The Franchiser (24 page)

I came to the Radio Shack bash to buy. Chelton should have come. He knows the stock better, the clientele. I’m his operative really, just following orders.

It’s just that I’ve got to do
some
thing.

We were all in our seats. They dimmed the lights in the Century Ballroom. The great collar of equipment from the display booths that lined three sides of the ballroom glowed like electric Crayolas. It was really rather pretty. The franchisers applauded. Even I started to applaud but it hurt my hand. Then someone yelled, “Bravo, bravo,” and this was taken up and soon everyone was clapping and cheering, giving a standing ovation to a lot of colored dials. It was like applauding dessert, the waiters’ parade of cherries jubilee at a catered dinner, luminous baked Alaska at a golden wedding anniversary. Businessmen are
so
dumb.

Then—I don’t know how they did this, some linked rheostat arrangement or something—they brought down the lights on the equipment until the ballroom was pitch black. A white pin spot flared on some Fort Worth guy on the dais and we sat back down.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “there’s to be a demonstration.”

The pin spot, round as a pancake, large as his face, reduced itself, burned briefly on the tip of his nose, and went out. The Century Ballroom was bereft of light, blackness so final it was void, a vacuum of light. We could have been locked in the subterranean on the backside of moons. I thought of the brownouts I’d fled, but this was darker, melanistic, the doused universe and the pitch of death.

And they applauded
this
, applauded darkness.
So
dumb. And I thought—the Wharton Old Boy—it’s a miracle Dow Jones
has
an average, a miracle that there’s trade at all. The dollar’s a miracle, the dime a wonder, America astonishing, all organization a wondrous serendipity. Higher the handicapped and Excelsior to all. Applauded
darkness!

Self-consciously—oh, the demands of level good will—I thought perhaps I should join them. Even in the darkness—who could have seen me?—I felt this pressure to join in, to add my two-cent increment of invisible loyalty, pressured like men at ball parks to stand with their fellows for the anthem, to move their lips over the words flashed on the scoreboard, and make a noise here and another there when the song descends to their key. But it hurt my hand to applaud and I kept still. And then, the
oddest
thing.

A man called, “Bravo, bravo.” Then the chant was taken up, and through the sound of applause and cheers I could hear chairs scraping all about me as they were pushed back and the Radio Shack people stood. It was ludicrous. Cheer darkness! As well applaud lawns, crabgrass, hurrah the sky and clap for rain. The givens are given. I wouldn’t move. I hadn’t the excuse of my game hand but I wouldn’t move, would not rise with my clamorous colleagues.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the Fort Worth man said, “there’s to be a demonstration.”

The lights came on in the Century Ballroom. The Fort Worth man was not on the dais. No one was standing. The chairs were just where I had remembered their being when we had sat down after applauding the new line of equipment. We looked at each other.

“What happened?” my neighbor asked.

“I don’t know.”

“What was all that clapping? Why did you get up when the lights went out?”

“I didn’t. Why did you?”

“I never moved.”

All around me people were asking the same questions of each other. It seemed that no one had applauded, no one had stood.

“Where’d what’s-his-name, Fort Worth, go?”

“I don’t know.”

“There he is.”

“Where?”

“By that console.
There
. Beside the dais.”

The man from Fort Worth, his arms folded across his chest, stood smiling at us. He moved toward the microphone stand again.

“How did you like the demonstration? We played a little joke on you. We played a little joke on you and you’ve just heard the future.”

“What’s this all about, Sam?” This was called out by a man in my row.

Sam, the Fort Worth guy, nodded and smiled. He shaded his eyes, pretending to look where the question had come from. “We recorded your initial response and played it back for you.”

“Was that some kind of quadraphonics?”

“Quadraphonics? Honey, it was decaphonics. It was quinquagintaphonics. It was centophonics. Myriaphonics. It was the whole-kit-and-caboodlaphonics! The system’s perfected. It’s on line now. Well, there’s nothing to it from an engineering standpoint, or even from a recording standpoint. All they have to do is plant a mike wherever they want. The technology’s been licked since stereo. We could do that all along, make as many tracks as we wanted. It’s just multiplex. It was at the other end, the delivery system, where the trouble came in. Now we’ve got these miniaturized speakers that we can plant anywhere. Well, you just heard.”

“Is it expensive?” I had the impression there were shills in the audience.

