“Listen to the fire in her voice,” Mrs. Levy said. “So vigorous. It’s unbelievable.”
Miss Trixie tried to break away from Mrs. Levy as they entered the office, but her pumps did not give her the traction that she was used to with sneakers, and she only wobbled.
“She’s back?” Mr. Gonzalez cried heartbrokenly.
“Can you believe your eyes?” Mrs. Levy asked him.
Mr. Gonzalez was forced to look at Miss Trixie, whose eyes were weak pools edged with blue shadow. Her lips had been extended in an orange line that almost reached her nostrils. Near the earrings a few gray wisps of hair escaped from beneath the black wig, which was slightly awry. The short skirt revealed withered, bowed legs and small feet that made the pumps look like snowshoes. Whole days of napping under a sunlamp had baked Miss Trixie to a golden brown.
“She certainly looks fit,” Mr. Gonzalez said. His voice was false and he smiled a broken smile. “You’ve done her a wonderful service, Mrs. Levy.”
“I am a very attractive woman,” Miss Trixie babbled.
Mr. Gonzalez laughed nervously.
“Now listen here,” Mrs. Levy said to him. “Part of this woman’s trouble is that kind of attitude. Ridicule she doesn’t need.”
Mr. Gonzalez tried unsuccessfully to kiss Mrs. Levy’s hand.
“I want you to make her feel wanted, Gonzalez. This woman still has a sharp mind. Give her work that will exercise those faculties of hers. Give her more authority. She desperately needs an active role in this business.”
“Definitely,” Mr. Gonzalez agreed. “I’ve said that myself all along. Haven’t I, Miss Trixie.”
“Who?” Miss Trixie snarled.
“I’ve always wanted you to assume more responsibility and authority,” the office manager screamed. “Isn’t that correct?”
“Oh, shut up, Gomez.” Miss Trixie’s teeth clattered like castanets. “Have you bought me that Easter ham yet? Answer me that.”
“All right. You’ve had your fun. Let’s go,” Mr. Levy said to his wife. “Come on. I’m getting depressed.”
“Just a moment,” Mr. Gonzalez said. “I have some mail for you.”
As the office manager went to his desk to get the mail, there was a crash in the rear of the office. Everyone, aside from Miss Trixie who had begun napping on her desk, turned around and looked in the filing department. There an extremely tall man with long black hair was picking up a file drawer that had fallen to the floor. He stuffed the filing roughly back into the drawer and slammed the drawer into its slot in the files.
“That’s Mr. Zalatimo,” Mr. Gonzalez whispered. “He’s only been with us for a few days, and I don’t think he’s going to work out. I don’t think we’ll want to include him in the Levy Pants plan.”
Mr. Zalatimo looked confusedly at the filing cabinets and scratched himself. Then he opened another drawer and fumbled through its contents with one hand while the other scratched at his armpit through his threadbare knitted shirt.
“Would you care to meet him?” the office manager asked.
“No thanks,” Mr. Levy said. “Where do you find the people that work in this place, Gonzalez? I never see people like this anywhere else.”
“He looks like a gangster to me,” Mrs. Levy said. “You don’t keep any cash around here, do you?”
“I think Mr. Zalatimo’s honest,” the office manager whispered. “He only has trouble alphabetizing.” He handed Mr. Levy a sheaf of mail. “These are mostly confirmations on your hotel reservations for spring practice. There’s a letter in there from Abelman. It’s addressed to you and not the company, and it’s marked personal, so I thought you’d better open it. It’s been around for a few days.”
“What does that crack want now?” Mr. Levy said angrily.
“Maybe he wonders what happened to a brilliant, growing concern,” Mrs. Levy observed. “Maybe he wonders what happened since Leon Levy died. Maybe this Abelman has some words of advice to a playboy. Read it, Gus. It will be your work for Levy Pants for the week.”
Mr. Levy looked at the envelope, on which “personal” had been written three times in red ball-point. He opened it and found a letter on which some attachment had been stapled.
