TAXES

Pretzel and Ronnie stand on the corner in front of the deserted Shabazz Steak and Take, huddled back a little to take advantage of a slight overhang of the roof and stay out of the rain. Ronnie, lean and muscular, his hair cut into a flattop, hunkers down, cups his hands, and lights another Newport. Pretzel is smaller, skinnier, and does not smoke. It isn’t his health that concerns him, just the waste of money.

“You set up, man,” says Ronnie.

“Forget it,” says Pretzel. “Just forget it.” Across the street, behind stained plate-glass windows, a shadowy figure moves slowly back and forth. The cracked plastic sign overhead reads simply “Tax.”

“Chump change. Nickels and dimes. That’s all you ever going to get out of him.” Ronnie puts the toe of his sneaker into a puddle, testing its depth.

“Bought me this coat.” A cheap blue parka with a fake fur-lined hood hangs on Pretzel’s narrow frame, the nylon material shining off and on in the reflected light from passing cars.

“Ugly,” says Ronnie, breathing smoke. “I wouldn’t never wear no coat like that.” Ronnie’s coat is silver colored sheepskin, but Pretzel knows how he got it.

“How much you carry last night?”

“I don’t know.”

“Come on, man.”

“Eleven hundred.”

Ronnie whistles. “Damn.”

Pretzel watches the cigarette ember grow brighter as Ronnie sucks on it. “Forget it.” He checks his watch. “I got to go over now. Where you staying?”

“With my lady.” He throws the butt into a puddle where it hisses and dies. “Think it over. He don’t care about you.” He pulls his collar up around his neck, shoves his hands deep into his pockets, and steps out into the rain.

          

Fishman does not look up when Pretzel comes in, just tells him to lock the door. The tax man’s feet ache—they seem to have swollen two sizes inside his battered loafers—and he wishes he were home where he could take them out, put them up on the table, read the paper. Out of the corner of his eye he watches the boy perch on one of the torn chairs, shake a few drops of rain off his head. Fishman inscribes numbers in his ledger book, adds daily totals, compares those figures to last year’s, estimates what percentage of his total business has already pushed its way through the heavy glass doors. Every year Fishman raises his prices 10 percent, and every year business drops off by not quite that number. He feels a detached, almost scientific curiosity about the trend.

“Just a couple of minutes, Pretz,” he says, punching up some numbers on his calculator. “Big day today.”

It is seven o’clock, closing time, and Pretzel is always punctual. Sometimes, if a client comes in at the last moment, Fishman will make him wait until he takes their information. Though he wears a watch—an ugly, multifunction thing his older son bought him seven years ago as a wedding present—he rarely looks at it. He depends instead on Pretzel.

While he waits, Pretzel walks around the office and checks out the supplies, which it is his job to replace. There are still paper cups by the coffee machine, though there is next to no coffee. Still a roll of toilet paper in the bathroom. The cracked linoleum floor is filthy and streaked from the constant in and out of muddy shoes, but he knows Fishman will tell him to wait on that, since the floor is a once a week job, reserved for Sundays when the office is closed. Pretzel gets ten dollars for the floor. Fishman lives in Queens, but still drives in to Brooklyn Sunday mornings, closes the heavy, motorized iron gates around the windows and, sealed off this way, catches up on paperwork. Sundays, Pretzel walks his mother to church, then comes down and bangs three times on the metal so Fishman will know it is him. Then he comes in and mops.

Fishman has been on this same corner now twenty-five years. In that time nearly all the other legitimate businesses have closed down, giving way to smoke shops, numbers spots, simple abandonment and vandalism. He and Eps, who owns the pharmacy across the street, are phantom images of what was once a neighborhood. Now, groups of drunken men gather endlessly on the street corners, and junkies stand shaking in doorways. Fishman dares only walk from his car to his office door, and even this he does in a hurry. He has Pretzel to do what little shopping is necessary, keep the place clean, and every evening after closing, get the money orders from Eps. The way Fishman figures it, crossing the street himself with that kind of cash would be asking for trouble.

“Right,” he says, closing the book. “Ready?”

Pretzel nods and stands up.

“Nasty out tonight?”

“Not so bad.” He watches the old man’s hands as they slip a rubber-banded stack of bills into an envelope.

