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The Keeper of Numbers


Tucked away in the university’s bowels, he toils away in thermal paper dreams masquerading as headstones of campus dining events. His mind vacillates between a dull trance of accounting for all student, faculty, and staff dining orders and a rapid race of thoughts he has recently begun putting down to paper. Unlike most colleges that utilized a complex and changeful mycelium of software programs—or digital products, as sales departments called them—to manage their receipts, Acacia University relied on physical receipts to reconcile its books.

            He understood the importance of tradition, especially for a college whose business is the very transmission of old ideas written on paper from time immemorial.

            “Thirteen dollars, twenty-three cents total; tax, eighty-one cents,” he said rotely.

Dining Services was actually administered by an outside company—Overgrade—the business of which was governed by a contractual agreement that served as the impetus for his position. While Overgrade kept track of all their own expenses, sales, and profits, a clause required Acacia to ensure a minimum total sales each month regardless of student demand. He worked for Acacia, not Overgrade, to verify all sales on campus to keep the massive company honest. After all, they provided food and catering to hundreds of colleges across the Midwest: much to keep track of.

            “Three dollars and eighteen cents total; tax, nineteen cents.”

            He knew that amount: the cost for an individually-wrapped pair of ibuprofen pills sealed in airtight, shiny plastic. Or a blueberry muffin, perhaps. One or the other. It didn’t much matter, of course, since the numbers didn’t lie. In a little department of one, he was keeper of these numbers.

            Looking up from his receipts, he noticed the aged wooden crucifix centered above the clock in what passed for his office. They had generously converted a modest supply closet in the basement—rebranded by an ambitious campus president as the Garden Level—as his workspace. Years ago, the University converted all the clocks across the college to digital ones that would automatically change for Daylight Savings Time, which Ohio still religiously embraced on the staunch grounds of heritage.

            His office, however, was exempt, a numerical outlier: the mechanical clock remained, its worn black frame encircling it, the second hand tick, tick, ticking with mathematical certainty. The dust-covered crucifix above it (since his office rarely got cleaned by Facilities) was another throwback to a time when Acacia wore its Jesuit heritage like a badge of honor, before the well-known scandals and abuses, of course. Time moved slyly in the Garden Level.

            “Fifty dollars total; no tax,” he said—a gift card, no doubt, but to where? Overgrade had just begun selling them, the lack of tax having caused him to place a rare inquiry with his immediate supervisor three floors up in the Office of Business and Finance Services. They assured him that no error was made; gift cards are not taxed by the local or state governments.

            Each day, he calculated the sum of all the receipts: burger and fries for staff straying from their employer’s wellness program goals, vegan chicken salad for students studying cultural studies, environmental science, and dietetics, black coffee to cure faculty hangovers after a night of drinking to forget, and baked salmon for the blue-blooded Deanery who would outlive us all. His job was like a window into the lives of campus people, which worked out well since his office had no window: the slight buzzing hum of a single tic-tac-toe fluorescent light fixture was his only music. Each month, he submitted his report to the Vice President of Business Affairs with the only response being a thumbs up emoticon in his email program.

            Amidst the sea of numerical truths, the lone accountant of sorts found himself increasingly fixed upon one nagging thought. In a word, legacy, but that’s not exactly it. He had no children, no spouse, no great sum of money to leave Acacia as an endowment. No, he had settled the matter of legacy in his mind years ago. What concerned him, here and now, was how the numbers were crowding out—to his mind—his own thoughts, which raced quickly some days, swerving in and out around the dollars and cents, encircling but not overtaking them.

            His thoughts were like that old falcon turning and turning, passionate intensity growing internally. His ideas on a myriad of topics and senses came to him frequently, from world events and local news to the short lives of moths and the vicissitudes of post-coital fortune.

            What would happen to those thoughts if not recorded, he thought. He waited a few days, then a week, hoping that the thought would pass like all thoughts eventually do, but, alas, he became steadily more obsessed with this dilemma, one of survival more so than legacy.

