The Franchiser (18 page)

“Leukopenia, check,” the Englishman said.

“My God, you’re bleeding all over.”

“No. Not actually
bleeding
, old fellow. It’s a sort of capillary action. It’s complicated rather, but the blood is forced out the pores. It’s all explained in the literature. Gibberd told me I might expect it. It was jolly good luck
your
happening to be by. There’s a box of Kleenex in that nightstand there. Would you mind? If you’ll just tamp at the bloody stuff. Oh, I say, forgive that last, would you just? I should have thought to think that would do me rather nicely.”

“Maybe I’d better call the nurse.”

“She’s rather busy, I should expect. There are people who really need help, for whom help is of some help, as it were. As I don’t seem to be one of them—incurable, generally
fatal
, I’m taking the darker view just now, old boy—I should think you would have thought we might work this out between ourselves.”

“Yeah, between ourselves,” Ben said. “Pip.” He took the Kleenex and began to dab at the man’s skin.

“There’s a good fellow. That’s got the arm, I think,” the Englishman said.

“This never happened before?”

“No no. Absolutely without precedent. I say, do you
realize
?”

“What?”

“That if this disease really
was
discovered in 1970—well, it was, of course, but I mean if it didn’t
exist
before 1970—why, then I’m only the ninth person to have experienced this particular symptom. We’re breaking freshish ground here, you and I.”

Ben, working on the bloodfall at its headwaters just under the Englishman’s left eye, started to gag. He brought the bloodied Kleenex up to his lips.

“Be firm, Mister Softee.” Ben swallowed and looked at him.

“I think that’s it, rather,” Ben said quietly.

“Yes, well, it would be, wouldn’t it, except that the insides of my thighs seem a bit sticky.”

“No no. I mean that’s
it. Generally
fatal. I’m taking the lighter view. I’m calling the nurse.”

“Mister Softee.”

“What?”

“We’ve the same doctor.”

The same spring that Ben Flesh lay in the tropical medicine ward of Rapid City General—the prime interest rate was 6
³
/
₄
percent—a record heat wave hit the northern tier of the central plains states. Extraordinary demands on the energy supplies caused breakdowns and brownouts all over. The hospital had its own auxiliary generator, but the power situation was so precarious that the use of electricity, even there, was severely cut back, if not curtailed entirely. There was no electricity to run the patients’ television sets, none for air conditioning in any but the most crowded wards, or in those rooms where the heat posed a threat to the lives of the patients. It was forbidden to burn reading lights, or to play radios that did not run on batteries. All available electricity was directed toward keeping the lights and equipment in good order in the operating theaters, maintaining the kitchens with their washers and driers, their toasters and refrigeration units (even at that Flesh suspected that much of what he ate was tainted or turning), to chilling those medications that required it, to operating the laundry services (though the sheets were changed now every third or fourth day instead of daily), and to keeping the power-hungry instruments going that analyzed blood and urine samples and evaluated the more complicated chemistries and tests. The X-ray machines, which required massive doses of electricity, were now used only for emergencies and only the dialysis machine and iron lung, top priorities, were unaffected by the brownout. Even electroshock therapy was suspended for all but the most violent cases, and Flesh was kept awake nights by the shrieks and howls of the nearby mad, people so far gone in their terror and delusion that even powerful tranquilizers like Thorazine were helpless to calm them.

“It isn’t the heat,” the Englishman said, as they both lay awake one night while the screams of crazed patients in an adjacent ward came through their open windows. (The windows had to be opened, of course, to catch whatever breeze might suddenly stir.) “It’s the humidity drives them bonkers.”

“They were already bonkers,” Flesh said irritably.

“That exacerbated it then,” the Englishman said just as irritably.

“Shit.”

“You know,” the Englishman said, “I don’t remember heat like this even in Brit Honduras.”

“Brit Honduras, Brit Honduras. Why can’t you say British Honduras like everybody else?”

“Everyone in RAF called it Brit Honduras.”

“And that’s another thing—Raf. Can’t you say R.A.F. like any normal human being?”

“I’ll say what I bloody well please.”

“Then be consistent. Say ‘Craf.’ ” (The Englishman had been on detached duty with the Canadians at their air base in Brandon, Manitoba, when the first symptoms of his Lassa fever had begun to manifest themselves.)

