“Really?” Ignatius asked with interest. “Perhaps I was hasty about dropping them. Political movements must get their money from whatever source they can. The girls have, no doubt, a charm which their blue jeans and boots obscure.” He looked over the seething mass of guests. “You must get these people quiet. We must bring them to order. There is crucial business at hand.”

The cowboy, the phony bitch, was tickling an elegant guest with his riding crop. The black leather lout was pinning an ecstatic guest to the floor. Everywhere there were screams, sighs, shrieks. Lena Home was now singing within the phonograph. “Clever,” “Crisp,” “Terribly cosmo,” the group around the phonograph was saying reverently. The cowboy broke away from his aroused fans and began to synchronize his lips to the lyrics on the record, slinking around the floor like a chanteuse in boots and Stetson. With a barrage of squeals, the guests gathered around him, leaving the black leather lout with no one to torture.

“You must stop all of this,” Ignatius shouted to Dorian, who was winking at the cowboy. “Aside from the fact that I am witnessing a most egregious offense against taste and decency, I am also beginning to smother from the stench of glandular emissions and cologne.”

“Oh, don’t be so drab. They’re just having fun.”

“I am very sorry,” Ignatius said in a businesslike tone. “I am here tonight on a mission of the utmost seriousness. There is a girl who must be attended to, a bold and forward minx of a trollop. Now turn off that offensive music and quiet these sodomites. We must get down to brass tacks.”

“I thought you were going to be fun. If you’re just going to be tacky and dreary, then you’d better leave.”

“I shall not leave! No one can deter me. Peace! Peace! Peace!”

“Oh, dear. You are serious about this, aren’t you?”

Ignatius broke away from Dorian and rushed across the room, pushing through the elegant guests, and unplugged the phonograph. As he turned around, he was greeted by the guests’ emasculated version of an Apache war cry.

“Beast.” “Madman.” “Is this what Dorian promised?” “That fantastic Lena.” “The outfit—grotesque. And that earring. Oh, my.” “That was my very favorite song.” “Horrible.” “How unbelievably gross.” “So monstrously huge.” “A bad, bad dream.”

“Silence!” Ignatius bellowed over their enraged babbling. “I am here tonight my friends, to show you how you may save the world and bring peace.”

“He’s truly mad.” “Dorian, what a bad joke.” “Where in the world did he come from?” “Not even vaguely attractive.” “Filthy.” “Depressing.” “Someone turn on that delicious record again.”

“The challenge,” Ignatius’s continued at full volume, “Is placed before you. Will you turn your singular talents to saving the world, or will you simply turn your backs on your fellow man?”

“Oh, how awful!” “Not at all amusing.” “I’ll have to leave if this tacky charade continues.” “In such poor taste.” “Someone turn on that record again. Dear, dear Lena.” “Where is my coat?” “Let’s go to a smart bar.” “Look, I’ve spilled my martini on my most priceless jacket.” “Let’s go to a smart bar.”

“The world today is in a state of grave unrest,” Ignatius screamed against the mewing and hissing. He paused for a moment to glance down in his pocket at some notes he had scribbled on a piece of Big Chief paper. Instead he pulled out the torn and dogeared photograph of Miss O’Hara. Several guests saw it and shrieked. “We must prevent the apocalypse. We must fight fire with fire. Therefore, I turn to you.”

“Oh, what in heaven’s name is he talking about?” “This is making me so depressed.” “Those eyes, they’re frightening.” “Let’s go to a smart bar.” “Let’s go to San Francisco.”

“Silence, you perverts!” Ignatius cried. “Listen to me.”

“Dorian,” the cowboy pleaded in a lyric soprano. “Make him keep quiet. We were having such fun, such a grand, gay time. Oh, he’s not even amusing.”

“That’s right,” an extremely elegant guest, whose taut face was brown with suntan makeup, said. “He’s truly awful. So depressing.”

“Must we listen to all of this?” another guest asked, waving his cigarette as if it were a magic wand which would make Ignatius disappear. “Is this a trick of some kind, Dorian? You know that we dearly love parties with a motif, but this. I mean, I never even watch the news on television. I’ve been working all day in that shop, and I don’t want to come to a party and have to hear all of this sort of thing. Let him talk later if he really has to. His remarks are in such terrible taste.”

“So inappropriate,” the black leather lout sighed, turning suddenly fey.

“All right,” Dorian said. “Turn on the record. I thought it might be fun.” He looked at Ignatius, who was snorting loudly. “I’m afraid, my dears, that it turned out to be a terrible, terrible bomb.”

“Wonderful.” “Dorian’s magnificent.” “There’s the plug.” “I love Lena.” “I truly think that this is her very best recording.” “So smart. Those special lyrics.” “I saw her in New York once. Magnificent.” “Play Gypsy next. I adore Ethel.” “Oh, good, it’s coming on.”

There Ignatius stood like the boy on the burning deck. The music rose from the tabernacle once again. Dorian fled to speak with a group of his guests, actively ignoring Ignatius, as was everyone else in the room. Ignatius felt as alone as he had felt on that dark day in high school when in a chemistry laboratory his experiment had exploded, burning his eyebrows off and frightening him. The shock and terror had made him wet his pants, and no one in the laboratory would notice him, not even the instructor, who hated him sincerely for similar explosions in the past. For the remainder of that day, as he walked soggily around the school, everyone had pretended that he was invisible. Ignatius, feeling just as invisible standing there in Dorian’s living room, began feinting at some imaginary opponent with his cutlass to relieve his self-consciousness.

Many were now singing with the record. Two began dancing near the phonograph. The dancing spread like a forest fire, and soon the floor was filled with couples who swayed and dipped around the Gibraltar of a wallflower, Ignatius. As Dorian swept past in the arms of the cowboy, Ignatius tried futilely to attract his attention. He attempted even to stick the cowboy with his cutlass, but the two were a wily and elusive dance team. Just as he was about to evanesce completely, Frieda, Liz, and Betty burst in from the kitchen.

“We couldn’t take that kitchen anymore,” Frieda said to Ignatius. “After all, we’re human beings, too.” She gave Ignatius a light punch to the stomach. “Looks like you’re left out, Fats.”

“Just what do you mean?” Ignatius asked haughtily.

“Looks like your costume’s not going over too well,” Liz observed.

“Pardon me, ladies. I must leave.”

“Hey, don’t go, Tubby,” Betty said. “Somebody’ll ask you. They’re just trying to bitch you. Don’t give up the ship. They’d bitch their own mother.”

At that moment, Timmy, who had slipped out to the slave quarters again to look for his missing charm bracelet and, he hoped, more games with the chains, appeared in the living room. He wandered over to Ignatius and asked wistfully, “Do you want to dance?”

“There. You see?” Frieda said to Ignatius.

“I want to see this,” Liz shouted. “Let’s see you two do the limbo. Come on. I’ll get a broom we can use for the pole.”

“Oh, my God!” Ignatius said. “Please. I don’t dance.”

“Oh, come on,” Timmy said. “I can teach you. I love to dance. I’ll lead.”

“Go ahead, bigass,” Betty threatened.

“No. It would be impossible. The cutlass, the smock. Someone would be injured. I came here to speak, not dance. I don’t dance. I never dance. I have never danced in my life.”

“Well, you’re going to dance now,” Frieda told him. “You don’t want to hurt this sailor’s feelings.”