332
RICHARD STERN
Dr. Hobbie's other book patient. After this, most of her appoint–
ments coincided with Mr. Givens'. She wondered if Dr. Hobbie
also
brought his sales people together. At any rate, she exchanged a few
words each time with him while a beaming Hobbie stood by. Once
she recommended Herzen's
Memoirs
to him and another time she
told him that she'd just reread the Manifesto and not only the
"Working Day," but the whole first book of
Capital.
At this, Mr.
Givens struck a great hand to his fine brow. "You mean to say
there's a whole book of that, and I don't know it? Give me the
name there, Miss Wilmer. I'm ashamed of myself. I'll go git it today
if I got to go to every bookstore in Chicago." Miss Wilmott gave him
the name, told him it was readily available, and recommended the
Everyman Library Edition, one sixty-five for each of the volumes.
"God," said Mr. Givens, "they could charge three or four dollars
for them, and I'd git them as quick as I'm going to now." He held
out his hand, and she put her own great one into it. Dr. Hobbie
said, "What'd I tell you, George?"
Today Miss Wilmott's tidbit was that biologists regarded fish
teeth as migrated scales. "I suppose our ancestors may have masticated
on the skins," she said, as he placed her head back into the rest.
Dr. Hobbie said that that sure would make dentistry easy.
Then a large shape darkened the office door, a grey fedora pulled
nose-level on the head. "'night son," it said.
" 'night, Dad," said Dr. Hobbie.
Though she'd not seen Hobbie's father, a doctor from the floor
above, she knew that the glass cabinet of unfinished bridges and
tooth sets over by the television aerial was due to him, or rather
to the dying patients whom he felt would be comforted by his son's
diverting skill. They often died in the midst of their absorbed
interest in refurbished mouths, and Miss Wilmott's Dr. Hobbie
kept their work, as if, in some odd turn of the world, a mouth would
appear just right for one of the unfinished bridges.
"That your father?"
"Yep. That's the old man. Been in this building since they put
it up. He's a real good doctor if you need one." He was washing
his
hands, and she studied his reflection in the dark window. He took
off his smock, and she saw his skinny, harmless back, white and pink,
a rabbit scooting into a green shirt. "He helped me out with Suzanne
