“You’ve got to watch this, Kitty. You’ve never seen anything like it.”
He slipped seven quarters into the machine.
“But that’s $1.75. It says fifty cents.”
“This will give us a better opportunity to see what it can do. Raise your window. Is your window up?”
“Yes.”
“Here we go then.”
They heard a subterranean growl as some sort of metal hook rose below them, engaged and grappled the axle. “She’s locking it,” Ben said. “It’s amazing. It adjusts universally. Like the tone arm on a phonograph that mixes ten- and twelve-inch records.”
Then there was a long hiss like the sound of air escaping from a tire.
“Oh, Ben,” Kitty said.
And then, as the car began to be pulled forward, sheets of water, panes of it—the extra dollar and a quarter, Ben thought happily—slapped at them from every direction at once, like waves, like a riptide, and so thick that the illusion was they were indeed in the sea under water, Kopechne’d. Detergent added now, dropping like snow, foaming the windows, frothing their vision, Kitty grabbed his hand and squeezed.
“Something’s wrong,” she said, “the extra money you put in, you must have jammed it or something. Oh, Ben.”
While the car rocked back and forth—he had not turned off the ignition, had left it in drive; it was being tugged back as it strained against the hooks; Kitty, of course, hadn’t noticed—the heavy brushes came out of the walls, closing in on them like the trick rooms of matinee serials. The timing was off, the brushes embracing the car even as the water continued to shoot out of every pore in the pipes, crushing the detergent against the windshield, twirling, lapping at the car like the bristled tongue of some prehistoric beast. Kitty had both arms around his neck. “Please, Ben. Oh God. Please, Ben. When does it stop?”
“I don’t know. Something’s wrong,” Flesh said, pressing the brake and causing them to lurch forward. “Jesus, do you think it’ll crush us? I can’t see out.” It was true. The interior was almost totally dark.
The brushes were all about them now, scraping the long sides of the car, settled on the roof, rolling and bumping as the Cadillac, in drive, threw their timing off still further and Ben pulled at the bottom of the steering wheel with one hand. From his side he lowered his electric window a bit. “I want to see if—” Then lowered Kitty’s.
“Ben, let’s get out,” Kitty said nervously. “It’s beginning to come in. We’ve got to get out.”
“We can’t,” he shouted over the sound of the water and the grunt and grinding of the brushes, “we’d never be able to open the doors. The brushes are up against us. Even if we could get out, the bristles would tear us to pieces.”
“Oh, God. Oh, Ben,” Kitty screamed. “When does it stop?”
“We’ve still got to go through Rinse,” Ben yelled.
“What?”
“Rinse. It’s part of the cycle!’
And that’s—Kitty practically in his lap now, her arms thrown about his neck like a drowner, her legs capturing his as though she meant to shinny up him to safety—when he felt the warm trickle of her pee as it rolled down his thigh and knee and splashed against his shoes and puddled the thick carpet of his Cadillac.
So he knew why he’d approached her. For his priviness to those wild dreams that no man but himself shared, not of the dead, not even of sex, but simply of excitement, Kitty’s kiddy spook-house conjurings, her fervid invocation of plight, trap, and wicked pitfall that froze her reason and loosened her urine, to induce in her that high-strung roller coaster, snap-the-whip, loop-the-loop, vertiginous vision he’d somehow recognized in her from the beginning—known would be there—but till now had never seen. He shoved the lever into neutral, shut off the engine.
“It’s like this at night, isn’t it?”
“Oh, Ben.”
“At night. In the dark. This is how it is then, isn’t it?”
“Please.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Yes,” she said. She was whimpering.
“It’s all right,” he told her, “the brushes, they’re just cloth, the bristles are smooth as chamois.”
“Oh, Ben.”
“It’s all right,” he said, “everything is fine. Look, Kitty dear, they’ve already gone back into the walls.”
“Oh, Ben,” she said. “Oh, Ben, oh, you son of a bitch.”
She raised no objection when he told her brothers and sisters about his Robo-Wash proposition. But it was a long time before she would speak to him again.
He drove the remaining 120 miles to Kansas City without the tape deck or radio. Oh my oh my but he had the memories.
