John Toole - A Confederacy of Dunces

“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 work 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, however, 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.