Stanley Elkin - The Franchiser

Gus-Ira called.

“Ben,” he said gloomily, “oh, Ben.”

“It’s all right,” Ben said, “don’t feel bad. Kitty’s a bed wetter. I consider the source. Don’t fret, Gus,” he said. “Only tell me, level, do you feel that way? Kitty’s—”

“Kitty’s dead, Ben,” Gus-Ira said.

“What?”

“She died. She’s dead.”

“When? How? What are you…”

“She bought it, Ben. She chafed to death.”

“She…?”

“All those years of wetting herself. C 5H 4N 4O 3.”

“Is this a code? Gus-Ira? Is this a freak connection?”

“C 5H 4N 4O 3. It’s uric acid. The basic component of gout, of kidney stones. The salts of piss, Ben. She’d been thrashing them into her thighs for a lifetime. In effect, she’d driven kidney stones into her capillaries and flesh. They blocked the blood. Uremia, too. Uremic poisoning. Her body choked on her pee. She chafed to death.”

“She died of pee-pee?”

“That’s about it, Ben.”

“Of sissy? Of number one?”

“Yes,” Gus-Ira said, “tragic.”

“Death by tinkle? ”

“We were shocked.”

“I don’t know what to…”

“We never thought. We were shocked.”

“Gus-Ira, I’m so sorry. If there’s anything….”

“We knew it would happen, we just never thought — it just never occurred to us that — She used to read in bed. We’d tell her, we’d plead with her, ‘Kitty darling, get yourself grounded. Suppose you dozed off, suppose you’re lashing about and your bedlamp falls over. If the wire is worn, if there’s a hairline crack in the insulation’ ”

“In the insulation?”

“She could have been electrocuted in her urine, Ben.”

“Jesus.”

“So we always anticipated, we just never thought she’d chafe herself to death. You never know.”

“I don’t,” Ben Flesh said, “I can’t — Listen, is Kitty in Riverdale?”

“They’re shipping her body to LaGuardia. I’m flying in today. I’ve been out of town. I’m out of town now. They had to call me in Cleveland. When I heard, I asked if anyone had gotten in touch with you. Helen didn’t know. There’s a lot of confusion. When something like this happens…I figured I’d take a chance. I hate having to break news like this, but you had to know.”

“Yes,” Ben said, “thanks, thank you for calling. I’ll, I’ll get up to Riverdale. I’ll see you this evening.”

They said goodbye.

So he hadn’t heard. He’d been out of town and hadn’t heard Kitty’s bitter message about him on the Phone-Mate. He felt Gus-Ira was an ally and was immediately ashamed that he could feel such cheap relief when poor Kitty lay dead. Poor Kitty. What he’d said was now true and he did consider the source. She had been chafed; even as she’d complained of Ben to Gus-Ira, she had spoken out of her chafed, worn, cricket irritability, a woman rubbed a lifetime the wrong way. Poor Kitty. And then he thought of something else she’d said on Gus-Ira’s device. “Poor Jerome,” she’d said. He’d forgotten about the tests. He called Jerome and got Wilma, his godcousin’s wife, a girl he’d met only once. The woman was crying. He felt bad that he had not been closer to his godcousins’ families. “I’m sorry,” Ben said when he had explained who he was, “I just heard about it. I appreciate how torn up you must be. How’s Jerome taking it, Wilma?”

“Who is this?” she shrieked. “Who is this son of a bitch?”

“It’s Ben,” he said. “I told you. We met once when I was coming through Fort Worth. I took you and Jerome to dinner.”

“Who the hell do you think you are?” she demanded fiercely. “The man’s dead and you ask how he’s taking it? What kind of a son of a bitch…?”

“Dead? Who’s dead? Kitty’s dead. Who’s dead?”

“Jerome’s dead. My husband. Oh, God,” she wailed. “Poor Jerome.”

“Jerome? Oh, Wilma,” he said. “Oh, Wilma. I didn’t…I meant about Kitty. Jerome’s dead, too? Jerome? When? What happened? Oh dear. How? What happened?”

He had died that morning. Wilma had been with him. It was the tests. The Fort Worth doctors were not satisfied with the explanation about Jerome’s lifelong chronic constipation. They suspected cancer of the bowel, the colon. They didn’t buy the theory that his body simply didn’t produce enough fecal matter. They thought a virus or some kind of tapeworm must be attacking, devouring his godcousin’s shit. The tests were enemas which produced nothing but the soapy water they had just shot up his behind. High colonics. Oil enemas. They fed him roughage and gave him massive doses of the most powerful laxatives. They put him on a sort of potty and made him stay there until he went. It was like being toilet-trained, Wilma said. His legs went to sleep, his arms and hands. He begged to be put back to bed, but they insisted they had to find out what was causing his constipation. They named a dozen diseases that could kill him if they weren’t able to analyze, not the normal, beautiful stools he faithfully produced every two weeks, but the incipient shards they were now convinced were incubating morbidity in his gut. They had to find out what was destroying these. They could not reach it, take samples, with even the longest of their instruments. Cutting into the intestine was too dangerous. The roughage, the potent laxatives were the only way, the last resort. He had to stay on his giant potty until he did his duty. Wilma was with him. He squeezed and squeezed. Poor Jerome. He tried to cooperate. He forced himself, he labored. (It was like labor, like giving birth.) The tests killed him. The laxatives were too potent. He shat out his empty intestines, his long red bowel of blood. Death by caca. Death by crap.

And so one was dead of bed wetting. And one of constipation. Number one, Ben thought. Number two.

He wanted Jerome’s body sent to New York. Wilma couldn’t think. He made the arrangements with Fort Worth himself. He would handle everything — death’s take-charge guy.

He gave funerals away as others might bring a coffee cake to the mourners, or a Jell-O mold. “It’s the least I can do,” he said and gave away funerals as perhaps his godfather Julius might once have papered the house for an ailing show. Left and right he gave them away. So many were dying.

Moss rented a car at the airport to drive up to Riverdale. He and it were totaled when he smashed broadside at forty-five miles an hour into the side of an oil truck made out of a particular metal alloy his perfect, beautiful eyes could not see.

Helen, in her grief, drank heavily. The Finsbergs hid all the liquor and she left the house in a black mood looking for a tavern. She hailed a taxi. They tried to follow, but lost her in traffic. The police called from the morgue. She had found a place on Eighth Avenue, a hangout for whores, pimps, and degenerates. She drank more heavily than ever — a hell of a binge — and in her foul mood picked a fight with a very butch bull dyke. The dyke tried to defend herself as best she could, but Helen, made vicious by drink, was hitting her with everything she had. The poor bull dyke was terrified and broke a beer stein on the bar and cut Helen’s throat with it before Helen could choke the life out of her.

“It was self-defense,” the police said. “Everybody in the bar will swear to that. We don’t think you have a case.”

“We know,” Noël said, sobbing heavily. “Sometimes she got like that. She was a mean drunk.”

“Couldn’t handle the stuff, eh?” the cop said sympathetically. “ That’s too bad.”

“Oh oh,” Noël said and, in his grief, plunged his long nails into his hair, scratching fiercely at his cradle cap.