“How’s that coat working out?”

“Warm, Mister F.”

“Good, good,” he says, without looking at him. “OK, we’ve got twelve here. Not a bad day, right?” He grins at Pretzel, taking him into his confidence with this information. It is a game they play, pretending that Pretzel is somehow an integral part of the business, and that these daily totals are the result of teamwork.

“Sounds good to me.”

“Sounds good to you, huh? All right then, hurry up.” He hands Pretzel the envelope, keeping it low in case anyone might be watching. Pretzel sticks it into his pocket, zips up, and steps out into the night.

When he sees who it is, Eps unlocks his door, then locks it again after Pretzel, damp with rain, steps inside. Pretzel feels a kind of odd bond with Eps, if only because he, like Fishman, is an elderly Jewish man in a neighborhood others like him have long since abandoned. But they almost never say anything to each other. Fishman schmoozes with his clients, but Eps is a quiet man, guarding his words as carefully as the dollars he locks up nightly in his safe. He nods at the envelope and steps behind the cash register, where he makes out the money orders: two for five hundred each, one for two hundred. While he waits, Pretzel walks up and down the aisles, examining the medications. He doesn’t think Eps likes him much. Still, once years ago when he wasn’t feeling well, he gave him some laxative to take home, no charge.

When Eps is through, he peers through his glasses at Pretzel. “I guess you’ll be wanting something else to do soon,” he says.

Pretzel puts down the bottle of vitamins he has been looking at. “What?”

“I heard Fishman’s closing up after this season. I don’t blame him. Neighborhood’s dead anyway.”

“We’re doing good business,” says Pretzel.

Eps hands him the money orders. “I don’t know, it’s just what I heard. Anyway, if you need to pick up a couple bucks after he’s gone, you come by. I’ll find you something.”

Crossing back over the street, Pretzel can’t believe it. He’s been working for Fishman ever since he was little, hanging out in front of the supermarket, making quarters helping people carry their bags home. One day, Fishman stuck his head out of the door and whistled him over because a client had spilled coffee all over the floor, and he needed paper towels. He gave him two dollars and said to get himself something with the change. Along with the towels, he bought a bag of pretzels, which he ate sitting in the chair in front of Fishman’s desk. That was seven years ago.

When he returns with the money orders, Fishman is just closing up his briefcase. He takes them and slips them into his pocket.

“Mister F.,” says Pretzel, “Eps says you’re going to close down.”

Fishman smiles. His skin is still rosy from the two weeks he spent in Florida over Christmas. He has a house, two cars, a son who’s married and another in medical school. Pretzel suddenly wonders why he has bothered to keep the business open even this long.

“Eps said that?”

“Said come see him if I need work.”

“He did, did he?” He picks up his briefcase. “Come on, let’s get out of here. Lillian’s going to kill me if I’m late again.”

Pretzel has never met Fishman’s wife, but he knows she is younger than he, and imagines her as very beautiful. She and Fishman play tennis together. “Are you?” he asks.

“I’ve got a good business here, Pretz. You don’t just walk away from a good thing.”

After they lower and padlock the gates, Pretzel escorts him to his car, aware that he has not really answered the question. Big Larry, drunk as usual, is seated on the hood, a pint of Popov in his hand, another sticking out of the pocket of his coat. His fly is open, and one knee of his pants is wet, as if he has recently knelt in a puddle. “Professor,” he says when he sees them.

“Come on Larry, off the car,” says Pretzel.

Larry waves the bottle in the air in front of him. “Oh, you a big man,” he says. “A big man.”

“Now, Larry.”

He heaves himself to the sidewalk, points a finger at Fishman. “I’m a lawyer, man,” he says. “I got thousands. Thousands.”

“Sure you do,” says Pretzel. Fishman unlocks the door and gets in.

“Got me a Cadillac,” says Larry.

From inside the car, Fishman waves to Pretzel, then pulls out into the traffic.

“Hey, boy,” says Larry, “I seen your brother.”

Pretzel looks up at the man’s eyes. They are glazed with alcohol, like small plastic buttons. He was probably once an intelligent man, but drink has rotted his brain and made a fool out of him.

“So what?” he says.

Larry shakes his head. “You watch yourself now.”