            After all, he was under no delusion that his thoughts would ever be read by another soul. No, that wasn’t it. The process of inscription though, not unlike the numbers, was important to him, even if not to anyone else.

            Tick, tick, tick, tick went the clock, hours ticking away. It would soon be time to retire for the day, the old leather swivel chair made with genuine rivets having made its inscription on his body over the years. He could have—and probably should have—requested a new office chair, one with more lumbar support, but he was a habitual animal. Some would have filed a lawsuit over unsafe working conditions, but he had little interest in retributive justice: the numbers of history bore out the absolute impossibility of such an ostensible justice.

            “Twenty-six dollars, sixty-one cents; tax, one dollar, sixty-two cents.” He decided to take out his new leather-bound notebook with ivory pages and record his thoughts. The numbers, after all, are always willing to wait, unlike Chronos, the god of small and large things alike.

            A “friends combo”—perhaps chicken, maybe pot roast—one of the larger meals offered at the college for a group of friends (or, more occasionally, colleagues). Friendship—an interesting phenomenon, a voluntary engagement, one fraught with constant threat of sorrowful failure: friends, after all, grow apart sometimes, all the time, each day in fact. No, not even sometimes—usually, more often than not. Perhaps sharing a meal together will sustain it for a bit, a shared chronotope of friendship, but only for so long. Friendship, after all, expires upon several factors: perpetual distance, growing apart, the introduction of new lovers, alcoholism, death, the last of which can only be borne for so many friends. How many true friends can one person mourn? Certainly, yes, the number varies by person, personality, and the various traumas one has suffered (note to self: consider how traumas—and which ones precisely—enlarge or otherwise shrink one’s capacity for mourning and, therefore, for friendship). Friendship is a deadly business.

            “Three dollars and eighteen cents total; tax, nineteen cents.”

            Another headache or perhaps a menstrual cramp, an accounting thought that interrupted his thinking on friendship, observations he could revisit later if he wished, ones he could even perhaps publish should a suitable home be found for them. No matter, the act of writing satisfied him; it set his racing mind at ease, at least for a moment.

            His physician had always been a bit concerned about such thoughts, the demarcation between intrusive thoughts and obsessive thoughts and racing thoughts all signifying disparate symptoms in a medicalized understanding of the human condition. Over the years, he had indulged a diagnostic approach to life, one of numbers, levels, statistics, but had found it largely a distraction from his work of accounting for campus numbers, which, to him, were signs (in the Saussurean sense) of the lives of campus. Besides, no one lives forever, and suffering is a given; only a fool attempts to escape these certainties.

 

            The day is over, and he returns to his home with only his weathered, black leather satchel in hand, its various patches and zipper repairs barely noticeable from a distance.

            He stops for a moment at his door, like a prisoner waiting for the guard to buzz him through or as though he weren’t sure he had the right house; actually, it was as though he were waiting before the door to be invited in by someone, but he lived alone, his Scottish Fold feline companion, Blanchot, having died a few months ago, boyfriends and girlfriends having left for different, more banal reasons long ago over the years.

            After crossing the threshold, he dropped his satchel on the floor in front of the door’s sidelights that were framed with wrought iron shaped into winding vines. The original hardwoods of his small—what was the compulsory euphemism—cozy?—house bequeathed to him by his parents, both since passed from cancer and drink, creaked as he walked to the living room. He made no major repairs since, as he liked to imagine telling friends (should he have them one day), the house had good bones.

            The popcorn ceiling housed water stains that dripped asbestos onto the floor during hard rains, which were increasingly common in that part of Pennsylvania when droughts weren’t ravaging farms and scorching suburban lawns kept alive only on nitrogen-powered poisons. His house suited him though: mostly bare walls, devoid of photos of family and friends or even the old cat, and a minimalist décor of old, dust mite-infested furniture—couch, recliner, and one of those papasan chairs that a former lover had left behind.

