Book of Numbers: A Novel Page 3

  9/11/2001, Miriam was bagladying up Church Street to an allergist’s appointment. She must’ve heard the first plane, or seen the second. The South Tower 2, the North Tower 1, collapsing their tridentate metal. Their final defiance of the sky was as twin pillars of fire and smoke.

  Sometime, then—in some hungover midst I can’t point to, because to make room for the coverage every channel banished the clock—a seething splitscreen showed the Bowery, the street just below me, and it was like a dramatization of that Liberty sonnet, “your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” “the wretched refuse of your teeming shore”: the old homeless alongside the newly homeless and others dressed that way by ash, none of them white, but not black either, rather gray, and rabid, being held at bay by a news crew with lashes of camera and mic. I spilled Cal’s mouthwash and spilled myself downstairs, leaving the TV on, and thinking a minty, asinine muddle, about this girl from last night who said she lived on Maiden Lane like she was inviting me there anytime that wasn’t last night, her date she was carrying who said he was too blitzed to make it to Inwood, and thinking about my book, and Miriam, and Aar, and how vicious it’d be to get all voxpop man on the street interviewed, and be both outside and inside at once.

  But downstairs the crew was gone, or it never was there—so I went onto Houston and through the park, beyond. Chinatown beyond. Chinatown was the edge of triage. A firetruck with Jersey plates, wreathed by squadcars, sped, then crept toward the cloud. A man, lips bandaged to match his bowtie, offered a prayer to a parkingmeter. A bleeding woman in a spandex unitard knelt by a hydrant counting out the contents of her pouch, reminding herself of who she was from her swipecard ID. A bullhorn yelled for calm in barrio Cantonese, or Mandarin. The wind of the crossstreets was the tail of a rat, swatting, slapping. Fights over waterbottles. Fights over phones.

  Survivors were still staggering, north against traffic but then with traffic too, gridlocked strangers desperate for a bridge, or a river to hiss in, their heads scorched bald into sirens, the stains on their suits the faces of friends. With no shoes or one shoe and some still holding their briefcases. Which had always been just something to hold. A death’s democracy of C-level execs and custodians, blind, deaf, concussed, uniformly tattered in charred skin cut with glass, slit by flitting discs, diskettes, and paper, envelopes seared to feet and hands—they struggled as if to open themselves, to open and read one another before they fell, and the rising tide of a black airborne ocean towed them in.

  “If you can write about the Holocaust,” Miriam once told me, “you can write about anything”—but then she left this life and left it to me to interpret her.

  A molar was found in the spring, in that grange between Liberty & Cedar, and was interred beneath her bevel at Union Field.

  Aar dealt with insurance, got custody of Achsa—Miriam’s daughter, Ethiopian, adopted, then eight. He moved her up to the Upper East Side, built her a junglegym in his office. His neighbors complained, and then Achsa complained she was too old for it. He fitted the room with geodes, lava eggs, mineral and crystal concretions, instead.

  The bookstore still stood—preserved by its historical foundations from the damage of scrapers. But Aar couldn’t keep it up. It wasn’t the customer scarcity or rehab cost, it was Miriam. The only loss he couldn’t take. He put the Judaica in the gable, garnished the best of the rest and sold it, donated the remainder to prisons, and sold the bookstore itself, to a bank. For an unstaffed ATM vestibule lit and heated and airconditioned, simultaneously, perpetually.

  He kept the topfloor, though, Miriam’s apartment, tugged off the coverlets that’d been shrouding its mirrors since shiva, moved his correspondence cabinet there, moved his contract binders there—fitted his postal scale between her microwave and spicerack—the entirety of his agency. He kept everything of hers—the bed, dresser, creaky antiques, coffinwood, the clothes, the face products. Took her antianxieties and antidepressants and when he finished them, got prescriptions of his own. Meal replacement opiates—he’d chew them.

