“Hey, watch out,” Jones called, violating the sanctity of the rite. “You droppin your profit from the orphans, butterfinger.”
“Did you see where it went to, Jones?” she asked. “See if you can find it.”
Jones rested his mop against the bar and scouted for the coin, squinting through his sunglasses and smoke.
“Ain this the shit,” he mumbled to himself while the two searched the floor. “Ooo-wee!”
“I found it,” Lana said emotionally. “I got it.”
“Whoa! I’m sure glad you did. Hey! You better not be droppin silver dollars on the floor like that, Night of Joy be going bankrup. You be havin trouble meetin that big payroll.”
“And why don’t you try keeping your mouth shut, boy?”
“Say, who you callin ‘boy’?” Jones took the handle of the broom and pushed vigorously toward the altar. “You ain Scarla O’Horror.”
Ignatius eased himself into the taxi and gave the driver the Constantinople Street address. From the pocket of his overcoat he took a sheet of Levy Pants stationery, and borrowing the driver’s clipboard for a desk, he began to write as the taxi joined the dense traffic on St. Claude Avenue.
I am really quite fatigued as my first working day draws to a close. I do not wish to suggest, however, that I am disheartened or depressed or defeated. For the first time in my life I have met the system face to face, fully determined to function within its context as an observer and critic in disguise, so to speak. Were there more firms like Levy Pants, I do believe that America’s working forces would be better adjusted to their tasks. The obviously reliable worker is completely unmolested. Mr. Gonzalez, my “boss,” is rather a cretin, but is nonetheless quite pleasant. He seems eternally apprehensive, certainly too apprehensive to criticize any worker’s performance of duty. Actually, he will accept anything, almost, and is therefore appealingly democratic in his retarded way. As an example of this, Miss Trixie, our Earth Mother of the world of commerce, inadvertently set flame to some important orders in the process of lighting a heater. Mr. Gonzalez was quite tolerant of this gaffe when one considers that the company of late has been receiving fewer and fewer orders and that the orders were a demand from Kansas City for some five hundred dollars ($500!) worth of our product. We must remember, though, that Mr. Gonzalez is under orders from that mysterious tycooness, the reputedly brilliant and learned Mrs. Levy, to treat Miss Trixie well and to make her feel active and wanted. But he has also been most courteous to me, permitting me to have my will among the files.
I intend to draw Miss Trixie out rather shortly; I suspect that this Medusa of capitalism has many valuable insights and more than one pithy observation to offer.
The only sour note—and here I degenerate into slang to more properly set the mood for the creature whom I am about to discuss—was Gloria, the stenographer, a young and brazen tart. Her mind was reeling with misconceptions and abysmal value judgments. After she had made one or two bold and unsolicited comments about my person and bearing, I drew Mr. Gonzalez aside to tell him that Gloria was planning to quit without notice at the end of the day. Mr. Gonzalez, thereupon, grew quite manic and fired Gloria immediately, affording himself an opportunity at authority which, I could see, he rarely enjoyed. Actually, it was the awful sound of Gloria’s stake-like heels that led me to do what I did. Another day of that clatter would have sealed my valve for good. Then, too, there was all of that mascara and lipstick and other vulgarities which I would rather not catalogue.
I have many plans for my filing department and have taken—from among the many empty ones—a desk near a window. There I sat with my little gas heater at full force throughout the afternoon, watching the ships from many an exotic port steaming through the cold, dark waters of the harbor. Miss Trixie’s light snore and the furious typing of Mr. Gonzalez provided a pleasant counterpoint to my reflections.
Mr. Levy did not appear today; I am given to understand that he visits the business rarely, that he is actually, as Mr. Gonzalez puts it, “trying to sell out as soon as possible.” Perhaps the three of us (for I shall endeavor to make Mr. Gonzalez dismiss the other workers if they arrive tomorrow; too many people in that office will probably prove distracting) in the office can revitalize the business and restore the faith of Mr. Levy The Younger. I have several excellent ideas already, and I know that I, for one, will eventually make Mr. Levy decide to put his heart and soul in the firm.
I have, incidentally, made a very shrewd bargain with Mr. Gonzalez: I convinced him that because I had helped him save the expense of Gloria’s salary, he could respond by transporting me to and fro by taxi. The haggling that ensued was a blot upon an otherwise pleasant day, but I finally won my point by explaining to the man the dangers of my valve and of my health in general.
So we see that even when Fortuna spins us downward, the wheel sometimes halts for a moment and we find ourselves in a good, small cycle within the larger bad cycle. The universe, of course, is based upon the principle of the circle within the circle. At the moment, I am in an inner circle. Of course, smaller circles within this circle are also possible.
Ignatius gave the driver the clipboard and a variety of instructions upon speed, direction, and shifting. By the time they had reached Constantinople Street there was a hostile silence in the taxi, which was only broken by the driver’s request for the fare.
As Ignatius pulled himself angrily up and out of the taxi, he saw his mother coming down the street. She was wearing her short pink topper and the small red hat that tilted over one eye so that she looked like a refugee starlet from the Golddiggers film series. Ignatius noticed hopelessly that she had added a dash of color by pinning a wilted poinsettia to the lapel of her topper. Her brown wedgies squeaked with discount price defiance, as she walked redly and pinkly along the broken brick sidewalk. Even though he had been seeing her outfits for years, the sight of his mother in full regalia always slightly appalled his valve.
“Oh, honey,” Mrs. Reilly said breathlessly when they met by the rear bumper of the Plymouth, which blocked all sidewalk traffic. “A terrible thing’s happened.”
“Oh, my God. What is it now?”
Ignatius imagined it was something in his mother’s family, a group of people who tended to suffer violence and pain. There was the old aunt who had been robbed of fifty cents by some hoodlums, the cousin who had been struck by the Magazine streetcar, the uncle who had eaten a bad cream puff, the godfather who had touched a live wire knocked loose in a hurricane.
“It’s poor Miss Annie next door. This morning she took a little fainting spell in the alley. Nerves, babe. She says you woke her up this morning playing on your banjo.”
“That is a lute, not a banjo,” Ignatius thundered. “Does she think that I’m one of these perverse Mark Twain characters?”
“I just come from seeing her. She’s staying over by her son’s house on St. Mary Street.”
“Oh, that offensive boy.” Ignatius climbed the steps ahead of his mother. “Well, thank God Miss Annie has left for a while. Now perhaps I can play my lute without her rasping denunciations assailing me from across the alley.”
“I stopped off at Lenny’s and bought her a nice little pair of beads filled with Lourdes water.”
“Good grief. Lenny’s. Never in my life have I seen a shop filled with so much religious hexerei. I suspect that that jewelry shop is going to be the scene of a miracle before long. Lenny himself may ascend.”
“Miss Annie loved them beads, boy. Right away she started saying a rosary.”