“There are no ludicrous deaths,” Ben said.
“There are,” she cried. “Oh, Ben, there are. We die them.”
“Don’t jinx us,” Irving said. “Why do you talk like that? Are you trying to jinx us? I think we should bury Gertrude and get the hell out of here before anything else happens. It’s been some week.”
They looked at racially prejudiced Irving. They seemed to agree with him. Even Ben agreed. Gertrude was cremated and it took three men to carry her ashes.
“Slag,” the funeral director said. “I never saw anything like it. The woman was slag.”
They left New York after the funeral. Ben went back to his Travel Inn site. Where there was a message from Lorenz.
Bad weather in St. Louis had caused Irving’s flight to be diverted to Chicago. Bad weather in Chicago had caused it to be diverted to Detroit. The weather in Detroit was beautiful but Irving, out of sorts from his tiring journey, died there in a race riot of his own devising.
Ethel had a simple, or limited, mastectomy. They got all the cancer but accidentally cut off her heart.
Cole complained of headache one morning and was dead that afternoon. The autopsy revealed that his brain was crawling with termites.
Sigmund-Rudolf called.
“I don’t want to hear it,” Ben said.
“Listen to me, Ben, it’s—”
“I don’t want to hear it.”
…important.”
“I don’t want to hear it. No,” Ben said, “I’m hanging up. I don’t want to hear it.”
“Ben, listen, will you?” Sigmund-Rudolf said.
“I don’t want—”
“There are only a few of us left.”
“…to hear it! I’m not listening to this!”
“There are only a few of us left and the prime rate is going up and down like a Yo-Yo. Father couldn’t have anticipated when he wrote his will that so many of us would die.”
“I won’t hear this,” Ben said. “I don’t want to hear about one more death. I won’t listen. I don’t want to hear it.”
“Nobody’s dead, Ben. I mean nobody else. Gus-Ira, Lorenz, Oscar. Myself. La Verne, Patty, and Mary. Maxene. We’re still alive, Ben. Nothing’s happened to us.”
“Nobody else has died?”
“No. I’m trying to tell you.”
“Gus-Ira and Lorenz? Oscar? Patty? La Verne and Mary? Maxene? You? You’re all well? ”
“We’re fine. I’m trying to tell you.”
“That’s all right then.”
“Sure. It’s just that Father couldn’t have known. When he stipulated that we’d guarantee your loans — There were eighteen of us. Ten are gone. Listen, Ben, you’re welcome to live in Riverdale. Everyone’s agreed on that. God knows, none of the rest of us wants the place, but that other stuff, the prime interest thing, we can’t go along with that anymore. We’d be spreading ourselves too thin. You’re on your own, Ben. I mean, I know you’ve never stuck us for a penny, but with so many gone, with conditions the way they are, the risk is too great. We can’t hold your paper, Ben. You understand, don’t you? Don’t you, Ben?”
“I don’t want to hear it!”
4
In Ringgold, Georgia, the prime rate was 7½ percent. Elsewhere it was 8 percent, 8¼, 7¼, 9. Ben had never seen anything like it, the economy heavily fronted, arbitrarily banded, whorled with high pressure and low, laid out like yesterday’s weather on the meteorological map in today’s paper. All climate’s swayback boundaries like wavy strokes of chocolate on scrunched layer cake, the jigsaw arrangements of contested territory. Freak, unseasonable economy.
He needed additional funds. The strike, cost overruns, forced him to take out a second loan. He wanted more, but all Modell Sanford would let him have was an extra $125,000. He offered his ice-cream interests, his Dairy Queen and Baskin-Robbins and Mister Softee, as collateral. (They were already into him for his Western Auto and his Taco Bell. Indeed, almost all his franchises were pledged, hostage to the success of the motel.)
Sanford had asked to see the list again, his portfolio of franchises.
“The One Hour Martinizing,” the banker said, “the One Hour Martinizing and the ice-cream parlors, and we’ll shake hands, part friends, and have us a deal.”
“Not the dry cleaners,” Ben had said.
“Well, heck,” Modell Sanford said, “I don’t see why you’d stick at that. I don’t figure you have you more than twenty, twenty-five thousand tied up in that place.”
“Sentimental. The One Hour Martinizing is of sentimental value to me.”
“Yeah, but lookee, friend, you’re about fifty thousand shy.”
“But you’d have the motel,” Ben said. Modell was dubious. “All right,” Ben said, “here’s what we’ll do. Keep the ice creams, forget about the dry cleaners, and I’ll put up my Cinema I, Cinema II.”
Modell Sanford looked at him.
“Mr. Ben, that’s funky. Them theaters is worth ’bout a quarter million. They your biggest asset. You a serious businessman. Why’d you want to make a deal like that?”
“Because I’m very confident. I feel very confident about the Travel Inn venture. Look, Mr. Sanford, it’s my risk. You can run an audit on the theaters. I’ll pay for it myself. If everything isn’t exactly as I’ve represented it, throw me out. Take all my flavors and the two picture houses and the motel, too.”
“Don’t have to run no audit. Just have to make one phone call to my credit people in Oklahoma City. All right, Mr. Flesh, you come on in tomorrow morning and I’ll give you my decision.”
The decision was yes, of course. And since the banker didn’t wish to take advantage of him, Ben was permitted to withdraw his Dairy Queen stand. But before he drew up the papers, Modell Sanford reintroduced the One Hour Martinizing. For some reason he fixated on the dry-cleaning plant in Missouri, perhaps because he sensed that Ben was telling the truth about its importance to him. Flesh was incensed. He said that if Sanford still wanted the One Hour Martinizing he would take back all his ice-cream businesses, plus his Cinema I, Cinema II. He refused to budge. “I’ll borrow money in Chattanooga,” he said.
“Interest rate’s a point higher in Chattanooga.”
“Fine,” Ben said.
“Oh, come on now,” Modell Sanford had said, “what you want go grandstanding me, what you want get so hot for? This motel is gone be good for you and good for Ringgold, Georgia. Tell you what, you promise to make sure all your help is Ringgold folks and I’ll drop the One Hour Martinizing.”
“Where we stand?” Ben asked. “I forget.”
The banker explained where they stood and they shook hands and signed the papers.
By the time the Inn was ready, he had had to take out a third loan. His godcousins, as Sigmund-Rudolf had warned, withdrew their support. Ben would not contest their decision in court, but by now his investment in the Inn was so great that all his franchises, the One Hour Martinizing included, were hostage to it, his businesses held for ransom.
Lorenz’s temperature dropped from its constant 102.4 degrees to 98.6. He hung on for three weeks and froze to death.
Though the surviving Finsbergs were all invited to the opening, none could come.
“But I don’t care about the prime rate thing,” Ben told them on the telephone. “I don’t even blame you. We’re still godcousins. Please,” he said. “Please come. Let’s be together.”
Patty promised to try to make it, but even she did not show up. Ben meant it, understood, and forgave their reluctance to co-sign for him — the motel would cost about a million dollars — but was hurt when not a single Finsberg would accept his invitation.