Stanley Elkin - The Franchiser

He looks away from these human flies and sees that he stands above an excavation, an upholstered pit, roughly at the center of the immense lobby. It is a sunken barroom, the depth of the shallow end of a swimming pool. Low, handsome furniture — chrome, leather the color of the cork tips on cigarettes — is grouped in a deliberate randomness which gives the illusion of a house made up entirely of living rooms. There is something odd about the bar, though he cannot at first put his finger on it. He still holds his light suitcase, his garment bag rests on his arm like a towel on the sleeve of a waiter. He walks around the perimeter of the bar. The tops of the drinkers’ heads are at a level with his knees. The waitresses, carrying their trays, come up to his chest.

Then he realizes what is so strange about the bar. There is no bar. People are served from low consoles about the size of shields. (An impression reinforced by the crown and heraldry emblazoned on their fronts.) But that still isn’t it. Not entirely. Now. Now he knows. The consoles are not unlike the rolling carts pushed up and down the aisles of airplanes. The girls might be stewardesses, the young men stewards.

The franchiser understands the place now. With its nature brought indoors and its machinery out, with the lowest point in the lobby giving the sense of flight. The elements have been split, transposed, not just inversion but an environmentalist’s hedge against the continuity of the present. He might be, he might be in some zoo of the future. This is what a waterfall was like. Those were called trees. Those smaller things plants. When there was still fuel, people used to fly in heavier-than-air machines to go from one place to another. They were served food and drink on them. If you’ll come this way and step into the machine, you can get a good view of the outdoors, the “streets,” as they were called in those days. People used to move about in them.

They were way ahead of him, way ahead of the franchiser with his Robo-Washes and convenience-food joints, with his roadside services and dance studios and One Hour Martinizing, with his shopping center movie houses and Firestone appliance stores and Fotomats. Why, he was decadent, a piece of history, the Yesterday Kid himself, Father Time, OP Man River — his America, the America of the Interstates, of the sixties and middle seventies, as obsolete and charming and picturesque as an old neighborhood.

(Later that night he would go with other men to a restaurant called The Old Washington Street Station. He would read the legend on the back of the menu: “Surrounded in an atmosphere of early Kansas City history, The Old Washington Street Station invites you on a journey through our historic past. Ninth and Washington was the location of one of Kansas City’s first cable railway powerhouses. For your dining pleasure, an authentic reproduction of an early Kansas City streetcar has been provided in our main dining room. We invite you to make yourself at home, enjoy our good food, your friends, and fond memories of Kansas City’s rich heritage.”

“Is this true?” he would ask the waitress. He had a few drinks in him.

“Is what true?”

“What it says here. Is it true?” He would point to the legend on the back of the menu.

“Oh yes.”

“Terrific,” he would say, and bring his finger down smartly in the middle of the paragraph. “That’s what I want. That’s just what I want for my dining pleasure. Wheel it over.”

“What?”

“The Kansas City streetcar. And don’t tell me you’re all out. I can see it from here. Boys,” he would say, “I’m very hungry.”

And would study the menu like a map, asking, genuinely unsure, “Should we stay here? Look, look what’s upstairs. It shows you. We could eat in the jailhouse, we could eat in the courtroom or the barber shop. We could eat in the haberdashery or the penny arcade. We could eat in the orchard. We could eat, we could eat in the library or the parlor or the governor’s mansion or on the porch or gazebo and wet our whistles in the Brass Bed Cocktail Lounge.”

“Benny’s a little loaded.”

“Benny’s whistle is lubricated.”

“Come on, Benny, calm down, son. Let’s just stay right here in Grandma’s Garden.”

“Macintyre,” he would say, “you silly bastard. Grandma’s Garden. You hear that, Lloyd? You hear that, Frommer? Grandma’s Garden. The stupid son of a bitch calls it Grandma’s Garden.”

“Hey, come on, now,” Macintyre would say, “watch your language. I know you’ve got a few drinks under your belt, but there’s a lady present. Now, come on, Ben, just try to behave yourself.”

“Watch my language? Watch my language? I am watching my language. Take a look at your own, you fuckhead. You wanted to eat in Kenny’s Newsroom, you wanted to go to Harlow. What were some of those other places? Lloyd? Frommer? Wait, wait, don’t tell me: Yeah. The Snooty Fox. He wanted to eat in a railroad car, he was willing to try a warehouse . Jesus!”

“The Warehouse is supposed to have the best K.C. strip steaks in K.C.”

“Yeah,” he would say, “and you know why? ’Cause they’re so aged, you asshole.”

“I told you before. I warned you.”

“Forget it, P.M., he’s had too much to drink.”

“Sure, Paul, take it easy, he’s three sheets to the wind.”

“Oh, my God, ‘P.M.,’ you lousy afternoon, you dumbass evening, ‘three sheets to the wind.’ “ He would be laughing. There would be tears in his eyes. “And, yeah, wait, wait, somebody said something about The Monastery. And which one of you fatheads wanted to try Ebenezer’s? Which one Yesterday’s Girl? You want yesterday, you schmucky hickshit? Yesterday? They’ll give you — they’ll give you…Listen, you really want picturesque? Let’s get out of here. I know this charming Holiday Inn.” And would stand up, shouting, his voice carrying through the entire restaurant: “Who here remembers Thursday? Huh? Anybody recall Saturday? How about it? Thursday? Friday? Saturday? Those were the days, those were the good gold goddamn candyass days. Huh? Huh? ”

And would be pulled down, Frommer and Lloyd peacekeepers still, but pulling him by his bad arm, holding on to his paresthetic right hand, Lloyd’s metal graduation ring against Flesh’s skin like an electric prod, the hands restraining him — how could they feel what he felt? — as alien nervewise and texturewise as moonrock.

“Oh,” would scream, “Aiee,” would call, “ God! ” would cry.)

He presents his confirmation at the desk, registers, asks if his room is near where the other Radio Shack franchise people will be.

He strolls through the exhibits in the Century Ballroom.

“Hey,” says Ned Tubman from Erlanger, Kentucky. “How you doin’?”

“Fine.”

“I seen your name tag. Bowling Green, hey?”

“Right.”

“Western Kentucky State University?”

“Yes.”

“What’s shakin’?”

“Oh, you know.”

“Foxy. Close to the chest. Well, I’ll tell you. — When’d you say you opened up?”

“About three years ago.”

“Three years. Well. How long Fort Worth sit on your application?”

“I don’t know, I don’t remember.”

“What was it? You slip ’em somethin’?”

“Who?”

“You know — Fort Worth.”

“I bought it outright.”

“Oh. Outright. Say listen, I didn’t mean — But if you bought it out right — Me, I had my application in fourteen months. By the time they okay’d me, Lexington was gone, Richmond was took, Berea, Bowling Green—” He pointed to Flesh’s badge. “Every last college town in the state. They come up with Fulton.”