Confederacy of Dunces, A - John Kennedy Toole [42]
Mr. and Mrs. Levy, who considered each other the only ungratifying objects in the home, sat before their television set watching the colors merge together on the screen.
“Perry Como’s face is all green,” Mrs. Levy said with great hostility. “He looks like a corpse. You’d better take this set back to the shop.”
“I just brought it back from New Orleans this week,” Mr. Levy said, blowing on the black hairs of his chest that he could see through the V of his terry cloth robe. He had just taken a steam bath and wanted to dry himself completely. Even with year-round air conditioning and central heating one could never be sure.
“Well, take it back again. I’m not going to go blind looking at a broken TV.”
“Oh, shut up. He looks all right.”
“He does not look all right. Look how green his lips are.”
“It’s the makeup those people use.”
“You mean to tell me they put green makeup on Como’s lips?”
“I don’t know what they do.”
“Of course you don’t,” Mrs. Levy said, turning her aquamarine-lidded eyes toward her husband, who was submerged somewhere among the pillows of a yellow nylon couch. She saw some terry cloth and a rubber shower clog at the end of a hairy leg.
“Don’t bother me,” he said. “Go play with your exercising board.”
“I can’t get on that thing tonight. My hair was done today.”
She touched the high plasticized curls of her platinum hair.
“The hairdresser told me that I should get a wig, too,” she said.
“What do you want with a wig? Look at all the hair you’ve got already.”
“I want a brunette wig. That way I can change my personality.”
“Look, you’re already a brunette anyway, right? So why don’t you let your hair grow out naturally and buy a blonde wig?”
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Well, think about it for a while and keep quiet. I’m tired. When I went into town today I stopped at the company. That always makes me depressed.”
“What’s happening there?”
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
“That’s what I thought,” Mrs. Levy sighed. “You’ve thrown your father’s business down the drain. That’s the tragedy of your life.”
“Christ, who wants that old factory? Nobody’s buying the kind of pants they make anymore. That’s all my father’s fault. When pleats came in in the thirties, he wouldn’t change over from plain-front trousers. He was the Henry Ford of the garment industry. Then when the plain front came back in the fifties, he started making trousers with pleats. Now you should see what Gonzalez calls ‘the new summer line.’ They look like those balloon pants the clowns wear in circuses. And the fabric. I wouldn’t use it for a dishrag myself.”
“When we were married, I idolized you, Gus. I thought you had drive. You could have made Levy Pants really big. Maybe even an office in New York. It was handed all to you and you threw it away.”
“Oh, stop all that crap. You’re comfortable.”
“Your father had character. I respected him.”
“My father was a very mean and cheap man, a little tyrant. I had some interest in that company when I was young. I had plenty interest. Well, he destroyed all that with his tyranny. So far as I’m concerned, Levy Pants is his company. Let it go down the drain. He blocked every good idea I had for that firm just to prove that he was the father and I was the son. If I said, ‘Pleats,’ he said, ‘No pleats! Never!’ If I said, ‘Let’s try some of the new synthetics,’ he said, ‘Synthetics over my dead body.’”
“He started peddling pants in a wagon. Look what he built that into. With your start you could have made Levy Pants nationwide.”
“The nation is lucky, believe me. I spent my childhood in those pants. Anyway, I’m tired of listening to you talk. Period.”
“Good. Let’s keep quiet. Look, Como’s lips are