Confederacy of Dunces, A - John Kennedy Toole [84]
“Gloria?” Mr. Levy asked. “I didn’t fire any Gloria!”
“Yes, you did!” Miss Trixie piped. “I saw it with my very own eyes. Poor Gloria was the soul of kindness. I remember Gloria gave me socks and luncheon meat.”
“Socks and luncheon meat?” Mr. Levy whistled through his teeth. “Oh, boy.”
“That’s right,” Mrs. Levy shouted. “Make fun of this neglected creature. Just don’t tell me whatever else you did at Levy Pants. I couldn’t bear it. I won’t tell the girls about Gloria. They wouldn’t understand a heart like yours. They’re too innocent.”
“No, you’d better not try to tell them about Gloria,” Mr. Levy said angrily. “Any more of this foolishness and you’ll be down on the beach in San Juan with your mother, laughing, and swimming and dancing.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“Now quiet!” Miss Trixie snarled more loudly. “I want to go back to Levy Pants right this very minute.”
“You see that?” Mrs. Levy asked her husband. “You hear that desire to work. And you want to crush her by retiring her. Gus, please. Get help. You’re going to end badly.”
Miss Trixie was reaching for the bag of scraps that she had brought as luggage.
“Okay, Miss Trixie,” Mr. Levy said as if he were summoning a pet cat. “Let’s go get in the car.”
“Thank goodness,” Miss Trixie sighed.
“Take your hands off her!” Mrs. Levy screamed.
“I haven’t even gotten up from my chair,” her husband answered.
Mrs. Levy shoved Miss Trixie down on the couch again and said, “Now stay there. You need help.”
“Not from you people,” Miss Trixie wheezed. “Let me up.”
“Let her up.”
“Please.” Mrs. Levy held up a warning hand, plump and ringed. “Don’t worry about this neglected creature I’ve taken under my wing. Don’t worry about me either. Forget your little daughters. Get in your sports car and ride. There’s a regatta this afternoon. Look. You can see the sails from the picture window I had installed with your father’s hard-earned money.”
“I’ll get even with you people,” Miss Trixie was snarling on the couch. “Don’t worry. You’ll find out.”
She tried to rise, but Mrs. Levy had pinned her to the yellow nylon.
II
His cold was getting worse and worse, and each cough caused a vague pain in his lungs that lingered on for moments after the cough had seared his throat and chest. Patrolman Mancuso wiped his mouth clean of saliva and tried to clear the phlegm from his throat. One afternoon he had had such a bad case of claustrophobia that he almost fainted in the booth. Now it seemed that he was ready to faint from the dizziness that the cold had induced. He leaned his head against the side of the booth for a moment and closed his eyes. Red and blue clouds floated across his eyelids. He had to capture some character and get out of that rest room before his ague got so bad that the sergeant had to carry him to and from the booth every day. He had always hoped to win honor on the force, but what honor was there in dying of pneumonia in a bus station rest room? Even his relatives would laugh. What would his children say to their friends at school?
Patrolman Mancuso looked at the tiles on the floor. They were out of focus. He felt panic. Then he stared at them more closely and saw that the haze was only the moisture that formed a gray film over almost every surface in the rest room. He looked again at The Consolation of Philosophy, which was opened on his lap, and turned a limp, damp page. The book was making him more depressed. The guy who wrote it was going to be tortured by the king. The preface had said so. Now all this time the guy was writing this thing, he was going to end up with something driven down into his head. Patrolman Mancuso felt sorry for the guy and felt obliged to read what he had written. So far he had covered only about twenty