John Toole - A Confederacy of Dunces

“You must believe me,” he sighed. “The Trixie trollop had a fixation about a turkey or a ham. Or was it a roast? It was all rather fierce and confusing at times. She swore vengeance in connection with not being retired at the proper age. She was filled with hostility.”

Mr. Levy eased him aside and got out into the hall, where the maroon-haired mother was waiting like a doorman.

“Thank you, Mr. Reilly,” Mr. Levy said. He had to get out of that claustrophobic miniature of a heartbreak house. “If I need you again, I’ll call you.”

“You’ll need him again,” Mrs. Reilly called as he passed her and ran down the front steps. “Whatever it is, Ignatius done it.”

She called out something else, but Mr. Levy’s roar drowned out her voice. Blue smoke settled over the stricken Plymouth and he was gone.

“Now you done it,” Mrs. Reilly was saying to Ignatius, her hands grasping the white smock. “Now we in trouble for real, boy. You know what they can do you for forgery? They can throw you in a federal prison. That poor man’s got a $500 thousand case on his hands. Now you done it, Ignatius. Now you really in trouble.”

“Please,” Ignatius said weakly. His pale skin was turning an off-white that shaded into gray. He felt really ill now. His valve was executing several maneuvers that exceeded in originality and violence anything it had done before. “I told you it would be like this when I went out to work.”

Mr. Levy picked the shortest route back to the Desire Street wharf. He sped out Napoleon to the Broad overpass and got onto the expressway, fired by an emotion that was a distant but recognizable version of determination. If resentment had really driven Miss Trixie to writing that letter, then Mrs. Levy was the person responsible for the Abelman suit. Could Miss Trixie write something as intelligible as that letter? Mr. Levy hoped that she could. He drove through Miss Trixie’s neighborhood quickly, flashing past the bars and the BOILED CRAWFISH and OYSTERS ON THE HALF SHELL signs that stuck out everywhere. At the apartment house he followed the trail of scraps up the stairs to a brown door. He knocked and Mrs. Levy opened it with, “Look who’s back. The idealist’s menace. Have you solved your case?”

“Maybe.”

“Now you’re talking like Gary Cooper. One word I get for an answer. Sheriff Gary Levy.” She plucked at an offending aquamarine lash with her fingers. “Well, let’s go. Trixie’s gorging on the cookies. I’m getting nauseous.”

Mr. Levy pushed past his wife into a scene he could never have imagined. Levy’s Lodge had not prepared him for interiors like the one he had just seen on Constantinople Street—and for this one. Miss Trixie’s apartment was decorated with scraps, with junk, with bits of metal, with cardboard boxes. Somewhere beneath it all there was furniture. The surface, however, the visible terrain, was a landscape of old clothes and crates and newspapers. There was a pass through the center of the mountain, a clearing among the litter, a narrow aisle of clear floor that led to a window where Miss Trixie was seated in a chair sampling the Dutch cookies. Mr. Levy walked down the aisle past the black wig that hung from atop a crate, the high pumps tossed on a pile of newspapers. The only aspect of the rejuvenation that Miss Trixie had apparently retained was the teeth; they gleamed between her thin lips as they knifed into the cookies.

“Suddenly you’re very silent,” Mrs. Levy observed. “What is it, Gus? Another mission ended in failure?”

“Miss Trixie,” Mr. Levy screamed into her ears. “Did you write a letter to Abelman’s Dry Goods?”

“Now you’re scraping rock bottom,” Mrs. Levy said. “The idealist fooled you again, I guess. You really fall for that Reilly’s line.”

“Miss Trixie!”

“What?” Miss Trixie snarled. “I must say you people know how to retire a person.”

Mr. Levy handed her the letter. She picked a magnifying glass from the floor and studied the letters. The green visor cast a deadly color upon her face, upon the Dutch cookie crumbs that rimmed her thin lips. When she put down the magnifying glass, she wheezed happily, “You people in trouble now.”

“But did you write that to Abelman? Mr. Reilly said you did.”

“Who?”

“Mr. Reilly. The big man with the green cap who used to work at Levy Pants.” Mr. Levy showed Miss Trixie the photographs in the morning paper. “That one there.”

Miss Trixie applied her magnifying glass to the newspaper and said, “Oh, my goodness. So that’s what happened to him.” Poor Gloria. He seemed to be injured. “That’s Mr. Reilly, is it?”

“Yes. You remember him, I guess. He says you wrote that letter.”

“He did?” Gloria Reilly wouldn’t lie. Not Gloria. True blue. Gloria had always been her friend. Miss Trixie tried hazily to recall. Perhaps she had written the letter. All sorts of things happened that she couldn’t remember anymore. “Well, I guess I did. Yes. Now that you mention it, I guess I did write that. You people deserve it, too. You’ve driven me crazy these last few years. No retirement. No ham. Nothing. I must say I hope you lose everything you own.”

“You wrote that?” Mrs. Levy asked. “After all I’ve done for you, you wrote something like that? A viper in our own bosom! You can kiss Levy Pants goodbye, traitor. Discarded? You’ll get discarded!”

Miss Trixie smiled. That annoying woman was really getting excited. Gloria always had been her friend. Now the annoying woman would go to the poorhouse. Perhaps. But right now she was coming toward her, those aquamarine fingernails poised like talons. Miss Trixie started to scream.

“Let her alone,” Mr. Levy said to his wife. “Well, well. Won’t Susan and Sandra like to hear about this. Their mother tortures an old lady so much that the girls are in danger of losing all of their cardigans and culottes.”

“So. Blame me,” Mrs. Levy said wildly. “I stuck the paper in the typewriter. I helped her peck it out.”

“Didn’t you write that letter to get even with Levy Pants because you weren’t retired?”

“Yes, yes,” Miss Trixie said vaguely.

“To think I trusted you,” Mrs. Levy spat at Miss Trixie. “Give me back those teeth.”

Her husband blocked her grab for Miss Trixie’s mouth.

“Quiet!” Miss Trixie snarled, all of her white fangs gleaming. “I can’t even have a little peace in my own apartment.”

“If it wasn’t for your stupid, harebrained ‘project’ this woman would have been retired long ago,” Mr. Levy said to his wife. “After all those years of predicting things, you turn out to be the one who almost threw Levy Pants down the drain.”

“I see. You don’t blame her. You blame a woman of standards and ideals. If a thief broke into Levy Pants, I’d be to blame. You need help, Gus. Badly.”

“Yes, I do. And from Lenny’s doctor, of all people.”

“Wonderful, Gus.”

“Quiet!”

“But you’re the one who’s going to call Lenny’s doctor,” Mr. Levy said to his wife. “I want you to get him to declare Miss Trixie senile and incompetent and to explain the motivation for writing the letter.”

“This is your problem,” Mrs. Levy answered angrily. “You call him.”

“Susan and Sandra won’t like to hear about their mother’s little mistake.”

“And blackmail, too.”

“I’ve learned a few things from you. After all, we’ve been married for some time.” Mr. Levy watched anger and anxiety play upon his wife’s face. For once she had nothing to say. “The girls won’t want to know that their dear mother was such a fool. Now plan to get Trixie over to Lenny’s doctor. With her admission and any doctor’s testimony, Abelman doesn’t have an outside chance on this case. All you’d have to do is drag her into a courtroom and let a judge look at her.”