The Franchiser (45 page)

“We’ll be killed,” Ben said.

“No,” his manager said. “They told me at school that unless you overlook a place like Niagara Falls, or you’re in one of the big towns, and only then if it’s some skyscraper setup that gets a lot of advance publicity and makes a mark on the skyline, you can’t expect to do much business the first month or so. At service locations like ours it could be three or four months before an inn takes hold.”

“Eighteen percent?”

“Eighteen is low.”

“They’ll kill us.”

“We’ve got fifteen reservations for tomorrow night, Mr. Flesh. That doesn’t include what comes in off the highway. Like today, for example. Only eleven rooms were reserved. We picked sixteen up off the street. Two rooms are staying over. We do just as good off the highway as we did today, that’s thirty-three rooms occupied. And you’ve got to expect we’ll get another ten reservations at least. That’s forty-three rooms.”

“Twenty-eight percent,” Ben said. They would kill him. It was so. This was the busy season, when people went on their vacations. It was different with his other franchises. Convenience foods, for example. Appetite was a constant. Appetite was seasonal, too, of course. It had its rush hours, its breakfasts and lunch hours and dinners. But it also had its steady increment of whim, the sudden gush of appetite, the cravings of highs and pregnancy, its coffee breaks and gratuitous lurching thirsts, its random sugar-toothedness, all the desiderata of gratification and reward. How had he so miscalculated? They would kill him. The 18 percent would climb to 28 percent, the 28 to 35, to 40, the 40 to 50 or 52. And level off. Things could be done, he knew, measures taken. The break-even point could be lowered, perhaps even met. There could be cutbacks among the staff, maids could be let go, some of the waitresses and kitchen help, one or two bookkeepers made redundant. People could double up on jobs. His debt could be slowly amortized by the piecemeal selling off of his other franchises. There were plenty of things that could be done. They would kill him. He would be killed.

“Why don’t you?”

“What?”

“Why don’t you get some sleep?” Shoe asks kindly.

“No no. You. Kingseed’s out front. He can take care. It’s interesting. Go home. I’d prefer it. It’s interesting to me. To be on this end of the motel. I figure I sleep 250, maybe 300 nights a year in them. But lobby life—This I know nothing about. Go get your rest. Tomorrow’s another day. I read that somewhere. This way, the both of us up, it’s too much like a deathwatch. Go on. Kingseed doesn’t need either of us. It’s just that I feel more comfortable minding it through its first night. Go on. Why should your wife be alone?”

Ben insisted and Shoe left.

“I think I’ll walk around a bit,” he told Herb Kingseed after a while, and went through the lobby past the closed lounge and closed restaurant to the long central building where all the guests had been given rooms. He walked along the corridor and came to 1109, his room. Through the door he could hear the television set still playing. He opened the door, went in, and turned the set off. He was about to go out again when he heard voices behind the thin wallboard.

“Suck me, suck me,” Mr. Glosse says.

“What’s this?” Ben says softly.

Mr. Glosse groans. “I’m coming, I’m coming,” he cries. “I’m coming in your mouth. I’m shooting my dick off inside your face.”

“What’s this?”

“No no,” he pleads, “swallow it, swallow it. Don’t spit it out, what’s wrong with you? All right. It’s all over your lips. Kiss me, kiss me now.”

“What’s this?” Ben says. “What’s this?” He listens but can make out no other words.

He returns to the hall. Now he is conscious of the sounds that come from behind each door. He hears Mr. Kith, a single in 1134. He is talking to Elke Sommer. She is a guest on Carson’s program. He’d seen her when he went into his room to turn his set off. “Take that, Elke. Take that, you German bitch. How do you like my cock in your hair?” What’s this? Is he beating off against Nate Lace’s television set? Flesh puts his ear to the door and hears what sounds like meat being slapped against glass. He hears growls and the falsetto whimper of masturbate orgasm. What’s this? What’s this?

And blazes a trail down all the long corridor, stopping at each occupied room. He is able to remember exactly who is where. He listens at 1153. The Renjouberts’ room. A couple in their forties with a son about fourteen or fifteen.

“Shh,” Mrs. Renjoubert says softly. “Hush, darling. Be very quiet. Oh, that’s good. That’s very good. But be quiet. Oh, that’s lovely, sweetheart. Rub the other. Oh, oh. Shh. Hush, you’ll wake Daddy.”

What’s this? What’s this
?

It is twelve forty-five when he goes to the Inn-Dex machine and sends his first message. He has the Travel Inn Directory open like a phone book beside him. He depresses the Enter button, sees the top light go on, and knows he is on the air. He punches the Inn-Dex code number and painfully taps out his message:

MAYDAY. MAYDAY. RINGGOLD, GA. TRAVEL INN CALLING VINELAND, N.J. IT’S LOVE NIGHT. IT’S LOVE NIGHT. AND HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING.

