A Confederacy of Dunces (42 page)

The room itself was what decorators would probably call severe. The walls and high ceilings were white, and the room itself was sparsely furnished with a few pieces of antique furniture. The only voluptuous element in the large room was the champagne-colored velvet drapes tied back with white ribbons. The two or three antique chairs had apparently been chosen for their bizarre design and not for their ability to seat anyone, for they were delicate suggestions, hints at furniture with cushions barely capable of accommodating a child. A human in such a room was expected not to rest or sit or even relax, but rather pose, thereby transforming himself into a human furnishing that would complement the decor as well as possible.

After Ignatius had studied the decor, he said to Dorian, "The only functional item in here is that phonograph, and that is obviously being misused. This is a room with no soul." He snorted loudly, in part over the room and in part over the fact that no one in the room had even noticed him, even though he complemented the decor as well as a neon sign would have.

The participants in the kickoff rally seemed much more concerned about their own private fates this evening than they were about the fate of the world. "I notice that no one in this whitened sepulcher of a room has so much as even looked at us. They haven't even nodded to their host, whose liquor they are consuming and whose year-round air conditioning they are taxing with all of those overpowering colognes. I feel rather like an observer at a catfight."

"Don't worry about them. They've been simply dying for a good party for months. Come. You must see the decoration that I've made." He took Ignatius over to the mantelpiece and showed him a bud vase containing one red, one white, and one blue rose. "Isn't that wild? It's better than all of that tacky crepe paper. I did buy some crepe paper, but nothing that I could do with it satisfied me."

"This is a floral abortion," Ignatius commented irritably and tapped the vase with his cutlass. "Dyed Bowers are unnatural and perverse and, I suspect, obscene also. I can see that I am going to have my hands full with you people."

"Oh, talk, talk, talk," Dorian moaned. "Then let's go into the kitchen. I want you to meet the ladies' auxiliary."

"Is that true? An auxiliary?" Ignatius asked greedily. "Well, I must compliment you upon your fore-sightedness."

They entered the kitchen where, except for two young men who were having an emotional argument in a corner, all was quiet. Seated at a table were three women drinking from beer cans. They regarded Ignatius squarely. The one who was crushing a beer can in her hand stopped and tossed the can into a potted plant next to the sink.

"Girls," Dorian said. The three beer girls raised a raucous Bronx cheer. "This is Ignatius Reilly, a new face."

"Put it there, Fats," the girl who had been crushing the can said. She grabbed Ignatius's paw and worked it over as if it, too, were a prospect for crushing.

"Oh, my God!" Ignatius screamed. "That's Frieda," Dorian explained. "And they're Betty and Liz."

"How do you do," Ignatius said, slipping his hands into the pockets of his smock to prevent any further handshaking. "I'm sure that you'll be of invaluable help to our cause."

"Where did you pick him up?" Frieda asked Dorian while her two companions studied Ignatius and nudged each other.

"Mr. Greene and I met through my mother," Ignatius answered grandly for Dorian.

"No kidding," Frieda said. "Your mother must be a very interesting person."

"Hardly," Ignatius replied.

"Well, grab yourself a beer, Tubby," Frieda said. "I wish we had it in bottles. Betty here could open you one with her teeth.

She's got teeth like an iron claw." Betty made an obscene gesture at Frieda. "And one of these days she's going to get them all knocked down her fucking throat."

Betty hit Frieda on the head with an empty can. "You're asking for it," Frieda said, raising one of the kitchen chairs.

"Now stop it," Dorian spat. "If you three can't behave, you can just leave right now."

"Personally," Liz said, "we're getting very bored just sitting here in the kitchen."

"Yeah," Betty screamed. She grabbed a rung of the chair that Frieda was holding over her head, and she and Frieda began wrestling for possession of it. "How come we have to sit out here?"

"Put that chair down this minute," Dorian said.

"Yes, please," Ignatius added. He had retreated to a corner.

"Someone will be injured."

"Like you," Liz said. She heaved an unopened beer can at Ignatius, who ducked.

"Good heavens!" Ignatius said. "I think I shall return to the other room."

"Beat it, bigass," Liz said to him. "You're using up all the air in here."

"Girls!" Dorian was screaming at the wrestling Frieda and Betty, whose T-shirts were growing damp. They were huffing and heaving around the room with the chair, mashing each other against the wall and sink.

