A Confederacy of Dunces (23 page)

"Yeah?"

Lana started to plan the ensemble with the globe, the chalk, and the book. If the thing had commercial possibilities, it should be done with a certain finesse and quality. She envisioned several arrangements that would combine grace and obscenity. There was no need to be too raw. After all, she was appealing to kids.

"Here we come," Darlene called happily from the door. She tripped into the bar in slacks and a pea jacket, carrying a covered birdcage.

"Well, don't plan to stay too long," Lana answered. "I got some news for you and your friend."

Darlene put the cage on the bar and uncovered a huge, scrofulous rose cockatoo that looked, like a used car, as if it had passed through the hands of many owners. The bird's crest dipped, and it cried horribly, "Awwk."

"Okay, get it out, Darlene. You go back to your stool starting tonight."

"Aw, Lana," Darlene moaned. "Whatsa matter? We been doing good in rehearsal. Just wait'll we iron out the kinks. This act is gonna be a boffo smash."

"To tell you the truth, Darlene, I'm afraid of you and that bird."

"Look, Lana." Darlene took off her pea jacket and showed the manager the tiny rings attached to the side of her slacks and blouse with safety pins. "You see these things? That's what's gonna make the act smooth. I been practicing with it in my apartment. It's a new angle. He grabs at those rings with his beak and rips my clothes off. I mean, these rings is just for rehearsal. When I get my costume made, the rings are gonna be sewed on top of a hook and eye so when he grabs, the costume pops open. I'm telling you, Lana. It's gonna be a smash hit sensation."

"Listen, Darlene, it was safer when you just had that goddam thing flying around your head or whatever it did."

"But now it's gonna be a real part of the turn. It's gonna pull..."

"Yeah, and it might pull your tits off. All I need in this place is a goddam accident and a ambulance to drive away my customers and ruin my investment. Or maybe this bird gets it in his head to fly out in the audience and pull out somebody's eyes. No, to be frank, I don't trust you and a bird, Darlene.

Safety first."

"Aw, Lana." Darlene was heartbroken. "Give us a chance. We just getting good."

"No. Beat it. Take that thing off my bar before it takes a shit."

Lana threw the cover over the birdcage. "The you-know-whats are gone and you can go back to your stool."

"I think maybe I'll tell you-know-who about the you-know-whats and make you-know-who scared and quit."

Jones looked up from an advertisement and said, "If you peoples be talkin all this double-talk, I cain read. Whoa. Who the 'you-know-whats' and who 'you-know-who?' "

"Get off that stool, jailbait, and get on my floor."

"That bird been travelin to Night of Joy practicin and tryin,"

Jones said from his cloud, smiling. "Shit. You gotta give it a chance, cain treat it like it's color peoples."

"That's right," Darlene agreed sincerely.

"Since we cuttin off the orphan chariddy and we not extendin it to the porter help, maybe we oughta give a little to a po, strugglin gal gotta hustle on commission. Hey!" Jones had seen the bird flap around on the stage while Darlene tried to dance. He had never seen a worse performance; Darlene and the bird qualified as legitimate sabotage. "Maybe it need a little polishin here and there, a little twistin and rockin, some more slippin and slidin, but I think that ack very good. Ooo-wee."

"You see that?" Darlene said to Lana. "Jones oughta know.

Colored people got plenty rhythm."

"Whoa!"

"I don't wanna scare somebody with a story about some people."

"Oh, shut up, Darlene," Lana screamed.

Jones covered the two with some smoke and said, "I think Darlene and that there bird very unusual. Whoa! I think you be attractin plenny new peoples in this place. What other club got them a ball eagle on the stage?"

"You jerks think there's really a bird trade we could tap?" Lana asked.

"Hey! I sure they a bird trade. White peoples always got parrakeets and canayries they smoochin. Wait till them peoples fin out what kinda bird the Night of Joy offerin. You be havin a doorman in front this place. You be gettin the society trade. Whoa!" Jones created a dangerous-looking nimbus that seemed ready to burst. "Darlene and that bird just gotta eye-rom out a few rough spot. Shit. The gal just startin in show biz. She need a break."

"That's right," Darlene said. "I'm just startin out in show biz. I need a break."

"Shut up, stupid. You think you can get that bird to strip you?"

