Free Book of Numbers: A Novel by Joshua Cohen Page B

but tampons,
     how would you know? From their “teeth gnashing”? their “furrowed
     brows”? all those antique gestures? or just those antiquated translations? Forget
     the fictional characters—how many authors are being stopped on the street?
    Another feature, but of the Victorian serial novel: They always doubled
     up, they repeated, reviewed, just in case the reader skipped an installment. Or was
     diverted by a major business decision.
    I’d just made a major business decision, having contracted for a
     book for which I had absolutely no qualifications.
    Or my only qualification was my name, the JC halfloops I stopped
     strolling—I stopped.
    I’d just quit the presence of immemorial Basileis and marmoreal
     Caesares—the likenesses of infamous men who’d raped and plundered Europe
     and Asia as if only for my entertainment. Yet this—he—was what jarred me.
     This guy who’d always played the shrewn but happy hubby, the patient catchphrasey
     Pop. A minor B-celeb, a situational tragicomedian.
    He was sensitive, but gave the impression of impersonating himself. His
     handsomeness was stilled, like the lines of his face were just distortion in his
     reception. In terms of painting: chiaroscuro cheeks, a worried craquelure mouth. In
     terms of sculpture: the nosetip curiously chipped, puttied cosmetically.
    This cameo was atop a bench off the reservoir path,
     crowded by pigeons pecking at the matzah slivers he tossed. A proper picnic was spread
     in the grass.
    I gathered myself and approached him, setting the flock to flying, a
     claque clapping its wings and wallaing west—like in film when directors seeking
     indistinct background chatter have their extras, forbidden by union rules from
     pronouncing anything scripted, repeat the same word at the same time but at different
     speeds and in different tones,
walla
supposedly being the most effective or
     just traditional choice, which happens to be an Amerindian word for
     “water,” as well as slang for “really?” in Hebrew and
     Arabic—really?
    Because sitting next to him was Rach.
    \
    I started fabricating immediately—as if I were Rach—began
     peddling their presence to myself: this was just a routine appointment enlivened with
     nature. A meeting negotiated into a harmless park outing. Their commercial was about to
     be shot, had been shot and was about to air. This was crunchtime, kinks had to be
     smoothed, geriatric touches retouched.
    I remember thinking that their conversation—this
     situation—was itself a commercial, an infomercial, a public service announcement
     warning: you’re not as witty as you think.
    The actor noticed me before she did, and he recognized too—two
     stars in rare midday conjunction. His face tanned a shade deeper, and went rumpled as if
     by a gust, like the dewed pollenstrewn picnic blanket—a bedsheet, one of
     ours.
    Rach collapsed into her lap.
    She’d been complaining about him since the fall. He’d been
     forced on her by a director, by an agency exec. She’d never been more harried on
     set, she’d never dealt with talent more demanding. So old, hard of hearing,
     glaucomic, goutish—just getting his travel arranged was an account in itself, a
     nightmare.
    But the way Rach kept her head in her hands told me the truth: that
     he’dbeen her true campaign, or she his, all along, and that
     all her whining to me had just been a prompt or cue—to be something, to change
     something, perform my regret, make amends.
    What’s my line? Did I have any lines?
    Otherwise, his presence would’ve been nothing but scenery to
     me—he’d existed strictly in bitparts, never as a whole. Until then,
     I’d thought of him only as a supporter, a walking dead rerun, I’d known
     him only as a man who—a generation after appearing as the first teacher
     cannibalized by student zombies in the last installment of a horror franchise, as the
     smilingly wisenheimer outtaboro accent of an animated knishcart in a