The Franchiser (33 page)
“Aren’t you going to—”
“Oh dear me, no, I’ve seen it. Wonderful meeting you. You seem very nice. Like you know what you’re doing.”
“Hey, shh,” someone said behind me.
“Yes, sorry. Yes of course. Quite right. Enjoy the picture. I’m sorry, sir. It’s just the trailers, only the coming attractions. A lot of late-model cars being destroyed. I saw that one, too. Well, again—it’s been a genuine pleasure. We’re all Americans. We all love Burt. He reaches something in each of us, and though he’s the star, we needn’t take a backseat. Not for a minute. How competent people are! How their authority bespeaks some grounding in natural law itself, God’s glorious injunction to be. My godfather was wrong, I think. Life not only is not flashy, a kick in the head of the rules of probability, it’s normal, fixed as thermostat.”
“Hey, buddy—”
“Come on, mister, up or down, in or out. We paid good money.”
“Efficiency and integrity around like the gases and elements. How we do our homework, every mother’s son of us. Enjoy the picture.”
“Come on, will you?”
“Yes, yes, I’m going.” I backed up the aisle. On the screen—
Freebie and the Bean
—cars were screeching around corners and slamming through plate-glass windows, flipping over guard rails, and landing on cars below like bombs dropped from planes. “We’re all Americans. Look, look. Do you spot the motifs? This couldn’t have happened before the Yom Kippur war and the energy crisis. We’ve become disenchanted with our automobiles. This too will pass.”
“Fella, if you don’t shut up—” a man said. Lockwire was beside me and I beside myself.
“Enjoy the picture. You know? I think Burt Reynolds once lived in Oklahoma. I think I read that somewhere.”
“Hey, Ben,” Lockwire said, “what is it? Come on.”
“Lockwire,” I whispered, “did someone report me to the manager?”
I retreated with him up the aisles, my face to the screen and quiet now, as he gently held me. “Take it easy, Ben,” he said. “Take it easy.”
“Yes. I will,” I said softly. We were standing at the back near the doors. “Wait. Just a minute. Wait. I just want to see this part.”
On the screen it said, “Cinema I Feature Presentation,” and then there was the big animated image of a sort of gear, like the sprocket flywheel of a wristwatch, or like a kid’s mandalic picture of sunshine. It turned around and around, ticking to weird electronic whistles and beats. “Yes. This is the part.” It was supposed to represent a projector spinning off film like line from a fishing reel. It was the logotype of Cinema I, Cinema II, and all over America in the eastern time zone and the central, mountain, and Pacific ones, people were watching it, as if Greenwich Mean Time itself were unwinding, unwinding. But it was the gears, the gears with their deep notches and treacherous terrible teeth that held me, that translated the zippered nerves which were just then coming unstuck again, the remission remissed, in my hands and fingertips, in the stripped caps of my knees and the scraped tines of my ears, loose as rust, as nuts and bolts in the blood.
It was to be his last remission, and he was to remember it like a love affair, like some guarded, precious intimacy, parsing it like a daydream, an idyll, the day he broke the bank at Monte Carlo. (And would dream about it, too, the dreams realistic but with a certain cast of sepia-tone nostalgia, like dreams of dead parents, bittersweet with love and recrimination.)
Lockwire had thought he’d gone crazy of course, and in a way he had, though not crazy so much as heroically excited—M.S. is a stress disease—his febrile talk like the aura of migraine, the incoherics of inspiration. But in a minute he was all business: More than ever. His plans and off-the-cuff schemes a desperate attempt to make a connection to his health, fear’s black coffee.
This is what he said:
“I want smoking permitted back of the first ten rows. There’s to be no public announcement. You’ll continue to run the ‘Fire Regulations Prohibit Smoking in Any Part of This Theater’ footage, but don’t do anything about enforcement. In the beginning you can have one or two of the ushers light up. This will serve as a signal. When the inspector registers a complaint, offer him a self-perpetuating free pass. If he doesn’t go for it, call the Fire Commissioner. Discuss it with him. Mention one thousand dollars. If he gives you static, go back three spaces, play it their way.
“Candy: I want vending machines put in. No gum, of course. Gum fucks up a theater. Just good, relatively inexpensive stuff. Name brands. You can keep the soft-drink and popcorn apparatus where it is, but replace the candy with paperback versions of the books the movies are based on. With records of the score if it’s a good one.
The Sting
, for example,
Love Story
. As a matter of fact, stock up on all the good movie music. Get an inventory together. And movie mags:
Silver Screen, Photoplay
. Posters are very big. Get in some Robert Redfords, Marlon Brandos, W. C. Fieldses, that sort of thing. Why should the headshops get all the play? Let’s get off our asses, Lockwire. I want to make Cinema I, Cinema II a goddamned Grauman’s Chinese, a regular little Merchandise Mart of the spin-off. Use those shops in museums where they sell postcards, art books, and twenty-five-buck reproductions of famous statuary as your model, those goofy imported handmade toys. We’ll make the candy girl—that redhead—our curator. Take her uniform away. Get her a smock and a patch that goes on the shoulder that says ‘Volunteer,’ or ‘Friends of Cinema I, Cinema II.’ Something like that.”
“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.’ ”
I
t 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.
