Stanley Elkin - The Franchiser

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 clothing, 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.”