles. Shit only an officionado would own. The labels were W (black) w/ Stallion (black), W (white) w/ Pony (skewbald), M on M cow (costume), M on M on F Dwarf “speakeasy 1929,” which were disgusting for what they were but also for how antique and unlike your other piles organzied by theme, Bestiality, Gangbang, Minstrel, Red Army Sexual Hygiene Instructional Materials. I confess I was emphafically not going to sift this. I enraged at you. I we’d given you a chance. Rach had given you so many chances that I wanted to toss it out. Then I wanted to just take it all and send it to you COD. Send it to you COD destroyed. Take it and fence it immediately, one lot (though Rach’s correct in that we’d get better prices on the other belongings from auction houses that will have to appraise and by putting the other belongings online).

  But no, I became calmed down.

  I have followed every law and then be courteous like a cherry on top.

  Yes also I would know where to send it now. Or at least Rach has a knowledge as to your whereabouts approximately. Because her therapy blog has a stat counter that’s counted traffic from throughout the United Arabic Emirates but also from Palo Alto, California, which neighbors San Francisco. Dhubai. Abu Dhaubi. Daily for a while. Consistent with Amex conditions.

  Makes sense you are retreating us. All will be transmitted to Eisen our laywers.

  Besides the porn the autographed editions of Wiesel, Bellow, Roth, Bernard Malamud. I.B. Singer, personalized inscription. Encyclopedia Judaicas, which can’t be carried. Once a reference set is on the shelves the room can never be left, my parents called that “Jewish wallpaper.” Basquiat napkin, laminated. The guitar pick of Slash from the rock band Guns & Roses, that’s what’s signed in sharpie on the ziploc. All will be authenticated. Brownpaper in plastic of magazines hoarded but the explanation as I went through them wasn’t how into celebrity profiles you were but that your writing was in them, always in the back, always reviews of books, and Makelsen who read through them also said you were “a very thorough reviewer.” But he wouldn’t take them with. Makelsen said he had copies of everything at the office his agency office already except for the files that were his intellcetual property in the computer so that’s why he was taking the computer and everything else was your ordeal. I’m don’t know what you did to anger a guy like that. Such a together guy except for the scalded throat thing that would barely be noticeable if he wore a tie, which for what we did together was inappropriate.

  Framed frontpage that says First Color Page of the New York Times, 10/16/9? So many copies of your own book I haven’t read (but will). So many books on computers and the computing business new in their Amazon cellophane (I’ll match up the invoices with our billing), just shelves of them called The Exciting Account of How Something Changed Something Forever? The drawers stuffed with crumpled tissue. Semen all on the underside of the desk. Your mugs, shrunken twisted penholders from clay I tried not to break, fountainpen, Mount Blank.

  Which if any are valuable and what are they worth because they were in a separate special pile? The Education of Henry Adams by Adams, Henry, Brief Lives by Aubrey, John, The Life of Samuel Johnson by Boswell, James, Sartor Resartus by Carlyle, Thomas, Tischreden by Luther, M
artin, Parallel Lives of Plutarch by Plutarch, The Playboy Interviews: Comedians, and then a book I was unable to read but Makelsen who held it said it was in Russian Programirovany economysomethingych y upravlensomethingych zaduck with total pro diction and said that meant Programming Economic and Management Tasks by? He’s a very educated asset to the agency, Makelsen. My chair is much more comfortable than yours.

  All this I took and put in designated trashbags with the assitance of Makelsen. I forgot to say I brought a box of trashbags. Then my cell rang. The Refuseniks were downstairs. This was the end of my salvaging time. I just could’n’t do it anymore and Makelsen either who didn’t have to assist me but did out of his own heart. We had ten bags full by that time. My knees and back were spasms, especially because I couldn’t buzz them in so had to go all the way down the stairs again to open the door. But Makelsen who had publisher appointments you were keeping him from offered to go and let the Refuseniks in as he went. He handed me $200 in two $100s and said he wished the agency was able to do more but the agency wasn’t able to do more and so I have to think this was from his own pocket, which would be gnerous. He said gday mate so I said gday mate too. I just love that. Then Makelsen picked up the computer that I never mentioned was Rach’s so that I wasn’t able with him holding it to even shake his hand. (I have profound respect for him and guess he had a car.)

  Then the Refuseniks came on up.

  The rest of your office is theirs now, which we can get a tax deduction and whatever they can’t donate to charity will be offered to the dump. They will send a list of documentation for what has been donated and though it’s too polite to you I will fwd: that too. All of this was explained to me again by their coordinator who mentioned he was getting a PhD in Urban, I’d rather not get it wrong, maybe just in Urban and so I asked if his two colleagues were also students and he answered they were graduate students in nonprofit while the two stayed silent strapping on their lifting belts. I thought maybe they wouldn’t be phased by the porn but I thought wrong, because showing them around the unit but unable to move because all crowded in by your dreck your chazerai I said to be levity, “feel free to help yourself to this guy’s porn,” but they did not find it funny and acted insulted because their nonprofit thesis was on gender policy.

  They were older than I remembered students being, certainly older than I must’ve been at City College, which I was barely shaving and they all had large mutton beards with moustaches, were big, burly, confusign. They certainly looked like movers or sanitation or other people in debt. Then talking it out with me they tried to sound like they were from the city with that accent I never hear anymore except in the crime procedurals I used to do, that Irish cop fireman or PS 475 assistant principal or Social Security office supervisor with the wife sore at him so he never goes home voice. All this but still they were quite transparentyl not from the city, they didn’t have that city antenna, that you can’t impress me sensabilty. I was once in a commercial for loans. But they didn;t recognize.

