Stanley Elkin - The Franchiser

“Modest?”

Ben nodded. It was not true. In sickness he understood what he never had in health, that his body, anyone’s, everyone’s, was something for the public record, something accountable like books for audit, like deeds on file in county courthouses. If he was ashamed it was because he couldn’t work his fingers. He stood to take off his pants and shorts. Then he smiled.

“Yes?”

“I was just thinking,” he said.

“Yes?”

“I’m Mister Softee.” She turned away and completed the last hospital corner. “No,” Ben said, “I am. I have the local Mister Softee franchise. It’s ice cream.” She folded the sheets back. “It’s true. Anytime you want a Mister Softee, just go down and ask Zifkovic.

Zifkovic’s my manager.”

“Please put your gown on.”

“Tell him Ben Flesh sent you,” he said and burst into tears.

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” Ben said, “I don’t know what’s happening to me.”

“That’s why you’re here,” she said, “so we can find out.” She helped him out of the chair gently, unfolded and held open the gown for him. “Just step into it,” she said, “just put your arms through the sleeves.” He had to make a fist with his right hand so his fingers wouldn’t touch the rough fabric. She came toward him with the gown. His penis moved against her uniform. “Can you turn around?” she said. “I’ll tie you up the back.”

“I can turn around.” He was crying again.

“Please,” she said, “please don’t do that. You mustn’t be afraid. You’re going to be fine.”

“I can turn around. See?” he sobbed. “Is it smeared? My ass? What there is of it. All belly, no ass. Is it smeared? Is it smeared with shit? Sometimes, I don’t know, I try, I try to wipe myself. Sometimes I’m careless.”

“You’re fine,” she said. “You’re just fine. Please,” she said, “if you shake like that, I won’t be able to tie your gown for you.”

“No? You won’t?” He couldn’t stop sobbing. He was grateful they were alone. “So I’d have to be naked. How would that be? This — this body na-naked. Wouldn’t that be something — thing? No ass, just two fl-flabby gray pouches and this wi-wide tor-tors- torso . They say if you can squeeze a half inch of flab between your forefinger and thumb you’re — you’re too fat. What’s this? Three in-in-inch-ches? What does that make me? I never looked like you’re supposed to look on the — on the beach. I’ve got this terrible body. Well, I’m not the franchise man for nothing. It’s — it’s like any middle-age man’s. I’m so white .”

“Stop,” she demanded. “You just control yourself.”

“Yeah? What’s that? Shock therapy? Thanks, I needed that? Well, why not? Sure. Thanks, I needed that.” He turned to face her. He raised his gown. “ Flesh the flasher! ” He was laughing. “See? I’ve got this tiny weewee, this undescended cock.”

“If you can’t control yourself,” she said.

“What? You’ll call for help? Lady, you just saw for yourself. You don’t need help. You could take me.” He sat on the side of the bed, his legs spread wide, his elbows on his thighs, and his head in his palms. But he was calm. “I just never took care of the goddamned thing, my body. I just never took care of it. And the only thing that counts in life is life. You jog?” he asked suddenly.

“What’s that?”

“Do you jog?”

“Yes.”

“I knew. I knew you did. You smoke?”

“No.”

“Right. That’s right. Ship-fucking shape.”

“I think one of the interns…”

“No,” he said calmly, “I’m okay now. No more opera. But you know? I hate joggers. People who breathe properly swimming, who flutter kick. Greedy. Maybe flab is a sign of character and shapelessness is grace. Sure. The good die young, right?”

“Why do you loathe your body so?”

“What’d it ever do for me?”

“Will you be all right now?”

“I told you. Yes. Yeah.” He got into bed. When he pulled the covers up his hand tingled. The nurse turned to go. “Listen,” he said.

“Yes?”

“Tell Gibberd he can skip the preliminaries, all the observation shit. Tell him to get out his Nation’s Leading Crippler of Young Adults kit. The kid’s got M.S.”

“You don’t know what you have.”

“Yes. Wolfe the specialist told me. He gave me egg salad and set me straight.”

The nurse left him. He tried to feel his pulse with the fingers of his right hand and couldn’t. He did five-finger exercises, reaching for the pulse in his throat, his hand doing rescue work, sent down the carefully chiseled tunnels of disaster in a mine shaft, say, to discover signs of life. He brought the fingers away from his neck and waved to the widows. He placed three fingers of his good hand along a finger of his right and, closing his eyes, tried to determine the points where they touched. He couldn’t, felt only a suffused, generalized warmth in the deadened finger. He took some change the nurse had put with his watch and wallet in the nightstand by his bed and distributed it on his blanket around his chest and stomach. Still with his eyes closed, he tried to feel for the change and pick it up. He couldn’t. He opened his eyes, scooped up a nickel, a dime, and a quarter with his left hand and put them in the palm of his right hand. Closing his eyes again, he very carefully spilled two of the coins onto the blanket — he could determine this by the sound — and made a fist about the coin still in his hand. Concentrating as hard as he had ever concentrated on anything in his life, and trapping the coin under his thumb, he rubbed it up his forefinger, trying to determine the denomination of the remaining coin. It’s the dime, he decided. He was positive. Yes. It’s the dime. The inside of his thumb still had some sensitivity. (Though he couldn’t be sure, he thought he had felt a trace of pulse under his thumb when he had held the dead necklace of his right hand against his throat.) Definitely the dime. He opened his eyes. His hand was empty. He shoved the change back in the nightstand and closed the drawer.

“I say, are you really Mister Softee?” The voice was British and came from behind the screen at the far end of the ward.

“Who’s that? Who’s there?”

“Are you?”

“Yes.”

“Jolly good. They’re rather splendid.”

“Thanks.”

“Mister Softee.” The name was drawn out, contemplated, pronounced as if it were being read from a marquee. “Apropos too, yes?”

“Why’s that?”

“ Well , after your performance just now for Sister, I should have thought that would be obvious, wouldn’t it?”

“I’m sick.”

“Not to worry,” the invisible Englishman said cheerfully. “We’re all sick here.” Ben looked around the empty ward. “Sister was right, you know. You are going to be fine. You’re in the best tropical medicine ward in either Dakota.”

“This is a tropical medicine ward?”

“Oh yes. Indeed. One of the finest in the Dakotas.”

“Jesus,” Ben said, “a tropical medicine ward.”

“Top drawer. Up there with the chief in Rapid City.”

“What do you have?” Ben asked.

“One saw you through the crack where the panels of my screen are joined. One saw everything. One saw your bum. It is smeared, rather. What do I have? Lassa fever, old thing. Came down with a touch of it last year. Year it was discovered actually. In Nigeria. Odd that. Well, I wasn’t in Nigeria. I was in Belize, Brit Honduras, with RAF. What I meant was, Lassa fever was discovered in Nigeria. Trouble with a clipped rather precise way of talking, articles left out, references left dangling, pronouns understood, is that it’s often imprecise actually, rather.”