The Franchiser Read Free Page B

Pavilion. It was still early morning. He politely inquired of the head nurse on the fourteenth floor whether Mr. Finsberg was receiving visitors.
    “No. Mr. Finsberg is very ill. His condition is grave.”
    “Oh,” Ben said.
    “Are you a member of the family?”
    “Not the immediate family. Mr. Finsberg is my godfather.”
    “You’re Ben?”
    “You know my name?”
    “Go in. It’s 1407. Well, you’d know that from the telegram, wouldn’t you?”
    “You know about the telegram?”
    “Did you get your pocket money?”
    “It’s in my pocket. You know about my pocket money?”
    “We shouldn’t delay, Ben. Your godfather is a very sick man.”
    They entered the room, Ben feeling a little guilty. Here was someone about to change his life perhaps. If the man had been behindhand in his attentions, Ben had been equally remiss. Their mutual indifference to each other made him feel, if the relationship existed, a sort of godson out-of-wedlock.
    The old man lay diminished beneath a giant cellophane wrap, the oxygen tent. Ben could hear the frightful crinkle of his respiration. He sounded as if he were on fire.
    “He’s sleeping,” the nurse whispered.
    “I can come back.”
    “No, no. There might not be time.”
    “What does he have?” Ben whispered.
    “Everything,” the nurse said.
    “I’ll come back later,” he whispered.
    “I won’t hear of it,” she whispered back. She went to an enormous cylinder of oxygen and turned some handles. Immediately his godfather began to gasp for breath.
    “Uugh—kagh—” his godfather skirled. The tent collapsed.
    “What are you doing?” Ben demanded.
    “Mr. Finsberg,” the nurse said, “your godson’s arrived.”
    “Uugh—Ben? Uurgh. Ben’s here? Arghh. Uughh. Okk.” She turned the oxygen back on and Ben watched the bubble reconstitute itself. “Ben. Is that you, godson?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    And then the executives would really hear something, poring over Fortune’s profile in their Lear jets or in their all but empty first-class cabins as they sipped captain’s compliments. Would learn—as he’d learned—that there were more ways to the woods than one, that inheritance or self-creation were not the only alternatives in the busy world of finance, that there were all sorts of success stories, qualitative distinctions, that the world was a fairyland still. That he, Ben Flesh, the owner of franchises from one end of the country to the other, was where he was today because—
    “Sit down, please, Ben. What I have to say will take some time. As I am old, as I am dying—”
    “Oh no, sir, you’re—”
    “As I am dying , I have to conserve my energies. Seeing you stand is a drain on those energies; watching you tire tires me. Please, godson. Please sit down.”
    He looked around for a chair. Only then did it strike him how curious a place it was. Except for Julius Finsberg’s hospital bed and the oxygen and two hat racks of the medical on either side of his bed, they might have been in a first-class apartment. It was not like a hospital room at all. From his position he could see something of the other rooms in the suite, none of them having the least thing to do with the practice of medicine. There was a living room with a sofa and easy chairs. There were coffee tables and lamps. At the far end of the billiard room was a gaming table with slots for poker chips at each corner. There were oil paintings on the walls and he could see, off the hall, two guest bedrooms, an open bathroom with decanters of bath salts and oils on a ledge beneath the vanity. He could see a kitchen with an automatic dishwasher, a refrigerator with a tap for ice water.
    His godfather lay in the dining room. Near his bed a table was set for eight, the crystal and silver and china beautiful against the thick white tablecloth. Napkins were folded like tiny crowns beside each place setting. He removed one of the chairs from the dining-room table and drew it beside his godfather’s