“Why should one say ‘Craf’ when it’s the Royal
Canadian
Air Force? I should have thought you would have heard of the Royal Canadian Air Force
exer
cises. I’d have to say ‘RCAF,’ wouldn’t I? The whole point of an acronym is to save time. One could, I suppose, say ‘
R
-caf.’ That might be all right, I should think. Yes. ‘
R
-caf.’ That’s not bad. It has a ring, just. One
could
say that.”

“Don’t say anything.”

“I say. Are you saying, don’t say anything?”

“Don’t say bloody anything. Shut bloody up. Go to sleep just. Close your eyes and count your symptoms, check.”

“Well, we
are
in a temper. You’re bloody cheeky, Yank.”

“
‘Yank
.’ Jesus. Where’d you train, on the playing fields of the back lot? Why don’t they run my tests? I know what I have anyway. Why don’t they read the lumbar puncture thing?”

“Well, they’ve their priorities, haven’t they? The lumbar puncture.
That
was manly. You screaming like a banshee. Louder than our lunatic friends.”

“That needle was big as a pencil.”

“ ‘Please stop.
Please!
Oh goddamn it. Oh Jesus. Oh shit. Oh fuck.’ Oh me. Oh my. Oh dear. Be adamant, Mister Softee. Be infrangible.
Be stiff
, Mister Softee. Be obdurate, be corn, be kibe!”

Flesh shut his eyes against Tanner’s taunts and took the darker view. “I’m taking the darker view,” he said quietly. “I’m taking the darker view because I’m going to kill him.”

In the morning the nurse came for Ben with a wheelchair. It was more than a hundred degrees in the ward.

“Is it my tests? Are my tests back?”

“You have a phone call. You can take it at the nurses’ station.”

“A phone call? Gibberd?”

“No.”

“I can’t think who it could be. No one knows I’m here. Is it a woman?”

“A man.”

She wheeled Ben to the phone and put the receiver in his left hand.

“Mr. Flesh?”

“Yes?”

“Zifkovic.”

He’d forgotten about his manager. “Yes, Zifkovic, what is it?”

“How you feeling, sir?”

“The same. I’m waiting for my test results. Is anything wrong?”

“The stuff’s all turned, sir. It’s rancid glop. There must be a ton of it. The Mister Softee’s all melted and running. We were working with ice for a time but I can’t get no more. It’s a high tide of ruined vanilla. The fruit flavors are staining everything in sight. I got the girls working on it with pails and mops but they can’t keep up. A truck come down from Fargo with a new shipment today. I told him that with this heat wave we couldn’t accept, but he just dumped it anyway. It’s outside now. A whole lake of the shit. What should I do, Mr. Flesh? Mr. Flesh?”

“It’s a plague,” Flesh said. “It’s a smoting.”

“What? Mr. Flesh? What do you want me to do? You wouldn’t believe what this stuff smells like.”

“I’d believe it.”

“You got any suggestions, Mr. Flesh? I didn’t want to trouble you. I know you got your own problems, but I don’t know what to do. You got any ideas?”

“Be hard, Mister Softee.”

“What? I can hardly hear you.”

“Nothing. I have no suggestions.” He handed the phone back to the nurse. “It’s the plague,” Flesh said. “A fiery lake of Mister Softee, check.”

“There you are, Mr. Flesh,” another of the nurses said, coming up to him. “Dr. Gibberd has your test results. He’s waiting for you.”

Flesh nodded, allowed himself to be returned to the ward.

Gibberd, standing at the Englishman’s bedside, waved to him. He indicated to the nurse that she set a screen up around Flesh’s bed. He was carrying a manila folder with the results of Ben Flesh’s tests. They were all positive. It was M.S. all right, Gibberd told him, but of a sensory rather than a motor strain. The chances of its becoming motor were remote. The fact that he’d been in remission all these years was in his favor. He really wasn’t in such bad shape. For the time being there would be no treatment. Later, should it shift to a motor M.S., they could give him Ritalin, give him steroids. How would he know? Well, he’d be falling down in the streets, wouldn’t he? There’d be speech impairment, wouldn’t there? There’d be weakness and he wouldn’t be able to tie his shoes, would he? There’d be nystagmus, don’t you know? Nystagmus? A sort of rotation of the eyeballs. Anyway, there was no real reason to keep him in the hospital. They needed the beds. Flesh looked around the empty ward.

“As a matter of fact,” Gibberd said, “I wish I were going with you. Where you off to now? Someplace cool?”

“I can drive?”

“Of course you can drive. I’ve told you, there’s no strength loss, no motor impairment at all. It’s just sensory. A little discomfort in your hand. So what?”

