Book of Numbers: A Novel by Joshua Cohen

was certain it was “anathema” to
     novels, “to the vicissitudes of the novel,” in that for a novel to
     “function properly”—as if novels were like a tool, not a
     bluntness—its characters had to be kept apart from each other, “separated
     into missing each other and never communicating,” and that now in this present of
     pdas and online, people were rarely ever “plausibly alone,” everyone now
     knew what everyone else was doing, and what everyone else was thinking, and the result
     was a life of fewer crosspurposes and mixups, of less portent and mystery too—and
     I agreed with him, I’d already agreed, because I’d recognized the ideas as
     having been plagiarized verbatim from an interview with a decrepit South African
     literary pundit just published at the site of the
NYRB
.
    Anyway, Cal signedoff by asking, as he always asked, whether I was working
     on anything, and I answered that I’d just completed an email, nonfiction.
    The next email to slip from my hands (two fingers, hardbitten nails) was
     sincerer.
    I told myself I had to finish the last lecture page for the professoress
     by midnight, be done with it, and at midnight I uploaded and clicked send, and she wrote
     back with such speed it was like she’d responded before I’d sent it, or at
     least like she’d had her response already prepared and saved under Drafts. Lana
     wrote to thank me with an invitation to the summer institute—apparently she was
     allotted one guest and it “has 2 b u.”
    I wrote another email declining—don’t waste the keystrokes
     on how, why—and Lana wrote me back, “lets chat.”
    “I don’t have chat.”
    “just download it here ,” a
     link to Tetchat.
    “You can always just call me. But I’m not sure I’m
     ready for another trip. Need to sort things w/ Rach. Need time.”
    “ download prick dont be such a
    “a
    “a
    “a
    My laptop was colorwheeling, so cursed to its cursor that force quit had
     to be skipped for the nuclear option, Off/On.
    Then the phone rang and though it was a regular ring and the number
     wasn’t listed, I went for it, “No patience.”
    But the voice though expectedly female was Asian, like reared in Asia,
     “Excuse? Hello, Mr. Cohen?”
    “Speaking?”
    “Please pack a single piece of luggage, including only materials
     important to your process—everything else will be provided. Waiting outside your
     studio residence is a Lincoln Continental, black. You will meet it within 10 minutes.
     Your flight departs JFK at 7:00.”
    “To? I’m guessing Palo Alto?”
    “Palo Alto does not have a commercial airport. Delta 269 nonstop to
     SFO. San Francisco. 10:18 PDT, arrival.”
    “Oskar Kilo.”
    “Excuse?”
    “That just means OK.”
    “Please, one precaution we ask: take your phone or pda and remove
     its battery, leave both the battery and chassis at home. You will not require
     it.”
    She didn’t have to ask twice—she didn’t.
    Goodbye (646).
    ://

The shift to Palo Alto
     was—I’m already regretting this—tectonic.
    Not because there was this apparently extremely minor earthquake or tremor
     just as my flight was being cleared for landing and we were delayed, an hour, hovering,
     two hours—the last time I fly commercial—nor because all my typical
     eastern negativity toward the West always threatens to break and chunk and pile up into
     violent incoherence.
    Rather I’m talking a totally personal, emotional rupture. Coming to
     the other coast, single, oneway, felt like a permanent upheaval.
    Also, I was all sorts of pilly.
    I have what’s called an addiction to Ativan, and Xanax. Which is
     preferable to admitting to an aversion to planes.
    The livery smartcar had a partition between me and what must’ve
     been a driver, but the switches just lowered the windows and a platelet of GPS. Our
     destination was La Trovita Lando, which I took for a city, or for a neighborhood. It was
     a slough through brackish marshes, a ping at a