A Confederacy of Dunces (10 page)

Miss Trixie had fallen asleep, her white head among the old newspapers on her desk.

"Yes," Miss Trixie finally sighed. "Oh, it's you, Gomez. Is it quitting time already?"

"Miss Trixie, this is one of our new workers."

"Fine big boy," Miss Trixie said, turning her rheumy eyes up toward Ignatius. "Well fed."

"Miss Trixie has been with us for over fifty years. That will give you some idea of the satisfaction that our workers get from their association with Levy Pants. Miss Trixie worked for Mr. Levy's late father, a fine old gentleman."

"Yes, a fine old gentleman," Miss Trixie said, unable to remember the elder Mr. Levy at all anymore. "He treated me well. Always had a kind word, that man."

"Thank you, Miss Trixie," Mr. Gonzalez said quickly, like a master of ceremonies trying to end a variety act that had failed horribly.

"The company says it's going to give me a nice boiled ham for Easter," Miss Trixie told Ignatius. "I certainly hope so. They forgot all about my Thanksgiving turkey."

"Miss Trixie has stood by Levy Pants through the years," the office manager explained while the ancient assistant accountant babbled something else about the turkey.

"I've been waiting for years to retire, but every year they say I have one more to go. They work you till you drop," Miss Trixie wheezed. Then losing interest in retirement, she added,

"I could have used that turkey."

She began sorting through one of her bags.

"Can you begin work today?" Mr. Gonzalez asked Ignatius.

"I don't believe that we have discussed anything concerning salary and so forth. Isn't that the normal procedure at this time?" Ignatius asked condescendingly.

"Well, the filing job, which is the one you'll have because we really need someone on the files, pays sixty dollars a week.

Any days that you are absent due to sickness, et cetera, are deducted from your weekly wage."

"That is certainly far below the wage that I had expected."

Ignatius sounded abnormally important. "I have a valve which is subject to vicissitudes which may force me to lie abed on certain days. Several more attractive organizations are currently vying for my services. I must consider them first."

"But listen," the office manager said confidentially. "Miss Trixie here earns only forty dollars a week, and she does have some seniority."

"She does look rather worn," Ignatius said, watching Miss Trixie spread the contents of her bag on her desk and sort through the scraps. "Isn't she past retirement?"

“Sshh," Mr. Gonzalez hissed. "Mrs. Levy won't let us retire her. She thinks it's better for Miss Trixie to keep active. Mrs.

Levy is a brilliant, educated woman. She's taken a correspondence course in psychology." Mr. Gonzalez let this sink in. "Now, to return to your prospects, you are very fortunate to start with the salary I quoted. This is all part of the Levy Pants Plan to attract new blood into the company. Miss Trixie, unfortunately, was hired before the plan went into effect. It was not retroactive, and therefore doesn't cover her."

"I hate to disappoint you, sir, but I am afraid that the salary is not adequate. An oil magnate is currently dangling thousands before me trying to tempt me to be his personal secretary. At the moment, I am trying to decide whether I can accept the man's materialistic worldview. I suspect that I am going to finally tell him, 'Yes.' "

"We'll include twenty cents a day for carfare," Mr. Gonzalez pleaded.

"Well. That does change things," Ignatius conceded. "I shall take the job temporarily. I must admit that the 'Levy Pants Plan' rather attracts me."

"Oh, that's wonderful," Mr. Gonzalez blurted. "He'll love it here, won't he, Miss Trixie?"

Miss Trixie was too preoccupied with her scraps to reply.

"I find it strange that you have not even asked for my name,"

Ignatius snorted.

"Oh, my goodness. I completely forgot about that. Who are you?"

That day one other office worker, the stenographer, appeared.

One woman telephoned to say that she had decided to quit and go on relief instead. The others did not contact Levy Pants at all.

*************

"Who wanna look at all that crap?"

"I told you to take the glasses off, Jones."

"The glasses stayin on. "Jones bumped the push broom into a bar stool. "For twenty dollar a week, you ain running a plantation in here."

Lana Lee started snapping a rubber band around the pile of bills and making little piles of nickels that she was taking out of the cash register.

"Stop knocking that broom against the bar," she screamed.

