The Franchiser

by Stanley Elkin

  They were staring at him.

  “Well,” he said. “It’s three o’clock in the morning,” he said. He was out of breath. “Good night, ladies, g’night, ladies, it’s ti’ t’say g’night. Gala’s over. Fred thanks you. Out. Beat it.”

  His guests moved off.

  “Excuse me,” a woman said.

  “What?”

  “Excuse me.”

  “What do you want?”

  “You’re standing on my shopping bag.” Ben moved his foot. She gathered her parcels and left.

  Al and Jenny, Luis and Hope had disappeared.

  Flesh sat on the edge of the stage, “Some stage,” he said. “I can touch the floor with my feet.”

  “I never heard anything like it. What the hell was that all about?” It was Clara’s voice. She must have been sitting in one of the wallflower chairs. The room was lighted by the small colored spots.

  “It’s like living in a jukebox,” Flesh said. “A pinball machine. I can’t see a thing. Turn that crap off. Let’s have some light.” He heard the rustle of Clara’s gown, her hand flick a switch. They were momentarily in complete darkness.

  “That better?”

  “Turn the lights on. Let’s see the damage.” The lights came on. “Jesus,” Flesh said. “After the ball is over. Oh boy. Look at my floor. It’s like a giant pizza.” There were crushed egg rolls, butterfly shrimp with their wings torn off, here and there barbecued ribs like tiny picket fences. Slabs of white turkey like the wood beneath bark. Rounds of roast beef floated in puddles of spilled Scotch, spilled bourbon.

  “Al’ll get it in the morning.”

  “Yeah. How’d we do?”

  “Nobody signed up.”

  Flesh nodded. “Good.”

  “Good?”

  “We can’t accept any new applicants.”

  “Why?”

  “Why. They’re cutting down on federal aid to education. I don’t want to lower our high standards.”

  “You shutting us down, Mr. Flesh?”

  “Yeah, we’re closing out of town. We ain’t taking it to Broadway.”

  “Then what was that pitch all about?”

  “In the morning I want you to call Nate Lace. He’s at the Nittney-Lyon Hotel in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.”

  “Who’s Nate Lace?”

  “No one. A liquidator. An old pal. When’s the session over? When’s graduation?”

  “Chibka has two more private lessons. The group session goes another three weeks.”

  “Three weeks, yeah. Get Lace. I want him for Commencement speaker.”

  “Mr. Flesh?”

  “Look at me in this suit. You ever see anything so ridiculous?”

  “What’s going to happen to us?”

  “Yeah. Well, to tell you the truth, I think I can find a spot in the Follies for Luis, but you don’t fit into the big picture. If you really love him, let the lug go.”

  “What are we going to do, Mr. Flesh?”

  “We’re going to liquidate. Fire sale. Everything must go. We’re closing down the Carioca.” She would be forty in maybe three years. Her figure was nice. He liked the long line of her legs, her flat chest and tough prettiness. “Listen,” he said, “you know how lonely it’s supposed to be at the top? Let me tell you, it’s lots lonelier at the bottom. I don’t know what you’re going to do, Clara. I don’t know what’s going to happen to Al or to Jenny or to Hope or Luis. Is that really his name? Shit, sister, there are shopping centers in Niles, in Buffalo Grove, La Grange, Glencoe. Bring your taps. Teach ballet to six-year-old Jewish kids.” She was crying. “Come on,” he said. “Clara, don’t. What are you doing? Hey. Stop.” He moved closer to her, and not knowing what would happen he held his arms open to her. She came toward the middle-aged man. He held her unsteadily. “I come from Fred Astaire,” he said softly, “everybody dance.”

  He tried to lead, and when he slipped from time to time on the puddings of scattered food or in the liquor, she caught him and held him up. He made a low hum in his throat as they danced. He liked the sound. He sang to her from his guttural hum. “I’m taking off my top hat, I’m taking off my topcoat, I’m taking off my tails.”

  “What was that stuff?” she asked. “That speech you made?”

  “Who knows? My father’s spirit’s in this room. I feel it.”

  “Your father?”

  “Yes. He’d be, what, seventy-five years old now. Hey, Daddy, you see how things change? This here’s Clara.”