“Initially. Initially the customer buys the receiver. That’s that console over there. That one’s professional of course and costs about four grand, but we can give him something almost as good, at least for his home entertainment purposes, starting at about eleven hundred and fifty dollars and going up to about eighteen or nineteen hundred. About the same price as professional-quality stereo equipment.”

“It’s high, Sam. These are kids, newlyweds.”

“They’ll go crazy for it,” Sam said. “You still haven’t caught on, have you? Anybody here with the vision to see what we’ve done?”

“I have.” Ben spoke. He rose and stood beside his chair.

“Pardner?” Sam said.

“I have. The vision.
I
have. It’s the Barbie Doll principle gone sound. It’s Mattel.
Mattelio ad absurdum in spadessum
. We kill them with accessory. They start with three speakers, four, and build toward infinity. Like model railroading—all the crap you could get. The station and stationmaster and a little signalman waving his tiny lantern with the teensy light inside. The gates and the bridges, the tunnels and tracks. The switches and couplers, the toy towns and trees. The Rockies and billboards and whistles that blew. The smoke. The freight cars and passenger. Cabooses. The observation car where the weensy President stood. The refrigerator cars cold to the touch. The flatcars with their lumber and perfume of evergreen. All the specialized carriers for oil, gas (non-flammable, nontoxic), natural resources. I have. I do.”

“Yes,” Sam said, “that’s it. That’s right.”

“I have,” Ben said. “I do.”

“Sign that pardner up,” Sam said, the man from Fort Worth. “Get an order blank back there, someone.”

“Because,” Ben said, “we live in a century of mood and until this afternoon only headphones gave the illusion of ‘separation.’ There is no separation. There are no concert halls in life. Nor do we see in 3-D. The chairs do not stand out. Only in stereopticons are the apples closer than the pears. We will Ptolemaicize men and have them move in their rooms as in a headset. I have. I do.”

“Hey now,” Sam said.

“And pour percussion in the porches of their ears. Their left ear and right. Tumble treble and crack the sax into the helix. A trumpet in every tragus, and violins in the semicircular canals. The flute in the fossa, the bass in the stapes. Quinquagintaphonics in the adolescent’s bedroom, the whore’s house, and doctor’s office. I have. I do. Mattel their minutes, Lionel their lives. Accessory them.”

“Hey,” Sam said, “you doin’ too much.”

“Cole Porter,” Ben said. “Hammerstein.”

“Buddy?” Sam said. “Buddy, you hear me?”

“In both ears.”

“Settle down, friend. We’re talking the new line.”

“That’s what I’m talking,” Ben said. His hand hurt him, his legs.

Everything tingled. Only his ears. I am up to my ears, he thought.

“Come on, now,” Sam said, “give us a break.”

“Put another record on. I’m having a Rodgers and Hart attack. Hah!”

Macintyre and Frommer were beside him. Lloyd has come up. He spies Ned Tubman through his nystagmic eyes. Ned and all whirl like pinwheels.

He put a call through to Riverdale.

“Yes?” It was Cole, the one who suffered from plant diseases.

“Hello, Cole. How are you? It’s Ben.”

(Not “Hi, who’s this?” but “Hello, Cole. How are you?” Even though they’d reached an age—Cole would be almost thirty-seven—when distinctions, were they to appear, would have begun to reveal themselves. But time itself thwarted, something in their Contac, time-released lived lives that stalled the oldest and ever so slightly aged the youngest prematurely, the seven-year point spread of their existence narrowed to an arithmetic mean so that they all seemed to be about thirty-three years old—in their prime his guarantors of the prime rate. But withal, the solidarity broken for him like a code, known like a secret, his best gift—poor Ben, poor sick, sad Ben—his connoisseurship for their voices and faces, his wine buff’s palate for their Finsberg body and Finsberg being. A gift. God-given. Poor Ben. Poor sad, sick Ben. Then why, for God’s sake, did he prefer Lorenz to Irving, Irving to Oscar, Cole to Lorenz? Did he see nuances in twin and triplet character as well?
Character?
He? Him? Poor Ben? Poor Ben.)

“Ben. How are
you?
Gee, we’ve been trying to get in touch with you for about two weeks. We called Phoenix Ford, we tried your H. Salt Fish, your Arthur Treacher in Stockton, the Jacuzzi Whirlpool in Columbus. Everywhere. We thought you might be at the Mister Softee in Rapid City, but the lines are down and we couldn’t get through.”

“I’m in Colorado Springs.”