He tells Vineland about the Glosses, about Tim Kith in 1134, about the Renjouberts. He describes the goings on between the Buggle sisters in 2218. Finally it is too uncomfortable for him to type. His paresthetic fingers vibrate like flesh tuning forks and he asks Kingseed to take over for him. “Tell Vineland,” he tells Kingseed, “that Elly and Nestor Pewterball make love in the shower.”

“But, Mr. Flesh—”

“Send the message,” he commands.

“What do I say?”

“Dear Vineland, New Jersey, Travel Inn,” he dictates. “Elly and Nestor Pewterball of St. Paul, Minnesota, who checked in at the Ringgold, Georgia, Travel Inn at approximately 7:15 p.m. driving a—just a minute.” He goes to the records, slips out the Pewterballs’ charge sheet and registration form. “—driving a 1971 Olds Vista Cruiser, Minnesota plates J7 5-1414-R2, dinner charges $12.47 with tip, representing—let’s see, can you make this out, Kingseed? Does that say ‘Crossroads Furniture’? It does, doesn’t it?—representing Crossroads Furniture and paying by BankAmericard—am I going too fast?”

“Was that $12.47 with tip?”

“Right.” He repeats himself slowly, waits till Kingseed catches up. Talking so slowly he is aware of a certain thickness in his speech, the words slightly distorted, as if the sides of his tongue were curling, rolled up like a newspaper tossed on a porch. With effort he is able to flatten it again. “Mrs. Pewterball is a tall, slender, gray-haired woman, almost as tall as Nestor, who is perhaps six foot. Though I couldn’t hear all they said due to the interference of the shower, adjusted, I should say, to something like fine spray, full force, I was able to make out a good deal, Elly’s ringing yelps, Nestor’s laughter, Elly’s desire to have her genitals soaped, Nestor’s predilection for lathered buttocks. I take it that they were standing face to face. I take it that they used washclothes. I only hope they remembered to close the shower curtain and put it inside the tub. I only hope there was a bathmat on the floor.

“When they were finished they dried themselves off. From what sounded like the crinkle of tissue paper, I would say that Nestor was probably wearing new pajamas. This impression was reinforced by a compliment I heard Elly pass on to her husband, perhaps not a compliment so much as an affirmation of her own judgment and taste. ‘See’ she said, ‘those checks aren’t at all loud. They’re quite elegant, really. I like a pajama top you don’t have to button. With everything wash-and-wear, the buttonholes get all out of shape, Ness.’ She calls him Ness. I’m not at all certain that Elly wears anything to bed. At least I couldn’t hear her poking about in their suitcase and it seemed to me from the angle and pitch of her voice that she may have been the first in bed. I distinctly made out a sort of grunt when she removed the bedspread. This was before I heard the crinkle of tissue paper. What follows is rather personal and more than a little touching.

“When they were both in bed—and they slept in different beds, incidentally, for I heard Ness pull back
his
bedspread—and had turned off the lights—I could see the little strip of light go out where the door just barely misses meeting the carpet—and I was just about to go down the corridor to see what was with Marie Kripisco in 2240, I suddenly heard Mrs. Pewterball’s voice.

“ ‘Ness?’ she said. ‘Ness? Are you awake, darling, are you still up, dear?’

“ ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘what is it, Elly?’

“ ‘I’m frightened,’ she said.

“ ‘Oh, El,’ he said, ‘I promise it will be all right.’

“ ‘But
Florida
, Ness.’

“ ‘It’s three years yet before I retire, El.’

“ ‘Yes.’

“ ‘The St. Paul winters.’

“ ‘I know.’

“ ‘All that snow.’

“ ‘I
know
.’

“ ‘We’ll make friends, El. There’ll be people there. Why, goodness, 95 percent of the people
in
those condominiums are from up north. People like us. And we’re just looking. Though I’ll tell you, El, prices are going up all the time. If we find something we really like, I think we ought to snap it up, make a down payment. That way, too, darling, we could take our vacations in the winter and rent it out when we’re not using it. And don’t forget, there’s a Crossroads branch now in North Miami Beach. With my discount we could furnish the whole place for under two thousand dollars. Golly, El, if we
did
rent it out, our tenants would be making the down payment for us.’

“ ‘It isn’t that, Ness.
I
get just as cold in the winter,
I
know we’ll make new friends, I even agree about the economics of the thing. It isn’t that.’

“ ‘Then what?’

“ ‘The water, Ness. The water’s so
hard
down there. Do you know how much effort it takes to work up a good lather? People our age? Sweetheart, have you any idea what the heck that’s going to do to our love life?’ ”

He contacts Huntsville, Alabama, contacts Lumberton, North Carolina, contacts Fort Myers, Florida. He tells on the Glosses, tells on Mrs. Renjoubert, on Kith and the Buggle girls and the Pewterballs, and relates the normative one-on-one passions of the Marshes and Mangochitnas. He has Kingseed patrol the corridors of the motel and sends the news to Wilmington, Delaware, that Ron and Minnie Cates, talking in their sleep, each call out the name of different lovers. “Oh, Hubert,” Minnie pleads. “Sylvia, Sylvia,” Ron Cates cries out.

