the people Waiter knew, Bill was the only one whose lips did not spread when smiling. They retracted, revealing yellow uneven teeth, and at the same time his nose wrinkled. Instead of a human smile one encountered a veritable snarl.
The two men exchanged 'good morning' and remained silent all the way to the seventh floor. It struck Waiter that he hardly knew Bill after years of working in almost adjacent rooms. Between their rooms there was only the patients' waiting room. When Waiter had first joined the clinic he used to attend the monthly meeting of the partners to discuss how things were going and particularly interesting cases. But he soon found these meetings, which took place late in the evening, utterly sterile and unduly irritating. They were usually chaired by the oldest partner, Max Caldwell. Max was a stumpy man with a spiky moustache and long arms. Immediately after he took the chair, he seemed to reach into his pocket, pull out his ego, and putting it on the table, started discussing it. Sometimes, he plunged straight into it, sometimes he made as if he had misplaced it in some other pocket and needed a few moments more to find it.
All the same, he invariably talked about how devoted he was to the success of the clinic and how much its image with the public had improved since he had become its director. He would always refer to the computer printout showing the rising income of the clinic in a deprecating manner, as if he was above such things, and then invite the members present to suggest ways of improving the service. Two or three members would start discussing their egos, to the obvious irritation of the chairman, and the meeting would usually end in discussing some trivial matter.
Since Waiter's printout had always shown a healthy balance, he decided to absent himself from these meetings.