“Colorado Springs? Are you looking over a new franchise, Ben?”

“Why were you trying to reach me?”

“It’s Mom, Ben.”

“What happened? Cole, is something wrong with Estelle?”

“She’s dead, Ben. She died ten days ago.”

“Estelle?”

“I guess that makes you head of the family.”

“What are you talking about? What do you mean ‘head of the family’?”

“Well, you’re the oldest, Ben. We figure that makes you our godfather.”

“I’m your godcousin, your godbabybrother. How can I be your godfather?”

“Relationships change, Godfather.”

“Stop that. What happened to Estelle?”

“It was tragic, Ben. It was the comeback.”

“What comeback? What are you talking about?”

“The comeback. After the sensational reception of
No, No, Nanette
, Mother—well everyone, really—saw the terrific potential in revivals. You know, nostalgia. Ruby Keeler’s reviews ate her heart out, Ben. She was Patsy Kelly’s pal but Kelly’s raves really got to her, I think. Well, we still have our contacts on Broadway and Mother learned that they’re planning to do a revival of
Irene
. She thought it could be her big chance. She hasn’t been the same since Father died. You know that, Ben. The musical theater is in our blood.”

Yes, Ben thought.

“Well, she found out where the auditions were to be held and she went down. She used her maiden name. She wasn’t looking for favors and figured that after all these years the Finsberg name packed more clout than the name she used to dance under, so she deliberately used her old stage name. These producers are young. They aren’t the old-timers.”

“Yes?” Ben said.

“So what can I tell you, Ben? They asked her to tap dance to ‘They Go Wild, Simply Wild over Me.’ She dropped dead. What can I tell you?”

“She dropped dead?”

“She was out of condition, Ben. She’d prepared ‘Alice Blue Gown.’ She never expected the other.”

“I’m sorry, Cole. I don’t know what to say.”

“So that’s the story. What can I tell you?”

“Gosh,” Ben said, “a heart attack.”

“Yeah,” Cole said dreamily, “that and stage fright. Comeback fever. It’s getting them all, the old-timers. It’s a terrible thing, Ben. These revivals are killing them all off. The ex-hoofers are dropping like flies. So how have
you
been?”

“Is the family together?”

“Until a few days ago. Most everyone’s gone off by now. Gertrude and Gus-Ira went back today. There’s just a few of us in Riverdale.”

“Who’s there now, Cole?”

“Oscar,” Cole said, “Noël, and myself.”

“What about the girls?”

“Patty, La Verne, and Maxene,” Cole said coolly.

“I’d like to speak to Patty, please, Cole.”

“Sure,” Cole said. “Sure you would.” He could hear Cole call out. They must all have been in the drawing room. “It’s himself. He wants to speak to
you
, Patty.” There was a pause. “She’ll take it upstairs—
Godfather
.”

He understood Cole’s feelings. He had slept with almost all the boys’ sisters by this time. “How are you, Cole?” he asked gently.

“Oh,” Cole said, “you know. The Japanese beetles have been pesky this summer, but aside from that I’m managing.”

“That’s good, Cole, I’m glad.”

“Hi, Ben, it’s Patty.”

“Hello, Maxene. I’m sorry to hear about your mother.”

“Darn it, Ben, we never could fool you.”

“No.”

“Hello, Ben.”

“Hello, Patty.”

“I’ll get off now, Ben.”

“Goodbye, Cole.”

“Goodbye, Ben.”

“Goodbye, Maxene.”

“Have you got to see me, Ben? Are you at a hotel now?”

“Patty, I’ve got to see you. I’m at a hotel in Colorado Springs. The Broadmoor. Get a plane to Denver, then fly down from there.”

“I’ll come out tomorrow,” Patty said. “I’ve been waiting for your call. I knew it would be you. I knew you would need me. That’s why I stayed on.”

“I know.” He did. Patty, who could not hear loud noises, was the one he needed.

She wired her arrival time and he met her plane. “I’m sorry about Estelle. I sent a contribution in Mom’s memory to the Riverdale Temple Sisterhood.” Patty nodded and opened her arms. They kissed. She flicked her tongue around inside his mouth, darting it like a mouse across the vault of his palate. “Woof,” he said, releasing her. “Woof.”

“The Black Studies Programs in the nation’s high schools and universities,” she said, “are racist in intent. They’re designed to induce in young colored people a pride of such fantasy dimensions that an entire generation of blacks will voluntarily return to Africa.”