Dear Gus Levy,
We were shocked and grievously injured to receive the attached letter. We have been a faithful outlet for your merchandise for thirty years and have heretofore always had the warmest affectionate feelings for your firm. Maybe you remember the wreath we sent when your father died for which we spared no expense.
This will be very short. After many nights without sleep, we have given the original letter to our lawyer, who is instigating a libel suit for $500,000. This may do a little to compensate for our hurt feelings.
Get a lawyer. We will see you in court like gentlemen. No more threats, please.
Very best wishes,
I. Abelman,
Manager, Abelman’s Dry Goods
Mr. Levy turned cold as he flipped the page and read the Thermofaxed copy of the letter to Abelman’s. It was incredible. Who would go to the trouble of writing things like that? “Mr. I. Abelman, Mongoloid, Esq.”; “your total lack of contact with reality”; “your blighted worldview”; “you may feel the sting of the lash across your pitiful shoulders.” Worst of all, the “Gus Levy” signature looked fairly authentic. Abelman must be kissing the original right now and smacking his lips. To somebody like Abelman that letter was like a savings bond, a blank draft on a bank.
“Who wrote this?” Mr. Levy demanded, giving the letter to Mr. Gonzalez.
“What is it, Gus? A problem? Are you having a problem? That’s one of your problems. You never tell me your problems.”
“Oh, my goodness!” Mr. Gonzalez squeaked. “This is horrible.”
“Silence!” Miss Trixie snapped.
“What is it, Gus? Something you didn’t handle correctly? Some authority you delegated to somebody else?”
“Yes, it’s a problem. It’s a problem that means we could lose the shirts off our backs.”
“What?” Mrs. Levy grabbed the letters from Mr. Gonzalez. She read them and became a hag. Her lacquered curls turned into snakes. “Now you’ve done it. Anything to get back at your father, to ruin his business. I knew it was going to end like this.”
“Oh, shut up. I never write the letters around here.”
“Susan and Sandra will have to quit college. They’ll be selling themselves to sailors and gangsters like that one there.”
“Huh?” Mr. Zalatimo asked, sensing that he was being discussed.
“You’re sick,” Mrs. Levy shouted at her husband.
“Quiet!”
“And will I be any better off?” Mrs. Levy’s aquamarine lids were trembling. “What will become of me? Already my life has been wrecked. What happens to me now? Prowling in garbage cans, following the fleet. My mother was right.”
“Quiet!” Miss Trixie demanded, this time much more fiercely. “You people are the noisiest I’ve ever met.”
Mrs. Levy had collapsed in a chair, sobbing something about going out to sell Avon products.
“What do you know about this, Gonzalez?” Mr. Levy asked the office manager whose lips had turned white.
“I don’t know a thing,” Mr. Gonzalez piped. “It’s the first time I’ve seen that letter.”
“You write the correspondence around here.”
“I didn’t write that.” His lips were quivering. “I wouldn’t do something like that to Levy Pants!”
“No, I know you wouldn’t.” Mr. Levy tried to think. “Somebody really had it in for us.”
Mr. Levy went over to the files, pushed the scratching Mr. Zalatimo aside, and opened the files in the A’s. There was no Abelman folder. The drawer was completely empty. He opened several other drawers, but half of them were empty, too. What a way to begin fighting a libel suit.
“What do you people do with the filing?”
“I was wondering about that myself,” Mr. Zalatimo said
vaguely.
“Gonzalez, what was the name of that big kook you had working in here, the big fat one with the green cap?”
“Mr. Ignatius Reilly. He handled the letter to go out.” Who had composed that awful thing?
“Hey,” Jones’s voice said over the telephone, “you people still got a fat mother with a green cap workin there at Levy Pant? A big white guy got him a moustache?”
“No, we don’t,” Mr. Gonzalez answered in a shrill voice and slammed the phone down.
“Who was that?” Mr. Levy asked.
“Oh, I don’t know. Someone for Mr. Reilly.” The office manager wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. “The one who tried to make the factory workers kill me.”