"Okay, cut it out," Liz screamed at her friends. "These people are going to think you're crude."

She picked up another chair and got between the two contestants. Then she slammed her chair down onto the one that Frieda and Betty were wrestling over, knocking the girls aside. The two chairs rattled and clattered to the floor.

"Who told you to butt in?" Frieda demanded of Liz, grabbing her by her cropped hair.

Dorian, stumbling over the chairs, tried to push the girls back to the table, snapping, "Now sit down there and be decent."

"This party stinks," Betty said. "Where's the action?"

"How come you invited us down here if all we're gonna do is sit here in this frigging kitchen?" Frieda demanded.

"You'll only start brawling in there. You know it. I thought it would be a neighborly thing to do to ask you down out of courtesy. I don't want any trouble. This is the nicest party we've had in months."

"Okay," Frieda growled. "We'll sit out here like ladies." The girls punched one another about the arms in agreement. "After all, we're only paying tenants. Go in there and be nice to that phony cowboy, the one that sounds like Jeanette MacDonald, the one that tried to bitch us on Chartres Street the other day."

"He's a very fine and friendly person," Dorian said. "I'm sure he didn't see you girls."

"He saw us all right," Betty said. "We copped him on the head."

"I'd like to kick his superior balls in," Liz said.

"Please," Ignatius said importantly. "All I see about me is strife. You must close ranks and present a unified front."

"What's with him?" Liz asked, opening the beer can she had thrown at Ignatius. A spray of foam shot out and wet Ignatius on his distended Paradise product stomach.

"Well, I've had enough of this," Ignatius said angrily.

"Good," Frieda said. "Shove off."

"The kitchen is our territory tonight," Betty said. "We decide who uses it."

"I certainly am interested in seeing the first sherry party that the auxiliary gives," Ignatius snorted and lumbered to the door. As he was exiting, an empty beer can struck the door frame near his earring. Dorian followed him out and closed the door. "I can't imagine how you decided to besmirch the movement by inviting those rowdies here."

"I had to," Dorian explained. "If you don't invite them to a party, they break in anyway. Then they're even worse. They're really fun girls when they're in a good mood, but they had some trouble with the police recently, and they're taking it out on everyone."

"They shall be dropped from the movement immediately!"

"Anything you say, Magyara," Dorian sighed. "I myself feel a little sorry for the girls. They used to live in California, where they had a grand time. Then there was an incident about assaulting a bodybuilder at Muscle Beach. They had been Indian arm wrestling with the boy, or so they say, and then it seems that things got out of hand. They literally had to flee southern California and dash across the desert in that magnificent German automobile of theirs. I have given them sanctuary. In many respects they're wonderful tenants. They guard my building better than any watchdog could. They have loads of money that they get from some aging movie queen."

"Really?" Ignatius asked with interest. "Perhaps I was hasty about dropping them. Political movements must get their money from whatever source they can. The girls have, no doubt, a charm which their blue jeans and boots obscure." He looked over the seething mass of guests. "You must get these people quiet. We must bring them to order. There is crucial business at hand."

The cowboy, the phony bitch, was tickling an elegant guest with his riding crop. The black leather lout was pinning an ecstatic guest to the floor. Everywhere there were screams, sighs, shrieks. Lena Home was now singing within the phonograph. "Clever," "Crisp," "Terribly cosmo," the group around the phonograph was saying reverently. The cowboy broke away from his aroused fans and began to synchronize his lips to the lyrics on the record, slinking around the floor like a chanteuse in boots and Stetson. With a barrage of squeals, the guests gathered around him, leaving the black leather lout with no one to torture.

"You must stop all of this," Ignatius shouted to Dorian, who was winking at the cowboy. "Aside from the fact that I am witnessing a most egregious offense against taste and decency, I am also beginning to smother from the stench of glandular emissions and cologne."

"Oh, don't be so drab. They're just having fun."

"I am very sorry," Ignatius said in a businesslike tone. "I am here tonight on a mission of the utmost seriousness. There is a girl who must be attended to, a bold and forward minx of a trollop. Now turn off that offensive music and quiet these sodomites. We must get down to brass tacks."

"I thought you were going to be fun. If you're just going to be tacky and dreary, then you'd better leave."

"I shall not leave! No one can deter me. Peace! Peace! Peace!"

