A Confederacy of Dunces (20 page)

"Ignatius! So you got yourself fired."

"Please, Mother, I am near the breaking point." Ignatius stuck the bottle of Dr. Nut under his moustache and drank noisily, making great sounds of sucking and gurgling. "If you are planning now to be a harpy, I shall certainly be pushed over the brink."

"A little job in a office and you can't hold it down. With all your education."

"I was hated and resented," Ignatius said, casting a hurt expression at the brown walls of the kitchen. He pulled his tongue from the mouth of the bottle with a thump and belched some Dr. Nut. "Ultimately it was all Myrna Minkoff's fault.

You know how she makes trouble."

"Myrna Minkoff? Don't gimme that foolishness, Ignatius. That girl's in New York. I know you, boy. You musta really pulled some boo-boos at that Levy Pants."

"My excellence confused them."

"Gimme that paper, Ignatius. We gonna take a look at them want ads."

"Is that true?" Ignatius thundered. "Am I going to be thrown out again into the abyss? Apparently you have bowled all the charity out of your soul. I must have at least a week in bed, with service, before I shall again be whole."

"Speaking of bed, what happened to your sheet, boy?"

"I certainly wouldn't know. Perhaps it was stolen. I have warned you about intruders."

"You mean somebody broke into this house just to take one of your dirty sheets?"

"If you were a bit more conscientious about doing the laundry, the description of that sheet would be somewhat different."

"Okay, hand over that paper, Ignatius."

"Are you really going to attempt to read aloud? I doubt whether my system could bear that trauma at the moment.

Anyway, I am looking at a very interesting article in the science column about mollusks."

Mrs. Reilly snatched the paper from her son, leaving two little scraps of it in his hands.

"Mother! Is this offensive display of ill manners one of the results of your association with those bowling Sicilians?"

"Shut up, Ignatius," his mother said, leafing compulsively toward the classified section of the newspaper. "Tomorrow morning you getting on that St. Charles trolley with the birds."

"Huh?" Ignatius asked absently. He was wondering what he could write to Myrna now. The film seemed to have been ruined, too. Explaining the disaster of the Crusade in a letter would be impossible. "What was that you said, mother of mine?"

"I said you gettin on that trolley with the birds," Mrs. Reilly screamed.

"That sounds appropriate."

"When you come home again, you gonna have you a job."

"Apparently Fortuna has decided upon another downward spin."

"What?"

"Nothing."

Mrs. Levy lay prone on the motorized exercising board, its several sections prodding her ample body gently, nudging and kneading her soft, white flesh like a loving baker. Winding her arms under the table, she held it tightly.

"Oh," she moaned softly and happily, nibbling on the section beneath her face.

"Turn that thing off," her husband's voice said somewhere behind her.

"What?" Mrs. Levy raised her head and looked dreamily around. "What are you doing here? I thought you were staying in town for the races."

"I changed my mind, if it's okay with you."

"Sure, it's okay with me. Do whatever you want. Don't let me tell you what to do. Have yourself a ball. See if I care."

"Pardon me. I'm sorry I tore you away from the board."

"Let's leave the board out of this, if you don't mind."

"Oh, I'm sorry if I insulted it."

"Just leave my board out of it. That's all I said. I'm trying to be nice. I don't start the arguments around here."

"Turn the damn thing on again and shut up. I'm going to take a shower."

"You see? You're very excited over nothing. Don't take all your guilt feelings out on me."

"What guilt feelings? What have I done?"

"You know what it is, Gus. You know how you've thrown your life away. A whole business down the drain. A chance to go nationwide. Your father's sweat and blood handed to you on a silver platter."

"Ugh."

"A growing concern failing."

"Listen, I have a headache from trying to save that business today. That's why I didn't go to the races."

After having fought with his father for almost thirty-five years, Mr. Levy had decided that he would spend the rest of his life trying not to be bothered. But he was bothered every day that he was at Levy's Lodge by his wife simply because she resented his not wanting to be bothered by Levy Pants. And in staying away from Levy Pants, he was bothered even more by the company because something was always going wrong there. It would all be simpler and less bothersome if he really operated Levy Pants and put in an eight-hour day as manager.

But just the name "Levy Pants" gave him heartburn. He associated it with his father.