  The only stuff he moved was Achsa’s, in whose old room he set up his rolltop and ergo swiveler. Computer and phone to accept offers, reject offers, monitor the air quality tests. He had different women working as assistants—Erica, and Erica W., and Lisabeth—junior agents in the kitchen, preparing my royalty statements, my rounding error earnings against advance. But on their days off and at nights he’d have his other girls over, his Slavs—helping them through their ESL and TOEFL exams, writing their LaGuardia Community College applications, fucking them, fucking them only in the stairwell, the hall, where Miriam’s scent didn’t linger—as insomniac corpses came and went for cash below, on a floor once filled with rare gallery catalogs and quartet partitur, just a ceaseless withdrawing, depositing, fluoresced, blown hot and cold.

  Caleb, however—that September made him. He’d done better at history, I’d done better at English, he’d become a journalist directly out of Columbia, with bylines in the Times, and I’d become a bookstore clerk, but published first—a book.

  Then I fell behind.

  What destroyed me, created him—Cal—the sirens were his calling. After filing features on Unemployment (because he was happy with his employment), and The Gay Movement (because he was happy being straight), he put himself on the deathbeat, jihad coverage. He left the Bowery and never came back. He was down at the site round the clock, digging as the searchers dug, as the finders sifted, but for facts. Every job has its hackwork, promotions from horror to glamour. Not to my credit, but that’s how it felt at the time.

  He tracked a hijacker’s route through the Emirates, Egypt, Germany—to Venice, Florida, where he proved himself going through the records of a flight school, turning up associates the FBI had missed, or the CIA had rendered. At a DC madrassa he got a tip about Al Qaeda funding passing through a Saudi charity and pursued it, cashed out on the frontpage above the fold. His next dateline was Afghanistan. He went to war. Combat clarified his style. He had few contacts, no bodyarmor. But when his letter from Kabul prophesied the Taliban insurgency, The New Yorker put him on staff. It’s difficult for me to admit. Difficult not to ironize. I was jealous of him, envious of risk. The troop embeds, the voluntary abductions, hooded with a hessian sandbag and cuffed, just to tape a goaty madman’s babble. He was advantaging, pressing, doing and being important, careering through mountain passes in humvees with Congress.

  Cal returned to the States having changed—in the only way soldiers ever change, besides becoming suicidal. He was clipped, brusque, and disciplined—his cynicism justified, his anger channeled. He brought me back a karakul hat, and for the rest of his fandom a .doc, an ms. A pyre of pages about heritage loss, the Buddha idols the mullahs razed. About treasurehunting, profiteering (Cal’s the expert). About the lithium cartels, the pipelines for oil and poppies (Aar told him to mention poppies).

  Cal certainly had other offers for representation, but went with Aar on my advice. The book sold for six figures, and got a six figure option, for TV or film, in development, still. I edited the thing, before it was edited, went through the text twice as a favor. But I’ll type the title only if he pays me. Because he didn’t use my title. Which the publisher loathed. 22 months on the bestseller list: “as coruscating and cacophonous as battle itself” (The New York Times, review by a former member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), “as if written off the top of his head, and from the bottom of his heart […] anguished, effortless, and already indispensable” (New York, review by Melissa Muccalla—Missy from my bookparty). The Pulitzer, last year—at least he was nominated.

  My famous friend Cal, not recognized in any café or caffè famous but recognized in one or two cafés or caffès and the reading room of the 42nd Street library famous—writerly anti-nonfamous. I’ve never liked Cal’s writing, but I’ve always liked him—the both of them like family. He’s been living in Iowa, teaching on fellowship. All of Iowa must be campuses and crops.

  “And I’ve been working on the n
ext book,” according to his email. This time it’s fiction, a novel. Aar hasn’t read a word yet. Cal won’t let it go until it’s finished. “And I’ve been thinking a lot about you and your situation and how you can’t be pessimistic about it because life can change in a snap, especially given your talent,” according to his email. Don’t I know it, my hero, my flatterer.