          

Ronnie is waiting for Pretzel outside his house, jaw clenched, eyes yellow and distant. “I need ten bucks,” he says.

“And I ain’t got it.”

“Come on, man, just ten is all. I’ll get it back to you tomorrow.”

Pretzel digs into his pocket and pulls out a five. “Here, you’ll have to get the other five somewheres else.”

Ronnie takes the bill from him. “There’s more where that came from.”

“I told you, forget it.”

Ronnie spits. “You protecting a leech. A bloodsucker.”

“You ought to know.”

“You ought to know I’m right.”

“He don’t have to stay open—he’s got money. People got to do tax.” The curtains on the cracked window pull aside and Pretzel can see his mother’s round face through the glass, but just for a moment. The curtains fall quickly back into place. “You want to come in?” he asks.

“Right,” says Ronnie, then starts to walk away. “You think about it. Do something for yourself for a change.”

“Leave off me, man.”

“You know I can’t do that. I’m your people. Me, not him. It’s gonna be you and me long after tax man’s gone.”

Pretzel watches him leave, then climbs the stairs, one at a time.

          

When he first started, the whole thing had seemed beautifully mysterious. You filled out a blue sheet of paper, sent it in, and the government sent you money. Taxes were a magic trick, and Fishman was the magician. Pretzel would sit for hours watching the people parade in and out: the men in their work boots, the women who, even in the heart of Bed-Stuy, somehow felt it necessary to dress up for the occasion. Teenagers coming to file for the first time, proud of their first job. Occasionally, someone got mad because they felt they were being cheated out of a bigger refund, or they owed. Fishman would calm them with that smooth, knowing voice that said, I understand, I’m on your side. Most of the clients thought Fishman was a gift from God—a man whose hands could turn paper into gold.

They all knew Pretzel, those customers who came back year after year. They’d bring him presents—a cheap hat, some free-sample cologne. Over the years Pretzel had become as much a part of the office as the old, steel-topped desks and the clumsy adding machines used by the preparers Fishman hired for the season. But he was almost done with school now, and already the summer stretched out before him, impossibly long and hot. And beyond that, the rest of his life.

He had a collection of advertisements he’d cut out of the Post, and taken from displays on the subway, for different technical schools. He kept them in the center of an old dictionary under the letter t. With each one he had been, at least for a while, convinced that he had found his future. Most recently it was Computer Technician, which the Apex Institute promised to teach in one intensive year. He’d brought the ad in to the office and asked Fishman if he knew anything about computers.

“I’ve got no use for them,” he’d said.

“It’s a fast-growing field, though,” Pretzel quoted the copy. “Lots of earning potential.”

“That may be. Is this leading up to something?”

Taking the ad from his pocket, he put it on the desk in front of Fishman, who picked it up and read it over, nodding his head as if it were a legal document and not a three-by-five card. “Did you get this on the subway?” he asked.

Pretzel nodded.

“Well, I’m not going to say it’s a bad idea. But you know what I think, right? I think you should forget about these schemes and take control of your life. Transcend, Pretz, transcend. Go to City College and study accounting, or computers even if that’s what you want. These Apex Institutes, they’re just someone else’s get-rich-quick scheme. They’re not for you. You know what I’m saying?”

“I think so,” said Pretzel.

“I’m saying you don’t sit around waiting for something good to happen to you. There are no magic cards waiting for you on the subway, or anywhere else. There’s only good, hard work. Nothing comes without a price.”

Afterward, Pretzel would reconsider his plans. But always, he saved the ad, slipping it into the hiding place in his dictionary, just in case. He drew comfort from them, as if their very presence guaranteed him options to fall back on. It was easy for Fishman to say make something of yourself. Pretzel knew that transcend meant to rise above. But most of the time he felt so hopelessly rooted to the ground that he could only stare at the entry in the dictionary and shake his head.

          

In the morning, Pretzel sits at the breakfast table poring over the business section of the Times. It is something he does every day, though the news of various mergers, takeovers, and new issues is as mysterious to him as the strange utterances that come from his mother’s room late at night when she reads her Bible. He hopes that if he reads it often enough, something, some grain of wisdom, will become clear to him. So he plows ahead, though it feels futile—a language he was not meant to learn, like his mother, who in her desire to become even closer with God, practices speaking in tongues.