  “Hi, Mr. Flesh,” Clara said.

  “Did you see how they spilled things? Boy, I tell you,” he said, “the public. Hey, Papa. You know something? I broke the law. I’m a possessor. I could be put in jail. Almost fifty fucking years old and I could be put in jail. I bet you never broke a law.” He let Clara go. “I’m sorry, Papa.” He was crying, shaken so hard by his sobs it was difficult for him to breathe. “I’m sorry you died in a crash,” he sobbed, “I’m sorry to have taken Fred Astaire’s name in vain, sorry my dancers live in a time when no one wants to learn the steps, sorry to God for a freedom which I helped shape by accepting all the credit cards—the Diners Club and Master Charge and BankAmericard and Carte Blanche and all the oil company things. Sorry for my rotten health of body and heart. Ah shit, Papa, it’s a hell of a way to start a fiscal year.”

  “Are you all right?” Clara asked.

  “No,” he cried, “no. No. I’m not.” He wiped his eyes and began again to dance with her. When he let her go he put his hand into the pocket of his tuxedo jacket. “Here,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Your money. The two fives I took from you earlier.”

  “You gave that back to him.”

  “I did? Then what’s this I’m holding?”

  “What’s what you’re holding? Where?”

  III

  Where has he seen these men? Their sport coats are the nubby textures and patterns of upholstery from credit furniture supplements in Sunday newspapers. They are crosshatched, double knits, drapery, checks like optical illusions, designs like aerial photographs of Kansas wheat fields, Pennsylvania pastureland, or the russets of erosion in western national parks. The pockets of their blazers are slashed, angled as bannister. Change would fall out of them, he thinks. The flaps are mock, shaped like the lower halves of badges. Their notched, pointed collars ride their shoulders like the conferral of wide, mysterious honors, the mantles of secret orders—and Flesh supposes they belong to these. He has never seen such shoes. Many are glossy white loafers, the color and sheen of wet teeth in ads. Gratuitous, useless buckles vault the white piping that rises from their shoes like welts. The jewelry and fixtures in the center of their false straps could be I.D. tags, or metal tablets, or slender sunken scutcheons. He sees no belts in the tight cuneiform-print trousers, in the plaids like colored grids, like cage, windowpanes, that climb their legs like ladders. The pants hold themselves up, self-supportive, a flap of fabric buttoned to a rim of itself like flesh sealed to flesh in operations. He marvels at their bump-toe shoes, their thick fillets of composition heels like shiny mignon or rosy cross sections of pressed geology. At their shirts like Christmas ties.

  Where has he seen such men? Sitting beside him when he had ridden on airplanes, with their slim gun-metal attaché cases open on their laps like adult pencil boxes. (He has no attaché case, travels even lighter than they.) Huddling with maître d’s behind the velvet ropes in restaurants. In convention at Miami Beach and San Diego in low season. With widows in the public rooms, restaurants, and oyster bars of good commercial hotels. With unmarried women a dozen years younger than themselves who chew gum. Yes. Yes. And always together, always in pairs or pairs of pairs, their flings a cooperation and conspiracy, their style a fever. (Though it wasn’t “fling.” They would have entire wardrobes of such clothes, their closets actually hazardous, flammable, with Fortrels, Dacrons, low-banked acetates, back-burnered polyesters, double knits.) And made brave, it could be, by the very resiliency of their cl
othing, the flexible permanent press that snapped back into place like rubber bands, that would not hold a wrinkle or keep a clue, as though they wore, these loud and husky men, garments blessed by gods, an invulnerability they perhaps took seriously, a vouchsafement of safety that made them louder, easily tripping their anger as galosh-shod boys might stomp in puddles. Not so he, Flesh, in his wools and silks and cottons, his earthy, dry-clean-only fibers, his easily trampled crops of clothes. Nor Lace the Liquidator, that creased and rumpled, raveled man.