            He crashed on the couch and flipped on the television to stream his favorite detective show—Monk—though he never had read Sherlock Holmes. Monk made him feel better about his own quirks and rigidity, a different temperament more so than a condition, or otherwise a condition of intense humanity. He reached for his notebook to realize that he had left it in his satchel. With a sigh, he made the trek of a dozen or two feet to retrieve it. Such trips were not as easy or painless as they used to be, but no matter, no matter. He had his thoughts and, according to his statistical calculations, at least 14.2 years left to record his thoughts.

            The same show watched over and again provides a reliable source of happiness attuned to the pleasure principle: repetition of the same, again and again, no difference. Even if I were a man of letters or a man of action immersed in difference and changeful circumstances, I suspect I would still need this repetition of the same, which the show and its medium, for me, takes to completion. Still, what, I wonder, does one miss out on? How much difference can one bear? Is such capacity like a bowl being filled or otherwise like an infinite valve being opened? I don’t know.

            Sam used to tell me that not everything in life has finite, quantifiable properties, which, of course, led to an argument of the everyday domestic variety so common to coupled life. Perhaps we each have a need for the same in our lives, but when it comes to people—lovers, friends, partners, colleagues—there’s some need for difference. Of course, the world needs diversity and society benefits from that, but that is not the question here. Insofar as one can even speak of an individual today—the Situationalists and Frankfurt theorists cast serious doubt on this—what is the experience of freedom in relation to the other? A freedom-with others, as Nancy had it, or perhaps a democratic freedom from domination as in Habermas? Or perhaps it’s just watching reruns of television shows in one’s underwear while one has time, before the cloth violently rips itself from its Hobbesian waistband.

            He had spent many years reading philosophical tomes from the Western tradition, first in college and then on his own, until he had reached the point where numerical certainty took its place. Still, there were times when he fell into a mood of existential pontification.

            One of his lovers, Billie, found this to be a very desirable quality, sapiosexual that they were, and loved nothing more than exploring the great ideas of the world late into the night, sometimes heighted by a moderate dose of psilocybin, which the keeper of numbers never cared for much due to the massive amount of uncertainty it provoked in him, namely, how numbers fell away and became empty signifiers, like a fragile house of cards that we have built to assuage our greatest fears. In his heart of hearts, he knew this to be true, but who among us can live completely without illusion? He put his faith in numbers.

            Another partner with whom he lived for a few weeks before a dramatic end filled with histrionics, Dave, couldn’t stand his philosophical musings.

            “You sound like an arrogant prick,” he said towards the end. Fair enough, he thought.

            Is there such a thing as freedom with others that also preserves the “force of I” Adorno spoke of, a force that is both individual and communal? Perhaps freedom in its truest sense has more to do with a refusal of domination oriented toward serving others, toward a community without a definition of belonging—no boundaries, only contingent belonging, made anew, renewed, with each interaction—

            A knock at the door interrupted his writing, a fact he found incredibly irritating, like a hit man being served peas in a luncheonette, something that would have sent him into a wild rage in his younger years. He waited for the person to go away.

            Knock, knock, knock.

            Muttering to himself, Don’t you see the ‘no solicitation’ sign up?, he slowly made his way to the door, opening it to find a young man in yellow shorts and a black polo shirt with an image of a colorful whale on it.

            “Yes?”

            “Good evening, sir, I’m going door to door to inform folks of an increase in your electricity bill and the availability of other providers that…”

            “Please, excuse me, I must stop you right there.”

            The young man paused, his gaze undeterred.

            “I follow these numbers very carefully, the kilowatts I use each month, not to mention the distribution and generation service charges of providers, not to mention the transmission service charge. My favorite is the ‘customer charge,’ which I find to be refreshingly honest in a time of unmatched corporate duplicity.”

            The young man nods along nervously, eyes shifting to his next conquest next door.

            “So, my friend, I am up-to-date on the numbers; I evaluate and sign new 12-month contracts in May, not June.”

            “Understood—but there’s an increase happening next month across many providers and—”

            “I evaluate in May only; I am the keeper of numbers. I alone am responsible.”

            “Have a good night,” the young man said as he clipped pen to clipboard.

            “You as well.”

