John Toole - A Confederacy of Dunces

“How bogus,” Ignatius belched. “Do you seriously expect me to believe you? Delivering school supplies after the schools are closed?”

“I’ll pay you a couple of bucks every day.”

“You will?” Ignatius asked with interest. “Well, you will have to pay me a week’s rent in advance. I don’t deal in small sums.”

George opened his wallet and gave Ignatius eight dollars.

“Here. With the two you already got, that makes ten for the week.”

Ignatius happily pocketed the new bills and ripped one of the packages from George’s arms, saying, “I must see what it is that I’m storing. You’re probably selling goof balls to infants.”

“Hey!” George shouted. “I can’t deliver the stuff if it’s opened.”

“Too bad for you.” Ignatius fended off the boy and tore off the brown wrapping. He saw a stack of what looked like postcards. “What are these? Visual aids for civics or some other equally stultifying high school subject?”

“Gimme that, you nut.”

“Oh, my God!” Ignatius stared at what he saw. Once in high school someone had shown him a pornographic photograph, and he had collapsed against a water cooler, injuring his ear. This photograph was far superior. A nude woman was sitting on the edge of a desk next to a globe of the world. The suggested onanism with the piece of chalk intrigued Ignatius. Her face was hidden behind a large book. While George evaded indifferent slaps from the unoccupied paw, Ignatius scrutinized the title on the cover of the book: Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy. “Do I believe what I am seeing? What brilliance. What taste. Good grief.”

“Give that back,” George pleaded.

“This one is mine,” Ignatius gloated, pocketing the top card. He handed the torn package back to George and looked at the piece of torn wrapping between his fingers. There was an address on it. He pocketed that, too. “Where in the world did you get these? Who is this brilliant woman?”

“None of your business.”

“I see. A secret operation.” Ignatius thought of the address on the piece of paper. He would do his own investigating. Some destitute woman intellectual was doing anything for a dollar. Her worldview must be quite incisive, if her reading material were any guide. It could be that she was in the same situation as the Working Boy, a seer and philosopher cast into a hostile century by forces beyond her control. Ignatius must meet her. She might have some new and valuable insights. “Well, in spite of my misgivings, I shall make my cart available to you. However, you must watch the cart this afternoon. I have a rather urgent appointment.”

“Hey, what is this? How long you gonna be?”

“About two hours.”

“I gotta get uptown by three o’clock.”

“Well, you shall be a little late this afternoon,” Ignatius said angrily. “I am already lowering my standards by associating with you and fouling up my bun compartment. You should be glad that I haven’t turned you in. I have on the police force a brilliant friend, a sly undercover agent, Patrolman Mancuso. He is just looking for the sort of break a case like yours would offer. Fall to your knees and be grateful for my benevolence.”

Mancuso? Wasn’t that the name of the undercover agent who had stopped him in the rest room? George got very nervous.

“What does this undercover pal of yours look like?” George sneered in an attempt at bravery.

“He is small and elusive.” Ignatius’s voice was cunning. “He is given to many disguises. He is a veritable will-o’-the-wisp, scurrying here and there in his never-ending search for marauders. For a while he chose the covert of a bathroom but now is out on the streets where he remains at my beck and call every minute.”

George’s throat filled with something that choked him.

“This is a frame-up,” he swallowed.

“That’s enough from you, you guttersnipe. Encouraging the degeneration of some noble woman scholar,” Ignatius barked. “You should be kissing the hem of my uniform in gratitude for my not advising Sherlock Mancuso of your evil goods. Meet me before the RKO Orpheum in two hours!”

Ignatius billowed grandly off down Common Street. George put his two packages in the bun compartment and sat down on the curb. This was really luck meeting a pal of Mancuso’s. The big vendor really had him. He looked furiously at the wagon. Now he wasn’t only stuck with the packages. He was stuck with a big hot dog wagon.

Ignatius tossed money at the cashier and literally lunged into the Orpheum, waddling down the aisle toward the footlights. His timing had been perfect. The second feature was just beginning. The boy with the magnificent photographs was definitely a find. Ignatius wondered if he could blackmail him into watching the wagon every afternoon. The urchin had certainly responded to his mention of a friend on the police force.

Ignatius snorted at the movie credits. All of the people involved in the film were equally unacceptable. A set designer, in particular, had appalled him too many times in the past. The heroine was even more offensive than she had been in the circus musical. In this film she was a bright young secretary whom an aged man of the world was trying to seduce. He flew her in a private jet to Bermuda and installed her in a suite. On their first night together she broke out in a rash just as the libertine was opening her bedroom door.

“Filth!” Ignatius shouted, spewing wet popcorn over several rows. “How dare she pretend to be virgin. Look at her degenerate face. Rape her!”

“They sure got some funny people at matinees,” a lady with a shopping bag said to her companion. “Just take a look at him. He’s got on a earring.”

Then there was a soft-focus love scene, and Ignatius began to lose control. He could feel the hysteria overtaking him. He tried to be silent, but he found that he couldn’t.

“They’re photographing them through several thicknesses of cheesecloth,” he spluttered. “Oh, my God. Who can imagine how wrinkled and loathsome those two really are? I think I’m getting nauseated. Can’t someone in the projection booth turn off the electricity? Please!”

He rattled his cutlass loudly against the side of his seat. An old usherette came down the aisle and tried to grab the cutlass from him, but Ignatius wrestled with her, and she slid to the carpet. She got up and hobbled away.

The heroine, believing her honor to be in question, had a series of paranoid fantasies in which she was lying on a bed with her libertine. The bed was pulled through the streets and floated across a swimming pool at the resort hotel.

“Good grief. Is this smut supposed to be comedy?” Ignatius demanded in the darkness. “I have not laughed once. My eyes can hardly believe this highly discolored garbage. That woman must be lashed until she drops. She is undermining our civilization. She is a Chinese Communist agent sent over to destroy us. Please! Someone with some decency get to the fuse box. Hundreds of people in this theater are being demoralized. If we’re all lucky, the Orpheum may have forgotten to pay its electric bill.”

As the film ended Ignatius cried, “Under her All-American face she is really Tokyo Rose!”

He wanted to stay for another showing, but he remembered the waif. Ignatius didn’t want to ruin a good thing. He needed that boy. Weakly he climbed over the four empty popcorn boxes that had accumulated before his seat during the movie. He was completely enervated. His emotions were spent. Gasping, he staggered up the aisle and out onto the sunlit street. There, by the cab stand at the Roosevelt Hotel, George was keeping a surly watch over the wagon.

“Jesus,” he sneered. “I thought you was never coming outta there. What kinda appointment you had? You just went to see a movie.”