“What in the world do you and that old bawd babble about?” Ignatius asked.
“Shut up!”
“Thank you. I see that things about here are as cheerful as ever.”
“How much money you brought in today? A quarter?” Mrs. Reilly screamed. She leaped up and stuck her hand into one of the pockets of the smock and pulled out the brilliant photograph. “Ignatius!”
“Give that to me,” Ignatius thundered. “How dare you besmirch that magnificent image with your vintner’s hands.”
Mrs. Reilly peeked at the photograph again and then closed her eyes. A tear crept out from beneath her closed eyelids. “I knew when you started selling them weenies you was gonna be hanging around with people like this.”
“What do you mean, ‘people like this’?” Ignatius asked angrily, pocketing the photograph. “This is a brilliant, misused woman. Speak of her with respect and reverence.”
“I don’t wanna speak at all,” Mrs. Reilly sniffed, her lids still sealed. “Go sit in your room and write some more of your foolishness.” The telephone rang. “That must be that Mr. Levy. He already rang up here twice today.”
“Mr. Levy? What does that monster want?”
“He wouldn’t tell me. Go on, crazy. Answer that. Pick up that phone.”
“Well, I certainly don’t want to speak with him,” Ignatius thundered. He picked up the telephone, and in an assumed voice rich with Mayfair accents said, “Yus?”
“Mr. Reilly?” a man asked.
“Mr. Reilly is not here.”
“This is Gus Levy.” In the background, a woman’s voice was saying, “Let’s see what you’re going to say. Another chance down the drain, a psycho escaped.”
“I’m terribly sorry,” Ignatius enunciated. “Mr. Reilly was called out of town this afternoon on rather crucial business. Actually, he is at the state mental hospital in Mandeville. Since being so viciously dismissed by your concern, he has had to commute back and forth regularly from Mandeville. His ego is badly bruised. You may yet receive his psychiatrists’ bills. They are rather staggering.”
“He cracked up?”
“Violently and totally. We had something of a time with him here. The first time that he went to Mandeville, he had to be transported in an armored car. As you know, his physique is rather grand. This afternoon, however, he left in a state patrol ambulance.”
“Can he have visitors at Mandeville?”
“Of course. Drive out to see him. Bring him some cookies.”
Ignatius slammed the telephone down, pressed a quarter into the palm of his still sniffling, blinded mother, and waddled to his room. Before opening the door, he stopped to straighten the PEACE TO MEN OF GOOD WILL sign that he had tacked to the peeling wood.
All signs were pointing upward; his wheel was revolving skyward.
Twelve
There had been a flurry of excitement. The wild blowing of the postman’s whistle, the chugging postal truck out on Constantinople Street, his mother’s excited screaming, Miss Annie’s calling to the postman that his whistle had frightened her—all had interrupted Ignatius’s dressing for the kickoff rally. He signed the postal delivery receipt and rushed back to his room, locking his door.
“What is it, boy?” Mrs. Reilly asked in the hall.
Ignatius looked at the AIR MAIL SPECIAL DELIVERY stamping on the manila envelope and at the little hand-written pleas, “Urgent” and “Rush.”
“Oh, my goodness,” he said happily. “The Minkoff minx must be beside herself.”
He tore open the envelope and pulled out the letter.
Sirs:
Did you really send me this telegram, Ignatius?
MYRNA FORM PEACE PARTY CENTRAL COMMITTEE NORTHEASTERN ZONE AT ONCE STOP ORGANIZE AT EVERY LEVEL STOP RECRUIT SODOMITES ONLY STOP SEX IN POLITICS STOP DETAILS WILL FOLLOW STOP IGNATIUS NATIONAL CHAIRMAN STOP
What does this mean, Ignatius? Do you really want me to recruit fags? Who wants to be a registered Sodomite? Ignatius, I am very worried. Are you hanging around with some queers? I could have guessed that this would happen. The paranoid fantasy of the arrest and accident was the first clue. Now the whole thing is out in the open. Your normal sexual outlets have been blocked for so long that now the sexual overflow is seeping out into the wrong channels. Since the fantasy, which was the beginning of it all, you have been undergoing a period of crisis which is culminating in overt sexual aberration. I could tell that you were going to flip sooner or later. Now it has happened. My group therapy group will really be depressed when they hear that your case has taken a turn for the worse. Please leave that decaying city and come north. Call me collect if you want to and we can talk over this problem of sexual orientation that you are having. You must have therapy soon or you will become a screaming queen.
