Stanley Elkin - The Franchiser

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Ben Flesh is one of the men "who made America look like America, who made America famous." He collects franchises, traveling from state to state, acquiring the brand-name establishments that shape the American landscape. But both the nation and Ben are running out of energy. As blackouts roll through the West, Ben struggles with the onset of multiple sclerosis, and the growing realization that his lifetime quest to buy a name for himself has ultimately failed.

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“But…”

“I’m way ahead of you. You’re thinking about the movies, what happens if we try to turn the place into an art house. We don’t. We run the same stuff. Blockbusters. Every movie a picture. You even hear Al Pacino, Hoffman, Gene Hackman, Paul Newman, Redford, you grab. They make a James Bond sequel you raise your finger, jerk your earlobe. And after the Academy Awards don’t fart around with reruns, ads in the paper ‘Nominated for Seven Academy Awards.’ Forget that crowd. Go on to the next blockbuster. Roll it! You got TV?”

“TV?”

“TV. Television. You got TV?”

“Well, certainly. Of course. Who doesn’t have T—”

“In your office?”

“In my office? No. Not in my office.”

“Get a little Sony. Watch Merv. Watch Johnny. Watch Mike. Get up early in the morning. Watch Barbara, watch Gene. They told us about The Exorcist . They told us about Last Tango . They told us about Harry and Tonto . What, you think it’s only the energy czars go on those programs? Stop, look, and listen, Lockwire. If you hear about it twice, it’s a blockbuster. Three times and it’s S.R.O. They have a lot to tell us.”

“To tell us.”

“To tell them . Us. Them. They have the franchise on the public taste. I don’t know how they do it. Magicians. But they know . They know and know. An exhibitor can learn more from those five guys than from forty junkets to the screening rooms of Los Angeles and New York. I’ll give you a tip. Don’t ever for one minute trust your own taste. Don’t trust mine. Where do you think I’d be today if I trusted my taste? Trust theirs — Barb’s and Johnny’s, Gene’s and Mike’s. Trust Merv’s. Those fellows are geniuses!”

“We’ve been doing pretty well. I’ll show you the figures.”

“You don’t have to. The figures are beautiful. I could qvell from the figures. You’d show me figures I’d go ‘hubba hubba,’ I’d follow them blocks and buy them a beer. We’re talking business — turnover, overhead, buy cheap, sell high.

“I want free passes in every thousandth popcorn box. If they say the secret word at the box office, give them double their money back. Invent, inaugurate, introduce, make up. Let there be ‘Special Daylight Savings Time Matinee’; package deals — they pay two-fifty for the show at Cinema I, you take off seventy-five cents for a ticket to Cinema II. Cards . Print up reaction cards. They fill in the blanks, you give them a fifty-cent rebate. Four stars, three, two, one, a half. Let them feel like critics. You do different categories: lighting, best performance by an animal, an Indian, a bad guy, an orphan over nine. Stuff about costumes, crap about sex.

“Look, Lockwire, hound them, please. Stick a line in our advertising that we run only those films that have no radiation hazards.”

“But no films—”

“Then where’s the lie? What’s the harm? Break their bad TV habits. Hound them, please. Did you know that more people collapse while jogging than while watching a flick, that there are fewer deaths per hundred thousand in motion-picture houses than in airplanes, football stadia, bathtubs, beds, restaurants, or living rooms?”

“Are there?”

“Who knows, but that’s where to hit them, in their life span. That’s where they live. Where we all live. If you would know me, learn my blood pressure, count my cholesterol, and taste my lipids. If you would look into my heart, read my cardiogram. Check my protein level every five thousand miles. A man’s character is his health, Lockwire, and I feel crummy, Egypt, crummy.”

He had been pacing up and down in Lockwire’s small office, excited, thinking to slow the force of his new symptoms by ignoring them, by concentrating on business, making the staggered kidney-shaped journey about Lockwire’s desk, passing by the small, discreet safe, by the telephone-answering device that gave out recorded information about what films were currently being shown, their stars and ratings and show times. He looked at the telephone, glanced at Lockwire.

“Put it on.”

“Pardon?”

“Put it on. Let me hear.”

“It’s just a recorded announcement. It saves time, the girls don’t have time to—”

“Put it on.”

Lockwire fiddled with some buttons, played the tape. His voice said, “Thank you for calling Cinema I, Cinema II. Our feature presentation this week at Cinema I is The Longest Yard starring Burt Reynolds and Eddie Albert. The Longest Yard is rated R. No one under seventeen will be admitted unless accompanied by an adult. Performances of The Longest Yard will be at 1:00, 3:00, 5:10, 7:30, and 9:45. The feature at Cinema II is The Gambler , starring James Caan. Rated R, no one under seventeen may be admitted to The Gambler unless accompanied by an adult. Times are 1:15, 3:30, 5:50, 8:00, and 10:00. Cinema I, Cinema II is located in the Draper Lake Shopping Mall. Take Exit 11 off Interstate 35 or Exit 22 if you’re coming from U.S. 40. For additional information, please phone 736-2350. Thank you.”