In the Business Opportunities section, he sees the ad. A Brooklyn tax practice, well-established, $200,000 average gross, then a phone number. Eps was right. Fishman is selling.

          

Like the bad weather that continues to spit gray drizzle down on the city, Ronnie seems to be everywhere. Pretzel finds him outside the liquor store. They take a walk over by the elevated shuttle stop and stand under the ancient, splintered wooden beams.

“What are you thinking?” he asks his brother.

Ronnie smiles at him. “I take it off you, that’s all. We split it later.”

“What if he don’t believe it?”

“We’ll do it right in front of his face, man. He watches you cross that street every night. I’m surprised you ain’t been mugged.”

Pretzel looks at the tops of his shoes, which he shines to perfection every morning, and wonders why he bothers. “All right,” he says, quietly. “Tomorrow’s Friday—payday. Lots of people picking up their returns.”

“My man,” says Ronnie, and puts out his hand, but Pretzel does not take it.

“I ain’t doing this for you,” he says.

          

Pretzel cuts out of school early and spends the afternoon in the park, walking and thinking. He could still call this off, no problem. He thinks over the conversations he’s had with Fishman and sees that they fall into two categories: the ones that are purely business, like when he sends him out for supplies or talks about how much money came in, and the other times, when he talks about Pretzel’s future.

Stopping to buy a hot dog, he watches bicyclists speed past in colorful clumps. A stray dog parks itself warily a few feet away and waits, watching him. Pretzel can see what will happen—Fishman won’t say anything until the last minute, and then it’ll be some fake sentiment, a twenty-dollar bill, a handshake, and the cheap smile he gives out fifty times a day, practiced over twenty-five years of dealing with ignorant clients. Feeling suddenly ill, Pretzel tosses the hot dog to the sidewalk, where the stray pounces and devours it in one fluid motion.

          

Friday, when Pretzel shows up at the office, Fishman is on the phone. “Good, you’re here,” he says, putting it down. “Do you know Johnny Bigelow?”

“Of course.”

“I’ve been trying to call him, but he hasn’t got a listed number.”

“Got no phone.”

Fishman throws up his hands. “That explains it. He overpaid by twenty dollars. I couldn’t figure it, the receipts kept coming out twenty over, but then I narrowed it down to him. It was busy when he picked up, but still, you’d think these people would pay attention to their own money.” He shakes his head.

Pretzel shrugs. “Drunk, probably. He always is when he comes down here.”

Fishman sticks a twenty dollar bill in his hand. “Run this over to him, would you?”

Pretzel looks at the twenty. “Why?” he says. “He don’t know.”

Fishman looks at him directly for the first time since he has come in. “You know the answer to that, don’t you?”

“No, I don’t,” he says. “You got the money in your hand. That’s twenty more for you and nobody gets hurt.”

“You are really something.” Fishman sits at his desk and motions Pretzel to a chair in front of it. He sticks his hands deep into the pockets of his coat.

“Johnny Bigelow’s been coming to this office for twenty years,” says Fishman. “Since before you were born.” He runs a hand through his thinning hair. He looks tired. “I provide a service here. It’s not a pretty place, and I don’t pretend it is. But I’ve never cheated anybody. If I make a mistake, I take responsibility.”

“You don’t care,” says Pretzel.

“What do you mean? What’s eating you?”

Pretzel faces him squarely. “You lied,” he says. The look of concern on Fishman’s face just makes Pretzel angrier. “You’re selling.”

Fishman raises his eyebrows. “I don’t know for sure that I’m selling.”

“I seen the ad.”

He nods. “So? I thought I’d see what kind of offers I got. You want I should stay in this place forever? I’m getting old. Anyway, I haven’t even had one call. Nobody wants this neighborhood.”

“Seven years and you don’t say nothing.”

“Why should I? Is this your business? I like you, Pretzel, but come on. You want to be emptying my wastebaskets when you’re fifty?” He puts two fingers to his forehead and squeezes momentarily. “I know you’ve got it tough, but that’s all the more reason for you to try harder. You don’t have to be like all the others.”

