John Toole - A Confederacy of Dunces

“Don’t you dare touch me!” he bellowed through the scarf.

“Ave Maria! Que pato!” the woman said to herself. Then she said, “Mira, you are pay now, maricon. We throw you out on your big culo.”

“Such grace,” Ignatius mumbled. “Well, I did not come here to drink with you. Now get away from my table.” He breathed deeply through the mouth. “And take your champagne with you.”

“ Oye, loco , you are…”

The woman’s threat was submerged by the band, which emitted a debilitated fanfare of sorts. Lana Lee appeared on the stage in what looked like gold lame overalls.

“Oh, my God!” Ignatius spluttered. The doped Negro had tricked him. He wanted to bolt from the club, but realized that it would be wiser to wait until the woman had finished and left the stage. In a moment, he was crouched down against the side of the stage. Over his head, the Nazi proprietress was saying, “Welcome, ladies and genitals.” It was so dreadful a beginning that Ignatius almost knocked over the table.

“You are pay me now,” the woman was demanding, sticking her head under the table to find the face of her customer.

“Shut up, you slut,” Ignatius hissed.

The band stumbled into a four-count version of Sophisticated Lady. The Nazi woman was screaming, “And now that pure Virgin-ny Belle, Miss Harlett O’Hara.” An old man at one of the tables clapped feebly, and Ignatius peered over the rim of the stage and saw that the proprietress was gone. In her place stood a stand decorated with rings. What was Miss O’Hara up to?

Then Darlene swept onstage in a ball gown that trailed yards of nylon net. On her head was a monstrous picture hat and on her arm a monstrous bird. Someone else clapped.

“Mira, you are pay me now or else, cabron.”

“There sure was plenty balls at that ball, but I still got my honor,” Darlene said carefully to the bird.

“Oh, my God!” Ignatius bellowed, unable to remain silent any longer. “Is this cretin Harlett O’Hara?”

The cockatoo noticed him before Darlene did, for its beads of eyes had been focusing on Ignatius’s hoop of a novelty earring ever since it had come onstage. When Ignatius bellowed, it flapped from Darlene’s arm to the stage and squawking, hopping, dashed for Ignatius’s head.

“Hey,” Darlene cried. “It’s the crazyman.”

As Ignatius was about to dash from the club, the bird hopped from the stage to his shoulder. It sank its claws into his smock and snagged his earring with its beak.

“Good heavens!” Ignatius leaped up and beat at the bird with his itching paws. What avian menace had depraved Fortuna spun his way? The champagne bottles and the glasses shattered on the floor as he sprang and began staggering to the door.

“Come back here with my cockatoo,” Darlene cried.

Lana Lee was on the stage now, screaming. The band had stopped. The few old male patrons moved out of the way of Ignatius, who was floundering around among the little tables making moose calls and beating at the mass of rose feathers welded to his ear and shoulder.

“How in the hell did that character get in here?” Lana Lee asked the confused septuagenarians in the audience. “Where’s Jones? Somebody get me that Jones.”

“Come here, you big crazyman,” Darlene hollered. “On opening night. Why you hadda come here on opening night?”

“Good grief,” Ignatius gasped, feeling for the door. In his wake he had left a trail of overturned tables. “How dare you fiends inflict a rabid bird upon your unsuspecting customers? You may expect to be sued in the morning.”

“Come! You are owe twenty-four dollar to me. You are pay right now.”

Ignatius knocked over another table as he and the cockatoo lurched forward. Then he felt the earring loosening, and the cockatoo, the earring firmly in its beak, fell from his shoulder. Terrorized, Ignatius bounced out of the door just ahead of the Latin woman, who was waving the check with great determination.

“Whoa! Hey!”

Ignatius stumbled past Jones, who had never expected the sabotage to assume such dramatic proportions. Gasping, clutching his cemented valve, Ignatius continued forward onto the street and into the path of an oncoming Desire bus. He first heard the people on the sidewalk screaming. Then he heard the pounding tires and the crying brakes, and when he glanced up he was blinded by headlights a few feet from his eyes. The headlights swam and faded from his sight as he fainted.

He would have fallen directly before the bus if Jones hadn’t leaped into the street and pulled at the white smock with his two large hands. Ignatius instead fell backward, and the bus, exhaling diesel exhaust, rumbled past an inch or two from his desert boots.

“Is he dead?” Lana Lee asked hopefully, studying the mound of white material lying in the street.

“I am hope not. He is owe twenty-four dollar, the maricon.”

“Hey, wake up, man,” Jones said, blowing some smoke over the inert figure.

The man in the silk suit and homburg stepped from an alleyway, where he had hidden himself when he saw Ignatius enter the Night of Joy. Ignatius’s departure from the club had been so violent and rapid that the man had been too startled to act until now.

“Let me take a look at him,” the man in the homburg said, bending over and listening to Ignatius’s heart. A kettledrum of a thump told him that life still breathed within the yards of white smock. He held Ignatius’s wrist. The Mickey Mouse watch was smashed. “He’s okay. He just passed out.” The man cleared his throat and ordered weakly, “Everybody back. Give him air.”

The street was filled with people and the bus had stopped a few yards down the street, blocking traffic. Suddenly it looked like Bourbon Street at Mardi Gras.

Through the darkness of his glasses Jones looked at the stranger. He looked familiar, like a well-dressed version of someone Jones had seen before. The weak eyes were most familiar. Jones remembered the same weak eyes on top of a red beard. Then he remembered the same eyes under a blue cap in the precinct on the day of the cashew nut incident. He said nothing. A policeman was a policeman. It was always best to ignore them unless they bothered you.

“Where he came from?” Darlene was asking the crowd. The rose cockatoo rested once again on her arm, the earring dangling from its beak like a golden worm. “What a opening night. What we gonna do, Lana?”

“Nothing,” Lana said angrily. “Let that character lay there till the street sweeper comes around. Then let me get my hands on Jones.”

“Whoa! Hey! That cat force his way in. We was fightin and grapplin, but that mother seem determine to get in the Night of Joy. I was ascare I be rippin this costume you rentin, you be havin to pay for it, Night of Joy be goin broke. Whoa!”

“Shut your smart mouth. I think I’m gonna have to call up all my pals at the precinct. You’re fired. Darlene, too. I knew I shouldna let you get on my stage. Get that goddam bird off my sidewalk.” Lana turned to the crowd. “Well, folks, now that you’re all here, how’s about coming into the Night of Joy? We got a class show.”

“Mira, Lee.” The Latin woman inflicted a little halitosis on Lana Lee. “Who is pay the twenty-four dollar for champagne?”

“You’re fired, too, you dumb spic.” Lana smiled. “Come on in folks, and enjoy a good drink made by our expert mixologists to your exact specifications.”

The crowd, however, was craning at the white mound, which was wheezing loudly, and declined the invitation to elegance.

Lana Lee was about to go over and kick the mound into consciousness and get it out of her gutter when the man in the homburg said politely, “I’d like to use your telephone. Maybe I’d better call a ambulance.”