  Oh why, why, why do I mourn them? Why do they touch me so, wrapped in their crazy laundry? These Necchi men and Falstaff distributors, this pride of Pontiac dealers and Armstrong linoleum licensees? Am I not one of them? And if my kindling point is higher, what doth it avail a man to keep his cool if his eyes boil, for the truth is, I cannot look at them without something profound in my throat forcing the maudlin hydraulics of the heart. Maudlin and sober still. These are my Elks, my Vets of Foreign Wars, my Shriners and Knights of Columbus and Pythias, my Moose mobs and Masons of all degrees. Oh. Oh. Variety Club is the spice of life. They do good work: tool the cripple, and patiently teach the retarded their names, bus the underprivileged to the park and usually it doesn’t rain. God’s blessing on them. Mine. All praise to the raising of their hospitals, to their raffle good will. Just, damn it, make them careful where they drop their ashes or swing their cigarettes! One live ash on a single pant leg and we could all go up. It would be the Chicago fire in Columbus, Indy, Wichita—all the landlocked campuses and home offices. (Home offices, yes, those legislative capitals of our trades where we, patriots to machines, to goods and services, pilgrims to the refresher course, all those wee congresses of American style, where last year’s figures and this one’s plans and promos hang out, where we honor the founders and applaud the record beaters, inspired and instructed, seminar’d, on-the-job-trained in Hamburgerology, the new models, sign placement, the architecture of the access road, lapping it up, taking it in, community relations, how the Civil Rights Act of ’68 has opened the way to the black dollar, which credit cards to honor, and all the rest. Business and Sociology, the first on our block to key the restroom, guard the fountain, cage the clerk. Inspired by their inspiration, enthused by their enthusiasm, standing when others stood and humming the bouncy anthems of our firms, tears in my eyes in the face of all this blessed, sacred, smarmy hope even if I know, as I do know, what I know. And loving it all anyway, my cellophane-window nameplate, the long capitals of my name and place of business.)

  There was a Ford LTD mounted on a platform in the lobby, turning, stately and slow as a second hand, pristine, mint, and looking on its pedestal and under the cunning lights as no automobile ever looked in the streets. A museum piece, a first prize.

  He went to the desk and registered. A Chase-Park Plaza bellman carried his bag and room key past the conventioneers still waiting to sign in.

  He didn’t go much any more, sending his proxies more often than not, those he hired to run his franchises for him.

  It was spring and the prime interest rate was 2.93 percent. Though they were already into April, the sky was the color of nickels, loose change, and the temperature never higher than that of a mild winter in a plains state. Flesh still wore his long dark cashmere coat, a fedora pulled low, tight on his head, a scarf. That was why he had spotted him—he was not so famous then—sore thumb, high profile, visible in his white suit as a man falling from a building. It was not white really, not the stark white of letterhead, but richer, the white of faintly yellow piano keys, of imperfect teeth, old texts. It was—this occurred to him—the “in person” white of presence, like limelight burning on a magician on a stage. He had never seen anyone so bright. And it was, once he recognized him, as if the man were on fire, his white hatless hair like whipped smoke.

  He saw him from the back, knew him from the back. Ben rose from his bench in the park and followed him to a little play area where the statues of characters from Alice in Wonderland were grouped. He stood beside the statue of Alice and the Mad Hatter, and when a few who recognized the man approached him with their cameras, Ben politely deflected them. The man, unconscious of his bodyguard, gazed at the frigid figures, and Flesh, everywhere at once, held up a strategic hand, extended a black cashmered arm, waved his dark scarf, swung his fedora, ruining their shots.

  “Isn’t that—?”

  “Shhh. Yes. Please,” Flesh urged, “he’s not to be disturbed.”

  “I’m not disturbing him. I just wanted—”

  “I’m sorry,” Flesh said, “I know. All you want is to take his picture but the man’s superstitious. He believes you steal his substance when you photograph him.”

  “That’s crazy,” he said, “his pictures on all those—”

  “Portraits. Oil paintings. You want to get your oils and brushes, okay, but no photographs.”

  “I never heard anything like—”

  Then getting a little rough, shooing, pushing, shoving.

  “Hey, this is a park. It’s a free country. Who you shoving?”

  “The camera,” Flesh demanded.

  “No.”

  “Go on, beat it. I tried to be nice.” He put his hand in his overcoat. The man backed off.

  “I’ll be damned,” he said, “if I ever buy another bucket—”

  “Yeah, we’ve lost you to Steak ’n Shake. These things happen.”

  “But he’s so pleasant on television.”