“Again,” Ben said. “Again, please.” He listened to Lockwire’s recording a second time. “That’s what I mean,” he said. “Lacks zip. Where’s the pep?”

“Zip? Pep? It’s an information service, it’s supposed to be clear. People want to know what’s playing, when it goes on. They have to know if they can bring their kids.”

Flesh nodded. “You think if we sent him a cassette we could get Burt Reynolds to read the copy? ‘Hi, this is Dinah’s great good friend, Burt Reynolds. Thanks for calling Cinema I, Cinema II. The feature this week, etc., etc.’ Then he finishes with ‘Ladies and gentlemen — James Caan! ’ ‘Thanks, Burt. Burt Reynolds, ladies and gentlemen, a terrific guy and a dynamite H-bomb flick. At Cinema II today, I’m doing The Gambler , which I really think you’d enjoy. I read seventy-eight scripts, some of which I thought might actually work for me, but when they showed me The Gambler I knew this was it. I mean like, wow, this is the sort of part an actor could wait ten years to do. And while I guess I shouldn’t be blowing my own horn, I think I’m as proud of myself and my coworkers as it’s possible to be. You can catch The Gambler at 1:15, 3:30, 5:50, 8:00, and 10:00. Take Exit 11 off good old Interstate 35 or Exit 22 if you’re coming from good old U.S. 40. Fight cancer with a checkup and a check.’ ”

Lockwire stared at him.

“Yeah,” Ben said, “what do you bet they’ll do it? You know how to reach these people. Find out and get back to me. It wouldn’t hurt to throw in a couple of Rona Barrett items either. Get back to me. I want to see lines. I want to see Oklahoma City policemen doing traffic control like it was the High Holidays and people are coming out of shul .”

Lockwire shook his head in wonder.

“Yeah,” Ben Flesh said, “that’s right. Get back to me.” And still the Jacuzzi Whirlpool was in the franchiser’s skin, Magic Fingers in his businessman’s tissue, all his body pinned and needled. Oh oh oh, his milled being, all his flesh grooved as the stem that winds your watch.

Back at the motel there was a message for him. He called the desk.

“Yes, Mr. Flesh, just a minute, please. I took it down myself. I put it — yes, here it is. ‘Please tell Mr. Ben Flesh that if it’s at all possible he should catch a flight out of Oklahoma City and come to New York. He is needed in Riverdale.’ ”

IV

1

It would have been wrong to call. The message was clear enough. He was needed in Riverdale, they said. To call, even to ask what was wrong, could be read as extenuation, a sort of plea bargaining. It had been their arrangement — his, the twins’ and triplets’—to serve, forever to come through, simply to be there when the chips were down, the mutual designated hitters of each other’s lives, the gut priorities of love. Yet did he love them? Had they loved him? How well? Was it not rather into a life-long category of mascot that they had enlisted him? (This thought out while still on the flight to LaGuardia, so, as far as he could determine, no damage done, those instincts still alive in him, for all the haywiring of his nerves, to set aside the at hand, the this, then this, then that sequences of his life, by which he meant, of course, his plans.) Yet emergency had its advantages, too. It took, like so many weeks in the sun, years off. There was, it was impossible to mistake it, a kind of bittersweet glamour in the big-time, big-stuff catastrophes of interruptions and drastically changed plans. He thought of scenes in pubs in certain films of the forties — Finsberg’s years — of men and women in nightclubs, in rich men’s mansions, their lawns and ballrooms done up in prom prospect, their dreamy society dance bands driving out the world, covering it with moony fox-trot and the claims of love. Then someone makes an announcement, the host himself, perhaps, that honest, understanding squire of a man. “It’s war, ladies and gentlemen.” Or glances at a scrap of paper the butler has handed him, nods, thanks his servant, signals his orchestra leader — it is almost prearranged, this transoceanic seriousness that shouts from his eyes like an agreement — and the music stops, though comically the drummer, looking down, still continues to work his traps and top hat and snares and the fiddlers bow their instruments and the saxophones croon till, hearing the silences around them, they look up, surprised as people on whom jokes have been played, and a few last dregs of music, even after they have stopped, clatter like dropped marbles, an orchestra tuning up in reverse, and, in the silence, the man finally speaks, almost apologetically. “The Japanese have bombed Pearl Harbor.” “The barbarians are at the gates.” “The British are coming.” “The Visigoths have entered Marseilles.” And the dancing partners push off from each other as if it were a step in the dance. “I have to get back to my unit. I’m sorry.” And a hundred young officers the same. And inside all this seriousness and farewell, within this altered mood while life zeroes in on the tragic, a joy, too. A joy and pride in deflection, in being deflected. Decamped. Debouched. No time really for the last embrace, kiss, which is, one feels, suffered , the young bloods reduced somehow to nephews again, their girlfriends avatar’d to well-meaning aunts. Yes. Years off. Years. So if he didn’t call, if he went automatically to his Finsberg unit, maybe it was no feather in his cap after all. He was returning to Riverdale a younger man than he had left, and perhaps it was not so much that he loved the Finsbergs as that he hated his life.

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