Stanley Elkin - The Magic Kingdom

“Benny.”

They shook hands solemnly.

“No, that’s not my idea at all,” Benny Maxine said. “Not of no dream holiday it ain’t.”

“Have you been there?”

“What, the Wor -ruld? No fear!”

“Well, maybe you’ll be surprised. Perhaps you’ll like it after all.”

“Nah,” Benny said. “It’s some tarted-up Brighton, is all. Adventureland, Tomorrowland. The bloody Never-lands! Greasy great kid stuff is what I say!”

“The Netherlands?”

“What?” Benny Maxine said. “Oh. No, sweetheart. Ne v er- Land. You know, where Peter Pansy flies his pals in the pantomime. Not the coun try, not the place wif the wood gym shoes and all the boot forests. You don’t talk the bull’s wool, do you, luv? Not to worry. We’re all Englitch ’ere. Just little dying Englitch boys and girls. Which is why I fink we should ’ave been personally consulted, drawn into the discussions, like, before they shipped us all off to Florida and the Magic Kingdom to put us on the rides and expose us to the dangerous tropic sun.

(“Don’t look now, luv,” Benny whispered, and indicated with a gesture of his chin where Janet Order was sitting, “but that one could do wif a bit o’ old Sol!) I mean, how do they know where a poor little mortal loser like yours truly would like to take his dream holiday? No one sat on the side of my bed and listened to me talk in me sleep.”

“Where would you?”

“What, take my dream holiday?”

“That’s right.”

“What, if I had the whole wide world to choose from?”

“Yes.”

“Well, there’s no contest then, is there? I mean, look what we got ’ere. Africa, South America, Australia. Asia. You can’t forget Asia. There’s Mother Russia and China, too, in Asia.”

“Is that where you’d go, Asia?”

“Monte Carlo,” Benny Maxine said.

“Why that’s only in the south of France.”

“Monaco. It’s in Monaco.”

The little girl giggled. “And isn’t as big as Regent’s Park, I shouldn’t think.”

“A choice seafront property,” Benny Maxine said.

“What a queer place to choose,” Rena said. “Whatever would you do there? Get your postcards franked?”

“Yeah, that’s right. And send them off to you and Little Girl Blue over there in Mickey Mouseland. ‘Yours truly,’ I’d sign them. ‘The Kid Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo!’”

“You wi-ish!”

“Hey, you’re pretty lively for a snotnose, ain’t you?”

For her giggle had shaken loose some of the immense reserves of Rena Morgan’s clear, cystic fibrotic phlegm. Benny watched for a moment. “You got a bad cold there, luv,” he said, offering his big clean handkerchief. Which, shaking her head, she declined, opening instead a rather large and attractive flowered canvas drawstring bag which, or so it seemed to Benny, appeared to contain nothing but handkerchiefs, men’s handkerchiefs, bigger than his own, some of them already crumpled. She poked her hand into the depths of the bag, plunged her wrists past the wet linen, and withdrew an unused handkerchief. Then, taking hold of it by a corner, she flipped it once and the whole thing came unfolded, unfurling like a flag, rolled carpet, an umbrella. She didn’t press the handkerchief to her face, she didn’t even actually blow, but allowed it to pass under her nose in a continuous, unbroken movement, like someone sliding corn on the cob past her teeth, Benny thought, or like paper moving beneath the keys of a typewriter.

“Sorry,” Rena Morgan said, crumpling the now-drenched handkerchief and dropping it into her bag. She seemed quite recovered.

“That’s a great trick,” Benny said. “How you unfolded that hanky.”

“I secrete too much mucus. It’s disgusting,” she said. “I’ve cystic fibrosis.”

“Well, we all got our cross, don’t we, or we wouldn’t be sitting here in de West bloody London Air Terminal waiting to be taken off to bleedin’ Heathrow in the bloody limos like it was already our bleedin’ funerals, would we?”

“You shouldn’t curse.”

“I’m fifteen years old.”

“I don’t think age has anything to do with it.”

“Yeah, and I don’t think age has anything to do with where a person would want to spend his dream holiday.”

“Think?”

“Pardon?”

“You didn’t say ‘fink.’ You can pronounce your th’s.”

“A diller, a dollar, a ten o’clock scholar.”

“What’s your cross?”

“Oh, my cross. My cross is the Magen David.”

“I never know what you’re talking about, Benny.”

“I’m a yid. I’ve got this yid disease. Gaucher’s, it’s called. I’ve got this big yid liver, this hulking hebe spleen. I’ve this misshapen face and this big bloated belly. It’s the chosen disease of the chosen people.”