 

  Caleb was off warring and I was stuck, ground zero. Which for me was never lower smoldering Manhattan, but Ridgewood. Metropolitan Avenue. Out past the trendoid and into the cheap, always in the midst of transition, enridged. Blocksized barbedwired disbanded factories. Plants where the bubbles were blown into seltzer and lunchmeats were sliced. My building was an industrial slabiform, not redeveloped but converted, in gross violation of the informal zoning code of prudence. Used to be a printing facility, the only relic of which was a letterpress, a hulking handpress decaying screwy out in the central courtyard, exposed to the weather, too heavy to move. From time to time I’d stumble on a letter, wedged between the cobbles.

  The unit itself was a storage facility 20 × 20, not certified for even a moment of frenetic pacing let alone habitation, and with a rabid radiator the resident antisemite, but without a window, I had to take from the rear dumpsters a bolt of billiard baize for a doorstop, for ventilation. Sawhorses supporting a desk of doublepaned wired glass. International Office Supply wood swiveler, the least comfortable chair of the Depression. Banker’s lamp. Bent shelves of galleys, from when I reviewed, of my own galleys from when I’d be the reviewee. My mother’s potted cups, one for caffeine, the other an ashtray. In a corner my airbed and bicycle, in another the pump for both. Brooklyn by my left leg, Queens by my right, hands between them, an intimate borough. At least there was a door. At least there was a lock.

  My apartment, my office—I had nothing to do but practice my autograph. I didn’t. I sat, I lay, pumped, adjusted the angle of recline.

  I was the only NYer not allowed to be sad, once it came out what I was sad about, the bathroom was common and down the hall, all my sustenance was from the deli.

  I bought a turkey sandwich, cheese curls, frosted donuts, lotto scratchers, Cossack vodka I’d drink without ice, from the spare change trough emptied and unwashed, Camel Lights I’d smoke out in the hall through the bars of the airshaft, smoking so hard as to crack a rib.

  That’s what I bought—representatively, each day—but also exactly, precisely, the day I spent the last of my advance. Summer 2002.

  No further monies would be earned from my book—from all that labor. My advance was now behind me.

  I tried to write something else—tried some stories (Hasidic tales recast), translations (from the Hebrew). But nothing—I was wasted, blocked, cramped blank by my “mogigraphia,” “graphospasms.” Translation: spending all my time online, blotted in a cell glutted with paper. I became a cursor, a caret, a button pressed and pressing—refreshing reactions to Cal’s work.

  Then, with the anniversary approaching, the Times got in touch. An editor emailed to ask if I’d write an “article,” a “piece,” about my luck. For the Sunday Styles section. I opened and closed her email for weeks, for months after the close of that summer, until rent was due, utilities too, and then I answered. I didn’t just write back in the affirmative, I wrote the thing itself, which was shocking. After being so incapable, so incapable of wording, to spew out what I spewed—all bodytext, no attachments—I was shocked.

  Because I sent it out and received an immediate rejection. I wasn’t timely anymore. But I could still read between the lines. My tone had been too charged, my rhetoric too raging.

  The editor, however, either pitying or gracious, passed me along to the Sunday Book Review, which offered me its font (Imperial)—if I could contain myself, be selfless, mature. My initial assignment was a book about the events—not as they affected me, but as they affected everyone (else).

  Though I’ve since forgotten everything about the book—its title, its author, but that’s only because they’re online—I do recall the work: being mortified by it, and enjoying it. Enjoying my mortification. The clippings collected. My precocious ghosts, paper creased yellow. “Edifice Rex.” “Rubble Entendre.”

  I became a legit critic, one of the clerisy, the tribe that had ignored me—and it was all because I’d been ignored that I was fair, accurate, pretentious. I always went after the feinschmecker stuff. Wolpe at Carnegie Hall (centennial of his birth), Whistler at the Frick (centennial of his death). The Atlantic, The Nation. Though my assignments were usually kept to Jewish books, to be defined as books not just about Jews but by them. The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering, American Judaism: A History—for The New Republic a novel called The Oracle or The Oracle’s Wife set entirely in Christian New Amsterdam but written by a woman called Krauss—I wrote Edward Saïd’s obituary for Harper’s.