"What did you do, Gus? Sign a few letters?"

"I fired somebody."

"Really? Big deal. Who? One of the furnace stokers?"

"You remember I told you about that big kook, the one that ass Gonzalez hired?"

"Oh. Him." Mrs. Levy rolled about on the exercising board.

"You should see what he did to that place. Paper streamers hanging from the ceiling. A big cross tacked up in the office.

As soon as I walk in today, he comes up to me and starts complaining that somebody from the factory knocked his bean plants to the floor."

"Bean plants? He thought Levy Pants was a truck garden?"

"Who knows what went on in that head. He wants me to fire the one who knocked over his plants and this other guy he says cut up his sign. He says the factory workers are a bunch of rowdies who have no respect for him. He says they're out to get him. So I go back in the factory to find Palermo, who of course is not there, and what do I find? All those workers have bricks and chains lying all over the place. They're all very emotionally worked up, and they tell me this guy Reilly, that's the big slob, made them bring all that crap so they could attack the office and beat up Gonzalez."

"What?"

"He'd been telling them they were underpaid and overworked."

"I think he's right," Mrs. Levy said. "Just yesterday Susan and Sandra wrote something about that in their letter. Their little friends at college told them that, from what they'd said about their father, he sounded like a plantation owner living on slave labor. The girls were very excited. I meant to mention it to you, but I had so much trouble with that new hair designer that it slipped my mind. They want you to raise the salaries of those poor people or they won't come home again."

"Who do those two think they are?"

"They think they're your daughters, in case you forgot. All they want is to respect you. They said you have to improve conditions at Levy Pants if you want to see them again."

"What's their big interest in colored people all of a sudden?

The young men gave out already?"

"Now you're attacking the girls again. You see what I mean?

That's why I can't respect you either. If one of your daughters was a horse and the other a baseball player, you couldn't do enough for them."

"If one of them was a horse and the other a baseball player, we'd be better off, believe me. They could turn in a profit."

"I'm sorry," Mrs. Levy said, flipping the board on again. "I can't listen to any more of this. I'm too disillusioned already.

I'll hardly be able to bring myself to write the girls about this."

Mr. Levy had seen his wife's letters to the girls, emotional, irrational brainwashing editorials that could have made Patrick Henry out to be a Tory, that brought the girls home on holidays bristling with hostility against their father for the thousands of injustices he had committed against their mother.

With him cast as a Klansman firing a young crusader, Mrs.

Levy could really write a flaming broadside. The material at hand was too good.

"This guy was a real psycho," Mr. Levy said.

"To you character is a psychosis. Integrity is a complex. I've heard it all before."

"Look, I probably wouldn't have fired him if one of the factory workers hadn't told me he heard this kook is wanted by the police. That really made up my mind fast. I have enough trouble with that company without having a kooky police character working in there."

"Don't give me that. It's too typical. To somebody like you, crusaders and idealists are always beatniks and criminals. It's your defense against them. But thanks for telling me. It will add to the realism of the letter."

"I've never fired anybody in my life," Mr. Levy said. "But I can't keep somebody the police are looking for. We might get in trouble."

"Please." Mrs. Levy gestured warningly from her board. "That young idealist must be floundering somewhere at this very moment. It will break the girls' hearts, just as it's breaking mine. I'm a woman of great character and integrity and refinement. You've never appreciated that. I've been debased through my association with you. You've made everything seem so cheap, me included. I've become very hardened."

"So I ruined you too, huh?"

"I was a very warm and loving girl at one time with high hopes. The girls knew that. I thought you'd make Levy Pants nationwide." Mrs. Levy's head bounced up and down, up and down. "Look. Now it's just a little run-down concern with a few outlets. Your daughters are disillusioned. I'm disillusioned. That young man you fired is disillusioned."

"You want me to kill myself?"

"You make your own decisions. You always have. I've just existed for your pleasure. I'm just another old sports car. Use me when you wish. I don't care."

"Oh, shut up. Nobody wants to use you for anything."

"You see that? You're always attacking. It's insecurity, guilt complexes, hostility. If you were proud of yourself and of the way you treat other people, you'd be pleasant. Just take Miss Trixie as another example. Look at what you've done to her."

"I've never done anything to that woman."

