Stanley Elkin - The Franchiser

“Oh, listen to him. Everybody gets some thing wholesale. Every body.”

The nurse came and gave his godfather some pills.

“I have the G.I. Bill,” Ben said thoughtfully. “They pay my tuition at Wharton.”

“There you go,” his godfather said, smiling, swallowing.

Ben nodded.

He was, of course, a little disappointed. Had it been his godfather’s intention to bring him from Philadelphia just to demonstrate how fortunate he was to be alive? The telegram had spoken of amends, reparations. Having seen the hospital apartment in which the man was to die, he had begun to grasp how much money his godfather had. The taxi had brought him up Broadway. He passed the enormous hoardings, wide as storefronts, read the huge advertisements for plays, musicals, the logos for each familiar, though he rarely went to the theater. (He had seen, he supposed, the emblems and clever trademarks, individual as flags, in magazine ads or above the passengers’ heads on buses in Philadelphia.) But seeing the bright spectacular posters for the plays like a special issue of stamps stuck across Broadway’s complicated packages as he viewed them from his deep, wide seat in the back of the cab, had been very exciting. Why, the musicals alone, he thought now, and tried to recall as many as he could. Arms and the Girl, The Consul, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Great to Be Alive , and Lost in the Stars. Miss Liberty, Kiss Me, Kate, South Pacific, Texas, Li’l Darlin’, Where’s Charley? They played songs from all these on the radio; he’d whistled them. Nanette Fabray was in one of the shows. Pearl Bailey was. Bambi Lynn, Vivienne Segal. Pinza and Mary Martin. Ray Bolger and Byron Palmer and Doretta Morrow. Kenny Delmar. And how many of these stars wore costumes his godfather had supplied? And that was just the musicals. The circus was in town. Could the man have dressed circus performers? Why not? And the Ice Show— Howdy, Mr. Ice of 1950 . And there was a Gilbert and Sullivan festival on and the ballet. Even if he supplied just a tenth of the costumes…God, he thought, if you added them all up and threw in the dramas and all that was going on in Greenwich Village, there were enough people in Manhattan alone wearing costumes — and think of the costume changes! — to dress a small city. That was the kind of action his godfather had. Gee!

“Uugh, agh! Uuch. Awgrh.”

“The tent, Godfather?”

“The bedpan! Get help. Hurry, boy. Where are you going? That’s the guest bedroom. No, that’s the linen closet. Not in there, for God’s sake, that’s the bar! There, that’s right.”

He grabbed a resident — the man wore a stethoscope over his turtleneck — and rushed with him and a nurse back to his godfather’s suite. He remained outside.

The nurse and resident came out in a few minutes. Ben looked at them.

“You didn’t tell me you were Ben,” the resident said.

“How’s the weather in Philly?” the nurse asked.

He could hear his godfather calling his name. “I’d better go in,” Ben said.

The man was sitting, his pillows fluffed up behind him.

“You seem more comfortable,” Ben said.

“Never mind about that,” he said irritably. “I’m a goner. There’s something we have to straighten out.”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“Here’s the long and short of it,” my godfather said. “I palmed a deuce.”

“Sir?”

“I palmed a deuce. You don’t spend the whole of your working life in the theatrical costume business without picking some thing up. You know how many magicians’ costumes I’ve turned out over the years? Let me count the ways. Sure, and the magician needing his costume immediately, five minutes after the phone call from his agent. Having to be in Chicago, the Catskills, Pittsburgh, St. Louis. It was always rush rush rush with magicians, and they hang over your shoulder while you work. Magicians! Well, it has to be that way, I suppose. Magicians have special requirements. They have to be there to tell the tailor everything. Well, wouldn’t they?”

“I guess so. I never thought about it.”

“Wake up , for God’s sake!”

“Yes, sir.”

“So, well, anyway, there was this magician and one time I, you know, he was hanging around waiting for his costume to be ready and I, I asked him to teach me to palm a deuce.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“Do I have to draw a picture for you? When we cut, your father and I, to see who’d buy out who and low man had to pay the other guy the three thousand bucks — You see, I wanted the business. If your old man had cut a queen or a jack or even a ten I wouldn’t feel so bad, because probably I could have beat him without the palm. But he cut a four. A fair four . I had to cheat. Son of a bitch. It’s been on my conscience for years. Then, your father, he had to go and make me your godfather because he felt he’d stuck me with the business. What a sap. Well, who was the sap? Because I didn’t have any kids of my own then, see? I wasn’t even married. So it meant a lot to me, being your godfather. But I couldn’t face you. What I’d done to you, you know? It was as if I’d taken the bread out of your mouth, my own godson and I’d taken the bread out of his mouth. You’ve got a sister. You don’t see her here, do you?”

“No, sir.”

“Because she was never my goddaughter and I don’t give a shit what happens to her. You follow?”

“I think.”

“Because I was a sport in those days. What the hell, I wasn’t married, I had no responsibilities.” He lowered his voice. “I used to go backstage with some of our customers. You follow?”

“I think—”

“So naturally I fell in with this show-biz crowd. Hoofers, singers. And spent less and less time in the shop. I’d tell your dad I was making contacts for us, for our business, and in a way I was. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”

“Well, I—”

“That’s when they took me to Tin Pan Alley.”

“Tin Pan Alley?”

“And there was this kid in Tin Pan Alley. He was always hanging around.”

“I see.”

“And whistling. You follow?”

“I don’t—”

“And everywhere I’d go in Tin Pan Alley there’d be this whistling kid, whistling tunes, Ben, the most beautiful tunes you ever heard. My God , what a whistler he was!”

“I follow.”

“What?”

“I see.”

“That whistler’s name was Jerome Kern!”

“My God!”

“He had a friend. A hummer. And, Ben, if it was possible, the hummer hummed even more beautiful than the whistler whistled.”

“He was—?”

“Richard Rodgers.”

“Wow!”

“And through Kern and Rodgers I got to know another character in Tin Pan Alley. A piano player. I’d listen to him play these incredible songs on his piano and I swear to you I had to catch my breath. It was like I was a sailor boy listening to the sirens.”

“Cole Porter,” Ben said.

“You better believe it.”

“Jesus.”

“So you see? I knew. I had my ear to the ground of Tin Pan Alley and I knew there was going to be a — what do you call it? — a renaissance in the American musical theater. And I saw new beautiful costumes in my sleep and I knew that the theatrical costume business was going to be the talk of the town. That’s when I asked the magician to teach me to palm the deuce. That’s it, that’s the story.”

“Gee.”

“Your father never knew.”

“I’m glad. He would have eaten his heart out.”

“He would have eaten his heart out.”

Ben nodded.

“So,” his godfather said after a while, “we’ve got business. I’m dying and I want to put things right.”