Stanley Elkin - The Franchiser

“Fred Astaire sent me,” he whispered. “I’m this social traffic cop.” He moved among them and started them dancing like a spinner of plates on sticks in nightclubs. “Good,” he said, “good, good.”

He scrambled back up on the stage, powdering his tuxedo trousers with paw prints of dust. He loosened his tie. “Caveat emptor,” he crooned. “This is only the fabulous introductory offer. It’s going to cost you. What, you think it’s cheap to throw the sheets over modern times while the owners are away? You think illusion is free, buddies? This shipboard ideal we make here, this Queen Mary ambience? I got a shine on my shoes it cost me two dollars. You want to see real stars, go to the country, look up, get a stiff neck. Ours have six points and you can reach out and touch them on the walls — convenience, convenience — like the astronomy decor in airplanes. Come, come, we’ll lie together in the time machine. When 1933 comes we’ll Carioca down Main Street, everybody do the Varsity Drag. We’ll Beer-Barrel Polka in the high-rent district and nobody leaves till he does the Continental!”

He explained the rates to them. The music was “Fascinating Rhythm.” He told them it would cost them thirty dollars an hour and that they had to sign up for a minimum of twenty-five hours. Calmly he explained that it was cheaper than psychoanalysis. They were dancing now. The song was “But Beautiful,” then “Dancing in the Dark.” If they thought the thirty an hour was stiff, he said, they should understand that a lot of the fee went into outings and galas like this one and that, if they chose, they could take up to ten of their hours with a private instructor, with Luis or Al, with Miss Jenny, Miss Hope, or Miss Clara.

“These aren’t bimbos,” he said while the stereo played “Dream.” “These are accredited people. Most of my people trained with Alex Moore’s International Society of Dance Instructors. Al and Miss Clara are two-time winners of the New York Daily News Harvest Moon Ball, the third jewel in dancing’s triple crown.”

The song was “Flat Foot Floogie” and several dropped out. They chewed his sandwiches and he made them a solemn promise. It was a tradition in ballroom instruction that an hour was only fifty minutes. Fred had authorized him to throw back the missing ten minutes into each hour. Did they have any idea, he wondered, how much of a leg up — he laughed delicately at his joke — that would give them on the Arthur Murray people? That was four hours and ten minutes of additional instruction. If they applied themselves they would run the Arthur Murray people off the floor. It was better than a hundred-and-twenty-dollar rebate. He didn’t understand how Fred could do it, but there it was. They danced to “Happy Days Are Here Again” and ate egg rolls from Don the Beachcomber. They moved over fallen hors d’oeuvres, stepping on the soft crusts and squashing them like bugs. Bits of pork and rice, of shrimp, chunks of chicken exploded like delicious gut under their weight. Dark sauces thick as blood stained the dance floor. He told them about “Recreation, companionship, instruction, and therapy.” That was their motto, he said. He told them they must understand that there was nothing authoritarian in the word “instruction.” If others he could name didn’t, the Fred Astaire people believed in freedom of individual expression. He saw, he said, in the movements of his black friend, a potential for the strong, masculine rhythms of Chassidic dancing. If that’s where the man’s talents lay he knew a rabbi in Skokie — They were dancing now with their drinks in their hands. The song was “I’m Sitting on Top of the World,” and as the men dipped the ladies, liquor spilled from their plastic glasses onto the dance floor. He tried to explain how the dance field was like karate in a way. Oh, it wasn’t combative, of course, the reverse if anything, a karate of the inside out. He meant that just as there were degrees, levels of competence in karate, white belts, brown, green, he thought, and black, there were the same sorts of measurements in dance. There had to be. One had to know where one stood. Someone had placed a plastic glass on the floor with a cigarette in it that was still burning. Ben watched the hole, outlined like a filament in a light bulb as it grew wider and wider. The song was “I Can Dream, Can’t I?” What was he saying? Oh yes, karate. In ballroom dancing it worked differently. They didn’t get belts. Medals. There were bronze, silver, and gold medals. One could earn these, though of course there was no guarantee. You had to know where you stood, but there had to be standards. Some people made silver at the end of the twenty-five-hour course, but he’d be frank, this was the exception. Usually it didn’t happen until forty hours and often, he had to be frank, he wanted them to know what they were getting into, seventy-five, sometimes not then. Gold medalists were rare. He had a feeling they were born. Independent judges were brought in. Incorruptible men who couldn’t be bought. If you got a medal you knew you’d earned it.

“Like the Olympics,” he said. “Swing, waltz, fox trot, cha-cha, and tango. All the high stepper’s catchy pentathlon.”

Were they necking? Necking?

“Is everybody happy?” he asked softly. “I come from Fred Astaire. He looks forty-eight. All old movie stars look forty-eight.” For some reason he was on the verge of tears. “Why,” he wondered aloud, “were there never any black streakers?” The song was “I’ll See You in My Dreams.” He was winding down. Who was he, fucking Cinderella? Would he cry in front of them? Snap out of it.

“Hey,” he said, “they found tuna fish on Mercury!”

It was “I Hadn’t Anyone Till You.”

“All right,” he said, “I’ll give it to you straight. I saw Fred Astaire one time at a franchise convention. He seemed embarrassed. You want to know the truth? I don’t dance, don’t ask me, and the outings I was talking about, you know where we take you? To places where they rewrite the lyrics and do special material. You know? Like at summer camp. That’s the gala. The band plays these show tunes and Al changes the lyrics to whatever’s topical or institutional. The bronze medalists get their name in a song and we boost the outfit and ain’t that something? Jesus.

“Listen,” he said, “I have this Cadillac. I’m a dancer. I go north in it and west. I do all the directions and turn corners and stay in my lane and trace the cloverleaf and cross the bridges. Good God, am I a dancer! America’s my ballroom. It’s my eats, listen to me! Something’s happening. I’ll tell you a secret. This dancing. I think it may be evil. As comedy is evil. I don’t think salvation has either a sense of humor or a sense of rhythm. Life is the conversion of the individual. God’s piecework. A custom-tailor God, every attention paid to details, the slant of the pocket and come back Tuesday. I think I may be doing evil with my franchises.”

“Hey, Mr. Flesh,” Luis said.

“There may be something genuinely evil in the idea of an N.F.L. Maybe the Miami Dolphins is an evil concept, the Houston Astros, Burger King, the American League. Franchises like some screwy version of Manifest Destiny.”

“Mr. Flesh.”

He heard his name called and made Hope out in the queerly lighted room, Band-Aids of blue and purple, of yellow and red sliding across her face and bare arms as the revolving mirrored ball punched out refracted messages of spectrum. She was shaking her head.

“Yes, Hope,” Flesh said. “I come from Fred Astaire. Everybody dance.”

He turned from the microphone and placed another recording on the turntable, setting the volume high as he could.