“Wilmington, Wilmington,” he has Kingseed ask their Inn-Dex, “what’s this? I recall,” he has him spell out on Travel Inn’s world-wide reservation system, “coming across scumbags in forests, panties in wilderness, love’s detritus on posted land, everywhere the flotsam and jetsam of concupiscence scattered as beer can, common as litter. What’s this, what’s this? Everyone everywhere is evidence, datum. The proof is all about us. We’re the proof. Everyone at the Super Bowl a fact of fuck. Every schoolboy, each senator, and every officer in every army, all the partners in law firms, and anyone on a mailing list or listed in a phone book or cramming for the written part of his driver’s exam. Each civil servant and every Pope and all the leads in plays and films and all the walk-ons and everybody in the audience. Everyone with anything to sell and anyone with money to buy it and all the faces on the cash exchanged for it, and every old man and all the dead. And also every representation, every sketched face in the funny papers, and every piece of clothing on every rack in every store in the world. And even furniture. Every chair or table or lamp to read by and all the beds. Every sideboard where the dishes are put away and every dish as well as every machine ever made, the toaster and the nuclear submarine, and every musical instrument and every rubber comb and each piece of chewing gum and all the pot roast. As though the world were merely a place to hold it all, as if gravity and Rumania and history were only parts of some great sexual closet. The world as Lovers’ Lane, drive-in, back seat, front porch, park bench, and blanket on the beach. Am I right about this Wilmington, Delaware? How’s your love life? Over.”

And an answer came, Ben reading it like stock-market quotation as it ticked out on the Inn-Dex:

YES. YOU ARE. A CONVENTION’S IN TOWN. WE’VE SEEN EIGHT HOOKERS GET INTO THE ELEVATORS SO FAR. EARLIER THIS EVENING WE HAD A CALL FROM TOM KLEINMAN IN 317 OBJECTING TO THE NOISE THAT THE HONEYMOONERS, EARL AND DELORES SIMMONS, WERE MAKING IN THE NEXT ROOM. MR. KLEINMAN SAID HIS BOY, TOM, JR., ELEVEN, COULD HEAR EVERYTHING THAT WAS GOING ON BETWEEN THOSE TWO. HE ASKED THAT EITHER WE CALL THE SIMMONSES AND TELL THEM TO HOLD IT DOWN, OR PUT HIM AND TOM, JR., IN A DIFFERENT ROOM. WE COULDN’T DO THE LATTER BECAUSE WE’RE FULL UP—THE CONVENTION. AND WE WERE RELUCTANT TO DO THE FORMER BECAUSE, WELL, YOU KNOW HOW IT IS, YOU CAN’T CALL GUESTS UP AND TELL THEM NOT TO FORNICATE. IT IS THEIR HONEYMOON, AFTER ALL. WHAT MR. PITTMAN, OUR INNKEEPER, FINALLY DID WAS TO CALL EARL SIMMONS UP AND TELL HIM HE’D HAD A COMPLAINT HE WAS PLAYING HIS TELEVISION TOO LOUD. YOU HAVE TO BE DIPLOMATIC. BUT YOU PUT YOUR FINGER ON IT, RINGGOLD, THE WORLD IS A VERY SEXY PLACE.

They Inn-Dex’d Chicago, contacted Denver, rang up L.A. Everywhere it was the same story. Not even the time differential made any difference finally, Ringgold’s nighttime, California’s evening, love’s mood obliterating time and space and all zones erogenous.

They put out all-points bulletins, calling Fort Wayne, Indiana, Springfield, Missouri, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Burlington, Vermont, Wichita, and Great Falls, Montana and Albuquerque, Phoenix, and towns up and down the Pacific coast. It
was
the same. Sperm was in the air like—like humidity. Heavy breathing was and squeals like imprint sounds in nature. Love’s high-pressure systems and lows, its fronts and squall lines and small-craft warnings only a sort of generic weather at last. Everything reduced finally to the skin’s friction, the fusion of agents and objects and all the moleculars of love.

Flesh couldn’t stand it. He had hoped to be torn off the air, to have been comeuppanced, jammed like the Voice of America, warned by Richmond itself perhaps. What he had not wanted was endorsement, all hunches confirmed. He should like to have been told by Houston that, no, folks round there seemed tuckered out, content, after a long day’s drive from Lubbock or a rough flight from Cleveland, to shower, in clean p.j.’s take their dinners on trays from room service, watch the telly, read the local papers, doze off.