  I explained, explicated, expounded—Mr. Pronunciamento, a taste arbiteur and approviste, dispensing consensus, and expensing it too: on new frontiers in race and the genetics of intelligence (Rabbi Moshe Teitelbaum and heterozygote fitness), on new challenges to linguistics (connectionist vs. Chomskyan), circumcision and STDs (“Cut Men, Not Budget”), manufacturing jobs shipped overseas and other, related, proxies for torture (“Contracting Abroad: Black Boxes and Black Sites”). All for casual readers who specialized in nothing but despecialization, familiarity. They didn’t want to know it, they just wanted to know about it. Culture justified by cultural calendaring: the times and addresses and price.

  But then, a break.

  A site was about to launch—a bright blue text/bright white background site that if it wasn’t defunct would be ridiculous now, but it wasn’t then—in NY urls were still being typed and discussed with their wwws. It was amply backed by old media, amply staffed by new media, and was to be given away for free—its publication was its publicity—www.itseemedimportantatthetime.com, believe me.

  They emailed with a Q: Would I like to interview Joshua Cohen?

  My A: Why not?

  But not this type of Q&A—instead, a profile, though they wanted only 2,000 words. They had infinite room, eternal room, margins beyond any binding or mind, and yet: they wanted only 2,000 words (still, @ $1/word).

  It was a gimmick—everything is, and if it isn’t, that’s its gimmick—and yet, I accepted, I had to, I had to meet myself.

  Joshua Cohen—Principal, but not yet mine—would be in NY for only a minimized window. I was instructed to meet him at Tetration’s HQ, at some strange time, some psychoanalyst’s 10 or so intersessionary minutes before or after the hour. In the lobby, in a waterfront fringe of Chelsea being rezoned for lobbies. They’d just gone public, at $80/share, for a market capitalization in excess of $22B.

  My first reaction was, this was a railshed of reshunted freight that coincidentally included office furniture—Tetration was still moving in. I entered as the gratis vendingmachines were being installed, empty, gratis but empty. They’d purchased the railshed before Cohen had even toured it, apparently. This would be a first for us both.

  The meet & greeter’s badge wasn’t brass but a brasscolored sticker on his vneck, below which were black slacker jeans, holstered taser. He smirked at my license, summoned an elongated attenuated marfanoid flunky to take me up, but instead of elevators or escalators or stairs, we took the ladders, rope ladders, rigging. An obstacle course of rainbowbanded enmeshments. We scuttled past androids fumbling to hook up their workstations, arraying plushtoys, wire/string disentanglement puzzles, tangrams, rubikses, möbiuses, slinkies.

  The conference room was massive and vacant and carpet interrupted by tapemarks. The flunky left and rolled back with a chair and positioned its casters over the tapemarks and to keep the chair from rolling away chocked the casters with lunchboxsized laptops, left finally.

  The ceiling panels were black and white, a chessboard defying gravity with magnetized pieces in an opening gambit of f3 d5, g3 g4, b3 d7, b2 e6. The
wallpaper, a cohelixing of the DNA of Tetration’s founders, a physical model of their alliance—or, just design.

  Portals, portholes, had a vista over a plaza whose rubberized T tiles were proof of the four color map theorem, and stacked cargo containers and bollards being retrofit for a children’s playground. The pier of my bookparty was just beyond, but which it was, I wasn’t sure, as all the piers were becoming trussed in steel or repurposed into monocoques of electrochromic smartglass, available for weddings, and bar and bat mitzvot.

  Our fleshtime: Principal entered, and the one chair was for him because he sat in it and I was still standing but all was otherwise similar between us.

  “How’s it treating you, NY?” I said.