how I got into the franchise business,” Ben told the hitchhiker.
“What?” He’d been sleeping.
“I was telling you how the pig got its curly tail. Oh, these origins, my pupick pasts and golden bough beginnings. Sleep, kid, sleep. I was only muttering my mythics and metamythics, godfairies spitting in my cradle, spraying spell, hacking their juicy oysters of fate in my puss.”
He had said “chain.” He had assumed that a man named Howard Johnson made ice creams, an ice-cream scientist, someone with a visionary sweet tooth, a chemist of fruits and candies, a larky alchemist who reduced the tangerine and the mango, the maple and marzipan to their essences, who could, if he wished, divide the flavor of the tomato and the sweet potato from themselves, a tinkerer in nature who might reproduce the savor of gold, the taste of cigarette smoke. He knew there was a Ford, thought there was probably a Buick and a Studebaker. He believed in the existence of a Mr. Westinghouse. Remington, Maytag, Amana, and the Smith brothers were real to him as film stars or the leaders of his country. He could believe, that is, in the existence of millionaires, men with a good thing going, who knew their way around a patent and held on like hell. Indeed, this was one of the things that had determined him to study shorthand and typing and bookkeeping at the Wharton School.He had no good thing of his own and had believed that the best thing for him would be to place himself in the service of those who had. One of the things he could not imagine once he came to understand the inevitability of death—this would have been at around two and a half—was how he would be able to support himself when his father died. He had no skill with the pencil or the needle, and though he tried—summer vacations, Christmas holidays—to apprentice himself to the designer and even the cutter and tailor in his dad’s costume business in Chicago, smaller than even the partnership in New York before its dissolution—they made tutus, leotards for ballet academies, costumes for high-school musicals, and had a tiny share of the public-school graduation-gown market—he was, boss’s son or no boss’s son, always rebuffed, reduced to running errands, delivering merchandise. They had no patience with him. Schmerler, his father’s tailor, thought he was a pain in the ass. “ Gay avec ,” he’d tell him, “you’re an American. What do you want? Look at my eyeglasses, thick as a slice of bread. Lift them, they weigh a pound. They break pieces off my nose and tear my ears. This is something an American boy should want? Unheard of. Go to the cutter. Ask him to shake hands. Count his fingers.” And one time when he’d been after Schmerler to show him how to use the Singer—he thought there was a Singer—the man had turned on him angrily. “Did you ever? What’s the matter, you got your eye on your own little place in Latvia? Go away, leave me alone, study bubble-gum cards, learn what the different cars look like, do their dances, eat hot dogs at the ball park, drink Coca-Cola, and make a taste in your mouth for beer.” And, when he insisted, Schmerler had handed him a sewing needle. “Stick me,” he said. He held up the forefinger of his left hand.
“What?”
“Stick me here.”
“What for? No.”
“Baby. Pants pisher.” He grabbed the needle from the boy and plunged it into his finger. He drew no blood. “You see? Nothing’s there. The blood’s all gone. My blood knows I’m a tailor. It left for other parts. The finger’s cold, the hand. There’s no more circulation. I wear fur gloves in the summer on the Sixty-third Street beach.” Then he drew the boy to him. “You know what, Benny? I only wish my kids loved me a tenth what you love Dad.”
But it wasn’t what Schmerler thought, and though he loved his father well enough, it was something else entirely which drove him to seek information about the business. It was his knowledge that his
“What?” He’d been sleeping.
“I was telling you how the pig got its curly tail. Oh, these origins, my pupick pasts and golden bough beginnings. Sleep, kid, sleep. I was only muttering my mythics and metamythics, godfairies spitting in my cradle, spraying spell, hacking their juicy oysters of fate in my puss.”
He had said “chain.” He had assumed that a man named Howard Johnson made ice creams, an ice-cream scientist, someone with a visionary sweet tooth, a chemist of fruits and candies, a larky alchemist who reduced the tangerine and the mango, the maple and marzipan to their essences, who could, if he wished, divide the flavor of the tomato and the sweet potato from themselves, a tinkerer in nature who might reproduce the savor of gold, the taste of cigarette smoke. He knew there was a Ford, thought there was probably a Buick and a Studebaker. He believed in the existence of a Mr. Westinghouse. Remington, Maytag, Amana, and the Smith brothers were real to him as film stars or the leaders of his country. He could believe, that is, in the existence of millionaires, men with a good thing going, who knew their way around a patent and held on like hell. Indeed, this was one of the things that had determined him to study shorthand and typing and bookkeeping at the Wharton School.He had no good thing of his own and had believed that the best thing for him would be to place himself in the service of those who had. One of the things he could not imagine once he came to understand the inevitability of death—this would have been at around two and a half—was how he would be able to support himself when his father died. He had no skill with the pencil or the needle, and though he tried—summer vacations, Christmas holidays—to apprentice himself to the designer and even the cutter and tailor in his dad’s costume business in Chicago, smaller than even the partnership in New York before its dissolution—they made tutus, leotards for ballet academies, costumes for high-school musicals, and had a tiny share of the public-school graduation-gown market—he was, boss’s son or no boss’s son, always rebuffed, reduced to running errands, delivering merchandise. They had no patience with him. Schmerler, his father’s tailor, thought he was a pain in the ass. “ Gay avec ,” he’d tell him, “you’re an American. What do you want? Look at my eyeglasses, thick as a slice of bread. Lift them, they weigh a pound. They break pieces off my nose and tear my ears. This is something an American boy should want? Unheard of. Go to the cutter. Ask him to shake hands. Count his fingers.” And one time when he’d been after Schmerler to show him how to use the Singer—he thought there was a Singer—the man had turned on him angrily. “Did you ever? What’s the matter, you got your eye on your own little place in Latvia? Go away, leave me alone, study bubble-gum cards, learn what the different cars look like, do their dances, eat hot dogs at the ball park, drink Coca-Cola, and make a taste in your mouth for beer.” And, when he insisted, Schmerler had handed him a sewing needle. “Stick me,” he said. He held up the forefinger of his left hand.
“What?”
“Stick me here.”
“What for? No.”
“Baby. Pants pisher.” He grabbed the needle from the boy and plunged it into his finger. He drew no blood. “You see? Nothing’s there. The blood’s all gone. My blood knows I’m a tailor. It left for other parts. The finger’s cold, the hand. There’s no more circulation. I wear fur gloves in the summer on the Sixty-third Street beach.” Then he drew the boy to him. “You know what, Benny? I only wish my kids loved me a tenth what you love Dad.”
But it wasn’t what Schmerler thought, and though he loved his father well enough, it was something else entirely which drove him to seek information about the business. It was his knowledge that his
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