Confederacy of Dunces, A - John Kennedy Toole [150]
“Mira, Lee.” The Latin woman inflicted a little halitosis on Lana Lee. “Who is pay the twenty-four dollar for champagne?”
“You’re fired, too, you dumb spic.” Lana smiled. “Come on in folks, and enjoy a good drink made by our expert mixologists to your exact specifications.”
The crowd, however, was craning at the white mound, which was wheezing loudly, and declined the invitation to elegance.
Lana Lee was about to go over and kick the mound into consciousness and get it out of her gutter when the man in the homburg said politely, “I’d like to use your telephone. Maybe I’d better call a ambulance.”
Lana looked at the silk suit, the hat, the weak, insecure eyes. She could spot a safe one, a soft touch all right. A rich doctor? A lawyer? She might be able to turn this little fiasco into a profit.
“Sure,” she whispered. “Look, you don’t wanna waste your evening messing with that character laying in the street. He’s some kinda bum. You look like you could use you some fun.” She stepped around the white mountain of smock, which was wheezing and snorting volcanically. Somewhere in fantasyland Ignatius was dreaming of a terrified Myrna Minkoff being tried by a court of Taste and Decency and found wanting. A dreadful sentence was about to be pronounced, something guaranteeing physical injury to her person as penance for innumerable offenses. Lana Lee got close to the man and reached into her gold lame overalls. She squatted next to him and surreptitiously flashed the Boethian photograph cupped in her hand. “Take a look at this, baby. How’d you like to spend the evening with that?”
The man in the homburg turned his eyes from Ignatius’s whitened face and looked at the woman, the book, the globe, the chalk. He cleared his throat once more and said, “I’m Patrolman Mancuso. Undercover agent. You’re under arrest for soliciting and for possession of pornography.”
Just then the three members of the defunct ladies’ auxiliary, Frieda, Betty, and Liz, stomped into the crowd surrounding Ignatius.
Thirteen
Ignatius opened his eyes and saw white floating above him. He had a headache and his ear was throbbing. Then his blue and yellow eyes focused slowly, and, through his headache, he realized that he was looking at a ceiling.
“So you finally woke up, boy,” his mother’s voice said near him. “Just take a look at this. Now we really ruined.”
“Where am I?”
“Don’t start acting smart with me, boy. Don’t start with me, Ignatius. I’m warning you. I had enough. I mean it. How I’m gonna face people after this?”
Ignatius turned his head and looked about him. He was lying in a little cell formed by screens on either side. He saw a nurse pass by the foot of the bed.
“Good heavens! I’m in a hospital. Who is my doctor? I hope that you have been selfless enough to secure the services of a specialist. And a priest. Have one come. I’ll see whether he’s acceptable.” Ignatius sprayed a little nervous saliva on the sheet that snowcapped the peak of his stomach. He touched his head and felt a bandage plastered over his headache. “Oh, my God! Don’t be afraid to tell me, Mother. I can tell from the pain that it must be rather fatal.”
“Shut up and take a look at this,” Mrs. Reilly almost shouted, throwing a newspaper on Ignatius’s bandage.
“Nurse!”
Mrs. Reilly tore the newspaper from his face and slapped her hand over his moustache.
“Now shut up, crazy, and take a look at this here paper.” Her voice was cracking. “We ruined.”
Under the headline that said, WILD INCIDENT ON BOURBON STREET, Ignatius saw three photographs lined up together. On the right Darlene with her ball gown was holding the cockatoo and smiling a starlet’s smile. On the left Lana Lee covered her face with her hands as she climbed into the rear seat of a squad car already filled with the three cropped heads of the members of the ladies’ auxiliary of the Peace Party. Patrolman Mancuso, in a torn suit and a hat with a bent rim, purposefully held open the door of the car. In the