Stanley Elkin - The Franchiser

He fumbled with the amplifier and found the button that cut off the power, and he stood on his father’s old cutting tables and spoke to them from his heart.

“My dearest ladies,” he said, “my most charming gentlemen. Please, this is very important. What’s sacred is important. You don’t know this, you’ll not be able to follow it all. Try not to blame yourselves. There’s no blame here. We are all swell people. Do you know what’s happening here? (Don’t sidetrack me, God; let me stick to the point, oh, Lord.) Everyone concentrate. I am going to link the world for you. I am going to have it make sense, but you must concentrate. Same here.

“All right. What am I talking about? How, if I’m to link the world, can I get sidetracked? Not possible. It’s all relevant. Be patient. Everything will come clear. Then — Who has water? I’m very dry. Luis, pleeth. Jenny, any?

“I stand on my father’s long old cutting tables. Bolts of graduation cloth unwound here like spools of film, the texture of the trim like oil slicks. Costumes were made for ballerinas. We are in a room with a musical tradition . Yes, and what made this possible, this room, this night, our gala, were the selfsame songs you danced to earlier, written by pals of my godfather, who was able to leave me the prime rate of interest because of those songs. You see? We dance to the prime rate of interest itself. We compound it. Nothing is lost. Follow? That’s one circle. Earlier I spoke of the rhythms, motion. Ah, God, we thank Thee for Thy do-si-dos, our hithers and yons, the wondrous cake walk and hopfrog of reality. We thank Thee for dressage and our Lippizaner life. Clara, you understand, don’t you?”

“No,” Clara said.

“I does,” the black man said.

“Yes, but that’s not my point. Do you know how good the world is? Listen, it’s better than you think and better even than it has to be. I go with Clone. Politeness, gratuitous as flowers, counts. It structures life like scaffolding. Under this stage is scaffolding, the carpenter’s hundred wooden X ’s. Would a man do that for money? The care , the nails like a driving rain. For money? Good Christ, friends, the man built to hold us all, to let us jump.” He jumped. “I believe the amazing world of Kreskin is amazing, and who could invent a card trick or make up a good joke? The lady who dropped the ketchup—”

“That was an accident,” she said.

“No, no, there are no accidents. The lady who dropped the ketchup — I saw into her shopping bag. There are Hefties there, liners for garbage cans. How civilized! Maybe all that distinguishes man from the beasts is that man had the consideration to invent garbage can liners. What a convenience! We die, yes, but are compensated by a million conveniences. Hefties are just the beginning. We perfect ourselves, we reach toward grace — I foresee a time when there will be flowered sheets and pillowcases in motel rooms. This is a deflection to convenience and the magnitude of the human spirit, the leap to comfort. The chemical creams,” he said excitedly, “the chemical creams. You know, the little sacks of powder you put in your coffee. I foresee a day — someone may be working on this right now — when non-dairy creamers shall be mixed with saccharine in the same packet! There you go: convenience! And do you think for one minute that the man now waiting for this great idea’s time to come will have thought it up for mere money? No . Unthinkable. It will hit him on an airliner like an inspiration, for the grace of the thing, only that, for the convenience it would make, and if he profits by his idea, why the money will be only another convenience. Someday a visionary shall come among us. He will lobby Congress to legalize pot on the principle that it would be a terrific boon to the snack-food industry! Oh, friends, the quality of all our lives shall rise like yeast. I love this world, this comfortable, convenient world, its pillow condition.” He was breathless. But he had more to tell them. Mystery was on the tip of his tongue. He studied them, watched them watching him.

“I come,” he said, “from Fred Astaire! I bring Ginger Rogers’ spicy ‘Hi.’ Fred says tell them. He says make them understand. He says when you see Miss Clara, Miss Jenny, and Miss Hope, when you see Mr. Luis and Mr. Al, when you get to Chicago and stand on the cutting tables on the evening of the Nineteenth Annual Fiscal Year Gala, when you hang suspended from your suspenders in the convenient clothes of romance, your uniform of cruise and ceremony, suspended in them, your feet barely touching your hose, your hose your shoes, your shoes your pop’s cutting tables, your pop’s cutting tables your planet, let them know that our work, the work we do, is important, that to walk is good but to dance is better, that what we do here is the ultimate leap; to go behind gravity’s back and spit in the face of the heavy. Hah? Heh?

“Listen, Fred didn’t say about this part, this part’s mine — Fred ain’t in it — but I want to give you some notion of the world we live in. I drive the road. I go up and down it. I stay in motels and watch the local eyewitness news at ten. Murders are done, town councils don’t know what to do about porno flicks, everywhere the cops have blue flu, farmers nose-dive from threshers, supply and demand don’t work the way they used to, and even our President’s at a loss and his advisers divided. The left hand don’t know what the right is doing and only the weather report touches us all. The time and the temperature. What we have for community. Only that. The barometer adjusted to sea level, the heat wave, the drought, the cold front stalled over Wisconsin, today’s low and if it’s the record. And the fuss that’s made! My God, the fuss that’s made and only because it’s what the local eyewitness news thinks holds us together. Some view of us it has, pals. As if we lived in the wind under the same umbrella. I see this. City after city and state after state. And, oh yes, something else, the good will and chatter, the hard-news guy lying down with the sports one, the jigaboo weatherman with the lady reporter. We should take over the stations and put out the real news. For everyone murdered a million unscathed, for every fallen farmer so many upright. We would put it out. Bulletin: Prisoners use sugar in their coffee! Do you see the sweet significance? We argue the death penalty and even convicts eat dessert. The cooks do the best they can. They have their eye out for the good fruit and the green vegetables. Oh, the astonishing manifestations of love! Rainbows wouldn’t melt in our mouths! The state’s bark always worse than its bite, brothers, and goodness living in the pores of the System, and Convenience, thank you, God, the measure of mankind. Nobody, nobody, nobody ever had it so good. Take heed. A franchiser tells you.

“Smile, you fuckers, laugh, you shitlings. I come from Fred Astaire, everybody dance! ”

He jerked a record from its sleeve and slapped it on the machine. He turned the volume up and shrieked into the microphone. “Business is bad but we do a big volume.” He turned the sound down some. They had gathered beneath him at the foot of his tiny stage to watch him and listen. He swayed above them. He might have been a band singer in the forties. The music was “Dance, Ballerina, Dance.”

“ Do it,” he commanded. “Dance, dance.” He made spiraling gestures with his fingers. Some of the people he had brought with him began to shuffle aimlessly. A few eyed each other, seeking partners. “That’s right, mother,” he told an old woman who held her arms out to Luis. He climbed down from the stage and began to move people around like a chess master playing several games at once. He pulled them to him in pairs, holding them by their wrists as if he would force them to shake, like a peacemaker, he thought, like love’s policeman.