ing a building inspector. Whatever it is, that’s why they took it and used it and it was ugly.” “I told you to sew those holes.” “That’s hardly my point. Besides, you cram so much change and keys in them, your pockets are always going to have holes.” “I need the change for the bus and subway. And newspapers.” “Since when do you buy your own newspaper?” “I buy it.” “Maybe for Sundays. The rest you take out of garbage cans.” “Sometimes if it’s a clean one and just laying there on top, but obviously clean and looking almost unread, why not? Why waste? So many people waste. I was brought up poor and taught not to.” “Sometimes some of the ones you brought home had spit on them and, once, dog doody.” “I didn’t see. The subway station was poorly lit or something. But one out of a hundred. So what?” “Let’s drop the subject and concentrate on the other one.” “What other one?” “Three people have already sent that photo to me through the mail. All anonymously. What did you do to make so many enemies? Anyway, it’s an example of how many people know about it regarding the children.” “I didn’t make enemies. If I made a lot more money than most other dentists, maybe that’s why. Jealousy, and this is how they get even with me, but behind my back. Or there are thousands of crazy people in the city who do nothing all day but read the papers. And when they see a man down, someone they’ve never even laid eyes on but through the papers think they know, they get their kicks pushing him further. But believe me, people will forget. In a year, two at the most. I’ll be old news, or their minds just don’t remember that far. The few who don’t forget, the hell with them. I’ll tell all those nut jobs and sickies that I did it standing on one foot.” “What do you mean?” “That it was easy — this is — and in some ways, even good for me. I’ve met lots of decent people here. Gentlemen. Men of means. Big successes in all kinds of fields. Future clients, some of them. They have me working in the prison clinic.” “I know.” “So, for one thing, I’m able to stay in touch with the latest dental gadgets and machines. It’s very well-equipped. But best yet, I see twenty patients a day, all men from the prison. No thieves or killers but tax evaders, embezzlers, extortionists, but not strong-armed ones, plus some draft dodgers. Those I don’t especially like, for what they’re doing, but that’s their business. And the conscientious ones who won’t go into the army for their own more personal reasons. Moral, religious, none of which I go along with or else don’t understand, but at least they’re better types. And they all got teeth. Most, I just look in their mouths, pick around a little and take an X-ray or two to satisfy them, since they usually have nothing wrong with them a quick prison release wouldn’t cure or else need major bridgework, some of them complete upper and lower plates, which the prison’s not going to put out for. They let me extract and fill and even do root canal on as many teeth as I want, since they don’t want their inmates walking around in pain and maybe kicking someone over it. But they feel the more expensive work, which means sending it out to a dental lab, the prisoner should pay for himself on the outside. All of which is to the good, since when a lot of these men get out they’ll come to me.” “How? You won’t have a license to practice when you get out.” “I’ll get it in a year, maybe two.” “You might get it in ten years if you’re lucky. That’s what I’ve been told.” “By who?” “The license people and Democratic club leaders you sent me to speak to for you.” “Don’t worry, I’ll get it much sooner. But till I do I’ll get different kind of work and do very well in it. I did in dentistry — started with borrowed money and no more skills than the next dentist — I can do well in other things. And by working at it long and hard and mixing in the right places a lot. I bought a house for us from it, didn’t I? A building. Five stories of it and you decorated it to your heart’s content.” “Fine. One where it cost more to keep up than the rents we get plus all the problems that go along with it.” “What problems? Be like me. Tenant complains, tell him to move out if he doesn’t like it. And we also got our apartment from it. Two floors. And my office, so those were supposed to make up the difference. And it was an investment if the neighborhood ever turned good. Not only that, we had other things. A full-time maid. One left, another came the next day. And a car whenever we needed one. And summer vacations for all of us but especially all summer for you and the kids. So stop complaining. I can do all that again no matter what I go into. And maybe a little dentistry — the hell with them — you know,” and he makes jabbing motions with his thumb over his shoulder, indicating he’ll do it on the side or behind their backs. “Till everything comes through.” “That’s exactly what you shouldn’t do. They’ll find out — one of your good friends who’s an enemy will squeal — and you’ll land right back here getting acquainted with all the latest dental instruments.” “Anyway, no job is that complicated unless it’s a real profession like dentistry and medicine and law. But I’m sure I won’t have to do anything else for very long. The people you spoke to were being extra-cautious. You’re my wife. How do they know you weren’t also working for the state, in return for helping to reduce my sentence or getting my license back, by letting them say, ‘Well now, you want him to get his license back sooner than ten years, you’ll have to pay for it.’ They’re no dopes. I never should have sent you to them, but thanks for trying. Because of course they built up the time to you till I get my license back and pretended to be saints. But when I see them I’ll talk to them like a boy from the boys. And on a park bench — no one in fifty feet of us or where the air can be bugged — and not in a restaurant or room. I know what to do.” “What? Bribing them?” “Shut your mouth. That one they heard. Say something quick and silly as if you were joking.” “They didn’t hear. And like how,” she whispers, “by bribing them?” “Shut up with that word. I’m serious. Smile. Make believe you’re laughing, the whole thing a joke.” She smiles, throws her head back, closes her eyes, opens her mouth wide and goes “huh-huh-huh” through it. “Okay,” her face serious again, “what’ll you do? The same stupid thing?” “That time was a mistake. I did it to the wrong inspector.” “He was a city investigator, not a building inspector.” “I thought different. He was an impersonator, that’s what he was — a lowlife mocky bastard in it for a promotion or raise. Or maybe he does both — inspects, investigates — when there’s cause for alarm or just that things are getting too hot in the department that other inspectors are taking graft. So one true-blue one in there. But they all take, so they wouldn’t use an inspector to investigate.” “You did it to all the inspectors. Fire, water, boiler, sewage — whatever they were, that was your philosophy in owning a building. Even if I’d seen to every inch of the building and complied to the last decimal to every city rule and law, matter of course you handed out fives and tens to them.” “To keep them happy. They expect it. They don’t get it they feel unhappy and can write out ten violations at a single inspection, some that’ll cost hundreds to correct. Or my office. I got water and electricity and intricate machine equipment I depend on and I don’t want them closing me down even for a day. Every landlord knows that and every professional man who owns and works in his own building.” “It’s a bad way to run a brownstone, and dishonest.” “But it’s the practical way, or was. Did we ever get a violation before? Why do you think why? They’re all on the take or were till the investigation, and probably now are again. There’s a lull, then it’s hot; it never stops. Cities are run on it, the mayor on down. What happened then was they were using me. They wanted to get a professional man bribing an investigator impersonating an inspector so they could say ‘See, even doctors and dentists give bribes, so how bad is it that our building inspectors take them? Dentists earn five times as much as our inspectors and get from the public ten times the respect, but the briber is as serious a criminal as the bribee,’ or whatever they call them the bribed guy who takes. And that’s why they trapped me and that doctor in Staten Island and the C.P.A. who owns a much bigger building — an apartment one, twelve stories — in the Bronx. I met them both, since they’re both here for around the same-length terms as mine. Nice family men and they shouldn’t be in prison. For what good does it? You want to make them pay, have them work in city clinics or helping the poor with their taxes for twenty hours a week for the next few years. Ten hours, but where it adds up to about what they’d put in nonsleeping time here.” “Please sign the name change.” “I can’t. I know you think it’s best for them, that it’s going to help their future. But today’s big graft and news story will be tomorrow’s trash, or something — yesterday’s news. Last year’s. Last two. That’s what I wanted to say. No one will even have heard of the case or remembered my name from it by then. ‘Doc who? Nah, what graft story’s in the paper today?’ And I’ll be out and practicing again with an even bigger clientele. And if I’m not? If they’re so stupid to deprive my family of a good livelihood and the country of a lot more income taxes because of some dumb bribe I gave a dumb building inspector or investigator or actor, then I’ll do something else. The Garment Center. I’ll sell dresses or sweaters or materials. One fine gentleman in here on some illegal — immigration or something — offense owns a large suit-and-cloak house on Thirty-fifth Street and says he’ll take me in as a salesman the minute I get out. If he’s still in here, he’ll tell his partner to put me on. Not road-selling but the showroom. He thinks I’m sharp and palsy-walsy, so just the right type, besides knowing my way around and eager for money. And it’ll give the house a little extra class, having a doctor working for them. They all wanted to be doctors or dentists or their parents wanted them to. Most of the men here bullshit, so you can’t really count on them. But I know lots of people in the Garment Center, and also one of the ones from here might come through. And in it for a couple of years, working very hard, I’ll eventually learn enough to start my own business. I can do all that, why not? And then we’ll be rolling again. But to have my kids walking around with the name Teller when I’m Tetch? How am I to explain it?” “You don’t have to.” “No, I do. ‘Meet my son Gerald Teller’? ‘Was your wife married before and the boy kept his real father’s name?’ ‘No, I’m his real father. Same blood and nose.’ ‘Then why the different names?’ ‘Because all the kids want to be bank tellers when they grow up and my wife thought it’d give them a head start.’” “That’s just stupid,” she says. “Why, you got a better explanation? Okay. ‘Because I was in prison for being too honest and my wife thought to really jab the knife in me to get even she’d change the kids’ name so no one would know they were mine.’ Because you don’t think that’s what people will ask? Over and over they will. For what father has a different name than his kids?” “People we know are always shortening or Anglicizing their names. But if you don’t like that one, I was thinking of another. Tibbert. It sounded good.” “It sounds awful. It has no meaning. It sounds like a bird or frog or some little barnyard animal singing by a brook or up a tree. ‘Tib-bert! Tib-bert!’ Anyway, something silly sitting on a lily pad in a pond. Look, don’t give me that paper. You do, don’t give me the pen, because I won’t take both at the same time. I won’t be pressured. Just because I’m here, I haven’t become a jellyfish.” “I’ll tell you what you’ve become.” “Sure, and you’re my wife. But what about Tibbs as a name? We’ll start shortening the Anglicized. Or Tubbs? Or Terbert? We can change Howard’s name to Herbert and he’ll be Herbert Terbert. Or forget the T. Who says in a name change it has to start with the same letter as Tetch? Sherbet. Gerald, Alex, Howard and Vera Sherbet. The Sherbet kids. They can go on stage. Tell jokes, take off their clothes, do little two-steps. I don’t know why, but it sounds all right. Or the Shining Sherbets. Up on the high wire. You can change your name to Sherbet too and go back on the stage or up there in the air with them. You still got the face and figure for it. Or just divorce me if you want.” “Oh please.” “I’m not kidding. You want it, you got it.” “What are you talking about? Though don’t think for a few moments I haven’t thought of it.” “So think of it some more, think of it plenty. What the hell do I care anymore? You’re so ashamed of me—” “It’s not that—” “You’re ashamed!” “Well I told you not to do—” “You told me and you told me and now I’m here doing it on one foot and soon I’ll be out on both, or not so soon but a lot sooner than any of my kids’ lifetimes so far and later everything will be forgotten and the same. Except I probably won’t be doing those things again, that’s for sure, but you’ll still be hocking me about it till I’m dead. In fact your hocking will make me dead. Look, you want a divorce, it’s yours, on a platter. Take the house, the kids, the platter and whatever you find in the mattresses. You find another kid there, take that one along too.” “Don’t give me what I don’t want. When you get out and if you still want it, we’ll talk. The children will be a little older then and maybe more able to adjust to it. But not now.” “Why not now? Why not? Why not?” The guard on her side comes over. “Anything the matter?” “Nothing’s the matter, thank you.” “She says nothing but let me tell you what she wants me to do,” tapping the glass to the paper on the table in front of her. “He knows, they all have to know. It had to be screened before it got to you.” “So good, everyone knows. But did you know,” he says to the guard, “she wants to force me to do it? She thinks I’ll bend, because prison somehow has weakened me, but not me, sir, not me.” “Please, Simon, let it ride,” she says. “Okay, it’ll ride, to please you. Everything to please you, except that goddamn name change.” “Let that ride too.” “I’m afraid to say your time’s about up,” the guard says to them. “That’s what I really came over to say.” “Okay, okay, thanks, but just a few seconds more — How’s the new dentist doing in the office?” he says to her. “Better than the last. He seems to be busy, mostly older people — plates, extractions, primarily, from talking to a few of them going in and out.” “Just like me then. I pull out about ten teeth a day here and does it ever feel good. And some of these guys are