John Toole - A Confederacy of Dunces

“That’s great,” Darlene said.

“That’s drama,” Lana corrected. “Okay, let’s give it a try. Music, maestro.”

“Whoa! Now we really back on the plantation.” Jones slid the needle across the first few grooves of the record. “I’m pretty stupor to open my mouth in this miser cathouse.”

Darlene minced out on the stage, sashaying demurely, and making a rosebud of her mouth, said, “There sure was plenty balls at that beau, honey, but…”

“Stop!” Lana hollered.

“Give me a chance,” Darlene pleaded. “It’s my first time. I been practicing being an exotic, not a actress.”

“You can’t remember one simple line like that?”

“Darlene got Night of Joy nerves.” Jones clouded the area in front of the stage. “It come from low wage and high intimidatia. The bird be gettin it, too, pretty soon, be snarlin and clawin and fallin off its stan. Whoa!”

“Darlene’s your pal, huh? I see she’s always passing you magazines,” Lana said angrily. This Jones was really starting to get under her lotioned skin. “This act is mostly your idea, Jones. You sure you wanna see her get a chance on the stage?”

“Sure. Whoa! Somebody gotta get ahead in this place. Anyway, this ack got plenny class, bring in a lotta trade. I be gettin a raise. Hey!” Jones smiled a yellow crescent that opened the lower part of his face. “I got all my hope pin on that bird.”

Lana had an idea that would help business and hurt Jones. She’d let him go too far already.

“Good,” Lana said to him. “Now listen to me, Jones. You wanna help out Darlene here. You think this act is good, huh? I remember you said Darlene and the bird was gonna bring in so much business I’d need a doorman. Well, I got a doorman. You.”

“Hey! I ain comin around here at night below the minimal wage.”

“You’re coming out on opening night,” Lana said evenly. “You gonna be out front on the sidewalk. We’re gonna rent you a costume. Real Old South doorman. You attract the people in here. Understand? I wanna see a full house for your pal and her bird.”

“Shit. I quittin this motherfuckin bar. Maybe you gettin Scarla O’Horror and her ball eagle on the stage, but you ain gettin a fiel han out front, too.”

“The precinct is gonna be gettin a certain report.”

“Maybe they be gettin another orphan repor, too.”

“I don’t think so.”

Jones knew that this was true. Finally, he said, “Okay. I be here on openin night. I bring in some peoples. I bring in some peoples shut down your place for good. I be bringin in peoples like that fat mother got him the green cap.”

“I wonder where he went to,” Darlene said.

“Shut up and lemme hear you say your lines,” Lana hollered at her. “Your friend here wants to see you get ahead. He’s gonna help you out, Darlene. Show him how good you are.”

Darlene cleared her throat and enunciated carefully, “There sure was plenty beaux at the bowl, honey, but I still got me honor.”

Lana grabbed Darlene and the bird off the stage and pushed them out into the alley. Jones listened to the loud sounds of argument and pleading coming from the alley and heard one plop of a slap land on someone’s face.

He went behind the bar to get a glass of water and contemplated means of sabotage that could finish Lana Lee forever. Outside, the cockatoo was squawking and Darlene was crying, “I ain’t no actress, Lana. I already told you.”

Looking down for a moment, Jones saw that Lana Lee had absentmindedly left the door open on the little cabinet under the bar. All afternoon she had been preoccupied with previewing Darlene’s dress rehearsal. Jones knelt down and, for the first time in the Night of Joy, took off his sunglasses. At first his eyes had to adjust to the brighter but still dim light that revealed crusted dirt on the floor behind the bar. He looked into the little cabinet, and there he saw neatly stacked about ten packages wrapped in plain paper. Piled in the corner were a globe, a box of chalk, and a large, expensive-looking book.

He did not want to sabotage his discovery by taking anything from the cabinet. Lana Lee, with her hawk eyes and bloodhound nose, would notice that right away. He thought for a moment, then he took the pencil from the cash register and, running his hand down the side of the stacked packages, wrote as minutely as possible on the side of each package the address of the Night of Joy. Like a note in a bottle, the address might bring some reply, perhaps from a legitimate and a professional saboteur. An address on a package wrapped in plain brown paper was as damaging as a fingerprint on a gun, Jones thought. It was something that shouldn’t be there. He stacked the packages back carefully, straightening the pile to its original symmetry. Then he placed the pencil on the cash register and finished his water. He studied the door of the cabinet and decided that it was open at about the same angle at which he had found it.

He came from behind the bar and resumed his desultory sweeping just as Lana, Darlene, and the bird, looking like a small unruly mob, burst in from the alley. Darlene’s orchid was hanging, and the bird’s few feathers were ruffled. Lana Lee, though, was still well groomed and looked as though some cyclone had miraculously missed only her.

“Okay now, Darlene,” Lana said, grabbing Darlene by the shoulders. “What the hell are you supposed to say?”

“Whoa! You sure a understandin director. If you be makin big movies, half the peoples in it be dead.”

“Shut up and get on my floor,” Lana said to Jones and shook Darlene a little. “Now say it right, stupid.”

Darlene sighed hopelessly and said, “There sure was plenty bones at that ball, honey, but I still got my honor.”

Patrolman Mancuso leaned against the sergeant’s desk and wheezed, “You gotta tage me oud thad badroom. I can breed no more.”

“What?” The sergeant looked at the wan figure before him, at the watery pink eyes behind the bifocals, at the dry lips through the white goatee. “What’s wrong with you, Mancuso? Why can’t you stand up like a man? Getting a cold. Men on the force don’t catch cold. Men on the force are strong.”

Patrolman Mancuso coughed wetly into the goatee.

“You haven’t picked up nobody out that bus station. Remember what I told you? You stay there until you bring me somebody.”

“I’b getting pneumodia.”

“Take some cold tablets. Get outta here and bring me somebody.”

“My at says if I stay iddat badroom, I’b gudda die.”

“Your aunt? A grown man like you’s gotta listen to his aunt? Jesus. What kinda people you know, Mancuso? Old ladies who go sit in strip joints all alone, aunts. You probly belong to a ladies’ sodality or something. Stand up straight.” The sergeant studied the miserable figure that was shaking with the aftereffects of a dangerous cough. He didn’t want to be responsible for a death. It would be better to give Mancuso a probationary period and kick him off the force. “Okay. Don’t go back to the bus station. Get out on the streets again and get some sunshine. But listen here. I’m giving you two weeks. If you don’t bring in nobody by then, you’re off the force. You understand me, Mancuso?”

Patrolman Mancuso nodded, sniffling.

“I’b gudda try. I’b gudda brig you subbody.”

“Stop leaning over me,” the sergeant screamed. “I don’t wanna catch your cold. Stand up. Get outta here. Go take some pills and orange juice. Jesus.”

“I’b gudda brig you subbody,” Patrolman Mancuso wheezed again, this time even more unconvincingly than the first. Then he drifted off in his novel costume, the sergeant’s ultimate practical joke on him. He was wearing a baseball cap and a Santa Claus outfit.