Joshua Cohen - Witz

Though not just any office…B doesn’t even know He’s in it, how deeply what this was, His father’s, what could’ve been, all His with tasteful lighting. The lobby’s plush if haphazard: the looting of a year ago’s still in evidence, desuetude, loopholes and gaps; the furniture had been purchased all in a lot to replace the antiques Israel had selected over the years, Empire in its Americanly acquisitive origins and devolutions both decadent and proper, staying seated if occasionally refined, preEmpire, nearEmpire, once risen conference curios by the time of their disappearance, fallen, wingchairs become clipped, corrupt, today made a host of the foldable, cardtables collapsing to the filed thinness of pending suits: seats unpadded, but the tabletops, they’ve sprung out extra makeshift legs to warranty such vinyl. Stacked reference materials, stools of crate and barrel. A bell rings from down the hall and this mensch emerges from behind nothingness, just a foldingchair unfolded from the grooves where the receptiondesk had been, asks B and the proctologist to follow him, right this way and huffily selfimportant: taking their leave of such a worried, Hadassah/Sisterhooded wife with a tongue like a subscription renewal insert (busying Solitaire with her membership cards, just now too concerned with her cascade), her reddened, promised daughter, then down a hall whose walls are still white if, could it be, snowed a little brighter, and this despite no new wash or coating, if only in relation to the stain retained of photographs removed; a coatrack wilts in a corner; the watercooler’s empty, webbed with the industry of spiders. A grove of plaintiffly withered plants scattered about here and there along with sorry files, paperaeroplaned whiles, with no bargain pled of access or negotiating passage, they have to compromise high toe heel along their ways. To avoid a slip and fall, them suing, a settlement for loss. Bad shape, and that’s my closing statement. The prosecution rests, to honor shiver.

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— Confirmed , so that He can finally go and marry my daughter, get her out of the house if only for a night…during which, let’s hope, to make a zeyde out of me.

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.

I assure you, says the fat, it’ll only be a moment…and as the proctologist rises he asks after him, as if unconversant: just look at the thing, that’s the Law, that’s what you want we should do, sign a piece of paper, give you a stamp, a large one we have, your choice of inks in every shade of red — the skinny adding, we don’t have to touch it, I’m just saying…to say: we might get our hands dirty for the money, but dignity’s the rub. Don’t blame, or accuse, they’re only assuming, with blushes. May it please the court, they’re new to this if greedy. And though the proctologist’s standing he’s nodding dumbly, stalling; probing around obscenely in his pockets front then rear for a wallet, which he eventually samples from his pants, tacts from it a stack of new bills he lays on the seat of his foldingchair. Appreciated, he says and then why not lies a businesscard atop, one of his own, you never know, tempting the cozen of professional courtesy, I’d do well by you…then turns to leave them alone, a schmeck privacy their privilege: he’s escorted out the doorway in the company of the receptionist who’d showed them in, a mensch they’d had to hire because of their frummier clients, the more religious who wouldn’t deal with a woman unless a relation, then how it’d become too much, this hiring of everybody’s kind and gifted sister; and so this haughty, hubristic, hospitalityschool dropout, he heads the doctor back down the halls to the lobby, its newspapers, magazines, wife, which none of them ever change except in their moods, her using the frontpages of today’s still crackling Fire! as a crumbly napkin, a dozen or so deep into the complimentary refreshments: yesterday’s coffee, the rugelach of last week, disappointingly fruity ever since they’re out of chocolate.