Book of Numbers: A Novel (13 page)

“Got it.”

Finn iced himself down and sipped, whispered, “You haven’t
met our Principal, have you?”

“I was expecting you to introduce me.”

“He doesn’t know I’m here—I begged an
invitation off an exgirlfriend from Gopal,” and he nodded a radius through the
table at four brunette romcoms.

“Get her to introduce us, all four of them.”

“She doesn’t think he’s here.”

“I don’t think I’m here either.”

Our server approached.

She was wearing a stetson and roper boots, denim overalls underall which
I’m not sure.

“Your preferenced meals will be out momentarily,” she said.
“For now, does anyone need anything?”

Finn said, “Nada.”

“Just as an update,” she smiled, “for dessert
you’ll be having the birthday cake, which is glutenfree, the candles are
sustainable beeswax.”

“Muchas gracias.” Finn reached out to tug straight her
bandana.

“Also keep in mind,” she was saying as she swatted his hand,
“with continued climate change, drought will affect over half of the world in
this century alone. That’s half of the whole world, not just the developing. So,
we’re doing all we can to moderate our water waste. By not changing your plates,
you’re changing lives. Snap the QR on your napkin rings to get
involved.”

I excused myself behind her: pretense was the toilet, purpose was the
bar.

I trailed, and turned past the wagonwheel tables of every
industry’s pioneers, destined for the dimming. Passing fame, passing actual fame.
Not the observed in the park, but the celebrated globally. People—what’s
more than people? more like businesses, companies, corporations,
states unto themselves?—whose reps, even, whose lowliest brand ambassadors, would
never return my calls.

It was a reality show—an actuality show—a making of a behind
the scenes collision. Two Nobel laureates (Physics, Peace), two models whose models,
unlike the laureates’, I understood (thanks, Rach), the actor who got top billing
in something Adam was in (won’t drop a name, but rhymes with “Mom
Thanks”), another who won an Oscar for directing a host of somethings Adam was
never in (rhymes with “Even Spielberg”), an andrologist with an
infomercial system, a copyright attorney who commented on extremist cable, and Oprah?
Fat Oprah and her skinnier double? Everyone lounging, chatty, bingey
purgey—entouraging one another, giving interview, posing, thronging the
serapedraped vitamix stations, mingling the dancezones, Tethelding selfies in pic and
vid while decrying the paparazzi.

If they were invited, they were a celebrity. Even if this was just a job
for them, they were a celeb. They had to be, the fame was contaminating. The wraithy
freckled red bandanafied servergirl, all the servers, they were moonlighting
microphenoms not only by moonlight but in their true industries too, with even the
busboys, the prides of Sonora, maintaining their own stalky followings.

I joined, danced through—no one else had my moves—toward a
holographic bonfire lighting up the forest. Finally, a pit of the party’s only
stiffer provision, a makeshift cantina camp pitched twinkly out in the night like the
last settlement before everything went savage—calling a younger crowd, guzzling
heirloom beers and heritage cocktails of one part freerange to two parts forage, muddled
into mason jars out of the back bays of circled Conestogas.

A girl bordelloized to impress asked, “When’s Lady Gaga
showing?” A ranchhanded guy said, “It’s Dylan &
Jagger,” and the girl asked, “Who’s that?”

I waited for my hooch behind a pornstached chillionaire and his two
brogrammer friends, by which I mean his coworkers at #Summerize, according to
their shirts and shorts and hats.

One said, “You can’t change the scale without scaling the
change.”

Another said, “Evoke transcendence.”

The chillionaire said, “Will you stop reading
that neurolinguistic reinforcement pickup artist shit? This party’s got mad
fucking latency to it.”

His coworkers nodded up from their Tethelds and the transcendence guy
said, “All paradigms can be realigned, modulo a pussy deficit. Because if we
don’t count the nontech women, who don’t count us, we’re dealing
with 6s, the same as always, mid 6s.”

“Get positivized,” the scalar change guy said. “Or
just get beyond the systems integration analysts—the ad rep girls are 8s for
def.”

The chillionaire said, “For me, this birthday’s all about
trying to get an audience with the boss. I mean, he bought us without even meeting us,
who does that?”

His coworkers clenched smiles at me. The chillionaire noticed and answered
himself, “A fucking genius is who. What are you guys feeling—the no carbs
rum horchata punch? Or the Red Bull Añejo Paloma?”