  They began crating everything up indiscrimly, two packing and hauling with their dollys down the hall and one, the urban coordinator one, down the hall trying the elevator. I hadn’t realized the presence of an elevator and the coordinator shouted if I had the key but I didn’t and called Bob Onders but he wasn’t picking up.

  I took the two bags I was able to handle and took the stairs to leave them downstairs and search for Bob Onders or get better reception for the cell in the event he wasn’t picking up because of the reception was better downstairs.

  Or he was in the basement.

  But just as I was about to leave a man comes jumping up the steps breathing and screaming, “stop! stop!” in Russian, “styop! styop!” and all I can say is where’s Maleksen when you need him (Maleksen wouldn’t need have to talk he’d just petrify him)?? But as he slams into me and we both have to hold each other to keep from flopping and he’s breathing on me I realize the man’s Tartar or mixed, which is all the worst of being Russian mixed with all the worst of being Muslim. You’ve been fortunate or are being covered for. A friend of yours, this Albanian, he said he was.

  He said that all the documents were his and that you’d given him a spare key and that he was using it to store this extra inventory in your unit with permission. What documents? “The pornographies.” For your sake is this so?

  ALBANIAN (to me): I will remove immediately my documentaries.

  I bestowed him the “benefit of the doubt,” which apppplies to you. This is why I have not told Rach about it despite how consistent it is with your behavior.

  I told the chief Refusekin to let him keep whatever if it was porn.

  CHIEF (fake hard): I’m not here to babysit anyone.

  I went for my wallet to bribe him if that’s what he would have come to but

  CHIEF: Forget it, you’ll just be overtime your estimate.

  They bill by the hour but I didn’t have it in me to negiotate the Albanian to pay. He was patheticly thanking

  ALBANIAN: Thank you.

  So the Refusekins would taken a break and we went down to let your friend or this con artist scrounge.

  They helped me with my bags. All the bags and I was aching all over.

  The bus and train would not be suffice. I’d have to get a cab or in that neighborhood a gypsy service because am I savvy in assuming no cabs ever come to that neighboorhod? Which serviced is yours? Gladly I had saved from online a number.

  The coordinator with his assistants took the opportunity of my dialing to leave me. They scattered. They wanted a deli if there was a deli there or just not to be bothered. I was left alone and remembered but nixed going upstairs again to your porn con to wonder if he had a copy of the elevator key, because they wanted the key to the elevator.

  The car service picked up, put me on hold, and I repeated them the address twice and finally they explained Spanish they’d be veinte minutos, which might have been 20 or 10 I froget. I waited out in front of the door alone except therefusenik truck, doubleparked at the corner. The Chrysler Imperial had taken leave of Metropolitan. The wind was It was cold. Check the weather today, it was freezing suddenly and I was waiting all freaked by the no pedestrians, which is not NY. All the cars with rims too ritzy for this neighborhood were passing me with my bags and scuffling, freaking me out to lug two at a time all my bags to the corner to wait by the truck, I amdit, to wait behind it. In the driver’s seat of the truck the only Refusenikwh o wasn’t a student. He was in distinction to them who were “inexperienced” white a black guy and very “experienced,” dozing through the windshield it was all just a heap of laundry.

  Half hour later the car service came and I dumped the bags in the trunk and told the Mex driver the city. But because he drove so hesitent on the LIE I took the wheel and told him to take the Queensborough and had to give him directions uptown and across and was so irked that even though I was doing the heavy lifting the fare was still $44 and I wasn’t feeling genrous. Still when I said keep the $60 he acted like he’d never been tipped before so that when he popped the trunk he got out of the car and got the bags out for me and some ripped with some sharp Tanach corner tearing through and all on the street was clay bits and loose pages from the broke Tanach. He stooped with me to the pavement scooping it all back into the holes and knotting the slack to be juryrigged enough to get them inside, which he also helped with too.

  So tack that expense onto what’s attached (below). Besides my time that I won’t charge for.

  Because I did this for Rach, which is priceless. But she’ll be coming home in a moment and dinner’s my responsibility, wash all this dust off me. We’ll order. Prawnless vegan prawn rolls, two #2s, Bia Hois.

  Yours in the book of life, gmar tov,

  Adam (Shulinsky)

  P.S. I took a mutliple copy of your book. Your mother’s from Cracow?My people are Warsaw olev hashalom. Specifically Vishkava, the shtetl. If you have any experience with that I would be under other cirumstances fascinated. She
was a reader and read until she died.

  PPS: No bcc: but cc: to Eisen. If you are familiar with ironies what happens incidently in missing spouse cases after digilent search is undertaken “is divorce by publication.” I refer you to New York Civil Law §315-316 www.divorcelawxplained.com/ny/3, which states

  Contents of order; form of publication; filing. An order for service of a summons by publication shall direct that the summons be published together with the notice to the defendant, a brief statement of the nature of the action and the relief sought, and, except in an action for medical malpractice, the sum of money for which judgment may be taken in case of default and, if the action is brought to recover a judgment affecting the title to, or the possession, use or enjoyment of, real property, a brief description of the property, in two newspapers, at least one in the English language, designated in the order as most likely to give notice to the person to be served, for a specified time, at least once in each of four successive weeks, except that in the matrimonial action publication in one newspaper in the English language, designated in the order as most likely to give notice to the person to be served, at least once in each of three successive weeks shall be sufficient. The summons, complaint, or summons and notice in an action for divorce or separation, order and papers on which the order was based shall be filed on or before the first day of publication.