Book of Numbers: A Novel (21 page)

He was close enough to obstruct my exit, and was stooping over as if to pick up something he’d dropped. Some hankie or submissive tissue—a woman.

But not white—she was black. She was a wadded tossed abaya, a smutty black abayayaya—trill it through the nose, like a jihad ululant.

She’d fallen—mucous sniveling through her nostril slit—she’d been hit.

As the doors went to shut, the Arab pivoted and kicked a foot out, a foot clad expensively crocodilian, and wedged them open.

“Stop!” I yelled, “Lay off, asshole!” or its panicked equivalent—it’s not enough to look ridiculous in action? I have to sound strangled on the page?

The Arab just tried to drag her into the elevator with me.

But she struggled, and so the Arab let go, only to hit her again—smacking the sniffling girl backhanded. She thrashed away howling.

Or that was me, urging her on with stupey nonconfrontationalisms: “Get away!” (I’m sure there’s a security recording), “Run!” (I’m willing to negotiate terms for the erasure of any security recording). My sneaker might’ve grazed his wingtip still holding the doors, and the Arab whirled around dervishly.

We faced each other, and I can only imagine what he took me for: a
burnt paleface, a paunch in its decline, into financial services,
Homo americanus consultantus
.

Then again, my impressions of him were just as imaginary. He was some fictional character from transit lit, some thriller villain spun from a revolving rack in an international terminal. I only wished it were a better translation. He was introducing himself as the girl’s husband, or father, or brother, explaining that whatever the nature of their relationship, it entitled him to beat her, explaining that it required him to beat her—and just as the elevator doors were sliding shut again between us, he lashed out with pointy chinbeard and charged.

He choked me by the totestrap and I went for his thumbs, until everything in the tote was falling and we went after it, into the hallway. We fell like dictators. Slowly, messily slowly, crashing into curios and rolling into benches. I punched his jaw and his head hit the wall, bent my knee between his balls on my way to getting upright, lurching amid the wreckage of lamps, braziers, kashkul of sawdusty potpourri.

He was out. Not just unaware, but unconscious, and not in the psychoanalytic definition, but with blood in his goatee.

“You OK?” I said to the girl. But the cowering napkin just wailed.

I stumbled to the elevatorbanks, pressed the up and down buttons. I rocked him loose from deadweight and turned him over and inside the car, pressed every floor.

The elevator closed, opened: a flap of his bedsheet was stuck between doors. I tucked him in and took out my wallet and swiped him down to the pillow of lobby, and thank the gods of maintenance or inspectorship, or of magnetic coercivity, he plummeted.

My sessh effects were sprawled along the hall, Tetbook concussed from tote. “If you’re seriously OK, help me pick all this up?”

The girl stayed just a heap, of grieved cheek and lusty gutturals, so I bent to collect my adapters, converters, pink highlighter, and then went to haul her up too—but her hands wouldn’t have mine—she refused to reach out and meet me. Though this wasn’t because of trauma, rather it was because the touch of an auslander male was prohibited: her daddy or hubby or whatever could touch, he could strike her, but her savior was—haram.

“What room number are you?”

No reply or no number?

“Speak English? The zimmernummer, your numéro de chambre?”

But why would she slink back to the suite of a beater?—beyond that, would a controlfreak batterer let her have her own key?

“Let’s call Security? Do you have any family you can stay with?”

Nothing, and I even tried in Hebrew—gevalt.

She stayed down on all fours just wiping her face with a black cloth, which then again became her veil—and her face was gone, and then she was gone, spurning me crawling around a corner.

Her mouth, at least, was beautiful. All of me that was not my mind was virtuous, blameless.

Rewrite this all. Bottom to top.

://

The Khaleej’s stairs were strictly service, in case of emergency, power outage. Their utility proved a moral instruction. An ethics of exertion. The soul antipode of the resort leisured around them.

There was no carpeting so profanely plush that rougher rugs had to be placed upon it for prayer, no marbles so carnally veined as to recall the flesh—they were purging, spiritually purifying. Unventilated, sweltering.

10 flights of 10 steps each, count their discipline down.

The fluorescence hummed penance, absolved the walls of their materials: scuffed, costcut, asbestic. Breathe in, breathe out, relax. But my wind wasn’t up to even an intellectual exercise. My lungs were tight, legs, feet, it’s my hand that I’m sure was broken. Typing with my nose. The last two flights were huffed.

Back in NY straggling home from the office, I’d do the burp fart shuffle four blocks south from my stop, trying to forget which building was mine, trying to forget which apartment. I could live anywhere, I thought, I could put my key to any door, not a card to swipe but a dagger to stab and turn—wounding any door, wounding any lock, and the insides that would weep for me, the roomy rumen and innards viscera, all that bark and sap and heartwood ringing, would be similar or same. They’d heal, but even when they wouldn’t, I could always exchange them, I could always upgrade—with no regard for brand if new. The new—once the time of the unprecedented, now the time of the compatible.

It’s mortifying, but this also went for women—the thought that any woman could accommodate, could give me what I expected from a life. The fault, then, would be with the expectations—downsized, reduced—the fault, then, would be mine.

My landing was temporary, hard on the heels. Junior Caliph Floor #2, North.

I leaned against the jamb. Against the bar. Open Sesame. If no one’s around, no alarm will sound.

\

I hadn’t realized I’d left the sink on. I washed my hands with my hands, cracked my knucks from numbness to stinging—if only minibars carried Vicodin or Percocet.

Admit it, I was smitten. Me, the stricken party.

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.