"Oh, dear. You are serious about this, aren't you?" Ignatius broke away from Dorian and rushed across the room, pushing through the elegant guests, and unplugged the phonograph. As he turned around, he was greeted by the guests' emasculated version of an Apache war cry.

"Beast." "Madman." "Is this what Dorian promised?" "That fantastic Lena." "The outfit-grotesque. And that earring. Oh, my." "That was my very favorite song." "Horrible." "How unbelievably gross." "So monstrously huge." "A bad, bad dream."

"Silence!" Ignatius bellowed over their enraged babbling. "I am here tonight my friends, to show you how you may save the world and bring peace."

"He's truly mad." "Dorian, what a bad joke." "Where in the world did he come from?" "Not even vaguely attractive."

"Filthy." "Depressing." "Someone turn on that delicious record again.-"

"The challenge," Ignatius continued at full volume, "is placed before you. Will you turn your singular talents to saving the world, or will you simply turn your backs on your fellow man?"

"Oh, how awful!" "Not at all amusing." "I'll have to leave if this tacky charade continues." "In such poor taste." "Someone turn on that record again. Dear, dear Lena." "Where is my coat?" "Let's go to a smart bar." "Look, I've spilled my martini on my most priceless jacket." "Let's go to a smart bar."

"The world today is in a state of grave unrest," Ignatius screamed against the mewing and hissing. He paused for a moment to glance down in his pocket at some notes he had scribbled on a piece of Big Chief paper. Instead he pulled out the torn and dog-eared photograph of Miss O'Hara. Several guests saw it and shrieked. "We must prevent the apocalypse.

We must fight fire with fire. Therefore, I turn to you."

"Oh, what in heaven's name is he talking about?" "This is making me so depressed." "Those eyes, they're frightening."

"Let's go to a smart bar." "Let's go to San Francisco."

"Silence, you perverts!" Ignatius cried. "Listen to me."

"Dorian," the cowboy pleaded in a lyric soprano. "Make him keep quiet. We were having such fun, such a grand, gay time.

Oh, he's not even amusing."

"That's right," an extremely elegant guest, whose taut face was brown with suntan makeup, said. "He's truly awful. So depressing."

"Must we listen to all of this?" another guest asked, waving his cigarette as if it were a magic wand which would make Ignatius disappear. "Is this a trick of some kind, Dorian? You know that we dearly love parties with a motif, but this. I mean, I never even watch the news on television. I've been working all day in that shop, and I don't want to come to a party and have to hear all of this sort of thing. Let him talk later if he really has to. His remarks are in such terrible taste."

"So inappropriate," the black leather lout sighed, turning suddenly fey.

"All right," Dorian said. "Turn on the record. I thought it might be fun." He looked at Ignatius, who was snorting loudly.

"I'm afraid, my dears, that it turned out to be a terrible, terrible bomb."

"Wonderful." "Dorian's magnificent." "There's the plug." "I love Lena." "I truly think that this is her very best recording."

"So smart. Those special lyrics." "I saw her in New York once.

Magnificent." "Play Gypsy next. I adore Ethel." "Oh, good, it's coming on."

There Ignatius stood like the boy on the burning deck. The music rose from the tabernacle once again. Dorian fled to speak with a group of his guests, actively ignoring Ignatius, as was everyone else in the room. Ignatius felt as alone as he had felt on that dark day in high school when in a chemistry laboratory his experiment had exploded, burning his eyebrows off and frightening him. The shock and terror had made him wet his pants, and no one in the laboratory would notice him, not even the instructor, who hated him sincerely for similar explosions in the past. For the remainder of that day, as he walked soggily around the school, everyone had pretended that he was invisible. Ignatius, feeling just as invisible standing there in Dorian's living room, began feinting at some imaginary opponent with his cutlass to relieve his self-consciousness.

Many were now singing with the record. Two began dancing near the phonograph. The dancing spread like a forest fire, and soon the floor was filled with couples who swayed and dipped around the Gibraltar of a wallflower, Ignatius. As Dorian swept past in the arms of the cowboy, Ignatius tried futilely to attract his attention. He attempted even to stick the cowboy with his cutlass, but the two were a wily and elusive dance team. Just as he was about to evanesce completely, Frieda, Liz, and Betty burst in from the kitchen.