“Reilly?” Miss Trixie said. “That wasn’t Reilly, that was…”
“The young idealist?” Mrs. Levy sobbed. “Who wanted him?”
“I don’t know,” the office manager answered. “It sounded like a Negro voice to me.”
“Well, I guess so,” Mrs. Levy said. “He’s out trying to help some other unfortunates right now. It’s encouraging to know that his idealism is still intact.”
Mr. Levy had been thinking of something, and he asked the office manager, “What was the name of that kook?”
“Reilly. Ignatius J. Reilly.”
“It was?” Miss Trixie said with interest. “That’s strange. I always thought it…”
“Miss Trixie, please,” Mr. Levy said angrily. That Reilly blimp was working for the company at the time that that letter to Abelman was dated. “Do you think that that Reilly would write a letter like that?”
“Maybe,” Mr. Gonzalez said. “I don’t know. I had high hopes for him until he tried to get that worker to brain me.”
“That’s right,” Mrs. Levy moaned. “Try to pin it on the young idealist. Put him away where his idealism won’t bother you. People like the young idealist don’t deal in underhanded things like that. Wait until Susan and Sandra hear about this.” Mrs. Levy made a gesture that indicated that the girls would clearly go into a state of shock. “Negroes are calling here to get his counsel. You’re about to frame him. I can’t take much more of this, Gus. I can’t, I can’t!”
“Then do you want me to say I wrote that?”
“Of course not!” Mrs. Levy screamed at her husband. “I’m supposed to end in the poorhouse? If the young idealist wrote it, he goes to jail for forgery.”
“Say, what’s going on?” Mr. Zalatimo asked. “Is this dump gonna close down or what? I mean, I’d like to know.”
“Shut up, gangster,” Mrs. Levy answered wildly, “before we pin it on you.”
“Huh?”
“Will you keep quiet? You’re getting everything confused,” Mr. Levy said to his wife. Then he turned to the office manager. “Get me this Reilly’s phone number.”
Mr. Gonzalez awakened Miss Trixie and asked her for a phone book.
“I keep all of the phone books,” Miss Trixie snapped. “And no one is going to use them.”
“Then look up a Reilly on Constantinople Street for us.”
“Well, all right, Gomez,” Miss Trixie snarled. “Hold your horses.” She took the three hoarded office telephone books out of some recess in her desk, and, studying the pages with a magnifying glass, gave them a number.
Mr. Levy dialed it and a voice answered, “Good morning. Regal Cleaners.”
“Give me one of those phone books,” Mr. Levy hollered.
“No,” Miss Trixie rasped, slapping her hand down on the stack of books, guarding them with her newly enameled nails. “You’ll only lose it. I’ll find the right number. I must say you people are very impatient and excitable. Staying at your house took ten years off my life. Why can’t you let poor Reilly alone? You already kicked him out over nothing.”
Mr. Levy dialed the second number that she gave him. A woman who sounded slightly intoxicated answered and told him that Mr. Reilly wouldn’t be home until late in the afternoon. Then she started crying, and Mr. Levy got depressed and thanked her and hung up.
“Well, he’s not at home,” Mr. Levy told the audience in the office.
“Mr. Reilly always seemed to have the best interests of Levy Pants at heart,” the office manager said sadly. “Why he started that riot I’ll never know.”
“For one thing because he had a police record.”
“When he came to apply, I certainly didn’t think he was a police character.” The office manager shook his head. “He seemed so refined.”
Mr. Gonzalez watched Mr. Zalatimo probing his long index finger high into one of his nostrils. What would this one do? His feet tingled with fear.
The factory door banged open and one of the workers screamed, “Hey, Mr. Gonzalez, Mr. Palerma just burn his hand on one of them furnace door.”
There were sounds of disorder in the factory. A man was cursing.
“Oh, my goodness,” Mr. Gonzalez cried. “Quiet the workers. I’ll be there in a minute.”
“Come on,” Mr. Levy said to his wife. “Let’s get out of here. I’m getting heartburn.”
