John Toole - A Confederacy of Dunces

“What is it, Gus? Something you didn’t handle correctly? Some authority you delegated to somebody else?”

“Yes, it’s a problem. It’s a problem that means we could lose the shirts off our backs.”

“What?” Mrs. Levy grabbed the letters from Mr. Gonzalez. She read them and became a hag. Her lacquered curls turned into snakes. “Now you’ve done it. Anything to get back at your father, to ruin his business. I knew it was going to end like this.”

“Oh, shut up. I never write the letters around here.”

“Susan and Sandra will have to quit college. They’ll be selling themselves to sailors and gangsters like that one there.”

“Huh?” Mr. Zalatimo asked, sensing that he was being discussed.

“You’re sick,” Mrs. Levy shouted at her husband.

“Quiet!”

“And will I be any better off?” Mrs. Levy’s aquamarine lids were trembling. “What will become of me? Already my life has been wrecked. What happens to me now? Prowling in garbage cans, following the fleet. My mother was right.”

“Quiet!” Miss Trixie demanded, this time much more fiercely. “You people are the noisiest I’ve ever met.”

Mrs. Levy had collapsed in a chair, sobbing something about going out to sell Avon products.

“What do you know about this, Gonzalez?” Mr. Levy asked the office manager whose lips had turned white.

“I don’t know a thing,” Mr. Gonzalez piped. “It’s the first time I’ve seen that letter.”

“You write the correspondence around here.”

“I didn’t write that.” His lips were quivering. “I wouldn’t do something like that to Levy Pants!”

“No, I know you wouldn’t.” Mr. Levy tried to think. “Somebody really had it in for us.”

Mr. Levy went over to the files, pushed the scratching Mr. Zalatimo aside, and opened the files in the A’s. There was no Abelman folder. The drawer was completely empty. He opened several other drawers, but half of them were empty, too. What a way to begin fighting a libel suit.

“What do you people do with the filing?”

“I was wondering about that myself,” Mr. Zalatimo said vaguely.

“Gonzalez, what was the name of that big kook you had working in here, the big fat one with the green cap?”

“Mr. Ignatius Reilly. He handled the letter to go out.” Who had composed that awful thing?

“Hey,” Jones’s voice said over the telephone, “you people still got a fat mother with a green cap workin there at Levy Pant? A big white guy got him a moustache?”

“No, we don’t,” Mr. Gonzalez answered in a shrill voice and slammed the phone down.

“Who was that?” Mr. Levy asked.

“Oh, I don’t know. Someone for Mr. Reilly.” The office manager wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. “The one who tried to make the factory workers kill me.”

“Reilly?” Miss Trixie said. “That wasn’t Reilly, that was…”

“The young idealist?” Mrs. Levy sobbed. “Who wanted him?”

“I don’t know,” the office manager answered. “It sounded like a Negro voice to me.”

“Well, I guess so,” Mrs. Levy said. “He’s out trying to help some other unfortunates right now. It’s encouraging to know that his idealism is still intact.”

Mr. Levy had been thinking of something, and he asked the office manager, “What was the name of that kook?”

“Reilly. Ignatius J. Reilly.”

“It was?” Miss Trixie said with interest. “That’s strange. I always thought it…”

“Miss Trixie, please,” Mr. Levy said angrily. That Reilly blimp was working for the company at the time that that letter to Abelman was dated. “Do you think that that Reilly would write a letter like that?”

“Maybe,” Mr. Gonzalez said. “I don’t know. I had high hopes for him until he tried to get that worker to brain me.”

“That’s right,” Mrs. Levy moaned. “Try to pin it on the young idealist. Put him away where his idealism won’t bother you. People like the young idealist don’t deal in underhanded things like that. Wait until Susan and Sandra hear about this.” Mrs. Levy made a gesture that indicated that the girls would clearly go into a state of shock. “Negroes are calling here to get his counsel. You’re about to frame him. I can’t take much more of this, Gus. I can’t, I can’t!”

“Then do you want me to say I wrote that?”

“Of course not!” Mrs. Levy screamed at her husband. “I’m supposed to end in the poorhouse? If the young idealist wrote it, he goes to jail for forgery.”

“Say, what’s going on?” Mr. Zalatimo asked. “Is this dump gonna close down or what? I mean, I’d like to know.”

“Shut up, gangster,” Mrs. Levy answered wildly, “before we pin it on you.”

“Huh?”

“Will you keep quiet? You’re getting everything confused,” Mr. Levy said to his wife. Then he turned to the office manager. “Get me this Reilly’s phone number.”

Mr. Gonzalez awakened Miss Trixie and asked her for a phone book.

“ I keep all of the phone books,” Miss Trixie snapped. “And no one is going to use them.”

“Then look up a Reilly on Constantinople Street for us.”

“Well, all right, Gomez,” Miss Trixie snarled. “Hold your horses.” She took the three hoarded office telephone books out of some recess in her desk, and, studying the pages with a magnifying glass, gave them a number.

Mr. Levy dialed it and a voice answered, “Good morning. Regal Cleaners.”

“Give me one of those phone books,” Mr. Levy hollered.

“No,” Miss Trixie rasped, slapping her hand down on the stack of books, guarding them with her newly enameled nails. “You’ll only lose it. I’ll find the right number. I must say you people are very impatient and excitable. Staying at your house took ten years off my life. Why can’t you let poor Reilly alone? You already kicked him out over nothing.”

Mr. Levy dialed the second number that she gave him. A woman who sounded slightly intoxicated answered and told him that Mr. Reilly wouldn’t be home until late in the afternoon. Then she started crying, and Mr. Levy got depressed and thanked her and hung up.

“Well, he’s not at home,” Mr. Levy told the audience in the office.

“Mr. Reilly always seemed to have the best interests of Levy Pants at heart,” the office manager said sadly. “Why he started that riot I’ll never know.”

“For one thing because he had a police record.”

“When he came to apply, I certainly didn’t think he was a police character.” The office manager shook his head. “He seemed so refined.”

Mr. Gonzalez watched Mr. Zalatimo probing his long index finger high into one of his nostrils. What would this one do? His feet tingled with fear.

The factory door banged open and one of the workers screamed, “Hey, Mr. Gonzalez, Mr. Palerma just burn his hand on one of them furnace door.”

There were sounds of disorder in the factory. A man was cursing.

“Oh, my goodness,” Mr. Gonzalez cried. “Quiet the workers. I’ll be there in a minute.”

“Come on,” Mr. Levy said to his wife. “Let’s get out of here. I’m getting heartburn.”

“Just a moment.” Mrs. Levy gestured to Mr. Gonzalez. “About Miss Trixie. I want you to give her a welcome every morning. Give her meaningful work to do. In the past her insecurity probably made her afraid of taking any responsible work. I think she’s over that now. Basically she has a deep seated hatred of Levy Pants that I’ve analyzed as being rooted in fear. The insecurity and fear have led to hatred.”

“Of course,” the office manager said, half listening. The factory sounded bad.

“Go see about the factory, Gonzalez,” Mr. Levy said. “I’ll get in touch with Reilly.”