I’m leaning both elbows on the piles of paper on the tax preparer’s desk, craning my neck to see what’s on his computer screen.

“See, it’s the damn depreciation that’s killing ya,” he snaps, violently jerking the screen more toward me, his eyes, deep in his pink face, flaring with misdirected anger. 

“Nuthin’ I can do.  You were happy enough ta claim the depreciation all them years ya owned the property, now the rooster’s comin’ home to chic…, anyways.” 

He shakes his head, his chins quivering.

“Always remember the silver rule!”

He aims his fleshy forefinger at a sheet of white paper, taped at a slight angle to the wall, upon which are printed the words:

GIVE UNTO CEASAR THAT WHICH BELONGS TO CEASAR

“You know, from the bible, Roman’s Thirty-Three or sumptin.  God said it, right?” his thin, grey-white eyebrows shoot up in disbelief.  “Funny enough it wuz the Romans that wrote it down.  An’ now, with all these people havin’ ta give unto Caesar, I ben in this chair ten hours a day for the last three months, tappin’ this damn computer keyboard so’s our Caesar can get his slice of our pie – right?”

He breaths out heavily, his pink-red cheeks billowing and sneers up at a large, framed photograph of George W. Bush hung high on the wall gazing over the six desks in the open office area.

Two desks down the row from my depreciation problem, a couple ease into their seats, ushered there by the worn tan-tweed arm of a skinny, smug-faced, sixty-something tax preparer.  He fake-starts to get out of the chair, but never executes, instead his thick-dyed hair and bushy-eye-browed head swivel over and back in his chair as his customers settle.

“Let me see yer shirt,” he leans forward fast, waving his hand at the couple’s twelve-ish year-old boy in a bottle-green, Heineken tee shirt with a graphic of a string-bikini clad, pole-dancing young woman of the proportions leeringly enjoyed by us twelve-year-olds of all ages.

“Verrry … good, verrry art…istic,” he purses his smug lips, nodding his head repeatedly. 

“They have great stuff these days, don’t they?” he continues to stare at the puckered lips of the Heineken woman frozen into a cleavage revealing forward fold off her pole.  “When I was a kid, it was just all Playboy and Hustler.  Very harsh stuff, not classy like that.”

He shakes his head slowly a few times, then settles his eye on the actual, forty-something year-old woman still in a heavy winter jacket sitting across from him.

“Missus Dam…browski!” he makes as if he’s trying to stand, but instead just leans both his hands over the metal desk toward her.  “You are looking radiant today, just rad…iant.  You’re fooling mother nature somehow and getting younger every year.”

He holds her hand in both of his, flicking his eyes over and back from wife to husband.  The woman’s arm, torso and head stay rigid.  The boy’s eyes dart from his parents to the tax preparer. 

“Now, now, now.  Tell that husband of yours to keep his pistol holstered.  It’s actually a compliment to him that he has acquired and retained such a beauuut…tiful female.”

My own tax preparer puffs out his splotchy cheeks as he wrestles with his computer screen which obstinately resists getting evenly reset amidst the mountains of the paper on the desk.

“So, you see why ye’re paying this year, right?  I just wanted you to know it aint my fault, that’s all.  It’s give unto Caesar season, that’s alllll!” he yanks the base of his computer screen until it knocks a pile of manilla folders onto the floor.

My head involuntarily recoils at the clap of paper hitting the floor.

“Don’t worry,” he says on an exasperated outbreath, eyes staring at me from deep in the folds of puffy-red skin.  “It’s just on a floor excursion, get it?”

He smiles quickly, then reverts to his scowl.

“You know, like my desk is a cruise ship an’ all these files are the passengers, get it?” he stares at me, not getting it, but continues anyway.  “I guess May 15 can’t get here fast enough.  That’s the day I’ll be back on the Queen of the Mississippi, around sixish I’ll be in a lounger on deck, sipping a Manhattan, all a these damn files stuck back here in Boston.”

He swivels his chair, and angling his head sidewards, looks down at the “floor excursion” file.

“Ahhh, Mar...tin McGonigle’s … 2004 filing.  I wondered where that got to!”

He reaches his hand quixotically toward it, stops, shakes his head.

“At least now I know where to find it.  A refile, funny how that happens sometimes.  You know life can make people forgetful.  So, Mister McGonigle here, ‘forgot’,” he raises both pudgy forefingers, “to tell me the, not so inconsequential, fact that in May of 2004 … he got himself divorced!  An’ it weren’t pretty!”

He keeps up his stare, and I resolve not to forget any inconsequential facts.

A buzzing vibration on the desk finally makes him divert those truth-rendering eyes.  He sets both pink-splotchy-skinned hands on the piles of paper, a thick wedding ring strangling his ring finger, an enormous gold-and-black mound of a graduation ring wedged halfway down his right pinky finger.

“I’ll find it, don’t worry.  It can hide, but it can’t run,” he says to no one, his eyes roving over the piles of paper.

Then, with catlike speed and dexterity, his right-hand darts into a pile of paper and retrieves a purple flip-phone.