"Yes, ma'm," Darlene said enthusiastically. "Suddenly it come to me. I was sitting in my apartment watching it play on its

.rings, and I said to myself, 'Darlene, how come you don't stick some rings on your clothes?' "

"Shut your moron up," Lana said. "Okay, let's see what it can do."

"Whoa! Now you talkin. All kinda mother be showin up to see this act."

"Santa, I hadda call you, honey."

"What's wrong, Irene babe?" Mrs. Battaglia's froggy baritone asked feelingly.

"It's Ignatius."

"What he's done now, sweetheart? Tell Santa."

"Wait a minute. Let me see if he's still in that tub." Mrs. Reilly listened apprehensively to the great liquid thrashings coming from the bathroom. One whalelike snort floated out into the hall through the peeling bathroom door. "It's okay. He's still in there. I can't lie to you, Santa. My heart's broke."

"Aw."

"Ignatius comes home about a hour ago dressed up like a butcher."

"Good. He's got him another job, that big fat bum."

"But not in a butcher shop, honey," Mrs. Reilly said, her voice heavy with grief. "He's a hot dog vendor."

"Aw, come on," Santa croaked. "A hot dog vendor? You mean out on the streets?"

"Out on the streets, honey, like a bum."

"Bum is right, girl. Even worst. Read the police notices in the paper sometimes. They all a bunch of vagrants."

"Ain't that awful!"

"Somebody oughta punch that boy in the nose."

"When he first comes in, Santa, he makes me guess what kinda job he's got. First, I guess, 'butcher,' you know?"

"Of course."

"So he says, very insolent, 'Guess again. You ain't even close.'

I keep guessing for about five minutes until I can't think of no more jobs where you'd be wearing one of them white uniforms. Then he finally says, 'Wrong every time. I got me a job selling weenies.' I almost passed out, Santa, right on the kitchen floor. Wouldn't thata been fine, me with my head broke open on the linoleum?"

"He wouldn't care, not that one."

"Not him."

"Never in a million years."

"He don't care about his poor momma," Mrs. Reilly said.

"With all his education, mind you. Selling weenies out on the street in the broad daylight."

"So what you told him, girl?"

"I didn't tell him nothing. By the time I got my mouth open, he runs off to the bathroom. He's still locked up in there splashing water all over the floor."

"Hold on a minute, Irene. I got one of my little grandchirren over here for the day," Santa said and screamed at someone at her end of the line: "Get the hell away from that stove, Charmaine, and go play out on the banquette before I bust you right in the mouth."

A child's voice made some reply.

"Lord," Santa continued calmly to Mrs. Reilly. "Them kids is sweet, but sometimes I just don't know. Charmaine! Get the hell outside and go play on your bike before I come slap your face off. Hold the line, Irene."

Mrs. Reilly heard Santa put the telephone down. Then a child screamed, a door slammed, and Santa was back on the line.

"Christ, I tell you true, Irene, that child won't listen to nobody!

I'm trying to cook her some spaghettis and daube, and she keeps on playing in my pot. I wish them sisters at her school would beat up on her a little. You know Angelo. You shoulda seen how them sisters beat up on him when he was a kid. One sister throwed him right into a blackboard. That's how come Angelo's such a sweet, considerate man today."

"The sisters loved Ignatius. He was such a darling child. He used to win all them little holy pictures for knowing his catechism."

"Them sisters shoulda knocked his head in."

"When he useta come home with all them little holy pictures,"

Mrs. Reilly sniffed, "I sure never thought then he'd end up selling weenies in the broad daylight." Mrs. Reilly coughed nervously and violently into the telephone. "But tell me, sweetheart, how Angelo's making out?"

"His wife Rita rings me up a little while ago to tell me she thinks he's coming down with pneumonia from being stuck in that toilet all the time. I tell you true, Irene, that Angelo's getting as pale as a ghost. The cops sure don't treat that boy right. He loves the force. When he graduated from the cops'

academy, you woulda thought he just made it outta the Ivory League. He was sure proud."

"Yeah, poor Angelo looks bad," Mrs. Reilly agreed. "He's got him a bad cough, that boy. Well, maybe he'll feel a little better after he reads that thing Ignatius give me to give him. Ignatius says it's inspirational literature."

"Yeah? I wouldn't trust no 'inspirational literature' I got from that Ignatius. It's prolly fulla dirty stories."

"Suppose somebody I know sees him with one of them wagons."