“How dare she?” Ignatius bellowed.
Whatever happened to the Divine Right party? I had several people who were all ready to join. I don’t know if they’ll go for this Sodomite business, although I can see that we might use this Sodomite party to drain off the fringe-group fascists. Maybe we could split the right wing in half. Still I don’t think this is a good idea at all. Suppose non-Sodomites want to join and we refuse. We will be accused of being prejudiced, and the whole thing will flop. The lecture was not exactly a success, I’m afraid. It went over all right—right over the people’s heads. There were two or three middle aged people in the audience who tried to heckle me with these very hostile remarks, but a couple of my friends from the group therapy group challenged them hostility for hostility and finally drove those reactionaries out of the auditorium. Just as I suspected, I was a little too advanced for the neighborhood audience. Ongah did not show up, that crumb. As far as I’m concerned, they can send him back to Africa. I really thought that guy had something on the ball. Apparently he’s very apathetic politically. He promised me he would be there, that schmuck. Ignatius, this Sodomite plan does not sound very practical at all. In addition, I think it is only a dangerous manifestation of your declining mental health. I don’t know how I can tell my group therapy group about this weird development—however predictable it might have been. The group has been really pulling for you all along. Some are even identifying with you. If you go, they might go, too. I need immediate communication from you. Please call collect anytime after 6 P.M. I am very, very worried.
M. Minkoff
“She’s totally confounded,” Ignatius said happily. “Wait until she hears of my apocalyptic meeting with Miss O’Hara.”
“Ignatius, what’s that you got?”
“A communication from Myrna minx.”
“What that girl wants?”
“She’s threatening suicide unless I swear that my heart is hers alone.”
“Ain’t that awful. I bet you been telling that poor girl a Iota lies. I know you, Ignatius.”
Behind the door there were sounds of dressing; something that sounded like a piece of metal fell to the floor.
“Where you going to?” Mrs. Reilly asked the peeling paint.
“Please, Mother,” a basso profundo voice answered. “I’m rather rushed. Stop bothering me, please.”
“You might as well stay at home all day long for all the money you bringing in,” Mrs. Reilly screamed at the door. “How I’m gonna meet the note I gotta pay that man?”
“I wish that you would let me alone. I am addressing a political meeting tonight, and I must organize my thoughts.”
“A political meeting? Ignatius! Ain’t that wonderful. Maybe you’ll make good in politics, boy. You got you a fine voice. What club, honey? The Crescent City Democrats? The Old Regulars?”
“The party is secret at the moment, I’m afraid.”
“What kinda political party’s a secret?” Mrs. Reilly asked suspiciously “Are you gonna talk with a buncha communiss?”
“Ho hum”
“Somebody gimme some pamphlets on the communiss, boy. I been reading all about the communiss. Don’t try to fool me, Ignatius.?
??
“Yes, I saw one of those pamphlets in the hall this afternoon. You either dropped it there on purpose so that I could benefit from its message or you tossed it there accidentally during your regular afternoon wine orgy in the belief that it was a particularly elephantine bit of confetti. I imagine that your eyes have some trouble focusing at about two in the afternoon. Well, I read through the pamphlet. It’s almost completely illiterate. Goodness knows where you get such garbage. Probably from the old woman who sells pralines at the cemetery. Well, I am not a communist, so let me alone.”
“Ignatius, don’t you think maybe you’d be happy if you went and took you a little rest at Charity?”
“Are you referring to the psychiatric ward by any chance?” Ignatius demanded in a rage. “Do you think that I am insane? Do you suppose that some stupid psychiatrist could even attempt to fathom the workings of my psyche?”
“You could just rest, honey. You could write some stuff in your little copybooks.”