“My wife’s,” he says. 

He holds the phone up between his thumb and forefinger, twisting his head a little abashedly.  The purple phone continues to vibrate, shaking his fat fingers.

“I don’t own one.  Don’t believe in ‘em,” he keeps the phone dangling as he stares across the desk at me.  “She makes me take it now.  I say call the office if I’m at the office.  If I’m in Stop and Shop or Sears, then you’re S.O.L..  Just leave a message at the office or, … or, God forbid you could wait ‘til I got home – right?”

As he’s monologuing, the phone ceases its buzzing momentarily, then immediately starts up again.

“Now if I said I’m goin’ ta work, why not call the office?  It’s cheaper for one thing, every minute on this stoopid thing costs me a few cents.  Plus, it sounds weird.  Sounds like she’s ben kidnapped by Whitey, an’ she’s callin’ me from a warehouse in Chelsea to negotiate the ransom.”

He breaks his stare to look at the vibrating phone.

“I should be so lucky.  At least ta pick ‘er up, I could swing by Buzzy’s for a roast beef sub.”

He takes the phone in both hands, and yanks it open violently.

“Don’t you know I’m at work!” his words rattle off over the jabber emitting from the phone. 

He jams the purple telephonic device tight against the side of his face, creating a white shadowing imprint on his red cheek. 

“I’m with a very important client who has major depreciation issues, we’re halfways through his Schedule C, an’ now I have lose where I am ‘cause you’re callin’!  This better be worth the fifteen cents it’s gonna cost me!”

I sit back, averting my eyes up to the dust-stained white tiles of the drop ceiling, embarrassed to witness a phone-fight between this man and his no-longer-so-beloved spouse.

“That’s a beautiful weapon,” the tax preparer, two desks down, says so loudly it penetrates my newly-discovered-very-importance. 

He’s leaning over the desk again, both hands clasped around an imaginary pistol.

“It don’t hardly got no kick, requires very little cleaning – though I love cleaning my weapons.  It’s my favorite thing to do.  Fill up a big glass of a scotch, head down the basement an’ clean ma guns.  There’s nuthin’ better in this world.”

He moves his right hand to his lips, kisses the tips of this fingers and shoots the hand up in the air.

“What could possibly be better?  Right?” he beams at the husband.  “No one else’s allowed down there but me.  Can’t have untrained people around guns.  It’s just me, my weapons, … and my scotch.”

He shakes his head slowly.

The couple across the desk from him sit tight shouldered.  Their son, and the voluptuous pole-dancer wrapped around his torso, stand impatiently; the boy moves from one foot to the other; the woman pouts and flashes cleavage with each of his movements.  Unconcerned with his audience’s apparent lack of enthusiasm, the tax preparer continues:

  “Once upon a time, before the … you know,” he sits up erect in his chair and looks around, almost catching me paying too much attention. 

“The …,” he wipes the back of his fingers down his cheek, raises his eyebrows knowingly, “started gettin’ … you know access to weapons an’ shootin’ the sh… daylights outta one another.  Back before that I useta have a mini range down there.  I mean wasn’t nuthin’ like you’d go to ….”

He aims his forefinger at the husband.

“Nuthin’ perfessional like the Hyannis police department’d have.  Just …” he circles his hand rapidly, “you know some old carboard boxes from Purity Supreme ta help with the sound, an’ I’d shoot into a pile a sand my brother-in-law brought over from the public works yard on Hancock Street.  But it was ok.”

He nods sagaciously. 

“Course I was a younger man then, an’ I didn’t get too-too upset if some rookie cop come by with questions.  All the regular officers down Gibson Street knew when they got a ‘shots fired’ 911 from our street, that it was just me target practicin’.  They probly apperciated havin’ a sharpshooter in the neighborhood, in case … you know … things started up.”

He rubs the back of his fingers down his cheek again, raises both his bushy eyebrows and nods knowingly.

The husband’s right hand rises to his face.  He turns slightly sideways, wipes the back of his hand across his mouth.

I can’t see their faces to read what their eyes might be saying.

Their son props both his hands on the desk and leans forward staring too intensely at the tax preparer.

The purple flip-phone snaps closed in front of me, pulling me back to my new-found-importance.

“That was great, four dimes an’ a nickel to find out my sister-in-law’s blood pressure is up again, ‘cause her toenail fungus is back.”

He stops for a breath, staring so hard at me all time that I feel implicated in his sister-in-law’s toenail fungus outbreak.

“So now, after work I have to drive alllll … the way to Weymouth, pick up Anita an’ her toenail fungus, an’ that busted blood pressure measurin’ thing she bought mail order from Cala…forni…yah.”

He stops for a breath on the stately flourish, but his accusing eyes never leave my fast-diminishing-importance.

“That godda… piece a medical junk should be thrown in the trash … or the re…cy…cling bin.  Have ya seen the latest?  Now Tom Menino’s tellin’ us what to do with our trash.  Like that’s cons…tit…tutional!”

