Stanley Elkin - The Franchiser

“I see. Well, that’s really — I’m going to have to take another—”

“ We both watch Monday-night football! ”

“—another…”

“When we go out with our wives — when we go out with our wives—”

“Yes?”

“ We both use babysitters !”

“…call.”

“ Neither of us has been in prison; we both like thick juicy steaks. Dick, Dick, both of us, both of us drive! ”

“Thank you, sir, for sharing your miracle. The Dick Gibson Show. You’re on the air, go ahead, please.”

Flesh couldn’t stop laughing. Things would work out. He left Interstate 70 and turned off onto U.S. 24 to drive the remaining eighty or so miles to Colorado Springs. At Peyton, Colorado, where his headlights ignited a sign that read COLORADO SPRINGS, 24 MILES, the signal was so powerful that he might have been in Chicago listening, say, to the local station of a major network.

When he was almost there, there was a station break. “This is Dick Gibson,” Dick Gibson said, “WMIA, Miami Beach.”

Then he panicked. It’s not, he thought, because it’s so close that it’s so clear, it’s because all the other stations have failed! It’s because America has everywhere failed, the power broken down!

And that, that , was the last time he was fooled.

Yet the lights were on in Colorado Springs.

Colorado Avenue was a garden of neon. The lights of the massage parlors burned like fires. The sequenced circuitry of the drive-ins and motels and theaters and bars was a contagion of light. A giant Big Boy’s statue illuminated by spots like a national monument. The golden Shell signs, an old Mobil Pegasus climbing invisible stairs in the sky. The traffic lights, red as bulbs in darkrooms, amber as lawn furniture, green as turf. The city itself, awash in light, suggested boardwalks, carnivals, steel piers, million-dollar miles, and, far off, private homes like upturned dominos or inverted starry nights. Down Cheyenne Mountain and Pikes Peak niagaras of lights were laid out like track. Don’t they know? he wondered. Is it Mardi Gras? Don’t they know? And he had a sense of connection, the roads that led to Rome, of nexus, the low kindling point of filament, of globe and tubing, as current poured in from every direction, rushing like electric water seeking its own level to ignite every conductor, conflagrating base metals, glass, the white lines down the centers of the avenues bright as tennis shoes, stone itself, the city a kind of full moon into which he’d come at last from behind its hidden darker side. The city like the exposed chassis of an ancient radio, its embered tubes and color-coded wire.

He drove to the Broadmoor Hotel and checked in. Only a suite was available. That was fine, he would take it. How long would he be staying? Open-ended. A bill would be presented every three days. That was acceptable. They did not honor credit cards. No problem. He would pay by check. He could give them two hundred dollars in cash right then if they liked. And was willing to show them his money. That wasn’t necessary. All right then. Could he get a bellboy to help with his bags? He was tired. Then he could go to his rooms at once. The boy would take his car keys and bring his bags up when he had parked Mr. Flesh’s car for him. Fine. His suite was in the new building. The new building, was that far? Oh no. Not at all. Another boy would show him the way. That was fine. That was just what he wanted.

He tipped his guide two dollars and sat on a Georgian chair by a white Georgian desk and put a call through to Riverdale.

He shoved the cartridge into the stereo and dedicated it aloud to Irving’s wife, Frances. My Fair Lady took him past St. Charles to Wentzville, Candide , played twice, to the Kingdom City exit, West Side Story to Columbia, where he ate lunch. He put his ’74 Cadillac through the Kwik Kar Wash. It cost him seventy-five cents and, as far as he could see, did no better job than his Robo-Wash in Washington, D.C., which took no longer and was a quarter cheaper. The difference — though there was no one ahead of him now — would have to be in customer convenience. His lot was shallower, the washbarn closer to the street. His customers, when there was a line, had to wait in the street. That meant a few bucks off the top to the cop every week. This guy’s machinery, set off to the side at the rear of his lot, permitted his customers to form a sort of U-shaped line, maybe eleven cars long, no, twelve or thirteen — he hadn’t allowed for the cars at the pit of the U — before they backed up into the street. Still, the sharp turn they had to make at the back of the lot to get into the barn must have chipped plenty of fenders. The management had put up a “Not Responsible” notice, but Flesh could guess how much that was worth. The insurance company would hassle him plenty, and why not? The customer couldn’t read the disclaimer until he had already committed himself, made or begun his turn into the narrow passageway, and it was too late, particularly if there was a strand of cars behind him, to back out. Sure. Six of one, half dozen of the other. The guy could keep his extra twenty-five cents. Flesh would rather deal with cops than insurance companies any day of the week.

What the hell was he thinking about? He’d dumped his Robo-Wash two years before. A mistake from the first. Strictly a novelty. A place to give kids the illusion — sitting in their cars while foamy water shot at them from all directions — that they were snugly drowning in the sea, and the illusion, as giant brushes like rolls of carpet rose up from the floor and left the wall, that they were being softly crushed. A novelty. A ride. Family entertainment. And never mind the self-creating traffic jams, not that there could have been that many. He’d picked a lousy location. Washington was black. Those people cared for their cars, polished them like flatware, either doing it themselves or, going the other way, springing for two-fifty and three-dollar jobs. He couldn’t have had the Robo a year.

He’d gone to Kitty with the proposition, told her the money — what had it cost him? under $12,000 probably — wasn’t significant enough to trouble the sibs with, and asked her to co-sign for him personally.

Kitty, the bed wetter, had never married. She did not think it fair to ask her husband to sleep on rubber sheets. Strangely, she never pissed her sheets during an afternoon nap or when she dozed off reading in a chair or watching TV. Only at night did she lose control, at night when the dreams came. The dreams, Flesh thought, the dreams she must have!

“This is really something, Kitty,” he’d said on their way to the place in Queens where he had first seen the Robo-Wash. “Wait, you’ll see.”

“Ben, it isn’t necessary. You know I trust your judgment. We all do. I don’t have to see the car wash. If you say it’s good, I believe you.”

“No. You have to see it. I want you to know just what you’re getting into. After all, I’m asking you to guarantee the loan personally. I want you to get an idea of the potential.”

“That’s the part I don’t understand. Why come to me? If it’s all that great, my brothers and sisters would go along with it as a matter of course, and you say the money isn’t significant.”

“Well, that’s the point. See, this is what I have in mind, Kitty. Up to now I’ve hit you kids collectively because the sums more often than not have been considerable, but suppose we do this, suppose I start up a series of small businesses and approach you one by one. We might all make more money.” Years before he had begun to cut them in, as co-signers of his loans, for a small share of the profits, though they had never actually had to put up a penny. He’d argued that they were entitled to it. Under the terms of their father’s will he was not obliged to do this, but he insisted. The sibs, though well off, were none of them making the fortune their father had made. Some, profligate, had already gone through a good deal of their capital. And that, of course, was the argument he had used to convince them, for they truly had not wanted to change an arrangement which had never actually cost them anything. “Look, Gus-Ira, I know you don’t need it. You’re a doctor, you do very well, but Oscar, the rock band, the bus he paid for and outfitted to travel in, what about him? Until he cuts a hit record he could really use the money. What the hell, even if it only pays the gas and oil for one of those trips he makes to the rock festivals, it would come in handy.” In this way, addressing the generosity of each, he had finally gotten them to accept the six or seven hundred dollars a year apiece that he gave them.