3
Ghiardelli Square in San Francisco. Atlanta’s Underground. Yes, and Hartford’s Constitution Plaza. Louisville’s Belvedere. Minneapolis’s Mall and L.A.’s Century City. Denver’s Larimer Square and Chicago with its Old Towns and New Towns. The Paramus Mall in New Jersey. Lincoln Road in Miami Beach—a bad example. Pittsburgh’s Golden Triangle—a good one. St. Louis with its Laclede’s Landing. The new Cincinnati. The new Detroit, Milwaukee. Albany’s billion-dollar civic center.
What was not highway was Downtown, the New Jerusalem. America’s Malls and Squares and Triangles like figures in geometry. Just the white man fighting back. Regrouping. Floating promises with bond issues. What had been white and then black was now white again. Phoenixy. The old one-two. Real estate’s chemotherapy, its surgical demolitions and plastic surgery. Like a cycle in nature or a rotation of crops. Allowing the blighted inner cities to lie fallow, the cores to oxidize—all those Catfish Rows of the doomed. Then Reclamation, Rehabilitation, Conversion, Salvation. Resurrection. The Tokyoization of the United States, the Boweries beaten into Berlin showcases. As if America had lost a war, a lulu, a Churchillian son of a bitch. We shall fight them on the beaches, we shall fight them on the streets, we shall fight them on the slums and on the ghettos. We will never surrender. We will smear them. But as if we hadn’t, didn’t, and the worst had happened, the bottom dropping out of victory. And were now being reparated, mollified, kissed where it hurt and made better. Given this—what?—Democracy and these—what?—monuments of the mercantile, these new Sphinxes and new Pyramids, these new wonders of the world. And everything’s up to date in Kansas City.
The prime interest rate is 11 percent and he stands in the five-story lobby of the Crown Center Hotel, the first jewel in Hallmark’s Triple Crown.
He has seen, from the highway, the twin saddles of the Harry S. Truman Sports Complex, two sloping stadia like counters in shoes, home of the Chiefs, home of the Royals—what, he thinks, what a franchise!—glimpsed the three-million-dollar scoreboard, tall as a high-rise, the glassed-in private boxes and suites along the rim of the stadia like handsome molding. (He has read that some of these rent for $18,000 a year. Eighteen Thousand Dollars.) And has proceeded through Kansas City’s squeezed downtown with its decaying warehouses and skyscrapers, some abandoned, nostalgia in the making like a bacteria culture, and out Truman Road and onto Grand Avenue to the Crown Center, passing the hotel with its high cantilevered tower like a machine-gun-emplacement on a prison wall, the windows like stereo speakers or light meters on cameras. Passing the Crown Center Shops on his right, the squares and plazas and fountains and open ice rink on his left, Hall’s huge office complex, vaguely—he has seen line drawings, even knows where the apartments will stand—like a locomotive, and turns right into the parking garage, and parks—no room on the Jack of Hearts, no room on the Jack of Diamonds, no room on the Queen of Spades—on the Queen of Clubs level. Of course! Hallmark cards. And has pulled his grip out of the trunk, his garment bag. An attendant comes up to him. “Better lock your car, sir.” And it is as friendly as—he’s Queen of Clubs—an admonishment not to show his hand. He wonders as he walks toward the double set of doors what is above him, a king? Of what suit? Does the parking lot hold a pair of kings? What is above the pair? And is now close enough to read the
sign above the double doors: TO WEST VILLAGE AND CROWN CENTER SHOPS. Ah. Aces high for hotel parking. He has been dealt a losing hand, trumped, out cut. He stands pat however and continues on through the doors.
