Confederacy of Dunces, A - John Kennedy Toole [52]
“You know I appreciate you, babe,” Mrs. Reilly sniffed. “Come on and gimme a little goodbye kiss like a good boy.”
Ignatius bent down and lightly bussed her on the cheek.
“Oh, my God,” he said, spitting out powder. “Now my mouth will feel gritty all night.”
“I got too much powder on?”
“No, it’s just fine. Aren’t you an arthritic or something? How in the world can you bowl?”
“I think the exercise is helping me out. I’m feeling better.”
A horn honked out on the street.
“Apparently your friend has escaped the bathroom,” Ignatius snorted. “It’s just like him to hang around a bus station. He probably likes to watch those Scenicruiser horrors arrive and depart. In his worldview the bus is apparently a good thing. That shows how retarded he is.”
“I’ll be in early, honey,” Mrs. Reilly said, closing the miniature front door.
“I shall probably be misused by some intruder!” Ignatius screamed.
Bolting the door to his room, he grabbed an empty ink bottle and opened his shutters. He stuck his head out of the window and looked down the alley to where the little white Rambler was visible in the darkness at the curb. With all of his strength, he heaved the bottle and heard it hit the roof of the car with greater sound effects than he had expected it to.
“Hey!” he heard Santa Battaglia shout as he silently closed the shutters. Gloating, he opened his looseleaf folder again and picked up his Venus Medalist.
Dear Reader,
A great writer is the friend and benefactor of his readers.
— Macaulay
Another working day is ended, gentle reader. As I told you before, I have succeeded in laying a patina, as it were, over the turbulence and mania of our office. All non-essential activities in the office are slowly being curtailed. At the moment I am busily decorating our throbbing hive of whitecollared bees (three). The analogy of the three bees brings to mind three b’s which describe most aptly my actions as an office worker: banish, benefit, beautify. There are also three b’s which describe most aptly the actions of our buffoon of an office manager: bait, beg, blight, blunder, bore, boss, bother, bungle, burden, buzz. (In this case, I am afraid that the list gets somewhat out of hand.) I have come to the conclusion that our office manager serves no purpose other than one of obfuscation and hindrance. Were it not for him, the other clerical worker (La Dama del Comercio) and I would be quite peaceful and content, attending to our duties in an atmosphere of mutual consideration. I am certain that his dictatorial methods are, in part, responsible for Miss T.’s desire to retire.
I can at last describe to you our factory. This afternoon, feeling fulfilled after having completed the cross (Yes! It is completed and gives our office a needed spiritual dimension.), I set out to visit the clank and whirr and hiss of the factory.
The scene which met my eyes was at once compelling and repelling. The original sweatshop has been preserved for posterity at Levy Pants. If only the Smithsonian Institution, that grab-bag of our nation’s refuse, could somehow vacuum-seal the Levy Pants factory and transport it to the capital of the United States of America, each worker frozen in an attitude of labor, the visitors to that questionable museum would defecate into their garish tourist outfits. It is a scene which combines the worst of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis; it is mechanized Negro slavery; it represents the progress which the Negro has made from picking cotton to tailoring it. (Were they in the picking stage of their evolution, they would at least be in the healthful outdoors singing and eating watermelons [as they are, I believe, supposed to do when in groups al fresco].) My intense and deeply felt convictions concerning social injustice were