“That is certainly far below the wage that I had expected.” Ignatius sounded abnormally important. “I have a valve which is subject to vicissitudes which may force me to lie abed on certain days. Several more attractive organizations are currently vying for my services. I must consider them first.”

“But listen,” the office manager said confidentially. “Miss Trixie here earns only forty dollars a week, and she does have some seniority.”

“She does look rather worn,” Ignatius said, watching Miss Trixie spread the contents of her bag on her desk and sort through the scraps. “Isn’t she past retirement?”

“Sshh,” Mr. Gonzalez hissed. “Mrs. Levy won’t let us retire her. She thinks it’s better for Miss Trixie to keep active. Mrs. Levy is a brilliant, educated woman. She’s taken a correspondence course in psychology.” Mr. Gonzalez let this sink in. “Now, to return to your prospects, you are very fortunate to start with the salary I quoted. This is all part of the Levy Pants Plan to attract new blood into the company. Miss Trixie, unfortunately, was hired before the plan went into effect. It was not retroactive, and therefore doesn’t cover her.”

“I hate to disappoint you, sir, but I am afraid that the salary is not adequate. An oil magnate is currently dangling thousands before me trying to tempt me to be his personal secretary. At the moment, I am trying to decide whether I can accept the man’s materialistic worldview. I suspect that I am going to finally tell him, ‘Yes.’”

“We’ll include twenty cents a day for carfare,” Mr. Gonzalez pleaded.

“Well. That does change things,” Ignatius conceded. “I shall take the job temporarily. I must admit that the ‘Levy Pants Plan’ rather attracts me.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful,” Mr. Gonzalez blurted. “He’ll love it here, won’t he, Miss Trixie?”

Miss Trixie was too preoccupied with her scraps to reply.

“I find it strange that you have not even asked for my name,” Ignatius snorted.

“Oh, my goodness. I completely forgot about that. Who are you?”

That day one other office worker, the stenographer, appeared. One woman telephoned to say that she had decided to quit and go on relief instead. The others did not contact Levy Pants at all.

“Take those glasses off. How the hell can you see all that crap on the floor?”

“Who wanna look at all that crap?”

“I told you to take the glasses off, Jones.”

“The glasses stayin on.” Jones bumped the push broom into a bar stool. “For twenty dollar a week, you ain running a plantation in here.”

Lana Lee started snapping a rubber band around the pile of bills and making little piles of nickels that she was taking out of the cash register.

“Stop knocking that broom against the bar,” she screamed. “Goddamit to hell, you making me nervous.”

“You want quiet sweeping, you get you a old lady. I sweep yawng.”

The broom bumped against the bar several more times. Then the cloud of smoke and the broom moved off across the floor.

“You oughta tell your customer use they ashtray, tell them peoples you workin a man in here below the minimal wage. Maybe they be a little considerate.”

“You better be glad I’m giving you a chance, boy,” Lana Lee said. “There’s plenty colored boys looking for work these days.”

“Yeah, and they’s plenty color boy turnin vagran, too, when they see what kinda wage peoples offerin. Sometime I think if you color, it better to be a vagran.”

“You better be glad you’re working.”

“Ever night I’m fallin on my knee.”

The broom bumped against a table.

“Let me know when you finish with that sweeping,” Lana Lee said. “I got a little errand I want you to run for me.”

“Erran? Hey! I thought this a sweepin and moppin job.” Jones blew out a cumulus formation. “What this erran shit?”

“Listen here, Jones,” Lana Lee dumped a pile of nickels into the cash register and wrote down a figure on a sheet of paper. “All I gotta do is phone the police and report you’re out of work. You understand me?”

“And I tell the po-lice the Night of Joy a glorify cathouse. I fall in a trap when I come to work in this place. Whoa! Now I jus waitin to get some kinda evidence. When I do, I really gonna flap my mouth at the precinct.”

“Watch your tongue.”

“Times changin,” Jones said, adjusting his sunglasses. “You cain scare color peoples no more. I got me some peoples form a human chain in front your door, drive away your business, get you on the TV news. Color peoples took enough horseshit already, and for twenty dollar a week you ain piling no more on. I getting pretty tire of bein vagran or workin below the minimal wage. Get somebody else run your erran.”

“Aw, knock it off and finish my floor. I’ll get Darlene to go.”

“That po gal.” Jones explored a booth with the broom. “Hustlin water, runnin erran. Whoa!”

“Ring up the precinct about her. She’s a B-drinker.”

“I waitin till I can ring up the precinct about you. Darlene don wanna be a B-drinker. She force to be a B-drinker. She say she wanna go in show biz.”

“Yeah? Well, with the brains that girl’s got she’s lucky they haven’t shipped her off to the funny farm.”

“She be better off there.”

“She’d be better off if she just put that mind of hers to selling my liquor and quit with the dancing crap. I can just imagine what somebody like her would do on my stage. Darlene’s the kinda person ruin your investment if you don’t watch her.”

The padded door banged open and a young boy clicked into the bar, scraping the metal taps on his flamenco boots across the floor.

“Well, it’s about time,” Lana said to him.

“You got a new jig, huh?” The boy looked out at Jones through his swirls of oiled hair. “What happened to the last one? He die or something?”

“Honey,” said Lana blandly.

The boy opened a flashy hand-tooled wallet and gave Lana a number of bills.

“Everything went okay, George?” she asked him. “The orphans liked them?”

“They liked the one on the desk with the glasses on. They thought it was some kinda teacher or something. I want only that one this time.”

“You think they want another like that?” Lana asked with interest.

“Yeah. Why not? Maybe one with a blackboard and a book. You know. Doing something with a piece of chalk.”

The boy and Lana smiled at each other.

“I get the picture,” Lana said and winked.

“Hey, you a junkie?” the boy called to Jones. “You look like a junkie to me.”

“You be lookin pretty junky with a Night of Joy broom stickin out your ass,” Jones said very slowly. “Night of Joy broom old, they good and splintery.”

“Okay, okay,” Lana screamed. “I don’t want a race riot in here. I got an investment to protect.”

“You better tell your little ofay kid friend move along.” Jones blew some smoke on the two. “I ain takin no insult with this kinda job.”

“Come on, George,” Lana said. She opened the cabinet under the bar and gave George a package wrapped in brown paper. “This is the one you want. Now go on. Beat it.”

George winked at her and banged out the door.

“That suppose to be a messenger for the orphans?” Jones asked. “I like to see the orphans he operatin for. I bet the United Fun don know about them orphans.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Lana asked angrily. She studied Jones’s face, but the glasses prevented her reading anything there. “There’s nothing wrong with a little charity. Now get back on my floor.”

Lana started to make sounds, like the imprecations of a priestess, over the bills that the boy had given her. Whispered numerals and words floated upward from her coral lips, and, closing her eyes, she copied some figures onto a pad of paper. Her fine body, itself a profitable investment through the years, bent reverently over the formica top altar. Smoke, like incense, rose from the cigarette in the ashtray at her elbow, curling upward with her prayers, up above the host which she was elevating in order to study the date of its minting, the single silver dollar that lay among the offerings. Her bracelet tinkled, calling communicants to the altar, but the only one in the temple had been excommunicated from the Faith because of his parentage and continued mopping. An offering fell to the floor, the host, and Lana knelt to venerate and retrieve it.