            He shut the door, finding that all of his thoughts about freedom and community had faded away, but Monk was still playing: the episode where the detective gets amnesia in a new city and a lonely woman convinces him that they are married and he is a roofer, despite his fear of heights. Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Brust, die eine will sich von der andern trennen.

            He wrote a bit in his journal about the ephemerality of memory and how numbers operate as a faithful pharmakon for memory: the numbers remain, even if wrong or skewed: they remain. His goal was to record all of his thoughts before he died, every last one, one hundred percent of them.

            That night, he dreamed of all the lunches and impulse snacks he calculated throughout the day, dreams buttressed with short fragments of images of trapezoidal shapes connected by galvanized screws of the wrong length and diameter, a mess that could not be resolved or easily fixed.

 

            The next morning was uneventful except for a few more thoughts that he managed to record on the bus ride to work. All his thoughts, to his mind, were exceptional.

            “Ninety nine cents; no tax.”

            An individually-wrapped tampon, since Pennsylvania stopped taxing period products in 1991. Residents and visitors in neighboring Ohio, however, only just took their pink tax off the books in 2020. Interesting how much difference a few miles can make. A bit further out, some twenty states still maintain these taxes. The numbers reveal the shameful secrets we hide in plain sight.

            A person in a dark blue pinstripe suit and purple knit tie entered his office space, since there was no door upon which to offer a courteous knock. This was a statistically improbable occurrence; he rarely had visitors.

            “Max,” the towering figure said.

            “That’s not my name, sir.”

            “Sorry—I’m here with some unfortunate news. Due to lower enrollment the past few years and the state paring back funding, we’ve had to make some cuts.”

            His heart started beating, mind racing a bit more than usual:

            Two eggs left in the fridge, a pair; one cucumber that should be moldy but is not; one half-full bottle of bbq sauce; a large pot of quinoa black bean taco mix; three broccoli crowns; a new box of butter sticks; an open box of baking soda. That’s it—no savings, mortgage already past due, consolidation loan from the divorce still has two years left.

            “The leadership team determined that your position was no longer needed, especially since your records show that Overgrade’s accounting has been accurate year after year.”

            “What about deterrence?”

            “Excuse me?”

            “You know, my position is a deterrent to them swindling the University.”

            “Be that as it may, we’re all swindled and swindlers: the goal is to come out ahead financially, and the decision has been to eliminate your position. I’m sorry. Next Friday at the end of our fiscal year will be your last day.”

            “Who will keep the numbers now?”

            The suited man grew uneasy for the first time.

            “The numbers belong to Overgrade, and they will keep them.”

            “I see,” he replied with disillusioned eyes, like when first learning that one’s father is a negligent brute of a human being. The man continued, as if reading from a script.

            “If this news causes you any mental health issues, please be sure to reach out to our employee assistance program, which is available 24/7 to support you.”

            “Through next Friday.”

            “Through next Friday. Since salaried paychecks are paid out two weeks in advance, last Friday was your last paycheck, but your benefits continue until your last day.”

            “My last day.” Schwindeln.

            With that, the man awkwardly left the makeshift office, and the old accountant’s mind began racing again with questions of survival and how such a change would impact his writing. He grabbed his little notebook.

            This is not a diary, nor a memoir. Upon being informed of losing my job, however, I must update the record to reflect that money is out, the refrigerator near bare, and there’s too much writing yet to be done. I thought I had more time left but no matter: I will press on with the work irrespective of these material setbacks. I wonder whether one can in fact eat and digest thoughts, like Argon’s magic chalk drawings: “It isn’t chalk that will remake the world . . .”

            After the impromptu meeting, it was hard to focus on the numbers that he no longer would keep. He considered fudging the numbers a bit to justify his existence, but such a tactic would be transparently self-serving and merely taint his record of good work. No, the numbers must be respected, even if others have transformed this world into the endless accumulation of ends upon ends certified by any means necessary. He felt lonely in his work, and the numbers, too, felt lonely beside him.

