Read Book of Numbers: A Novel for Free Online Page B

my book, with an inscription on the flyleaf, “great
     read!!” and an impostor’s signature, “Joshua Cohen.” The
     bookmark was a blank check likewise signed, made payable to me fromTetration, which I filled in and cashed for $1.41—proud of my
     selflessness, proud of my ignorance—all endeavor is the square root of two.
    \
    Nothing of mine has appeared since “in
     print”—rather it has, just anonymously, polyonymously, under every
     appellation but my own. I spent mid to late 2004 through early to mid 2006 responding to
     job listings online, falsifying résumés to get a job falsifying
     résumés, fabricating degrees to get a job fabricating papers for degrees,
     undergrad and grad, becoming a technical writer, a medical and legal writer, an
     expatriate American lit term paper writer, a doctoral dissertation on the theological
     corollaries to the Bakhtinian Dialogue writer: Buber, Levinas, Derrida, references to
     Nishida tossed in at no additional cost.
    I edited the demented terrorism at the Super Bowl screenplay of a former
     referee living on unspecified disability in Westchester. I turned the halitotic
     ramblings of a strange shawled cat lady in Glen Cove into a children’s book about
     a dog detective. I wrote capsule descriptions of hotels and motels in cities I’d
     never visited, posted fake consumer reviews of New England B&Bs I wasn’t
     able to afford but still, two thumbs up, four and a half stars more convincing than
     five, A− more conniving than +, “the deskclerk, Caleb, was just
     wonderfully polite and accommodating.” Or else I posted as “Cal,”
     dropping his name to assert that the B&Bs were closer to attractions, or farther
     from garbage dumps, more amenitized, or less pest infested, than otherwise claimed,
     while for rating car rental businesses I trended toward black, posting with
     interpolations of the names of dead presidents, “Washington Roosevelt,”
     and for spas and pampering ranches I tended dickless as a
     “Jane”—Dear John, Sincerely, Doe.
    I wrote catalog copy: “Don this classic tartan wool driving cap and
     suddenly you’re transported to the greenest backroad in County Donegal. You stop
     to let a shepherd get his flock across—is he wearing the same Royal Stewart as
     you?”
    “The time is yours and the weather is balmy. You settle into the
     Arawak Hammock. You don’t notice the mesh—it’s handwoven, notknotted, using the highest-grade cotton twill—you
     don’t notice the staves—they’re handcrafted seasoned oak, providing
     maximum stability, and preventing bunching and coiling. You just notice: the waves. You
     sway along with the tide. Have you ever been so comfortable? (Mount and chains incl.)
     (4′ W × 6 ½′ L, 16 lbs).”
    I responded to an ad posted by a MetLife jr. manager seeking a
     speechwriter for a banquet honoring a sr. manager on his retirement, and when the
     superior told the inferior he’d enjoyed the speech, the inferior told the
     superior he’d had a professional write it and the superior congratulated the
     inferior on his honesty, emailed for my email, and commissioned a toast for his
     granddaughter’s baptism.
    Menu tweaks came in cycles, booms and busts, from fancying up to fancying
     down, from overselling the Continental to underselling the American, both culinarily and
     linguistically. If it wasn’t mille-feuille, it was a millennial reduction of
     simple proteins, grains, and greens. The NY Landmarks Conservancy was giving some medal
     to someone, a donor who lived in a landmark no doubt, and wanted to get a second
     opinion, wanted a clause or two trimmed to fit the citation. Then there was that spate
     of unusually tricky translations from the Hebrew, everything from subtitling a
     documentary about the Jenin refugee camp (“Why was the UN factfinding mission
     denied entrance? was it because after the Israelis massacred the women and children,
     they still had to massacre the