Stanley Elkin - The Franchiser

“Look that pigeon shit.”

“Ben Flesh,” Ben Flesh said, extending his hand.

“Colonel Sanders,” the man said grudgingly.

Ben pushed his hand out farther. The man took it finally and Flesh grasped the chicken king’s hand in both his own and pulled it toward his face. Before Colonel Sanders knew what was happening Flesh opened his jaws wide as he could and shoved as much of the man’s hand inside his mouth as possible. He sucked the startled man’s knuckles, ran his tongue along his lifeline, chewed his nails, the heel of his hand, tasted his pinky. The Colonel made a fist and fought for his hand, which Ben still held to his mouth.

“Lemme be. What’s wrong with you?”

And Ben could not have told him, couldn’t have said that he’d pulled his first stunt, an engram of character and aggression. He stood before the Colonel with the man’s hand still at his lips. He was blushing. “Finger-lickin’ good,” Flesh said. “It’s true. What they say. About Dixie,” he added lamely.

The Colonel shook his hand about, drying it. He looked down at his suit, changed his mind. Flesh whipped out a handkerchief and waved it across the top of Colonel Sanders’s hand like a shoeshine cloth. He whistled, snapping the handkerchief smartly one last time, and returned it to his pocket.

“I’ll be damned,” Colonel Sanders said. “You’re a fool.”

“Listen,” Ben said, “I’m sorry. I don’t know what made me…”

The Colonel looked at me curiously. Then seemed suddenly to relent. He was taller than I would have expected — six foot one, better. Taller than myself.

“My height?” the Colonel said.

“Sir?”

“My height. People like their avunculars stubbly little Santas. Eb Scrooge’s old boss — what’s his name — he was a shorty. All of ’em, squatty, florid little fellers. Only your father figure is supposed to be tall. Well, you know what my real significance is, Jack? It ain’t the finger-lickin’-good routine. I mean to go down as the first avuncular in U.S. history to break the height barrier, bust six two. One day I’m comin’ out the closet altogether entire, speak the King’s English, iambic pentameter. That’s what I’m really after. Oh, I ain’t fixin’ to put out the twinkle in my eye or extinguish the roses in my cheeks — just very manly, very deliberate and distingué . Stand up straight, unhunch my shoulders, give my backbone its head, let America see what’s been hid from it too long — that a man can be lovable, turn out a good product, and tall all at the same time.”

“I never realized,” Ben told him, “what an idealist you are.”

“Shucks,” said the Colonel. “Schucks, pshaw, and…” He drew Ben toward him conspiratorially, looked both ways when they were nose to nose.

“—and?”

“—and pshit!”

They went to lunch at La Caravelle. “Unless you prefer Clos Normand,” the Colonel had said.

“I’ve never been to either.”

“ I know. Le Perigord.” Then changed his mind. “No, that’s all the way east.” Decisively. “Caravelle.”

It was the largest of intimate rooms, and there was, for Flesh, the sense that, remove the tables and cloak room — he thought like this, the franchiser vision, his blueprint imagination — lift the rugs and install the proper equipment, and one would have a gentlemen’s barber shop of the sort found in the basements of immense commercial travelers’ hotels.

Ben Flesh examined the table linen while Colonel Sanders looked over the wine list and bantered with the sommelier in French. He lifted the bread basket — it was cunningly made bread, baked to look like slabs of wicker — and tore into the most delicious roll he had ever eaten. He offered the Colonel one but the man shook his head.

“Flours the palate,” he said. “Tarts up the old wine cellar. Well, Ben,” he said, “it’s Ben, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What you up to, Ben? Why you bothering me?”

“We’re in the same line of work.”

“We are, are we? Well, you sure don’t dress for it. You dress like a lawyer or a cardiologist. You a lawyer or a cardiologist, Ben?”

“No, sir, I’m a franchiser.”

“Franchiser, eh? What sort franchises you sell? What’s your product?”

“I buy franchises.”

Colonel Sanders looked at him suspiciously. “You’re a damn liar, son. If you bought franchises you’d see the contract calls you the ‘franchisee.’ ”

“That’s always sounded like a cross between a Frenchman and Chinaman. I call myself a franchiser.”

“An’ you want to talk to me ’bout a Colonel Sanders — Well, that’ll have to wait. I don’t believe in business lunches. Here’s the wine. They do a wonderful half liter of Château Pomme hereabouts. That all right with you? It’s a ’53 white. The red’s better, of course, but it stains my beard.”

The sommelier poured an inch of wine in the Colonel’s glass. The chicken king rinsed, nodded judiciously, and the sommelier filled Ben’s glass.

Sanders ordered for them both. Ben was to have cassoulet , the Colonel a cold bouillabaisse and some cold asparagus.

“How’s your cassoulet? ” he asked.

“It’s wonderful. I never knew beans — these are beans? — could be so good.”

The Colonel took a fork and poked around in the stewy mound on Flesh’s plate. “Yes, sir, beans, pork sausage, and — son of a bitch!” he roared, “that’s duck! Son, don’t eat that. Where’s that son bitch garçon? You see where that peckerhead got off to?” He shouted for the waiter.

Ben winced.

“Who you shamed for, skippy?” the Colonel demanded. “That’s duck they give you. You squeamish for these people? Publishers, bud. Publishers, agents, editors, and starving writers. Expense accounts. Credit cards. Why, we the onliest folks in this restaurant showing them cash. Waiter!”

“Sir?”

The Colonel harpooned a piece of tanned flesh from Ben’s plate. “ C’est le canard! Ce n’est pas l’oie! Cochon! Merde! ”

“It’s delicious,” Ben said.

“It’s fuckin’ duck! ” Sanders roared. “It’s s’posed to be goose! ”

The waiter tried to take Ben’s plate, but Ben held on. “I like duck actually,” he said.

“Fah! Leave it be then. He likes duck. Let ’em eat duck. Boy,” he said, when the waiter had gone, “you are surely a disappointment to me. Okay. Now we’ve had our scene, let’s aid digestion with some good conversation. What’s your pet peeve?”

He was still a young man, still in his early thirties. I was still innocent, my character, which is not shaped, as psychologists would have it, in the formative first five or six years or we are back to Calvinism, infant damnation, the loss of the will, but, as I truly believe, in the thirties and forties, still unformed but just beginning to happen, thicken, as chocolate pudding thickens, begins its first resisting circle in the stirrer’s slowed spoon. So I was still a young man, not yet me, not yet myself.

“My pet peeve? I don’t know. Deliberate cruelty, I guess.”

“ ‘Deliberate cruelty,’ ” he said. “Forget the duck. My mistake. You bring your goose with you. You are goose equipped. Deliberate cruelty. Your pet peeve is deliberate cruelty? Ben, if you’re tellin’ the truth you’d better do yourself some more window shopping or you’ve bought yourself an ulcer for sure. Deliberate cruelty, hell. What other kind is there? No, lad. No, son. Get something refreshing you don’t have to rub shoulders with it in the street every day, it ain’t there like wallpaper, the last thing you see when you turn the light off at night, the first thing you see in the morning. Now I got a pet peeve a man can be proud of. You say, ‘What’s that?’ ”