            He wrote furiously in the coming days: at home against the periodic sound of the train passing through his neighborhood on its way to New York, on the bus to and from a job no longer worth doing, and in the office. Every moment was given to his inscriptions. On Sunday, he went to the bookstore to buy one more notebook. The completed tomes—each numbered on the spine—sat atop a lone shelf the previous owners had left in his kitchen.

            There were eight magnificently filled volumes of his thoughts on politics and love, a philosophy of moths, the cruel practices of the corporate university model, reflections on the quantification of sports, and so on. He wanted to fill the ninth volume, a religiously-imbued number made up of three threes. He wasn’t too keen on numerology, that pseudo-science undertaken by religious mystics and conspiracy buffs interested in the Illuminati. Still, the thought of nine—or, to be more accurate, the numeral 9—pleased him.

            But he had already gone several days without eating much with no money and limited stock on hand. He could beg, of course, or try to go on unemployment, but he was tired and just wanted to write. The writing held his depression at bay, that gloomy, unwanted friend that showed up during life’s difficult transitions. Billie used to call it his loathsome muse.

            Fear of death no person can escape, but hunger pains are a good distraction. One can imagine Wittgenstein writing something like that, or even Wilde. Atropos. Ahead of their time, perhaps ahead of time in general. Fast-paced minds and slow technique warp the experience of temporality, bend it to the will of Übermenschen, who tame death by living beyond it. How sad that Wittgenstein, a committed writer of ideas in notebooks, that man of predictable irritability, would suppress his queer sexuality and come to loathe himself. Even biographers and estate executors have, largely, maintained this erasure, even those as reputable as Monk—the real Monk, not the fictional Monk—as Perloff argues in affirmation of his queerness.

            There’s too much to write, and he feels overwhelmed by the prospect of continuing at this pace. After all, he knows he is not so much generating new knowledge as he is simply translating his thoughts to paper, whatever those might be.

            I have grown tired of how Americans pronounce the word, gyro, he wrote late one night right before falling asleep, his own stomach howling. The connection between the word, how it is spoken, and the thing in itself is arbitrary: his pangs needed no words, except in writing.

            The withering man, down ten pounds already from his typical wiry figure, continued doing his job at Acacia, not that anyone was checking or would notice. He was, already, like a ghost haunting the Garden Level in a room that likely wouldn’t even be repurposed for anything, just forgotten without a trace that he had ever been there. A dying garden. Such thoughts saddened him, but he didn’t have the luxury of dwelling on them: more writing had to be done.

            His thoughts had begun to slow a bit, either due to exhaustion, hunger, or so many ideas already preserved in the notebooks, or some combination thereof. This brought him a little comfort, since that meant there was not much writing left to be done. What came after that, he was uncertain, but he always had managed to figure out next steps once they were upon him. Too much planning, after all, was a little world of illusion unto itself.

 

            Today, I write what may perhaps be my last thought as I reach the end of my ninth notebook, and it regards temptation. Not the temptation I was raised with—desert temptations, resistance, and foolish glory to some god—but a temptation to start a tenth journal with the knowledge that nine is right, not ten. Odd, not even; queer, not straight. Monk would prefer an even ten, but nine is current; to pursue a tenth would be to ask too much from life. One must know when to start, when to rally, but then also when to end. Nothing good continues forever, and this ending moment of temptation to continue on reminds me that we—a pronoun I rarely use, incidentally, whoever may read this—always want more than we have. More stuff, more friends, more time. Scarcity is not only an economic rule; it’s an existential and sensory one. But there is no sense in wishing for more time right now. I have filled my ninth volume; the work is complete. I am complete, my mind calm for the first time since I can remember. Perhaps someone will read me, and perhaps not. 

 

Mike Piero, Ph.D. (he/him) is a bisexual writer and professor in Northeast Ohio, where he teaches courses in writing, literature, the humanities, and game studies. He is author of Video Games and Social Justice: Playing on the Threshold (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021). His short fiction and poetry have appeared in Impost: A Journal of Creative and Critical WorkMidway Journal, Moveable Type, Oak Tree Journal, and The River. He can be reached at www.mikepiero.org.

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