They say nothing to each other for minutes. Finally, Pretzel stands and walks to the window. He can see Ronnie on the other side of the street, leaning against the side of a building, waiting. He walks back over to Fishman. “You want me to get the M.O.’s first?” he asks quietly.

Fishman looks at him for a moment, then shakes his head in frustration. “No, take Johnny back his twenty. Then the M.O.’s.”

Expressionless, Pretzel nods, zips up his coat, and steps out the door.

          

As Fishman watches him go, he feels tired. He didn’t tell Pretzel that, in fact, a man had offered him a decent price for the business that very morning, and he’d turned him down. He’s not even sure why. He tries to summon the memory of this same street corner twenty-five years ago, but like the face of his first wife, it is something he has erased, and it is pointless to try. He does remember Pretzel though, skinny and wide-eyed, running errands for a quarter here and a dime there, and he wonders at how dependent he has become on the kid, as well as Pretzel on him. It was never meant to happen this way, but here he is playing father to a seventeen-year-old black kid, when his own children barely even keep in touch. It’s a responsibility he doesn’t need, and yet, like everything in his life, it has grown around him without his noticing, a twisting, painful vine that will, he fears, eventually choke the breath from him.

He leans against the thick, cold glass of the door and watches Pretzel cross the avenue, the streetlights illuminating the parka he bought him just last week. He could have bought a better one, had in fact planned to, but at the last moment he’d changed his mind. An expensive coat would have put things on a different level. All he really wanted was that the kid shouldn’t freeze. It wasn’t a gift, not really. Just essentials, that’s all. But when he thinks of all the nice coats he could have bought him, an empty feeling scrapes his gut, and he feels tireder still.

When Pretzel has crossed the street, Ronnie comes over to him. “All right, man,” he says, “Let’s do it.”

“I changed my mind,” he tells him.

“You ain’t changing nothing. Where is it?”

“You heard me. I got something to do.”

Ronnie reaches to put a hand in his pocket, but Pretzel smacks it away.

“What’s the matter?”

“Why’d you even come back here?”

“I live here.” Ronnie grins broadly, exposing gums that have begun to recede.

“We got no business.”

Ronnie nods, taking in the situation.

“Don’t even try it,” says Pretzel, turning away.

Suddenly he finds himself thrown up against the hard brick of a building, Ronnie’s hand clamped against his throat. He gasps for breath, forgets the twenty dollars in his pocket, forgets Fishman and Johnny Bigelow and the money orders. His vision clouded by tears, he summons all his strength and kicks out straight and high, aiming right between Ronnie’s legs.

Ronnie falls back astonished, and for a moment the two stand facing each other like wrestlers, each waiting for the other to move. Then Ronnie reaches into his boot and takes out a small kitchen knife.

A crowd has begun to gather, but they keep their distance. Across the street, Pretzel is aware of Fishman’s face, framed in the window, watching. He should run, he thinks, run and keep running, but something makes him stand his ground. An empty MD 20/20 bottle lies next to the curb and he grabs it, busts the end off against the side of the building. The glass cuts the side of his hand, but he can’t feel the pain, only the wetness of the blood on his hand.

Everywhere, people are watching him, waiting. In his state of mind, Pretzel forgets who he is, where he is, the fact that he does not even have the money. Eyes peer out from doorways, from the windows of the burnt-out buildings, and the street is filled with a sound of deeply drawn breath that may or may not be his own. The noise grows in intensity until it is a rumble, then a roar in his ears not unlike the crowd at a Knicks game, or the sound of the ocean. Ronnie comes at him, knife held low. The noise is deafening now, and shouting as loud as he can to drown it out, Pretzel swings high toward Ronnie’s face, feels himself connect with the side of his head, feels for just a moment a wonderful satisfaction, as if he has solved an impossible math problem. Then a bright comet of pain in his side as the knife enters almost effortlessly, his head seems to come untethered from his body, and the sound suddenly goes away.

It takes a moment for Fishman to realize what is happening. He grabs the telephone and dials 911, shouting to the dispatcher to hurry. There have been muggings and fights out here before, even a shooting, and Fishman has always lowered the gates and waited until it is over. But this is Pretzel, and he can do nothing but watch in horror.

