"B ig Bounce Therapy please hold.” Zevi kept the phone by his ear as he turned his attention to the customer standing on the other side of his desk. “Hey it’s Shwekey! Shwekey’s here! You gonna sing for me like last time?”

The little boy was grinning from ear to ear. “I-I-I don’t kn-n-now” he stuttered giggling.

His mother beamed. “Sruli sing Mr. Heyman the song you learned yesterday. Sruli told me he was going to sing it for you.”

The boy was red-faced and squirming with excitement but he shook his head shyly.

Zevi reached across the desk to tousle his dark hair. “No problem kiddo. First go into Mrs. Heyman and practice real good and then you can come out and give me a whole performance.”

Sruli’s mother hesitated by the desk. “Uh I’m really sorry but I forgot to bring the payment again. Can it wait until next week?”

“Sure sure no problem.” Zevi waved them on. “Work hard Shwekey!”

Suri watching this exchange as she wrote up some session notes in a corner of the office frowned. As Zevi with a lingering smile went back to his computer screen completely oblivious to the phone still in his hand she cleared her throat.

“Don’t you have someone on hold?”

He looked up startled. “Oh man I forgot.” He pressed a button. “Hung up. Ah well they’ll call back.” He threw the phone down on the desk.

Suri shifted uneasily.  “I hope so. I wouldn’t want to lose a new client.”

Zevi raised his eyebrows. “Like we have to worry. Ever since that big media event the phone’s been ringing nonstop. At this rate you guys are soon gonna have enough to retire!”

Suri pursed her lips. Not if you keep letting people in without paying she thought. She debated whether she should remind him that just yesterday they had discussed this exact issue and she had told him that a client more than two weeks in arrears should not be allowed into therapy.

Zevi was humming as he worked and Suri decided against mentioning anything. Besides it wasn’t really what she wanted to say. What she really wanted to ask him about was the insurance issue that Mrs. Gibber had brought up at the event last week. She just hadn’t determined the best way to raise it.

She scratched her nail against the rough surface of the desk as the debate that had been raging inside her head struck up once more. Who to confront? Should she ask Zevi directly casually mention the conversation with Mrs. Gibber? (“It’s a funny thing one of the mothers told me that you said we were in-network providers with Aetna when we’re actually not. Do you know how that happened?”) Or bring it up to Aviva and let her work it out with her husband?