“But it’s America’s number-one crippler of young adults.”

“M.S. is a basket term. You’ll be fine. These symptoms should go away in two to three months. Boy, this heat.”

“The heat, check.”

“Well. Get dressed, why don’t you? I’ll write up your discharge papers. Be sure to stop by the cashier on the way out. Really. Don’t worry about the M.S.”

“Sensory discomfort, check.”

“I guess you’ll be wanting to get back to your Mister Softee stand before you leave. This
heat
. I could use a Mister Softee myself right now.”

“The Mister Softees are all melted. The Lord has beaten the Mister Softees back into yogurt cultures.”

“What’s that?”

“Plague.”

“What’s all this about plague?”

“The plague is general throughout Dakota. We’re being visited and smited.”

“Well. Good luck, Mr. Flesh.”

“Doctor?”

“Yes?”

“What about him?” Flesh jerked his thumb in the direction of Tanner’s screen. The doctor shook his head.

“He’ll be shipped off to Guernsey eventually. The R.A.F. maintains a hospital there for incurables.”

The doctor extended his hand. A shiver of electric plague ran up Flesh’s hand and arm when Gibberd touched him. He felt he could start the hospital’s engines just by touching them, that the energy was in his hands now, in the ruined, demyelinating nerves sputtering like live wires in his fingertips.

Gibberd left and Flesh dressed. He was about his business, heading toward the cashier and the Cadillac. (Probably it wouldn’t start; the battery dead, check. Check the oil.) Then suddenly Ben turned back. He stood for a moment in the center aisle, staring in the direction of Tanner’s screen. “Tanner,” he said, “I don’t want you to say a thing. Don’t interrupt me. Just listen just.

“Gibberd has given me my walking papers. He has given me my dirty bill of health. It’s interesting rather. Here we are, two guys from opposite sides of the world. Yank and Limey. Strangers. Do-be-do-be-doo. Flight Lieutenant Tanner of Eng and Brit Honduras with Nigerian virus in his gut, and me, Ben Flesh, American—don’t interrupt, please just—Ben Flesh, American, ranger in Cadillac of Highway this and Interstate that. Yet somehow the both of us ill met in this hotshot trop med ward in Rap Cit S-dak. You know what? Don’t, don’t answer. You know what? Never mind what, I’ll get to what later.

“Well. Strangers. Sickmates on the edge of the Badlands. Both incurable and generally fatal. Oh, I know a lot about
my
disease, too. When Dr. Wolfe first diagnosed my case—you remember, I told you about Dr. Wolfe—I boned up on it in the literature, in
What to Do till the Doctor Comes
. It’s progressive, a neurological disorder of the central nervous system, characterized by muscular dysfunction and the formation of sclerotic, or hardening—be hard, Mister Softee—hardening patches in the brain. One’s myelin—that’s the soft, white fatty substance that encases the axis cylinders of certain nerve fibers: what a piece of work is a man—one’s myelin sheath is unraveling like wool. It snags, you see? Like a run in a stocking. I am panty hose, Lieutenant. Vulnerable as.

“Incurable. Generally fatal. Usually slow and often, in its last stages, characterized by an odd euphoria. I was blind once, I tell you that? No family to speak of. I have heart disease and many businesses. Is this clear? No, don’t answer. The point is, the lines of the drama of my life are beginning to come together, make a pattern. I mean, for God’s sake, Tanner, just consider what I’ve been through, I’ve told you enough about myself. Look what stands behind me. Theatrical costumes! Songs! My history given pizzazz and order and the quality of second- and third-act curtains, coordinated color schemes for the dance numbers, the solos and show-stoppers, what shows up good in the orchestra and the back of the house, and shines like the full moon in the cheap seats. I got rhythm, dig? Pacing, timing, and convention have gone into making me. Oh, Tanner, the prime rate climbs like fever and we ain’t seen nothing yet. Gibberd dooms me. You should have heard him. He makes it official. He dooms me, but very soft sell so I can’t even be angry with him. It’s getting on, the taxis are gathering, the limos, the cops are up on their horses in the street, and I don’t even know my lines—though they’re coming together—or begin to understand the character.

“What do you think? Shh, that was rhetorical. What do you think? You think I should kick my preoccupations? The stuff about my godfather and my godcousins? All the Wandering Jew shit in my late-model Caddy, going farther than the truckers go, hauling my ass like cargo? Aach.