"Don't be ashamed, babe. It ain't your fault you got a brat on your hands," Santa grunted. "What you need is a man in that house, girl, to set that boy straight. I'm gonna find that nice old man ast about you."

"I don't want a nice old man. All I want is a nice child."

"Don't you worry. Just leave it to Santa. I'll fix you up. The man runs the fish market says he don't know the man's name.

But I'll find out. As a matter of fact, I think I seen him walking down St. Ferdinand Street the other day."

"He ast about me?"

"Well, Irene, I mean I didn't get a chance to talk to him. I don't even know if it was the same man."

"You see that? That old man don't care neither."

"Don't talk like that, girl. I'll ask over by the beer parlor. I'll hang around Sunday mass. I'll find out his name."

"That old man don't care for me."

"Irene, they's no harm in meeting him."

"I got enough problems with Ignatius. It's the disgrace, Santa.

Suppose Miss Annie, the next door lady, sees him with one of them wagons. She's awready about to get us put under a peace bond. She's all the time spying in that alley behind her shutters."

"You can't worry about people, Irene," Santa advised. "The people on my block got dirty mouths. If you can live down here in St. Odo of Cluny Parish, you can live anyplace.

Vicious is the word, believe me. I got one woman on my block's gonna get a brick right in her face if she don't shut up about me. Somebody told me she's been calling me a 'merry widow.' But don't you worry. I'm gonna get her good. I think she's running with some man works at the shipyards, anyways.

I think I'm gonna write her husband a little anonymous letter to straighten out that girl."

"I know what it is, sugar. Remember I lived down there on Dauphine when I was a girl. The anonymous letters my poppa useta get . . . about me. Vicious. I always thought my cousin, that poor spinster girl, was writing them."

"Which cousin was that?" Santa asked with interest. Irene Reilly's relatives always had gory biographies that were worth hearing.

"That was the one knocked a pot of berling water on her arm when she was a child. She was kinda scalded looking. You know what I mean? I always seen her writing away at the kitchen table at her momma's house. She was prolly writing about me. She was very jealous when Mr. Reilly started seeing me."

"That's the way it goes," Santa said. A scalded relative was a dull figure in Irene's dramatic gallery. Then she said hoarsely and cheerfully, "I'll have a little party with you and Angelo and his wife, if she'll come."

"Aw, that's sweet, Santa, but I don't feel much like a party these days."

"It'll do you good to shake yourself a little, girl. If I can find out about that old man, I'll invite him over too. You and him can dance."

"Well, if you see the old man, babe, tell him Miss Reilly said,

'Hello.' "

Behind the bathroom door Ignatius was lying passively in the tepid water pushing the plastic soap dish back and forth across the surface with one finger and listening now and then to his mother on the telephone. Occasionally he held the soap dish down until it filled with water and sank. Then he would feel for it on the bottom of the tub, empty it, and sail it again. His blue and yellow eyes rested on an unopened manila envelope on the top of the toilet. For quite a while Ignatius had been trying to decide whether or not he would open the envelope.

The trauma of having found employment had affected his value negatively, and he was waiting until the warm water in which he wallowed like a pink hippopotamus had a calming effect upon his system. Then he would attack the envelope.

Paradise Vendors should prove to be a pleasant employer. He would spend his time parked somewhere by the river accumulating notes for the Journal. Mr. Clyde had a certain paternal quality that Ignatius liked; the old man, the scarred and wizened mogul of the frankfurter, would be a welcome new character in the Journal.

At last Ignatius felt relaxed enough and, raising his dripping hulk out of the water, picked up the envelope.

"Why must she use this sort of envelope?" he asked angrily, studying the little circle of a Planetarium Station, New York, postmark on the thick tan paper. "The contents are probably written in marking pencilor worse."

He tore the envelope open, wetting the paper, and pulled out a folded poster that said in large letters:

LECTURE! LECTURE!

M. Minkoff speaks boldly about

"Sex in Politics: Erotic Liberty

as a Weapon Against Reactionaries"

8 p.m. Thursday, the 28th Y.M.H.A. - Grand Concourse Admission: $1.00 - OR - Sign M. Minkoff's Petition Which Aggressively Demands More and Better Sex for All and a Crash Program for Minorities! (The petition will be mailed to Washington.) Sign now and save America from sexual ignorance, chastity, and fear. Are you committed enough to help in this bold and crucial movement?