But his coworkers’ faces shone expressionlessly rapt again in the
glows of their Tethelds until the chillionaire said, “Before your batteries are
cashed, are you guys checking in with your Tetsets?”

They keyed, and the scalar change guy said, “This says
there’s a quidditch game for new acqhires happening over by the
stables.”

The transcendence guy said, “This says if anyone finds a
yellow/black GoreTex GoreBike windstopper cycling shell, please reply, reward
negotiable.”

“There’s a capture the flag tourney for vest &
resters that’s voting now on team captains.”

“This says P Diddy’s taking all the ad rep pussy to the
sweat lodge.”

“Hey, sorry, disruption incoming,” and the chillionaire was
talking to me now. “Can you just take a square of us?”

He handed me his Tetheld, the only one I’ve ever held, and it was
anodized cool. I tried to get them all onscreen. But I wasn’t sure what to press,
or if there was anything to press. Or even whether the recording was still or in motion,
with sound. An Asian, an Arab, and an Indian, all speaking together in questionmarks
like white girls. Such were my unspoken thoughts, which only I can record, I think.

The Asian thanked me and posted the groupsquare crossplatform from his
Tetset and the Arab and Indian reposted to their own Tetsets,
and
read the replies as they blipped in: “giddyup you cutie cowboys,”
“fuck u and fuck the startup u rode in on.”

It was their turn to order from the Conestoga. They ordered waters with
electrolytes.

I had the fringey coonskincapped hipster pour me an artisanal vodka with
artisanal rocks.

As I went for a cig he said, “No smoking.”

“Where?”

“Nowhere on property.”

They didn’t need a sign. They needed a sign for everything
else.

“La Bano?” I pointed, “the toilets?” and while
the frontierster was pointing them out, I swiped a bottle, biomash rye.

I headed away, swerved for the trees. Forgive me. Fine me for tossing my
lighter. It was empty but I still had matches.

I staggered, rolled like a stone. It was all a ball of feints, disguises.
Power masquerading as responsibility, stewardship. Excess but slim, trim. Spiritual
emaciation in good citizen costume. Wastefulness spun as ethical consumption. A party in
honor of health, which improved health. Nothing could fool me, or could fool me
enough.

Still, I couldn’t get no satisfaction—the leaves rasping hey
hey hey. Cause I tried, and I tried, and I tried, and I tried—to distinguish
between the rustic and the epic style art: a Calder stabile like a girdered ferruginous
rhododendron, and what was either a Richard Serra or a Donald Judd or a boulder.

I couldn’t shake a certain bumpkinish feeling, that sense of being
a hick, a rube, an unacceptable regression. I spurred myself sloppy, smoked and drank
with the roots.

Just ahead was a stand of trees, just tremendous trees, mossy antennas,
redwood but pulsing black—their monitors were black, and their bark was livid
brown, quakefissured. They too had to acclimate after being transplanted. Weldmesh fence
prevented my touch. The path went around them and pebbled away and was panned into sand
by the grass.

It was a spit of beach along a salina bayscape. A dimidiate moon, and
stars falling darkly pacific.

From out of the nebula and down the beach, a desperado was approaching. I
didn’t have a weapon, I was freelance. I dug in, sparked the
pack’s penultimate cig, contemplated another message for the bottle besides
breaking it. On his skull, on mine.

He swayed, wary, rolledup pants, rolled shirtsleeves, suitjacket looped
around neck, a sockstuffed shoe in each hand, whiteness, Finn.

“Can I get a taste?”

“Taste the empty?” I tipped the bottle to grains.

“Then a smoke?”

I passed the butt, “Why not share?”

He dragged, “You’ve been making the rounds?”

“I’ve had people to meet—putting faces to names and
names to faces. The next round I’m putting bodies to bodies.”

Finn ashed, returned what was left, for me to snuff.

He said, “I’m not keeping tabs.”

“I am?”

“But Aaron just happened to mention—something about the
wife? She got you down?”

“Mine or yours?”

Finn clapped his heels, “You want some advice, Josh?”

“About what—always be a friend to your friends? Never go
swimming on a full stomach?”

Finn grinned, “The book: it can’t be a book—it has to
be an option. Write it for the screen. The game version. Whatever.”

