Stanley Elkin - The Franchiser

But just that I never dreamed of being wealthy, never expected it, never did what would have to be done to be it. And I’m not poor-mouthing the big dough, money so important it ceases to be money, becomes — what? — capital, some avatar of asset and credit and reserve and parity, all the complicated solvency of diversification and portfolio. Let them fiddle the tariffs at their pleasure, for the fiduciary is only another foreign language to me, and I leave to others the ins and outs of tare and cess and octroi. All that I ever wanted was enough cash. Death duties never bothered me, only death. (And even at that, even with all my opportunities, all my missed chances, still I have had to do with the stuff. More than most. A guy with his money “tied up.” Think, think: a fellow with tied-up money. Knotted dough, bread braided as challah . Ben Flesh like those strapped Croesi. Well, not in their league, of course, not even in the towns which hold their ball parks, but nevertheless, except for living expenses — high on the highway — with the rest of that fraternity, what I have all in the frozen assets of the frozen custard: the rent and payrolls and equipment and insurance, the petty cash, all the incidentals.)

But because in the last leg of my journey, on notice as I was, warned as I was, politely ultimatum’d, cautioned by the boys and only tenuously laissez-faire’d by the girls, who did not have the votes now anyway, Lotte’s suicide having shifted the balance of power and adulterated their fabulous consanguinity in some, to me, fathomless way — and how struck, hurt I had been to see them differentiated at last, to see their diversification, the awful introduction of nuance into their Finsberg portfolio — I knew that for the first time since the war, when I had put in those long-distance calls to my dead, killed parents — who died, as I lived, on the highway — that I was alone. That something had been withdrawn in Riverdale, taken from me, the godcousinship which had been my ace-in-the-hole, my letter of credit to the world, the carte blanche smeared, shmutzed , and that I had only one peeled wire of connection left, Patty’s IOU. That I could lie beside her in death like a puppy at the foot of a kid’s bed.

So what else was there to do? What choices did I have? Why, only to put on my decorous act of business-is-business propriety. To try to live as they had tried to teach me to live at Wharton. To try, as if I were cramming for an exam, to recall those principles of business administration, finance, and double-entry sobriety which are only finally solid solvency’s serious style.

For the fact is that in all those years he had merely gotten what he wanted — enough cash. That he had spread himself too thin, that there had been too many split ends. Mister Softee in the frozen north, a Robo-Wash in a neighborhood where half the cars were destined to be repossessed, a Radio Shack in a Kentucky town where reception was lousy and there was only one FM multiplex station, a Baskin-Robbins in a section of Kansas City too far from any neighborhood for there to be kids, a dance studio in a part of town where people wouldn’t even walk at night, a dry cleaner in a wash-and-wear world. As if he could live forever, outlast the phases, eras, and epochs of faddish geography and sociology. Like a player of Monopoly who built his hotels on Baltic and Mediterranean and Ventnor Avenues, say, all those low-rent districts of the spirit, whose strategy it was to go to jail as often as he could, to stay there as long as he could, and to win by attrition. Some strategy. Who did not turn out to have the body for strategies of attrition, for whom attrition was a reflexive disease. Who, going such distances, could not go the distance. Some strategy. And all it ever got him was all he ever wanted: enough cash, lolly, dough, brass, spondulicks — the ready. And if he bought and sold so much, if he was so active, perhaps, too, there was something else he wanted, something nobler and more spiritual even than enough cash: something no less than empire itself — to be the man who made America look like America, who made America famous. What had he called it for the murderously divided twins and triplets? Oh yes. The “Esperanto of simple need.” Convenience necessity and the universalized appetite. And if the outskirts of Chicago resembled Connecticut or Tulsa Cleveland and Cleveland Omaha and the north the west and the west the south and east, why he’d had a finger in it, more than a finger — some finger! — a hand. Some hand. There wasn’t a television in all the thousands of motel rooms in which he’d slept which wouldn’t show him in the course of a single evening at least two sponsored minutes of the homogenized, coast-to-coast America he’d helped design, costuming the states, getting Kansas up like Pennsylvania, Georgia like New York. Why he was a Finsberg! A Julius and his own father Flesh, too, loose and at large in his beautiful musical comedy democracy!

Yes. Loose. At large! Those were the operative words now. So what else was there to do? What choices did I have? None but to dredge up Wharton, recalling the patter like a foreign language.

“Yes, sir?”

“I’d like a word with Friendly Bob Adams, please, Miss. My name is Ben Flesh.”

“Ben,” friendly Bob, spotting him, said, “I expected you last week. When you didn’t come I tried to—”

“I’m sorry. I should have gotten you on the blower. I had to fly back to New York on some rather urgent business. I hope this isn’t an inconvenient—”

“No, no, of course not,” Adams said, smiling and taking his hand warmly. “Harriet, this is Mr. Flesh. Harriet’s our new receptionist, Ben.”

“How do you do, Harriet?” Harriet smiled. “She looks a crackerjack girl, Friendly. What happened to — it was Jean, wasn’t it?”

“She turned sourpuss, Ben. She wouldn’t let a smile be her umbrella. I had to get rid of her.”

“Of course. Nice to see you, Harriet. Miss—”

“Lapaloosa.”

“Look at the teeth on her, Ben. When she grins.”

“Very good to have you with us, Miss Lapaloosa. Oh, say, Adams, since I am running late, it might be a good idea if we skipped lunch this time. I’d like to take some things up with you.”

“Of course, Ben. Why don’t we go back to my office?”

“Splendid,” Ben said. Then, in his manager’s office, he let him have it.

“Cash flow,” he said, “hard times.”

“Demand has never been—”

“Hard times. Hard . The price of money to us. Ten cents on the dollar. The truth-in-lending laws. Price tags on our dollars like notarized statements from the appraiser.”

“But demand, Ben, the phone never stops ringing. They don’t care, Ben, they don’t . You think someone down on his luck comparison shops? We do the arithmetic for them, we show them the vigorish like a cop reading them their civil rights, and they still don’t care. ‘Where do I sign?’ they want to know. ‘How soon do I get the money?’ ”

“And this doesn’t make you suspicious? Wipe that smile off your face, Friendly. This doesn’t make you suspicious? You’ve got a good heart, you weren’t cut out to be a shylock. Schmuck, of course they don’t care. They know about bankruptcy. Sylvia Porter tells them in the papers.”

“But the credit checks, Ben, we run credit checks, we know exactly—”

“Yesterday’s newspapers, kid, history. Yesterday’s news, last year’s prospecti. The times have changed on them, their mood has, their disposition. A depression comes, the first thing that goes, after the meat on the table, after the fruit in the bowl, the first thing that goes is optimism, the belief they can pay back what they owe.”