  “Look, fella,” Ben said kindly, “he has a lot on his mind. Leave him be, why don’t you?”

  “I just wanted—”

  “Sure,” Flesh said. He patted the fellow on his back and sent him off, then walked around the circumference of the statue in order to study the man from the front. The face was benign as an angel’s, with his mouth closed the white goatee and mustache like a kempt fat mushroom, the dangling strings of his black tie like a wishbone or a character in an Oriental alphabet. Flesh was surprised to see that the white suit coat was double-breasted, like a chef’s. The eyes behind the horn-rimmed specs twinkled with vision. Flesh came up beside him. “Howdy,” Ben said. The man glowered at him. “Howdy.” Flesh moved closer. They were almost touching.

  “Lord, the man hours that gun into that,” the fellow said, nervously acknowledging him. “Look that Mad Hatter.”

  “Look that Alice,” Flesh said. The man moved to another grouping. Flesh followed silently. “Look that Queen,” he offered.

  “Look that Mock Turtle,” the white-suited man said wearily.

  “Look that Cheshire Cat.”

  “Look that pigeon shit.”

  “Ben Flesh,” Ben Flesh said, extending his hand.

  “Colonel Sanders,” the man said grudgingly.

  Ben pushed his hand out farther. The man took it finally and Flesh grasped the chicken king’s hand in both his own and pulled it toward his face. Before Colonel Sanders knew what was happening Flesh opened his jaws wide as he could and shoved as much of the man’s hand inside his mouth as possible. He sucked the startled man’s knuckles, ran his tongue along his lifeline, chewed his nails, the heel of his hand, tasted his pinky. The Colonel made a fist and fought for his hand, which Ben still held to his mouth.

  “Lemme be. What’s wrong with you?”

  And Ben could not have told him, couldn’t have said that he’d pulled his first stunt, an engram of character and aggression. He stood before the Colonel with the man’s hand still at his lips. He was blushing. “Finger-lickin’ good,” Flesh said. “It’s true. What they say. About Dixie,” he added lamely.

  The Colonel shook his hand about, drying it. He looked down at his suit, changed his mind. Flesh whipped out a handkerchief and waved it across the top of Colonel Sanders’s hand like a shoeshine cloth. He whistled, snapping the handkerchief smartly one last time, and returned it to his pocket.

  “I’ll be damned,” Colonel Sanders said. “You’re a fool.”

  “Listen,” Ben said, “I’m sorry. I don’t know w
hat made me…”

  The Colonel looked at me curiously. Then seemed suddenly to relent. He was taller than I would have expected—six foot one, better. Taller than myself.

  “My height?” the Colonel said.

  “Sir?”

  “My height. People like their avunculars stubbly little Santas. Eb Scrooge’s old boss—what’s his name—he was a shorty. All of ’em, squatty, florid little fellers. Only your father figure is supposed to be tall. Well, you know what my real significance is, Jack? It ain’t the finger-lickin’-good routine. I mean to go down as the first avuncular in U.S. history to break the height barrier, bust six two. One day I’m comin’ out the closet altogether entire, speak the King’s English, iambic pentameter. That’s what I’m really after. Oh, I ain’t fixin’ to put out the twinkle in my eye or extinguish the roses in my cheeks—just very manly, very deliberate and distingué. Stand up straight, unhunch my shoulders, give my backbone its head, let America see what’s been hid from it too long—that a man can be lovable, turn out a good product, and tall all at the same time.”

  “I never realized,” Ben told him, “what an idealist you are.”

  “Shucks,” said the Colonel. “Schucks, pshaw, and…” He drew Ben toward him conspiratorially, looked both ways when they were nose to nose.

  “—and?”

  “—and pshit!”

  They went to lunch at La Caravelle. “Unless you prefer Clos Normand,” the Colonel had said.

  “I’ve never been to either.”

  “I know. Le Perigord.” Then changed his mind. “No, that’s all the way east.” Decisively. “Caravelle.”

  It was the largest of intimate rooms, and there was, for Flesh, the sense that, remove the tables and cloak room—he thought like this, the franchiser vision, his blueprint imagination—lift the rugs and install the proper equipment, and one would have a gentlemen’s barber shop of the sort found in the basements of immense commercial travelers’ hotels.