Stanley Elkin - The Franchiser

“Who, me? No no, not even a keen observer most of the time. It’s only the juices of remission give me my power today. But that’s not in it. I want to make you an offer, I want to give you a job.”

“God’s nostrils, what would I do for references?”

“Did I ask for references? Did I say anything about references? What do you think, life is a term paper? I want you , not your references. I’m opening this Travel Inn in a bit, and I could use a good reliable man to run it. I’ll pay you fifteen thousand a year and you can take your meals in the restaurant and have a double that opens out onto the swimming pool.”

But in the end it was the convict who wanted Flesh’s references, the convict who was frightened off by Flesh’s own blank-check talk. By that and some quality he must have detected in him that was out of whack with his own notion of what was fitting. He made a speech, still uninflated and controlled. “Reality wants us,” the convict said. “What you offer me is very kind, what with your suspicions of me and all, and as to those I’ll say you aye or nay, neither one, for what I did if I did something and who I am if I am someone is none of your business. God’s gym shoes, sir, it isn’t that sort of world that you should get carried away, and even this, what’s happening right now, I mean me riding in this grand automobile, why that, too, is a sin against reality. I asked for the ride and you give it, gave it — I’m correcting myself because I know better and bad grammar is another sin against reality — and so that part’s my fault and I’ll have to watch myself and make my amends some way or other, but the point is that we come into this world and sooner or later an obligation is created and we have to be real. Real with each other and real with ourselves.”

“I’m real,” Flesh said.

“Maybe, maybe not. That’s not my business or for me to say. From what I understand, you got this sickness and now it’s given you some kind of breathing spell. — Well, sickness is real enough in its way, I guess, but it isn’t as real as health, and if I was you and I got the breathing spell you got—”

“You’ve your own breathing spell, Mister Convict.”

“—the breathing spell you’ve got, I wouldn’t go around crowing about how wonderful it all is.”

“No?”

“No, sir. I’d find my reality.”

“Who are you to talk, with your vintage luggage and your twenty-year-old suit?”

“That suitcase is what a suitcase is supposed to look like, and the suit is what men of my time wore. I’m not talking about clothes anyway. Why you traveling highways? Where you off to? Where you been? You got a wife? You got a son or sweet daughter at the University of Michigan?”

“Is that reality?”

“God’s glands, it is. You know what I’m hoping?” Flesh didn’t answer. “You know what I’m hoping? I’m hoping you got sample cases in the trunk of your car, yes, and casters on their bottoms to grease your gravity and road maps and Triptiks in the glove compartment and receipts from the oil companies because once you thought you might want to check your mileage, how much oil you burn. I hope you know to fire a sheet of newspaper and hold it up to warm the chimney so the fire draws. That your dampers are open in their season to be open and closed in their season to be closed.”

“I have plenty of road maps.”

“That you live in the middle of the middle class the bull’s-eye life. And that restaurants are for special occasions, birthdays, anniversaries, and once or twice a year just for the hell of it because you’re feeling good, because your ship came in or your uncle from California. I hope you have an insurance broker named Harry who sends you to a doctor who jiggles the results, systolic and diastolic, a dozen points up or down like a difficult window, and that your stocks aggravate you, that hindsight or foresight could have made you a rich man.”

“I am a rich man.”

“It ain’t the same. I wish you honorable lusts and one or two close calls with one of your wife’s bridge pals or a buyer, perhaps, when you’re both a little tight. And guilt like a whopping down payment you can’t manage so you draw back at the last minute and jerk off on the toilet seat that night like everybody else. I wish you the hypochondriacal concerns. May you find a lump you can’t figure at three o’clock in the morning and may a cough make you suspicious. Examine your stools like a stamp collector for two weeks running and give to a charity when it all blows over. Take an interest in the Super Bowl. Think about lamps, a davenport, finishing the basement, and settle for reupholstering what you’ve already got.”

“Reupholstering.”

“But spring for new carpeting every ten years. Talk arithmetic to yourself when you do your bills. Go on a diet and stick to it. Jog for a while and give it up. Cut down on smoking, really cut down. And may you have a nightmare you don’t understand or a dream that makes you cry and hear two jokes that crack you up but aren’t so funny when you tell them.”

“It sounds very exciting.”

“God’s rec room, who said anything about exciting? Exciting you already got. I’m talking about real, I’m talking about normal and the law of averages.”

“The law of averages,” Flesh said.

“All right, the Ten Commandments then. You can let me off up ahead.” They were still about seventy miles from Oklahoma City.

“There’s nothing up ahead.”

“That’s all right. That’s where I’m going. Thanks for the ride. Anywhere’s fine.”

Was he going to try something?

“God’s germs, man, stop the car, will you?”

Flesh took his foot off the accelerator to slow the car while he thought.

“God’s buttons, get a reality. I’m not going to hit you over the head.” He showed his hands. “Empty, see? You ain’t going to be cut. Just let me out, all right?”

Ben pulled over to the side and waited nervously while the fellow removed his suitcase from the back. He closed Ben’s doors and Flesh watched him carefully, expecting, once he realized he was safe, the man to cross to the other side of the highway. Instead, the convict simply moved a few feet down the road and put his thumb up. Flesh, annoyed, shifted to neutral and nudged the car in his direction, alternately depressing the power brake and releasing it, so that Ben, inside the big automobile, had the impression the Cadillac was actually limping up to the man.

“Hey,” Ben said, pressing open the electric window next to which his rider had been sitting. “You’re ruining my remission, do you know that?”

Their conversation was conducted with the fellow’s thumb still raised. It was, Ben Flesh suddenly realized — who had seen tens of thousands of hitchhikers in his day, his Flying Dutchman life bringing him up to, abreast, and beyond them (when, as most times, he chose not to stop) — the oddest gesture of petition there could be — a rakish prayer, more shrug than request, indifference in it, democracy. “Three years of suffering and you’re ruining my remission.”

“Get a reality,” the man said, only the corner of his mouth on Ben, his eyes on the road for cars. Ben watched him.

“Another shot in the dark — no offense — you’ll never get a ride with my car sitting here. You spoke of references. Surely to anybody passing by it must look as if I’ve just dumped you, given you bad references hitchhikerwise.”

“God’s rash, fellow, give over. Leave me be. All right, I made a mistake going with you. Well, I’ve served my time. Spring me, we’re square.”

“Let me just steal — no offense — a minute of your time — no offense.”

“Well then?”