“What does it do?”

“What does it do? It makes me beautiful and qualifies me to meet Donald Duck in person.”

“Does it hurt?”

“It’s weird,” he said. “It’s very weird. Sugar accumulates in my cells.” He lowered his voice. “See my fingers?”

“You bite your nails.”

“For a treat. I chew my thumbs. I lick my palms. I’m candy. I squeeze sweetness out of the juice of my tongue; my saliva’s better than soda pop. Look.” He unbuttoned his shirt sleeve. Indistinct crescents of teeth mark made a random, mysterious graffiti all along his arm. “I’m caramel, I’m cake, I’m syrup, I’m mead. I’m treacle and jam, I’m bonbons and honey. It’s incredible. I’m bloody fattening. But nah, it don’t hurt. Only when my bones break. I’ve got these peanut-brittle bones. Like tooth decay, only in the marrow.”

“Oh, that’s horrible,” Rena said.

“Yeah, well, we’re all ’orrible ’ere. That blue kid? The one that looks like someone’s school colors? And what’s’isname, Cloth, the one with the cancer, that they keep sawing at and carving on so that even if he lives he’ll end up looking like a joint for somebody’s Sunday dinner?”

“You’re terrible,” Rena said.

“They put me off my feed, our crowd does,” Benny Maxine said. “I don’t think I could take one contented munch off meself round this lot.”

“Oh, Benny.”

“You know what a tontine is?”

“A tontine?”

“It’s this agreement, like. Usually geezers make it? Flyers from the war, daft old boys, a particular chapter, say, of the Baker Street Irregulars — people tied up in some dotty mutual enterprise. And each puts something into the kitty, survivor take all. That’s what our bunch ought to do. Get up a tontine. We could have Mister Moorhead handicap us. Like underwriters do for the life assurance societies. We prorate what each puts in and — hey,” Benny Maxine said, “hey, don’t. Hey.”

The girl was crying, her tears melding with the clear gelatins of her runny nose.

“What’s happened?” her mother demanded, running from where she and the other parents had been talking with the staff. “Stop that, Rena! Stop! You know what crying does to you. Oh, Rena,” she said, and held the child in her arms, dabbing at her daughter’s nose with handkerchiefs from the drawstring bag, stabbing her mucus, blotting it up, stanching it as if it were some queer, devastating blood.

Bale feared they might never take off. Last-minute hitches. At this point almost a sign. Something might have been waving red flags at him, warning him off. Stand clear or be destroyed with them, his kids, his doomed collective charges. (Charges indeed. Bale’s bombs. Rigged. Set. Eddy’s timed tots. He felt like a sapper.) Ginny was there, Eddy waving and calling “Over here, over here,” like a reconciliation in pictures, the kids looking as if a ringer had been snuck in on them, the wise-guy kid, Benny Maxine, rolling his eyes and nodding his Uh-oh’s and What now’s? as if he knew something. How do you like that kid? Bale wondered. Playing to the crowd, putting on his phony Cockney accent when the closest he’d been to Bow Bells was Michael Caine films; Eddy Bale spotting Ginny meanwhile and doing his own home movies in his head, crying and laughing like a loon in Heathrow’s crowded departure lounge and singing “Over here, over here!” as if it were a railroad platform at Waterloo they stood on, both of them caught up in the indifferent traffic, swimming against the stream like salmon and Eddy already figuring out what to say. Ginny not even an apparition, not even someone who just looked like her, who wore her hair the same way or had similar tics. Ginny Ginny, and, worse luck, embarrassed. “Gee, Eddy, I didn’t remember today was the big day.” “What are you doing here then?” “Meeting a friend.” “Oh,” Eddy said. “Are those the children?” “What? Them? The saucy blue baggage who looks like she’s been dipped in grape juice? The boy with no place to put his ring? That little tyke with the wig who looks like she’s eight months pregnant? Or maybe you mean that idiot-looking nipper sucking chemotherapy from a bottle.” “Oh, Eddy.” “What friend?” “My lover friend, Eddy.” “Your lover friend. Ri-ight.” “I don’t want to hold you up,” she said. “Anyone I know?” “Oh, Eddy.” “Is he?” “Yes.” “You know something, Ginny? That’s too bad. I mean it really is. That makes me sorry for you in a way. Because I can’t, I mean try as I may, I brutal truthfully can’t think of anyone we both know who can hold a candle to me in the way of friendship or anything like loyalty.” The uproar in the lounge a welcome distraction by this time, a sound like the sudden appearance of celebrity, Eddy Bale looking over his shoulder.