There was a Ford LTD mounted on a platform in the lobby, turning, stately and slow as a second hand, pristine, mint, and looking on its pedestal and under the cunning lights as no automobile ever looked in the streets. A museum piece, a first prize.
He went to the desk and registered. A Chase-Park Plaza bellman carried his bag and room key past the conventioneers still waiting to sign in.
He didn’t go much any more, sending his proxies more often than not, those he hired to run his franchises for him.
It was spring and the prime interest rate was 2.93 percent. Though they were already into April, the sky was the color of nickels, loose change, and the temperature never higher than that of a mild winter in a plains state. Flesh still wore his long dark cashmere coat, a fedora pulled low, tight on his head, a scarf. That was why he had spotted him — he was not so famous then — sore thumb, high profile, visible in his white suit as a man falling from a building. It was not white really, not the stark white of letterhead, but richer, the white of faintly yellow piano keys, of imperfect teeth, old texts. It was — this occurred to him — the “in person” white of presence, like limelight burning on a magician on a stage. He had never seen anyone so bright. And it was, once he recognized him, as if the man were on fire, his white hatless hair like whipped smoke.
He saw him from the back, knew him from the back. Ben rose from his bench in the park and followed him to a little play area where the statues of characters from Alice in Wonderland were grouped. He stood beside the statue of Alice and the Mad Hatter, and when a few who recognized the man approached him with their cameras, Ben politely deflected them. The man, unconscious of his bodyguard, gazed at the frigid figures, and Flesh, everywhere at once, held up a strategic hand, extended a black cashmered arm, waved his dark scarf, swung his fedora, ruining their shots.
“Isn’t that—?”
“Shhh. Yes. Please,” Flesh urged, “he’s not to be disturbed.”
“I’m not disturbing him. I just wanted—”
“I’m sorry,” Flesh said, “I know. All you want is to take his picture but the man’s superstitious. He believes you steal his substance when you photograph him.”
“That’s crazy,” he said, “his pictures on all those—”
“Portraits. Oil paintings. You want to get your oils and brushes, okay, but no photographs.”
“I never heard anything like—”
Then getting a little rough, shooing, pushing, shoving.
“Hey, this is a park. It’s a free country. Who you shoving?”
“The camera,” Flesh demanded.
“No.”
“Go on, beat it. I tried to be nice.” He put his hand in his overcoat. The man backed off.
“I’ll be damned,” he said, “if I ever buy another bucket—”
“Yeah, we’ve lost you to Steak ’n Shake. These things happen.”
“But he’s so pleasant on television.”
“Look, fella,” Ben said kindly, “he has a lot on his mind. Leave him be, why don’t you?”
“I just wanted—”
“Sure,” Flesh said. He patted the fellow on his back and sent him off, then walked around the circumference of the statue in order to study the man from the front. The face was benign as an angel’s, with his mouth closed the white goatee and mustache like a kempt fat mushroom, the dangling strings of his black tie like a wishbone or a character in an Oriental alphabet. Flesh was surprised to see that the white suit coat was double-breasted, like a chef’s. The eyes behind the horn-rimmed specs twinkled with vision. Flesh came up beside him. “Howdy,” Ben said. The man glowered at him. “Howdy.” Flesh moved closer. They were almost touching.
“Lord, the man hours that gun into that,” the fellow said, nervously acknowledging him. “Look that Mad Hatter.”
“Look that Alice,” Flesh said. The man moved to another grouping. Flesh followed silently. “Look that Queen,” he offered.
“Look that Mock Turtle,” the white-suited man said wearily.
“Look that Cheshire Cat.”
“Look that pigeon shit.”
“Ben Flesh,” Ben Flesh said, extending his hand.
“Colonel Sanders,” the man said grudgingly.
Ben pushed his hand out farther. The man took it finally and Flesh grasped the chicken king’s hand in both his own and pulled it toward his face. Before Colonel Sanders knew what was happening Flesh opened his jaws wide as he could and shoved as much of the man’s hand inside his mouth as possible. He sucked the startled man’s knuckles, ran his tongue along his lifeline, chewed his nails, the heel of his hand, tasted his pinky. The Colonel made a fist and fought for his hand, which Ben still held to his mouth.
“Lemme be. What’s wrong with you?”
And Ben could not have told him, couldn’t have said that he’d pulled his first stunt, an engram of character and aggression. He stood before the Colonel with the man’s hand still at his lips. He was blushing. “Finger-lickin’ good,” Flesh said. “It’s true. What they say. About Dixie,” he added lamely.
The Colonel shook his hand about, drying it. He looked down at his suit, changed his mind. Flesh whipped out a handkerchief and waved it across the top of Colonel Sanders’s hand like a shoeshine cloth. He whistled, snapping the handkerchief smartly one last time, and returned it to his pocket.
“I’ll be damned,” Colonel Sanders said. “You’re a fool.”
“Listen,” Ben said, “I’m sorry. I don’t know what made me…”
The Colonel looked at me curiously. Then seemed suddenly to relent. He was taller than I would have expected — six foot one, better. Taller than myself.
“My height?” the Colonel said.
“Sir?”
“My height. People like their avunculars stubbly little Santas. Eb Scrooge’s old boss — what’s his name — he was a shorty. All of ’em, squatty, florid little fellers. Only your father figure is supposed to be tall. Well, you know what my real significance is, Jack? It ain’t the finger-lickin’-good routine. I mean to go down as the first avuncular in U.S. history to break the height barrier, bust six two. One day I’m comin’ out the closet altogether entire, speak the King’s English, iambic pentameter. That’s what I’m really after. Oh, I ain’t fixin’ to put out the twinkle in my eye or extinguish the roses in my cheeks — just very manly, very deliberate and distingué. Stand up straight, unhunch my shoulders, give my backbone its head, let America see what’s been hid from it too long — that a man can be lovable, turn out a good product, and tall all at the same time.”