“They would try to make me into a moron who liked television and new cars and frozen food. Don’t you understand? Psychiatry is worse than communism. I refuse to be brainwashed. I won’t be a robot!”
“But, Ignatius, they help out a lot of people got problems.”
“Do you think that I have a problem?” Ignatius bellowed. “The only problem that those people have anyway is that they don’t like new cars and hair sprays. That’s why they are put away. They make the other members of the society fearful. Every asylum in this nation is filled with poor souls who simply cannot stand lanolin, cellophane, plastic, television, and subdivisions.”
“Ignatius, that ain’t true. You remember old Mr. Becnel used to live down the block? They locked him up because he was running down the street naked.”
“Of course he was running down the street naked. His skin could not bear any more of that dacron and nylon clothing that was clogging his pores. I’ve always considered Mr. Becnel one of the martyrs of our age. The poor man was badly victimized. Now run along to the front door and see if my taxi has arrived.”
“Where you getting money for a taxi?”
“I keep a few pennies stuffed in my mattress,” Ignatius answered. He had blackmailed another ten dollars out of the urchin, also forcing the waif to watch the wagon while he spent the afternoon at Loew’s State watching a film about drag-racing teenagers. The guttersnipe was definitely a discovery, a gift sent by Fortuna to make amends for all of her bad spins. “Go peek through the shutters.”
The door creaked open and Ignatius appeared in his pirate finery.
“Ignatius!”
“I thought that you might react like that. Therefore I have kept all of this paraphernalia stashed at Paradise Vendors, Incorporated.”
“Angelo was right,” Mrs. Reilly cried. “You been out on the streets dressed up like a Mardi Gras all this time.”
“A scarf here. A cutlass there. One or two deft and tasteful suggestions. That’s all. The total effect is rather fetching.”
“You can’t go out like that,” Mrs. Reilly hollered.
“Please. Not another hysterical scene. You’ll dislodge all of the thoughts which are developing in my mind in connection with the lecture.”
“Get back in that room, boy.” Mrs. Reilly began beating Ignatius on the arms. “Get back in there, Ignatius. I ain’t fooling this time, boy. You can’t disgrace me like that.”
“Good heavens! Mother, stop that. I’ll be in no condition for my speech.”
“What kinda speech you gonna make? Where you going to, Ignatius? Tell me, boy?” Mrs. Reilly slapped her son flatly in the face. “You ain’t leaving this house, crazy.”
“Oh, my God, are you going mad? Get away from me this instant. I hope that you’ve noticed that scimitar dangling from my uniform.”
A slap struck Ignatius in the nose: another landed on his right eye. He waddled down the hall, pushed the long shutters open, and ran out into the yard.
“Come back in this house,” Mrs. Reilly screamed from the front door. “You ain’t going nowhere, Ignatius.”
“I dare you to come out in that shredded nightgown and get me!” Ignatius answered defiantly and stuck out his massive pink tongue.
“Get back in here, Ignatius.”
“Hey, knock it off, you two,” Miss Annie shouted from behind her front shutters. “My nerves is shot to hell.”
“Take a look at Ignatius,” Mrs. Reilly called to her. “Ain’t that awful?”
Ignatius was waving to his mother from the brick sidewalk, his earring catching the rays of the streetlight.
“Ignatius, come in here like a good boy,” Mrs. Reilly pleaded.
“I awready got me a headache from the goddam postman’s whistle,” Miss Annie threatened loudly. “I’m gonna ring up the cops in about one minute.”
“Ignatius,” shouted Mrs. Reilly, but it was too late. A taxi was cruising down the block. Ignatius flagged it down just as his mother, forgetting the disgrace of the shredded nightgown, ran down to the curb. Ignatius slammed the rear door right in his mother’s maroon hair and barked an address at the driver. He stabbed at his mother’s hands with the cutlass and ordered the driver to move along immediately. The taxi sped off, churning up some pebbles in the gutter that stung Mrs. Reilly’s legs through the torn rayon gown. She watched the red taillights for a moment, then she ran back into the house to telephone Santa.