And is in West Village, Chelsea Court, the shops like five-sided open-ended cubes hanging suspended in multileveled space and attached to each other by catwalk, the black-painted iron stairs of fire escape and spiral staircase. And is unsteady on his feet, overcome by a sense of standing among the fallen blocks of giant children. It is a theater of merchandise, he is overwhelmed by an impression of having stepped backstage. He looks about him, is momentarily confused, cannot tell audience from actors. Each store is a perfect set. And trade is dialogue. It’s like market day in some European town, it’s like a fair. He could be in a shop window, he could be in the street, in a crazy, zigzag perpendicular of streets; he could be standing ankle deep in some archaeology of the retail, the palimpsest digs of commerce. Nutty, displaced bourses, bazaars, booths and kiosks, the chic salesmen and saleswomen become mongers, costers, colporteurs, discreet tradesmen, hawkers, cheapjacks, chapmen. Some actually wear aprons over their mod clothing; others, their sleeves rolled above their forearms, posture like artisans, as if they have just this minute put the finishing touches on wares they have made themselves. He listens for and momentarily expects to hear work songs, street cries, folk solos, rags, arias: “Straaawberreez! Nay-ills and hatchets! Tenniss rackettsz, skeee wear here!” He sees a credit card change hands and is mildly surprised. Even cash would have surprised him here. He expects barter, solid elemental stuff—silver, gold, pinches of gold dust laid out on scales. There is something claustrophobic in this three-dimensional marketplace. The clever names of the shops oppress him. He reads them but has as much trouble taking them in as he has had when he has tried to read the news moving by in a huge electric typeface along the side of a building. Athlete’s Foot (sport shoes); The Candle Power & Light Co. (sculpted wax candles); Sunbrella (sporty sun goggles); The Signal House (model railroading). Some shops are of a sort he has never seen before in his life. There is a place called Wine-Art where one buys the equipment and essences for making wine. There is a place called Bits and Pieces which sells nothing but miniature handcrafted furniture for dollhouses. He looks closely at a grandfather clock no more than two inches high. Its pendulum swings, its minute and hour hands register almost the same time as his wristwatch. (There is a two-minute discrepancy; he is certain it’s his watch which is slow.) Another shop, The Stamp Pad, sells customized rubber hand stamps. He casts about somewhat wildly for an exit, finally spots one, makes his way by means of necessary detours—once he had driven this way, doubled back and forth, taken sudden instinctive, erratic swings south and north, looking for a hole in a heatwave—doglegs, travels a maze, climbs up one level in order to get to another beneath it.
He is out of West Village but still in Crown Center Shops. The stores are more conventional here but still—for him—troubling. Here and there along the corridor there are benches, like benches in museums. Lord Snowden is a men’s haberdasher, Habitat a furniture store, Ethnics a gallery of folk art. There are too many specialty shops, a place that sells yarn, another that does soap. There is The Board & Barrel, with its gourmet cookware; The Factory (a hardware store). There are The Bake Shop, The Candy Store, The Cheese Shop, The Flower Shop, The Sausage Shop, The Fish Market, The Meat Market, The Poultry Market, The Produce Market. And these, with their bare, spare generics, are somehow even more coy than the shops that are puns and double entendres. Though he feels that they have missed a bet, that they might have put in a broker and called it The Stock Market.
Yes. It is precisely what he had thought. As if America has lost a war with France, say, or England, or with, perhaps, its own past, knuckled under to its history. What’s a nice guy like me doing in a place like this? he wonders. A man of franchise, a true democrat who would make Bar Harbor, Maine, look like Chicago, who would quell distinction, obliterate difference, who would common-denominate until Americans recognize that it was America everywhere. The Stamp Pad, indeed. He would show them rubber stamp!
He sees a sign for the Crown Center Hotel and makes for it. No detours. No doglegs. No catwalks. No ups, no downs.
And is standing in the lobby of the hotel. There is, incredibly, along the width of its western wall, a waterfall, a tall slender stream of water no wider at its source than the stream that might come from heavy firehose, but opening out as it drops, spreading, diverted to two channels like the twin barrels on a shotgun, hugging, lower down, rocks, slipping over what appear to be mossy boulders, splashing plants, lichen, citrus trees, and spilling finally into a collecting pool, a sort of hemisphere of walled-off bay. The waterfall is reached by escalators, by exposed balconies two stories above him. Guests, tourists, stroll along iron-railed gangways that crisscross the waterfall like bridges in Japanese gardens. They stand at different levels, as if on scaffolding, spread out and up and down like notes on sheet music. And Flesh watches a woman toss change in the pool. Several sit for their photographs. He has guessed the appeal. It is the appeal of surrealism and odd juxtaposition. Something pit-of-the-stomach in the notion of bringing the outdoors in, just as the elevators at the tower end of the lobby, though entered from the lobby itself, climb the outside of the building, riding up gravity like effervescence in club soda. An appeal in inversion. He suffers a sort of vertigo for the people displaced above him in the air on their balconies and catwalks and scaffolds like so many window washers or house painters or construction workers. He has himself just come from the Center’s suspended cubes, sick in his stomach and feeling the heavy, off-center nausea of the weight, for example, in loaded dice.