"Goddamit to hell, you making me nervous."

"You want quiet sweeping, you get you a old lady. I sweep yawng."

The broom bumped against the bar several more times. Then the cloud of smoke and the broom moved off across the floor.

"You oughta tell your customer use they ashtray, tell them peoples you workin a man in here below the minimal wage.

Maybe they be a little considerate."

"You better be glad I'm giving you a chance, boy," Lana Lee said. "There's plenty colored boys looking for wo'rk these days."

"Yeah, and they's plenty color boy turnin vagran, too, when they see what kinda wage peoples offerin. Sometime I think if you color, it better to be a vagran."

"You better be glad you're working."

"Ever night I'm fallin on my knee."

The broom bumped against a table.

"Let me know when you finish with that sweeping," Lana Lee said. "I got a little errand I want you to run for me."

"Erran? Hey! I thought this a sweepin and moppin job." Jones blew out a cumulus formation. "What this erran shit?"

"Listen here, Jones," Lana Lee dumped a pile of nickels into the cash register and wrote down a figure on a sheet of paper.

"All I gotta do is phone the police and report you're out of work. You understand me?"

"And I tell the po-lice the Night of Joy a glorify cathouse. I fall in a trap when I come to work in this place. Whoa! Now I jus waitin to get some kinda evidence. When I do, I really gonna flap my mouth at the precinct."

"Watch your tongue."

"Times changin," Jones said, adjusting his sunglasses. "You cain scare color peoples no more. I got me some peoples form a human chain in front your door, drive away your business, get you on the TV news. Color peoples took enough horseshit already, and for twenty dollar a week you ain piling no more on. I getting pretty tire of bein vagran or workin below the minimal wage. Get somebody else run your erran."

"Aw, knock it off and finish my floor. I'll get Darlene to go."

"That po gal." Jones explored a booth with the broom.

"Hustlin water, runnin erran. Whoa!"

"Ring up the precinct about her. She's a B-drinker."

"I waitin till I can ring up the precinct about you. Darlene don wanna be a B-drinker. She force to be a B-drinker. She say she wanna go in show biz."

"Yeah? Well, with the brains that girl's got she's lucky they haven't shipped her off to the funny farm."

"She be better off there."

"She'd be better off if she just put that mind of hers to selling my liquor and quit with the dancing crap. I can just imagine what somebody like her would do on my stage. Darlene's the kinda person ruin your investment if you don't watch her."

The padded door banged open and a young boy clicked into the bar, scraping the metal taps on his flamenco boots across the floor.

"Well, it's about time," Lana said to him.

"You got a new jig, huh?" The boy looked out at Jones through his swirls of oiled hair. "What happened to the last one? He die or something?"

"Honey," said Lana blandly.

The boy opened a flashy hand-tooled wallet and gave Lana a number of bills.

"Everything went okay, George?" she asked him. "The orphans liked them?"

"They liked the one on the desk with the glasses on. They thought it was some kinda teacher or something. I want only that one this time."

"You think they want another like that?" Lana asked with interest.

"Yeah. Why not? Maybe one with a blackboard and a book.

You know. Doing something with a piece of chalk."

The boy and Lana smiled at each other.

"I get the picture," Lana said and winked.

"Hey, you a junkie?" the boy called to Jones. "You look like a junkie to me."

"You be lookin pretty junky with a Night of Joy broom stickin out your ass, "Jones said very slowly. "Night of Joy broom old, they good and splintery."

"Okay, okay," Lana screamed. "I don't want a race riot in here.

I got an investment to protect."

"You better tell your little ofay kid friend move along." Jones blew some smoke on the two. "I ain takin no insult with this kinda job."

"Come on, George," Lana said. She opened the cabinet under the bar and gave George a package wrapped in brown paper.

"This is the one you want. Now go on. Beat it."

George winked at her and banged out the door.

"That suppose to be a messenger for the orphans?" Jones asked. "I like to see the orphans he operatin for. I bet the United Fun don know about them orphans."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Lana asked angrily. She studied Jones's face, but the glasses prevented her reading anything there. "There's nothing wrong with a little charity.

Now get back on my floor."

