The Franchiser (39 page)

And the more worried, the more concerned—Jerome’s tests—the less there was to forgive anyone. Perhaps they didn’t want to upset him, felt they needed to protect him, as he protected them from his darkest symptoms. So he didn’t call. He stopped calling. Waiting for good news, waiting for the strike to be settled, waiting for something nice to tell them for a change.

It was settled in April. Ben nodded to the man who told him and went immediately to the telephone.

He called Gus-Ira. When the ringing stopped and he heard the connection completed, he began talking at once. “We’re cooking, the rank and file ratified and the boys will be…” There was a voice against his own voice. “Gee, I was so excited,” he said, “I didn’t even say hello. It’s me, Gus-Ira, it’s Ben. Say, I just…”

“…and that’s just for starters,” Kitty’s voice said, “you haven’t heard the…”

“Kitty, is that you? Hi, it’s Ben. There must be some freak connection. How are you, Kitty dear, how are you, Gus-Ira? ”

“…thing is he doesn’t stop. I think someone should call him off, tell him that (a) number one…”

“Kitty? Gus-Ira?” Ben broke in.

“…our own troubles, and (b) number two…”

“Hello? Hello?”

“ water is thicker than godblood.”

“Can’t you hear me? This is a freak connection. Hello?”

“…and Patty’s grandstanding that time: ‘He can lie beside me.’ All right, I know she said it to get him off our backs, but statements like that only encourage him. These damned phone calls. I tell you, he’s a sick man. I tell you?
He
tells you. How much longer do you think he can continue to function? I mean it. He expects to stay in Riverdale and have the family care for him. Do you realize what that would
mean?
The man’s a bore with his love and loyalty. And not just Riverdale. You won’t escape. It’ll be Ben Flesh, the traveling invalid, Ben Flesh…”

“Hello?”

“…shlepping his roadshow symptoms around the Finsberg bases like King Lear. A month or so in Riverdale. Then we parcel-post him to Noël in San Antonio. Dying on the circuit, only instead of doing his Grand Rounds on his own time and at his silly franchises it’ll be at our places,
we’ll
be his franchises, and don’t kid yourself, it’ll end up being at our expense, too. The man has no head for figures.”

“No,” Ben said involuntarily, “I have a head for figures. Hello?”

“Well,
I
won’t have him,” Kitty’s voice said. “And I’ve spoken to Lorenz and Gertrude and Cole. I’ve spoken to Moss, Maxene, Oscar, Irving, and poor Jerome.”

“
Poor
Jerome? Why ‘poor’ Jerome? What’s wrong? Kitty? Gus-Ira? Hello?”

“…feel the same. So I’m calling to tell you, Gus-Ira,
I
won’t have him, no one will. And my thinking is, there ought to be a solid front on this thing. We’ve got to get it together, we’ve got to be prepared. Ben will take any advantage. Okay, when we were kids it was different, he even filled a need, I suppose, but now we’ve got our own families. I won’t have him, Noël won’t, none of the girls, none of the boys I’ve spoken to. So the next time he calls, try to give him some inkling. No one wants to be actually rude to the old man, no one wa—”

Her voice broke off in the middle of the word. It was as if there had been a sudden power failure, or, rather, as if the lights in one part of the house, the living room, say, had suddenly gone out while the lights in the dining room continued to burn, for Flesh could still hear the crepitation of connection. Perhaps she was catching her breath, he thought, perhaps she was biting her tongue. Water is thicker than godblood? Than
godblood?

“No,” Ben Flesh said into the phone, “you’ve got me wrong, Kitty. A man organizes his life around necessities, principles. Only some people, me, for example, are born without goals. There are a handful of us without obsession. In all the world. Only a handful. I live without obsession, without drive, a personal insanity even, why, that’s terrible. The loneliest thing imaginable. Yet I’ve had to live that way, live this, this—sane life, deprived of all the warrants of personality. To team up with the available. Living this franchised life under the logo of others. And do it, these past years, under impossible burdens of discomfort. Have some feelings, Kitty, have a little pity, Gus-Ira. What, you think I like these random patterns? I’m irregular as the badly toilet-trained. The strange, the personal have been spared me. Nothing happens but disease.
Nothing
…”

“Hello,” Gus-Ira said jovially, “this is Gus-Ira Finsberg. I’m sorry that I’m not in to take your call. This is a recording. If you’ll wait for the little electronic beep and leave your name, number, and message, my Phone-Mate 270 will record you for two minutes and I’ll get back to you just as soon as I return.” There was a pause. Ben heard the beep.

“It’s me, Gus,” he said, “it’s Ben. Your Phone-Mate 270 is fucked up. Probably you put the reels in backward. You were never mechanically inclined, Gus-Ira. Even as a little boy. Goodbye.”

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
₅
H
₄
N
₄
O
₃
.”

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

“C
₅
H
₄
N
₄
O
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.

The doctor said it must have been the bacteria he picked up in the morgue that caused the blood poisoning he rubbed into his head like shampoo and killed him.

The Finsbergs were inconsolable. In their sorrow they closed their decimated ranks and turned once more to Ben.

“We don’t” Lorenz said,

“understand,” said Ethel.

“We were always” Sigmund-Rudolf said,

“musical comedy sort of”

“people,” said Patty, La Verne, and Maxene.

Ben nodded.

It had all happened so quickly—five deaths within thirty-six hours—that even Ben could not absorb it. He asked the people at Riverside Chapel to stall, to prepare the bodies for burial, of course, but to keep them in a sort of holding pattern before they were interred. He did not tell the twins and triplets that he was waiting for all the returns to come in, an official body count.

“Mr. Flesh,” said Weinman, the Director at Riverside, “what can I say at a time like this? You and the family have my deepest sympathy.”

“Thank you,” Ben said.

They were in the coffin room, a sort of display area for caskets not unlike an automobile showroom. The coffins, open toward one end, looked oddly like kayaks. Ben wanted identical caskets for the twins and triplets—cherry walnut, the best.

“We don’t have them,” Weinman said. “Something like this, so unusual, we just don’t have that many in stock. There’s the floor sample and the two in the basement, and that’s it. I suppose I could call Musicant in Lodi, New Jersey, he might have one, but he’s the only other funeral home in this part of the country that handles this particular item.”