Confederacy of Dunces, A - John Kennedy Toole [32]
“Watch your tongue.”
“Times changin,” Jones said, adjusting his sunglasses. “You cain scare color peoples no more. I got me some peoples form a human chain in front your door, drive away your business, get you on the TV news. Color peoples took enough horseshit already, and for twenty dollar a week you ain piling no more on. I getting pretty tire of bein vagran or workin below the minimal wage. Get somebody else run your erran.”
“Aw, knock it off and finish my floor. I’ll get Darlene to go.”
“That po gal.” Jones explored a booth with the broom. “Hustlin water, runnin erran. Whoa!”
“Ring up the precinct about her. She’s a B-drinker.”
“I waitin till I can ring up the precinct about you. Darlene don wanna be a B-drinker. She force to be a B-drinker. She say she wanna go in show biz.”
“Yeah? Well, with the brains that girl’s got she’s lucky they haven’t shipped her off to the funny farm.”
“She be better off there.”
“She’d be better off if she just put that mind of hers to selling my liquor and quit with the dancing crap. I can just imagine what somebody like her would do on my stage. Darlene’s the kinda person ruin your investment if you don’t watch her.”
The padded door banged open and a young boy clicked into the bar, scraping the metal taps on his flamenco boots across the floor.
“Well, it’s about time,” Lana said to him.
“You got a new jig, huh?” The boy looked out at Jones through his swirls of oiled hair. “What happened to the last one? He die or something?”
“Honey,” said Lana blandly.
The boy opened a flashy hand-tooled wallet and gave Lana a number of bills.
“Everything went okay, George?” she asked him. “The orphans liked them?”
“They liked the one on the desk with the glasses on. They thought it was some kinda teacher or something. I want only that one this time.”
“You think they want another like that?” Lana asked with interest.
“Yeah. Why not? Maybe one with a blackboard and a book. You know. Doing something with a piece of chalk.”
The boy and Lana smiled at each other.
“I get the picture,” Lana said and winked.
“Hey, you a junkie?” the boy called to Jones. “You look like a junkie to me.”
“You be lookin pretty junky with a Night of Joy broom stickin out your ass,” Jones said very slowly. “Night of Joy broom old, they good and splintery.”
“Okay, okay,” Lana screamed. “I don’t want a race riot in here. I got an investment to protect.”
“You better tell your little ofay kid friend move along.” Jones blew some smoke on the two. “I ain takin no insult with this kinda job.”
“Come on, George,” Lana said. She opened the cabinet under the bar and gave George a package wrapped in brown paper. “This is the one you want. Now go on. Beat it.”
George winked at her and banged out the door.
“That suppose to be a messenger for the orphans?” Jones asked. “I like to see the orphans he operatin for. I bet the United Fun don know about them orphans.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Lana asked angrily. She studied Jones’s face, but the glasses prevented her reading anything there. “There’s nothing wrong with a little charity. Now get back on my floor.”
Lana started to make sounds, like the imprecations of a priestess, over the bills that the boy had given her. Whispered numerals and words floated upward from her coral lips, and, closing her eyes, she copied some figures onto a pad of paper. Her fine body, itself a profitable investment through the years, bent reverently over the formica top altar. Smoke, like incense, rose from the cigarette in the ashtray at her elbow, curling upward with her prayers, up above the host which she was elevating in order to study the date of its minting, the single silver dollar that lay among the offerings. Her bracelet tinkled, calling communicants to the altar, but the only one in the temple had been excommunicated from the Faith because of his parentage and continued mopping. An offering fell to the floor, the host, and Lana knelt to venerate and retrieve it.
“Hey, watch out,” Jones called, violating the sanctity of the rite. “You droppin