Lana started to make sounds, like the imprecations of a priestess, over the bills that the boy had given her. Whispered numerals and words floated upward from her coral lips, and, closing her eyes, she copied some figures onto a pad of paper.

Her fine body, itself a profitable investment through the years, bent reverently over the formica top altar. Smoke, like incense, rose from the cigarette in the ashtray at her elbow, curling upward with her prayers, up above the host which she was elevating in order to study the date of its minting, the single silver dollar that lay among the offerings. Her bracelet tinkled, calling communicants to the altar, but the only one in the temple had been excommunicated from the Faith because of his parentage and continued mopping. An offering fell to the floor, the host, and Lana knelt to venerate and retrieve it.

"Hey, watch out," Jones called, violating the sanctity of the rite. "You droppin your profit from the orphans, butterfinger."

"Did you see where it went to, Jones?" she asked. "See if you can find it."

Jones rested his mop against the bar and scouted for the coin, squinting through his sunglasses and smoke.

"Ain this the shit," he mumbled to himself while the two searched the floor. "Ooo-wee!"

"I found it," Lana said emotionally. "I got it."

"Whoa! I'm sure glad you did. Hey! You better not be droppin silver dollars on the floor like that, Night of Joy be going bankrup. You be havin trouble meetin that big payroll."

"And why don't you try keeping your mouth shut, boy?"

"Say, who you callin 'boy'?" Jones took the handle of the broom and pushed vigorously toward the altar. "You ain Scarla O'Horror."

Ignatius eased himself into the taxi and gave the driver the Constantinople Street address. From the pocket of his overcoat he took a sheet of Levy Pants stationery, and borrowing the driver's clipboard for a desk, he began to write as the taxi joined the dense traffic on St. Claude Avenue.

I am really quite fatigued as my first working day draws to a close. I do not wish to suggest, hoXvever, that I am disheartened or depressed or defeated. For the first time in my life I have met the system face to face, fully determined to function within its context as an observer and critic in disguise, so to speak. Were there more firms like Levy Pants, I do believe that America's working forces would be better adjusted to their tasks. The obviously reliable worker is completely unmolested. Mr. Gonzalez, my "boss," is rather a cretin, but is nonetheless quite pleasant. He seems eternally apprehensive; certainly too apprehensive to criticize any worker's performance of duty. Actually, he will accept anything, almost, and is therefore appealingly democratic in his retarded way. As an example of this, Miss Trixie, our Earth Mother of the world of commerce, inadvertently set flame to some important orders in the process of lighting a heater. Mr.

Gonzalez was quite tolerant of this gaffe when one considers that the company of late has been receiving fewer and fewer orders and that the orders were a demand from Kansas City for some five hundred dollars ($500!) worth of our product. We must remember, though, that Mr. Gonzalez is under orders from that mysterious tycooness, the reputedly brilliant and learned Mrs. Levy, to treat Miss Trixie well and to make her feel active and wanted. But he has also been most courteous to me, permitting me to have my will among the files.

I intend to draw Miss Trixie out rather shortly; I suspect that this Medusa of capitalism has many valuable insights and more than one pithy observation to offer.

The only sour note-and here I degenerate into slang to more properly set the mood for the creature whom I am about to discuss-was Gloria, the stenographer, a young and brazen tart.

Her mind was reeling with misconceptions and abysmal value judgments. After she had made one or two bold and unsolicited comments about my person and bearing, I drew.

Mr. Gonzalez aside to tell him that Gloria was planning to quit without notice at the end of the day. Mr. Gonzalez, thereupon, grew quite manic and fired Gloria immediately, affording himself an opportunity at authority which, I could see, he rarely enjoyed. Actually, it was the awful sound of Gloria's stake-like heels that led me to do what I did. Another day of that clatter would have sealed my valve for good. Then, too, there was all of that mascara and lipstick and other vulgarities which I would rather not catalogue.

I have many plans for my filing department and have taken-from among the many empty ones-a desk near a window.

There I sat with my little gas heater at full force throughout the afternoon, watching the ships from many an exotic port steaming through the cold, dark waters of the harbor. Miss Trixie's light snore and the furious typing of Mr. Gonzalez provided a pleasant counterpoint to my reflections.