He tries to slap his hand off the desk, but just hits a tall pile of paper sending a few sheets skidding off.  As he’s deliberating whether he’ll retrieve the floor excursion sheets, the purple phone starts to buzz again.  He snaps it open and jams it up to his face, eyes blazing.

“WHAT IS IT NOW?”

Two tables down the wife starts to flick her head around for a second, then turns back.  Now feeling associative guilt, I let my eyes rove all over the stained ceiling, the calendars on the wall, furtively looking for a window to look, or jump, out.

Failing that, I resort to eyes-to-the-ceiling eavesdropping.

“Now for this young man, I’d suggest a Kel Tec 32.  A bee…uuu…tiful gun!”  

I can’t stop my eyes from darting down to see his face folding in on itself to reinforce his statement; bushy eyebrows crushing down to meet his smushed up lips.

“Now the Kel Tec’s gotta ah…luminum body, verrrr…ry light, even a young man, … a kid really, if you don’t mind my sayings so, can hold this gun.  Now it does have a kick,” he adds speaking fast, leaning forward toward the parents, his best serious-sales pitch visage in place. 

“Just like any pistol.  It’s gotta have a kick – right dad?  You’ve shot enough guns to know that the kick is the kick.  The bullet demands a kick, right, … right?”

He nods, purses his lips together.

“It’s natural law or chemistry or God’s law, whatever, … one a them put the kick in there and kick it does.  We’re not getting rid of the kick anytime soon.  Not even Teddy Kennedy an’ his liberal fiends down DC can get rid of the kick, right?  That’s what I call ‘em, ‘fiends;’ not friends but ‘fiends.’  They’re no friends a the ‘Merican people.”

He laughs a mirthless laugh and stares at his nonmoving clients.  His eyes flick to the boy who’s staring at a poster on the wall of a soldier lying prone on a lonely rock outcrop, shooting his rifle down at a blurry enemy.  Above the lithographic image, in black, bolded letters stands the name: WINCHESTER.

“But here’s the thing.  You can get the Kel Tec customized with a beautiful knurled ivory handle, see it’s actually ….”

He stops talking, his lips still formed around a seemingly unspeakable word; face set perfectly still; a slightly anxious look developing in his eyes as they dart from father to mother and back again.

“It’s really, or it … was, well it was designed for … ladies.  Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s how crazy the world is now.  Mom needs a pistol in her pocketbook ta go down ta the market for a gallon a milk.  Ya see it was invented for a lady’s purse.  That’s why it’s nice an’ light, an’ why it’s pretty too.  Female ladies do love pretty stuff – don’t you sweeties!”

He fake reaches out with his left hand, as if it was long enough to pat the mother on the shoulder.

“But now we’ve retooled it so it’s good for teenagers too, for young men.  Ya know, ta get them inta the game early.  It’s like smoking, it’s something that ya start young an’ it stays with ya through life.  Like it should, like God wants it ta be.  Course, just like smokin’ it drives them liberals outta their minds.”

“Bartek aint gonna be smokin’ nuthin’,” the father speaks harshly, wagging his index finger towards his son. 

“I can tell ya that, not unless he wants ta go outta the woodshed fer a gud old-fashioned Pappa Dambrowski style hidin’!”

“Spare the rod, spoil the child.  That’s what my father useta say … and do!” the tax preparer shakes his head, raising his thick eyebrows.  “Aint that the truth.  But now them whacko liberals’ll try to take him away from you if ya cuff him in public!”

“I don’t worry ‘bout that stuff,” the father says.  “Now, let’s get to ours taxes.”

“Sure, sure.  But, I’ll tell ya what.  With the refund I’m gonna find you, you really should think about getting a Kel Tec for the boy here.  They make them in black now.  I guess they found black ivory, maybe from an albino elephant ‘r sumptin, you know, the genes got everything backwards.  Or ya know I think it’s actually from a black rhino.  There’s a few a them left, I think.  But ya better go fast, we might have them almost extincted!”

The purple flip-phone snaps closed yanking me back to my reality of depreciation to be paid unto Caesar.

“Oh, it’s ok,” he puts on the fakest of fake smiles.  “Turns out I don’t need ta drive to Weymouth after all.  Anita’s stayin’ at a friend’s house in Rockland.”

He grits his teeth, eyes narrowing. 

“Even further away, more time for me in the car with her an’ her toenail fungus!”

He breaths out loudly and looks away down at the floor in the walk aisle.

“Are we good so?” I ask timorously looking to end my marital-strife and gun-madness agony.  “Or … not so good. I suppose like everything in life, depreciation catches up to you.”

“No, no, no, hang on one minute,” he says, opening a drawer in the desk and ceremoniously dropping the phone inside, slamming the drawer closed.

“I aint been dealin’ with Uncle Sam for thirty years ta give up that easy.  We might have ta give Caesar what’s his,” he flicks his eyes up at George W’s smarmy smile, again narrowing his eyes, gritting his teeth. 

“But I’ll be God…damned if I aint the one decidin’ what belongs to Caesar!”