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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.

The two menschs behind their sawhorse desk cleaning their glasses without glass with their ties, which are untied one starred the other striped, and frayed loose at lesser ends: their unfocused squint as if they’re always thinking, never not; then, replacing their glasses of only frames and then their ties, too, the greater end of each’s thrown back over their shoulders as if silken wings or the pursy ears of sows; they sit unsettled, hunched over their common desk of the converted door with its knob still installed at middle, which they both take turns touching at and turning, then both have a hand on it at the same time, on each other’s and how they’re stroking almost in reassurance, shvitzy to stoop forward and even nearer to one another, then to B, with their other hands holding up their heads: the listening position, it’s known as; futz conversate, though, the consultation’s theirs.

Stand up, please, the skinny says, come closer. And loosen your belt, says the fat…don’t worry, we don’t bite. Your shver, the tuchus doctor — he didn’t pay for that.