Confederacy of Dunces, A - John Kennedy Toole [94]
“Okay. Then it’s settled. You come in tomorrow morning, we’ll fix you up with some gimmicks.”
“I can’t promise you that many hot dogs will be sold in the Quarter. I will probably be kept busy every moment protecting my honor against those fiends who live down there.”
“You get mostly the tourist trade in the Quarter.”
“That’s even worse. Only degenerates go touring. Personally, I have been out of the city only once. By the way, have I ever told you about that particular pilgrimage to Baton Rouge? Outside the city limits there are many horrors.”
“No. I don’t wanna hear about it.”
“Well, too bad for you. You might have gained some valuable insights from the traumatic tale of that trip. However, I am glad that you do not want to hear of it. The psychological and symbolic subtleties of the journey probably wouldn’t be comprehended by a Paradise Vendors mentality. Fortunately, I’ve written it all down, and at some time in the future, the more alert among the reading public will benefit from my account of that abysmal sojourn into the swamps to the inner station of the ultimate horror.”
“Now listen here, Reilly.”
“In the account I struck upon an especially suitable simile in comparing the Scenicruiser bus to a loop-the-loop in a surrealistic amusement park.”
“Now shut up!” Mr. Clyde screamed, waving his fork menacingly. “Let’s go over your receipts for today. How much did you sell?”
“O, my God,” Ignatius sighed. “I knew that we’d get to that sooner or later.”
The two haggled over the profits for several minutes. Ignatius had actually spent the morning sitting at Eads Plaza watching the harbor traffic and jotting some notes about the history of shipping and Marco Polo in a Big Chief tablet. Between notes, he had contemplated means of destroying Myrna Minkoff but had reached no satisfactory conclusion. His most promising scheme had involved getting a book on munitions from the library, constructing a bomb, and mailing it in plain paper to Myrna. Then he remembered that his library card had been revoked. The afternoon had been wasted on the cat; Ignatius had tried to trap the cat in the bun compartment and take it home for a pet. But it had escaped.
“It seems to me that you would be generous enough to give some sort of discount to your own employees,” Ignatius said importantly after an audit of the day’s receipts showed that, upon subtracting the cost of the hot dogs he had eaten, his take-home pay for the day was exactly a dollar and twenty-five cents. “After all, I am becoming your best customer.”
Mr. Clyde stuck the fork in Vendor Reilly’s muffler and ordered him out of the garage, threatening him with dismissal if he didn’t show up early to begin working the French Quarter.
Ignatius flapped off to the trolley in a dark mood and rode uptown belching Paradise gas so violently that, although the car was crowded, no one would sit next to him.
When he walked into the kitchen, his mother greeted him by falling to her knees and saying, “Lord, tell me how come you sent me this terrible cross to bear? What I done, Lord? Tell me. Send me a sign. I been good.”
“Stop that blasphemy this moment,” Ignatius screamed. Mrs. Reilly was questioning the ceiling with her eyes, seeking an answer among the grease and cracks. “What a greeting I receive after a discouraging day battling for my very existence on the streets of this savage town.”
“What’s them bo-bos on your hand?”
Ignatius looked at the scratches he had received in trying to persuade the cat to remain in the bun compartment.
“I had a rather apocalyptic battle with a starving prostitute,” Ignatius belched. “Had it not been for my superior brawn, she would have sacked my wagon. Finally she limped away from the fray, her glad rags askew.”
“Ignatius!” Mrs. Reilly cried tragically. “Every day it seems you getting worst and worst. What’s happening to you?”
“Get your bottle out of the oven. It must be done by now.”
Mrs. Reilly looked at her son slyly and asked, “Ignatius, you sure