Ignatius read what he had just written with pleasure. The Journal had all sorts of possibilities. It could be a contemporary, vital, real document of a young man’s problems. At last he closed the looseleaf folder and contemplated a reply to Myrna, a slashing, vicious attack upon her being and worldview. It would be better to wait until he had visited the factory and seen what possibilities for social action there were there. Such boldness had to be handled properly; he might be able to do something with the factory workers which would make Myrna look like a reactionary in the field of social action. He had to prove his superiority to the offensive minx.

Picking up his lute, he decided to relax in song for a moment. His massive tongue rolled up over his moustache in preparation and, strumming, he began to sing, “Tarye no longer; toward thyn heritage/ Hast on thy weye, and be of ryght good chere.”

“Shut up!” Miss Annie hollered through her closed shutters.

“How dare you!” Ignatius replied, ripping open his own shutters and looking out into the dark, cold alley. “Open up there. How dare you hide behind those shutters.”

He ran furiously to the kitchen, filled a pot with water, and rushed back to his room. Just as he was about to throw the water on Miss Annie’s still unopened shutters, he heard a car door slam out on the street. Some people were coming down the alley. Ignatius closed his shutters and turned off the light, listening to his mother speaking to someone. Patrolman Mancuso said something as they passed under his window, and a woman’s hoarse voice said, “It looks safe to me, Irene. There ain’t no lights on. He must of gone to the show.”

Ignatius slipped his overcoat on and ran down the hall to the front door as they were opening the kitchen door. He went down the front steps and saw Patrolman Mancuso’s white Rambler parked before the house. Bending over with great effort, Ignatius stuck a finger into the valve of one of the tires until the hissing stopped and the tire’s bottom pancaked across the brick gutter. Then he walked down the alley, which was just wide enough for his bulk, to the rear of the house.

Bright lights were burning in the kitchen, and he could hear his mother’s cheap radio through the closed window. Ignatius climbed the back steps silently and looked in through the greasy glass of the back door. His mother and Patrolman Mancuso were sitting at the table around an almost full fifth of Early Times. Patrolman Mancuso looked more downtrodden than ever, but Mrs. Reilly was tapping one foot on the linoleum and laughing shyly at what she was watching in the center of the room. A stocky woman with kinky gray hair was dancing alone on the linoleum, shaking her pendulous breasts, which were slung in a white bowling blouse. Her bowling shoes pounded the floor purposefully, carrying the swinging breasts and rotating hips back and forth between the table and the stove.

So this was Patrolman Mancuso’s aunt. Only Patrolman Mancuso could have something like that for an aunt, Ignatius snorted to himself.

“Whoo!” Mrs. Reilly screamed gaily. “Santa!”

“Watch this, kids,” the gray-haired woman screamed back like a prizefight referee and began shaking lower and lower until she was almost on the floor.

“Oh, my God!” Ignatius said to the wind.

“You gonna bust a gut, girl,” Mrs. Reilly laughed. “You gonna go through my good floor.”

“Maybe you better stop, Aunt Santa,” Patrolman Mancuso said morosely.

“Hell, I ain’t stopping now. I just got here,” the woman answered, rising rhythmically. “Who says a grammaw can’t dance no more?”

Holding her arms outward, the woman bumped across the linoleum runway.

“Lord!” Mrs. Reilly said and guffawed, tipping the whiskey bottle to her glass. “What if Ignatius comes home and sees this.”

“Fuck Ignatius!”

“Santa!” Mrs. Reilly gasped, shocked but, Ignatius noticed, slightly pleased.

“You people cut it out,” Miss Annie screamed through her shutters.

“Who’s that?” Santa asked Mrs. Reilly.

“Cut it out before I ring up the cops,” Miss Annie’s muffled voice cried.

“Please stop,” Patrolman Mancuso pleaded nervously.

Darlene was pouring water into the half-filled liquor bottles behind the bar.

“Hey, Darlene, listen to this shit,” Lana Lee commanded, folding the newspaper and weighting it down with her ashtray. “‘Frieda Club, Betty Bumper, and Liz Steele, all of 796 St. Peter St., were arrested from El Caballo Lounge, 570 Burgundy St., last night and booked with disturbing the peace and creating a public nuisance. According to arresting officers, the incident started when an unidentified man made a proposal to one of the women. The woman’s two companions struck the man, who fled from the lounge. The Steele woman threw a stool at the bartender, and the other two women menaced customers in the lounge with stools and broken beer bottles. Customers in the lounge said that the man who fled was wearing bowling shoes.’ How’s about that? People like that are ruining the Quarter. Some honest Joe tries to make off with one of those dykes and they try to beat him up. Once upon a time it was nice and straight around here. Now it’s all dykes and fairies. No wonder business stinks. I can’t stand dykes. I can’t!”

“The only people we get in here at night anymore is plainclothesmen,” Darlene said. “How come they don’t get a plainclothesman after women like that?”

“This place is turning into a goddam precinct. All I’m putting on is a benefit show for the Policemen’s Benevolent Association,” Lana said disgustedly. “A lotta empty space and few cops throwing signals at each other. Half the time I gotta watch you, brain, to see you don’t try to sell them a drink.”

“Well, Lana,” Darlene said. “How I’m supposed to know who’s a cop? Everybody looks the same to me.” She blew her nose. “I try to make a living.”

“You tell a cop by his eyes, Darlene. They’re very self-assured. I been in this business too long. I know every dirty cop angle. The marked bills, the phony clothes. If you can’t tell by the eyes, then take a look at the money. It’s full of pencil marks and crap.”

“How I’m supposed to see the money? It’s so dark in here I can hardly see the eyes even.”

“Well, we’re gonna have to do something about you. I don’t want you sittin out here on my stools. You’re gonna try to sell a double martini to the chief of police one of these nights.”

“Then let me get on the stage and dance. I got a socko routine.”

“Oh, shut up,” Lana hollered. If Jones knew about the police in the place at night, then goodbye, discount porter. “Now look here, Darlene, don’t tell that Jones we suddenly got the whole force in here at night. You know how colored people feel about cops. He might get scared and quit. I mean, I’m trying to help the boy out and keep him off the streets.”

“Okay,” Darlene said. “But I ain’t making no money I’m so afraid the guy on the next stool is the police. You know what we need in here to make money?”

“What?” Lana asked angrily.

“What we need in here is a animal.”

“A what? Jesus Christ.”

“I ain cleanin up after no animal,” Jones said, bumping his mop noisily against the legs of the barstools.

“Come on over and check under these stools,” Lana called to him.

“Oh! Whoa! Where I miss a spot? Hey!”

“Look in the paper, Lana,” Darlene said. “Almost every other club on the street’s got them an animal.”

Lana turned to the entertainment pages and through Jones’s fog studied the nightclub ads.

“Well, little Darlene’s on the ball. I guess you’d like to become the manager of this club, huh?”

“No, ma’m.”

“Well, remember that,” Lana said and ran a finger along the ads. “Look at this. They got a snake at Jerry’s, got them some doves at the 104, a baby tiger, a chimp…”