He looks away from these human flies and sees that he stands above an excavation, an upholstered pit, roughly at the center of the immense lobby. It is a sunken barroom, the depth of the shallow end of a swimming pool. Low, handsome furniture—chrome, leather the color of the cork tips on cigarettes—is grouped in a deliberate randomness which gives the illusion of a house made up entirely of living rooms. There is something odd about the bar, though he cannot at first put his finger on it. He still holds his light suitcase, his garment bag rests on his arm like a towel on the sleeve of a waiter. He walks around the perimeter of the bar. The tops of the drinkers’ heads are at a level with his knees. The waitresses, carrying their trays, come up to his chest.
Then he realizes what is so strange about the bar. There is no bar. People are served from low consoles about the size of shields. (An impression reinforced by the crown and heraldry emblazoned on their fronts.) But that still isn’t it. Not entirely. Now. Now he knows. The consoles are not unlike the rolling carts pushed up and down the aisles of airplanes. The girls might be stewardesses, the young men stewards.
The franchiser understands the place now. With its nature brought indoors and its machinery out, with the lowest point in the lobby giving the sense of flight. The elements have been split, transposed, not just inversion but an environmentalist’s hedge against the continuity of the present. He might be, he might be in some zoo of the future. This is what a waterfall was like. Those were called trees. Those smaller things plants. When there was still fuel, people used to fly in heavier-than-air machines to go from one place to another. They were served food and drink on them. If you’ll come this way and step into the machine, you can get a good view of the outdoors, the “streets,” as they were called in those days. People used to move about in them.
They were way ahead of him, way ahead of the franchiser with his Robo-Washes and convenience-food joints, with his roadside services and dance studios and One Hour Martinizing, with his shopping center movie houses and Firestone appliance stores and Fotomats. Why, he was decadent, a piece of history, the Yesterday Kid himself, Father Time, OP Man River—his America, the America of the Interstates, of the sixties and middle seventies, as obsolete and charming and picturesque as an old neighborhood.
(Later that night he would go w
ith other men to a restaurant called The Old Washington Street Station. He would read the legend on the back of the menu: “Surrounded in an atmosphere of early Kansas City history, The Old Washington Street Station invites you on a journey through our historic past. Ninth and Washington was the location of one of Kansas City’s first cable railway powerhouses. For your dining pleasure, an authentic reproduction of an early Kansas City streetcar has been provided in our main dining room. We invite you to make yourself at home, enjoy our good food, your friends, and fond memories of Kansas City’s rich heritage.”
“Is this true?” he would ask the waitress. He had a few drinks in him.
“Is what true?”
“What it says here. Is it true?” He would point to the legend on the back of the menu.
“Oh yes.”
“Terrific,” he would say, and bring his finger down smartly in the middle of the paragraph. “That’s what I want. That’s just what I want for my dining pleasure. Wheel it over.”
“What?”
“The Kansas City streetcar. And don’t tell me you’re all out. I can see it from here. Boys,” he would say, “I’m very hungry.”
And would study the menu like a map, asking, genuinely unsure, “Should we stay here? Look, look what’s upstairs. It shows you. We could eat in the jailhouse, we could eat in the courtroom or the barber shop. We could eat in the haberdashery or the penny arcade. We could eat in the orchard. We could eat, we could eat in the library or the parlor or the governor’s mansion or on the porch or gazebo and wet our whistles in the Brass Bed Cocktail Lounge.”
“Benny’s a little loaded.”
“Benny’s whistle is lubricated.”
“Come on, Benny, calm down, son. Let’s just stay right here in Grandma’s Garden.”
“Macintyre,” he would say, “you silly bastard. Grandma’s Garden. You hear that, Lloyd? You hear that, Frommer? Grandma’s Garden. The stupid son of a bitch calls it Grandma’s Garden.”
The Franchiser Page 18