Confederacy of Dunces, A - John Kennedy Toole [120]
“Say, Mister, who they got laid out in there?” she asked the man.
“They waking old lady Lopez,” the man answered.
“You don’t say. She the wife of that Lopez ran the little market over on Frenchman Street?”
“That’s the one.”
“Aw, I’m sorry to hear that,” Santa said. “What she died from?”
“Heart trouble.”
“Ain’t that a shame,” Mrs. Reilly said emotionally. “Poor girl.”
“Well, if I was dressed,” Santa told the man, “I’d go in and pay my respects. Me and my friends here just on our way to a picture show. Thank you.”
As they walked along, Santa described to Mrs. Reilly the many sadnesses and tribulations that had comprised old lady Lopez’s dismal existence. Finally Santa said, “I think I’ll send her family a Mass.”
“Lord,” Mrs. Reilly said, overcome by old lady Lopez’s biography, “I think I’ll send a Mass, too, for the repose of that poor woman’s soul.”
“Irene!” Santa screamed. “You don’t even know them people.”
“Well, that’s true,” Mrs. Reilly agreed weakly.
When they arrived at the theater, there was some discussion between Santa and Mr. Robichaux over who was going to buy the tickets. Mrs. Reilly said that she would if she didn’t have to meet a payment on Ignatius’s trumpet before the week was out. Mr. Robichaux was adamant, though, and Santa at last let him have his way.
“After all,” Santa said to him as he handed tickets to the two ladies, “you the one’s got all the money.”
She winked at Mrs. Reilly, whose mind had wandered again to that sign that Ignatius refused to explain to her. During most of the movie Mrs. Reilly thought about Ignatius’s rapidly decreasing salary, the payment on the trumpet, the payment on the wrecked building, the earring, and the sign. Only Santa’s happy exclamations of “Ain’t she precious!” and “Just take a look at that cute dress she’s got, Irene!” brought Mrs. Reilly back to what was happening on the screen. Then something else drew her from her meditations about her son and her problems, both of which were really the same thing. Mr. Robichaux’s hand had gently covered and was now holding hers. Mrs. Reilly was too afraid to move. Why did movies always seem to make the men she had known — Mr. Reilly and Mr. Robichaux — amorous? She stared blindly at the screen, on which she saw not Debbie Reynolds cavorting in color but rather Jean Harlow taking a bath in black and white.
Mrs. Reilly was wondering if she could easily wrench her hand out of Mr. Robichaux’s and bolt from the theater when Santa cried, “Just watch it, Irene, I betcha little Debbie’s gonna have her a baby!”
“A what?” Mrs. Reilly screamed wildly, bursting into crazy, loud tears that didn’t subside until the frightened Mr. Robichaux took her maroon head and placed it carefully on his shoulder.
II
Dear Reader,
Nature has sometimes made a fool; but a coxcomb is always of man’s own making.
— Addison
As I was wearing the soles of my desert boots down to a mere sliver of crepe rubber on the old flagstone banquettes of the French Quarter in my fevered attempt to wrest a living from an unthinking and uncaring society, I was hailed by a cherished old acquaintance (deviate). After a few minutes of conversation in which I established most easily my moral superiority over this degenerate, I found myself pondering once more the crises of our times. My mentality, uncontrollable and wanton as always, whispered to me a scheme so magnificent and daring that I shrank from the very thought of what I was hearing. “Stop!” I cried imploringly to my god-like mind. “This is madness.” But still I listened to the counsel of my brain. It was offering me the opportunity to Save the World Through Degeneracy. There on the worn stones of the Quarter I enlisted the aid of this wilted flower of a human in gathering his associates in foppery together behind a banner of brotherhood.
Our first step will be