“Going to a costume party, pal?” the driver asked Ignatius as they turned onto St. Charles Avenue.
“Watch where you’re going and speak when you’re spoken to,” Ignatius thundered.
During the ride the driver said nothing else, but Ignatius practiced his speech loudly in the back seat, rapping his cutlass against the front seat to emphasize certain key points.
At St. Peter Street he got out and first heard the noise, dim yet frenetic singing and laughing coming from the three-story stucco building. Some prosperous Frenchman had built the house in the late 1700s to house a menage of wife, children, and spinster tantes. The tantes had been stored up in the attic along with the other excess and unattractive furniture, and from the two little dormer windows in the roof they had seen what little of the world they believed existed outside of their own monde of slanderous gossip, needlework, and cyclical recitations of the rosary. But the hand of the professional decorator had exorcised whatever ghosts of the French bourgeoisie might still haunt the thick brick walls of the building. The exterior was painted a bright canary yellow; the gas jets in the reproduction brass lanterns mounted on either side of the carriageway flickered softly, their amber flames rippling in reflection on the black enamel of the gate and shutters. On the flagstone paving beneath both lanterns there were old plantation pots in which Spanish daggers grew and extended their sharply pointed stilettos.
Ignatius stood before the building regarding it with extreme distaste. His blue and yellow eyes denounced the resplendent façade. His nose rebelled against the very noticeable odor of fresh enamel. His ears shrank from the bedlam of singing, cackling, and giggling that was going on behind the closed black patent leather shutters.
Testily clearing his throat, he looked at the three brass doorbells and at the little white cards above each:
Billy Truehard
Raoul Frayle -3A
Frieda Club
Betty Bumper
Liz Steele -2A
Dorian Greene -1A
He jabbed a finger into the bottom bell and waited. The frenzy behind the shutters abated very slightly. A door opened somewhere down the carriageway, and Dorian Greene came walking toward the gate.
“Oh, dear,” he said when he saw who was out on the sidewalk. “Where in the world have you been? I’m afraid that the kickoff rally is fast getting out of hand. I have tried unsuccessfully once or twice to call the group to order, but apparently feelings are running rather high.”
“I hope you’ve done nothing to dampen their morale,” Ignatius said gravely, tapping his cutlass impatiently
on the iron gate. He noticed somewhat angrily that Dorian was walking toward him a little unsteadily; this was not what he had expected.
“Oh, what a gathering,” Dorian said as he opened the gate. “Everyone is simply letting his hair down.”
Dorian did a rapid and uncoordinated pantomime to illustrate this.
“Oh, my God!” Ignatius said. “Stop that appalling obscenity.”
“Several people will be completely ruined after this evening. There’s going to be a mass exodus for Mexico City in the morning. But then Mexico City is so wonderfully wild.”
“I certainly hope that no one has tried to inflict any warmongering resolutions upon the gathering.”
“Oh, goodness, no.”
“I’m relieved to hear that. Heaven knows what opposition we may have to face even at the outset. We may have some ‘enemy within.’ Word may have leaked out to the whole military combine of the nation and, for that matter, the world.”
“Well, come along, Gypsy Queen, let’s get inside.”
As they walked down the carriageway, Ignatius said, “This building is repellingly flamboyant.” He looked at the pastel lamps concealed behind the palms along the walls. “Who’s responsible for this abortion?”
“I, of course, Magyar Maiden. I own the building.”
“I should have known. May I ask where the money comes from to support this decadent whimsy of yours?”
“From my dear family out there in the wheat,” Dorian sighed. “They send me large checks every month. In return I simply guarantee them that I’ll stay out of Nebraska. I left there under something of a cloud, you see. All that wheat and those endless plains. I can’t tell you how depressing it all was. Grant Wood romanticized it, if anything. I went East for college and then came here. Oh, New Orleans is such freedom.”
“Well, at least we have a gathering place for our coup. Now that I’ve seen the place, however, I would have preferred your renting an American Legion hall or something equally appropriate. This place looks more like the setting for some perverted activity like a tea dance or a garden party.”