mockie 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 not? 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 in personating 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 CPA 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 ever 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. Or some other house if that one doesn’t work out. 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 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? OK. “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 jelly fish.’ ‘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 all sounds 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 you told me and I did it and admit it and they had 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 forgetten 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?’ ‘Nothings 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,’ she says, ‘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. ‘OK, 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’ ‘OK, OK, 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 bullvons, with teeth like dinosaurs’—I’ll pull out yours too, Mr. Carey, if you want me to — no charge.’ ‘Thanks but no. Ones I don’t need I let fall out.’ ‘Smart guy. And I know you’re Carey because you got it stitched on your jacket. Don’t let me fool you.’ ‘You didn’t.’ ‘But no plates here,’ he says to her. “They won’t shoot for it for the prisoners. But I already said that. I’m repeating myself when I’ve only seconds left. I’d like to be making them. Keep my hands in so I don’t get rusty. Does he pay the rent on time?’ ‘First of the month. And for the summer, when he was going to a dental convention in Chicago and then on to a vacation somewhere — Denver, he said; the Grand Canyon to hike and ride horses—’ ‘Lucky guy. Not the hiking, but I used to ride horses. Once in army training, then in Prospect Park a couple of times. I’ve pictures. You’ve seen them.’ ‘—he gave me two months in advance. I think he’ll be there for as long as we like.’ ‘Tell him not to get too tied to the place. Or why not? I’ll open an office someplace else. It doesn’t always have to be in my own home.’ ‘Time’s really up,’ Carey says. ‘Now we’re all breaking rules and can be penalized. Your wife, with shortening her visits. You, because of that. Me, in that they don’t like me being this lenient at the end of a visit and I get a talking-to—’ ‘Can I kiss her hand through the bottom hole here?’ ‘Afraid not.’ ‘Right now she wouldn’t go for it anyway’ He stands. ‘Good-bye, dear,’ she says. ‘I mean it: please call and write as often as you can. And try to forget most of what we went over today — what might disturb you.’ ‘The kids. Give them each a big kiss on the head from me.’ Carey signals a guard behind the glass, who goes over to her husband. ‘Tell them I love them like nobody does but don’t tell them where I am.’ Carey shuts the speaking hole. ‘Gerald knows.’ Her husband cups his hand to his ear and his expression says ‘What?’ ‘I don’t want to get you in trouble here,’ she says louder, ‘but Gerald knows.’ ‘Yeah, I know, I know,’ he shouts, ‘but not the others and tell Gerald not to tell.’ Carey opens the hole and says ‘Everything all right, Yitzik?’ Yitzik waves that everything’s fine, puts his hand on her husband’s shoulder and says ‘Please don’t make a fuss.’ ‘Me? A fuss? You hear that, Pauline? This nice guard here thinks I’m going to make a fuss — Not goodtime Simon, sir. Not a chance,’ and without looking at her or back at her he goes with the guard through a door. She puts the paper back into a manila envelope, winds the string around the tab in back to close it, goes through her door, is asked if anything was slipped to her by the prisoner and is given her pocketbook back, calls for a cab, leaves the prison, takes the cab to town, goes to a bar near the train station and has two strong drinks, something she only started doing every day once he went to prison and which she has one or two more of and never has supper or lunch the day she visits him.”