Fishman’s view is blocked by the onlookers suddenly moving forward, and it is nearly a minute before he can see again. Pretzel is lying curled on the ground, his attacker gone. Almost as if they knew how long to wait, the police appear, stopping traffic and holding back the people. One of them comes over and knocks on the glass. Fishman unlocks.

“You saw what happened?” asks the cop.

“That’s Pretzel,” he says quietly. “He works for me.” Big Larry has stepped into the office too. He walks around picking up staplers and putting them down.

“The other one?”

Fishman shakes his head. “He tried to mug him. Pretzel was returning twenty dollars to one of my clients. He was protecting the money.” Shaken, he sits. “Twenty dollars,” he says.

“A mugging?” says the cop skeptically. “Sure doesn’t look like a mugging to me.”

“What else?” asks Fishman.

“I don’t know. Just seems like a hell of a lot of trouble to go to over twenty dollars. Your employees really that loyal?”

“Is he all right?”

The cop shakes his head. “Hard to say. EMS are checking him out now. He got knifed, hit his head too. Think your boy might have been on drugs?”

“Not Pretzel, no way.”

“Well, we’ll know soon enough. But don’t fool yourself. These kids, they’re all into something.”

Big Larry drops a stapler and bends to pick it up. The cop points a finger at his chest.

“What about you, old man? You know anything about this?”

“Known ’em both since they was little.”

“OK pal,” says the cop, “You just won a free trip back to the precinct.”

As he is led out the door, Big Larry looks back at Fishman and grins. “I’m a doctor,” he tells him. “I’m a lawyer. I got thousands.”

Across the street, behind the locked doors of his pharmacy, Fishman can see Eps in his white jacket, staring out on the scene.

          

Fishman sits for a long time in his car before he gets up the nerve to go to the door. Pretzel’s mother answers, and from the expression on her face, he can see that she already knows.

“I’m sorry,” he tells her. He fingers the envelope in his pocket, but does not take it out.

“You don’t have to be, mister. I raised me one bad child. The Lord balance everything out in the end.”

They stand in silence for a moment, and then Fishman asks, “May I come in?”

She nods and he steps inside, greeted by the calming scent of old, worn furniture, varnished wood floors, and a subtle hint of cleaning fluid. Everything immaculate and in its place, a cut glass candy dish full of M&M’s on the table in front of the sofa. He sits.

“I only have a few minutes,” she says. “My girlfriend is coming to give me a ride to the hospital. Would you like some coffee? Or a soda?”

“No thank you.”

“My husband done his tax with you.”

Fishman strains to remember, but cannot.

“Years ago,” she says.

“We’re none of us getting any younger.”

“I want to thank you for the coat you bought my boy.”

“It’s nothing,” says Fishman, embarrassed. “He’s a good worker.”

“He thinks a lot of you, too.”

“Look, there’s going to be hospital bills,” says Fishman. “I want to help.” He pulls out the stack of money from his pocket, the day’s receipts that Pretzel never got to take to Eps.

“No,” she says. “This ain’t no charity case. What those two boys done they done by themselves. You just put that away.”

Embarrassed, he begins to, but a thought strikes him, and he wonders why he didn’t think of it before.

“Pretzel was working for me at the time of the fight—running an errand. He was injured on the job.”

The doorbell rings. “Well,” she says, “I suppose you know better than I do.”

“Technically, I’m responsible.” It is as if a light has been turned on somewhere in his head. He puts the money back in his pocket and takes out a business card. “You’ll send me the medical bills. This is my home number. Please, let me know as soon as you find out how he is.”

Fishman watches Pretzel’s mother drive off with her friend, then gets in his own car. He sits for a minute, watching the drops of water gather slowly in front of him on the windshield, then under their collective weight, slide smoothly down the glass. His body feels tired and battered, as if he himself has been through some kind of fight this evening. Across the street he sees a man in torn and ill-fitting clothes with a tall, knit cap on, coming drunkenly toward him. Fishman locks his door and starts the engine, just as the man reaches the car. The man is trying the door as Fishman pulls out, and he very nearly knocks him over. A couple of yards further and a bottle smashes his back window, but Fishman does not stop. He drives as quickly as he can through the blocks and blocks of row houses, and on out to the expressway that will take him home to wait for the news.