“That’s it?”

“I need a property,” he mooned. “I need an
adaptation.”

\

I felt it the next morning. Noon, after. Nothing but hangover fog, a
lukewarm front of quit throat. Giving way by evening to arrogance.

Nobody came.

I checked my new account: one email, my first. [email protected]. An
invitation to yesterday, a link to a dietary survey. Made another resolution: quit
drinking and smoking, check email more or less often.

Drag. Dump Trash. An empty inbox, an empty outbox. A pure, an impeccable,
soul.

I went out to get something to eat, and some head
analgesia. Just when I had my hand on the handle, a voice said,
“Hungry?”

I turned.

The voice said, “Aspirin or ibuprofen?”

“What?”

Voice circumambient, modulated with viperish reverb, then a panel
withdrew, the monition of a monitor face. Just opposite my cot. Principal’s face.
But frozen, cryogenized.

I assumed a malfunction, a fritz.

“It is just a still,” the voice said. “Official as
like for a book.”

“As like what?”

“Or perhaps this one is better?” and the monitor regressed:
a Founder’s shot, him next to a—I’m just going to call it a server.
“Or this one?” a yearbook shot—highschool? college?—teeth
agleam amid pleiades of acne. “Or maybe this?” a newborn frame, squashed
and jaundiced, clawmarks at the cheeks. “Or?”

“Whichever the fuck,” and again, the first familiar image
was restored.

“Come back toward the cot—hang out.”

“You can see me?”

“Confirmative.”

“You can hear me?”

“Confirmative, though on the cot is better—hang
loose.”

“You’re fucking snooping on me?”

“We are doing no such thing. We are offering naproxen?
Acetaminophen? Depends how your stomach is—you should not need an
anti-inflammatory.”

“I’m just trying to avoid taking the hard shit.”

“The hard shit?”

I gestured around at all my stuff stowed, “You should
know—you think I moved in myself?”

“Pfizer is in the dumps, trading down below 20, indicating low
consumer confidence in ibuprofen. Johnson & Johnson is holding steady in the 60s,
aspirin is on the up.”

“Were you even around for your own 4-0?”

“Around, yes, in attendance, no.”

“Did I jerk off?”

“Unclear.”

I wanted to wish him happy returns on his birthday, but also I wanted to
keep that sentiment pounding in my head, to determine whether it registered.

“We cannot read thoughts.”

“Try.”

“Think of something.”

“Any something?”

“Any.”

“Am doing it—you got it?”

At the door was a knock and a black but white goth buff transgender person
entered—an XX or an XY or a chromosomally spliced Ze bearing a metal tray. I had
not been thinking about its contents. But I did not have that thought until I’d
consumed its contents. The tray was divided into quadrants, and all were of composted
mush.

I used one of the quadrants to ash in. I wouldn’t have minded a
beeeeeeeer.

“Go to your Tetbook, the desktop, open the folder
Dossier.”

The only new folder, “Dosser?”

“There is no
i
?”

“Guess not.”

It contained: Tetration site txt, public domain .docs, junk. But then also
internal reports. Personnel intel. Official Tetration capsule bios of its prez, its vps
of VP (Various Projects), Finance, Futurity/Devo.

Quarterly assessments. Performance reviews with nothing smeared out. How
many files? More than scrollable—inscrollable?

Everything has a beginning, or needs one, and if the beginning’s
identifiable but not dramatic enough, it needs to be deidentified—located
elsewhere. Creation stuff, cosmology, a founding myth, lore of origin: light separated
from darkness, the wind inseminating the aether—the earth is balanced on the back
of an elephant, or held by angels standing on the shell of a turtle—but what was
that turtle standing on? was it just tortoise on tortoise forever?

An apple plunging from a tree and inventing gravity, volume determined by
water displaced from Antiquity’s jacuzzi, a dream about the structure of the
solar system being the structure of the atom, a dream
about a snake
consuming its own tail being the ring structure of the molecule benzene, relativity
conceived in a tram as it passed a clocktower in Bern, coordinate geometry measured by
the relationship of a flitting fly and the floor, ceiling, walls of some sordid dorm in
Utrecht? or Leiden? A suburban garage with Dad’s camper parked out in the
driveway—make room for the racks, clear the toolbench for the switches. A grant
or degree. A mentor, a mother.