"That's just it. She's alone, afraid."

"She's almost dead."

"Since Susan and Sandra are gone, I feel a guilt complex myself. What am I doing? Where is my project? I am a woman of interests, ideals." Mrs. Levy sighed. "I feel so useless.

You've caged me in with hundreds of material objects that don't satisfy the real me." Her bouncing eyes looked coldly at her husband. "Bring me Miss Trixie and I won't write that letter."

"What? I don't want that senile bag out here. Whatever happened to your bridge club? The last time you didn't write a letter you got a new dress. Settle for that. I'll buy you a ball gown."

"It's not enough that I've kept that woman active. She needs personal help."

"You've already used her as a guinea pig for that correspondence course you took. Why not let her alone. Let Gonzalez retire her."

"Do that and you'll kill her. Then she'll really feel unwanted.

You'll have a death on your hands."

"Oh, boy."

"When I think of my own mother. On the beach in San Juan every winter. A tan, a bikini. Dancing, swimming, laughing.

Boyfriends."

"She has heart failure every time a wave knocks her down.

What she doesn't lose in the casinos she spends on the house doctor at the Caribe Hilton."

"You don't like my mother because she's on to you. She was right. I should have married a doctor, somebody with ideals."

Mrs. Levy bounced sadly. "It really doesn't matter to me very much anymore. Suffering has only strengthened me."

"How much would you suffer if somebody pulled the wires out of that goddam exercising board?"

"I told you already," Mrs. Levy said angrily. "Leave the board out of this. Your hostility's getting the upper hand. Take my advice, Gus. Go see that analyst in the Medical Arts building, the one that helped Lenny pull his jewelry shop out of the red.

He cured Lenny of that complex he had about selling rosaries.

Lenny swears by that doctor. Now he's got some kind of exclusive agreement with a bunch of nuns who peddle the rosaries in about forty Catholic schools all over the city. The money's rolling in. Lenny's happy. The sisters are happy. The kids are happy."

"That sounds great."

"Lenny's put in a beautiful line of statues and religious accessories."

"I bet he's happy."

"He is. You should be the same. Go see that doctor before it's too late, Gus. For the girls' sake you should be helped. I don't care."

"I'm sure you don't."

"You're a very mixed-up person. Sandra, personally, is much happier since she was psychoanalyzed. Some doctor at the college helped her out."

"I'm sure he did."

"Sandra may have a setback when she hears of what you did to that young activist. I know the girls will at last turn against you completely. They're warm and compassionate, just like I was before I was brutalized."

"Brutalized?"

"Please. Not another word of sarcasm." An aquamarine-nailed gesture warned from the bouncing and undulating board. "Do I get Miss Trixie or do the girls get the letter?"

"You get Miss Trixie," Mr. Levy said finally. "You'll probably try to bounce her on that board and break her hip."

"Leave the board out of this!"

Seven

Paradise Vendors, Incorporated, was housed in what had formerly been an automobile repair shop, the dark ground floor of an otherwise unoccupied commercial building on Poydras Street. The garage doors were usually open, giving the passerby an acrid nostrilful of boiling hot dogs and mustard and also of cement soaked over many years by automobile lubricants and motor oils that had dripped and drained from Harmons and Hupmobiles. The powerful stench of Paradise Vendors, Incorporated, sometimes led the overwhelmed and perplexed stroller to glance through the open door into the darkness of the garage. There his eye fell upon a fleet of large tin hot dogs mounted on bicycle tires. It was hardly an imposing vehicular collection. Several of the mobile hot dogs were badly dented. One crumpled frankfurter lay on its side, its one wheel horizontally above it, a traffic fatality.

Among the afternoon pedestrians who hurried past Paradise Vendors, Incorporated, one formidable figure waddled slowly along. It was Ignatius. Stopping before the narrow garage, he sniffed the fumes from Paradise with great sensory pleasure, the protruding hairs in his nostrils analyzing, cataloging, categorizing, and classifying the distinct odors of hot dog, mustard, and lubricant. Breathing deeply, he wondered whether he also detected the more delicate odor, the fragile scent of hot dog buns. He looked at the white-gloved hands of his Mickey Mouse wristwatch and noticed that he had eaten lunch only an hour before. Still the intriguing aromas were making him salivate actively.