Everything’s underheated if not unheated totally, with an icewind down the halls…then the hall down to the last offices and there the largest, too, cornered at the edge of the building, topfloored thirtysix high above Mitteltown’s marked drudge: papers gust through, and more files, merging and acquiring then winding apart, everywhere draftily whirled around with the Garden’s ash duct in, what sustaining smoke, as if an interior night (that’s if it’s not just the electricity’s been cut here: nonpayment, moons overdue), now starred with a raided suppliesroom’s worth of miscellaneous office staples, paperclips and stamps, their edges and those of the sharpest papers, too, and then the folders for files cutting them as they pass, slicing them raw, as if unfolding their flesh to the cold. The mensch leading, how can you trust him wearing such a bulky trench indoors. An opened office at hallway’s end reveals a glaring glass, a window the length of the wall, and to Him fishbowlish, though the wet’s still kept outside, upsidedowned and floating in the sky. It’s fronted by two menschs, sitting in two chairs set uncomfortably too close to each other behind their single, small desk, which is little more than the old office door fallen to rest atop sawhorses dirty, scarred, obviously filched from the reconditioned street. At work, in progress this regression. Don’t bother to get up, on my account, no good here. Better you should shvitz.
The heat in the room and only this room is up incredibly against the prevelant outside, what weather let in through the halls: how hot is it that the two how you have to convince yourself they’re lawyers, and keep reminding, are decked out in suits, with jacket, vest, and pants, but how under these there’s nothing else, apparently nothing underneath whether worn or mended, borrowed, white or blue, only these two suits of three pieces each as slouched right off the remaindered’s hangers, tailored too loose from the skeletal rack; no shirts are evident under their vests and jackets, no underwear in evidence under the pants under the single shared desk (the bulges are too conspicuous from both sides of the metal’s median support), no socks around either, shoeless. What else, this unbecoming, it’s just a hunch, a feeling: how they’re the kind of lawyers who can never take calls, who let’s say regularly shut the lights then hide behind the cabinets for linner, which is houred to encompass the entire afternoon — a splurge on delivery, let the secretary tip, or else to send her freezing for their takeout, then forget to remunerate receipts. Waiting as if patient for any client paying even only one of them as they’re only billing each the other, selling short and fat the one, the other tall and overcharging, one wipes his brow with a cuff of his suit while the other examines his stubble in the reflection of a nailfile, which could be used to split wood, or to cut the clouds, make rain. The proctologist gives B a wink that says, they know me here, or maybe there’s schmutz in his eye; then, he tugs on an ear, as if that’s a sign, too, for what and not just nerves. Trust me, I know how to talk to these people. That’s what the other eye wants to say, many times unwinked. Whoever they are, whatever they make…Goldenbergs, Thron, & Rauber, He suspects they’ll be anyone you want — if you can pay, in cash and preferably today.
And what can we do for you, the fat asks, Mister…
Jacobson, says the proctologist.
Please, Mister Jacobson, says the skinny, let the boy speak for Himself…I’m not Jacobson, says the proctologist.
And so you’re here for a change of name…
No, says the proctologist, He’s…accusing with an ungloved finger he still uses for you shouldn’t know what and enjoyably, here to be, what’s the term—
And so?
I’ve been told by my rabbi, he goes on, undaunted, that despite His assurances His, nu, covenant needs to be checked…independentlike, thirdparty and all, but you’re the professionals, aren’t you, I’m paying you to be — to demonstrate proof of His circumcision is what, and cough, in the presence of at least two witnesses, preferably lawyers is what he said, or a notable notary public. A mensch down at my mikveh, Shearith Israel’s, gave me your names, Little Jimmy Mizrahi who handles for me my malpractice, said you’d give me a good deal if I mentioned him.
The two menschs turn to stare at each other; then the skinny turns back to calm a yawn into his fist.
Mister Jacobson, he says, it’s standard policy to ask you to leave the room for the purposes of this inspection.
Say no more. As if to say even more. Keep everything in confidence except my confidence in you.