“Just a moment.” Mrs. Levy gestured to Mr. Gonzalez. “About Miss Trixie. I want you to give her a welcome every morning. Give her meaningful work to do. In the past her insecurity probably made her afraid of taking any responsible work. I think she’s over that now. Basically she has a deep seated hatred of Levy Pants that I’ve analyzed as being rooted in fear. The insecurity and fear have led to hatred.”
“Of course,” the office manager said, half listening. The factory sounded bad.
“Go see about the factory, Gonzalez,” Mr. Levy said. “I’ll get in touch with Reilly.”
“Yes, sir.” Mr. Gonzalez made a deep bow to them and dashed out of the office.
“Okay.” Mr. Levy was holding the door open. Just come near Levy Pants and you were subjected to all sorts of annoyances and depressing influences. You couldn’t leave the place alone for a minute. Anyone who wanted to take it easy and not be bothered had better not have a company like Levy Pants. Gonzalez didn’t even know what kind of mail was going out of the office. “Come on, Dr. Freud. Let’s go.”
“Look how calm you are. It doesn’t matter to you that Abelman is about to sue our lives away if he can.” The aquamarine lids trembled. “Aren’t you going to get the idealist?”
“Some other time. I’ve had enough for one day.”
“Meanwhile Abelman has Scotland Yard at our throats.”
“He’s not even home.” Mr. Levy didn’t feel like speaking with the crying woman again. “I’ll call him tonight from the coast. There’s nothing to worry about. They can’t sue me for a half million for a letter I didn’t write.”
“Oh, no? I’m sure somebody like Abelman could. I can just see that lawyer he’s got. Crippled from chasing ambulances. Mutilated from being caught in fires he’s started for insurance money.”
“Well, you’ll take the bus back to the coast if you don’t hurry up. I’m getting indigestion from this office.”
“All right, all right. You can’t spare a minute of your wasted life for this woman, can you?” Mrs. Levy indicated the loudly snoring Miss Trixie. She shook Miss Trixie’s shoulder. “I’m going, darling. Everything is going to be fine. I’ve spoken to Mr. Gonzalez and he’s delighted to see you again.”
“Quiet!” Miss Trixie ordered. Her teeth snapped menacingly.
“Come on before I have to take you to get a rabies shot,” Mr. Levy said angrily and grabbed his wife through her fur coat.
“Just look at this place.” A gloved hand gestured to the dingy office furniture, to the warped floors, to the crepe paper streamers still hanging from the days when I. J. Reilly was custodian of the files, to Mr. Zalatimo who was kicking at the wastebasket in alphabetical frustration. “Sad, sad. A business down the drain, unhappy young idealists stooping to forgery to get even.”
“Get out of here, you people,” Miss Trixie snarled, slapping her palm on the desk.
“Listen to the conviction
in that voice,” Mrs. Levy said proudly as her round, furry figure was being hauled through the door. “I’ve worked a miracle.”
The door closed and Mr. Zalatimo came over to Miss Trixie, absently scratching himself. He tapped her on the shoulder and asked, “Say, lady, maybe you can help me out with this. What would you say comes first, Willis or Williams?”
Miss Trixie glared at him for a moment. Then she sank her teeth into his hand. In the factory Mr. Gonzalez heard Mr. Zalatimo’s screaming. He didn’t know whether to desert the seared Mr. Palermo and see what had happened or to stay in the factory, where the workers had begun dancing with one another under the loudspeakers. Levy Pants demanded a lot of a person.
In the sports car, as they drove through the salt marshes that led back to the coast, Mrs. Levy, pulling her blowing fur up closer around her neck said, “I’m establishing a Foundation.”
“I see. Suppose Abelman’s lawyer gets the money out of us.”
“He won’t. The young idealist is trapped,” she said calmly. “A police record, inciting a riot. His character references will stink.”
“Oh. Suddenly you agree that your young idealist is a criminal.”
“He obviously was all alone.”
“But you wanted to get your hands on Miss Trixie.”
“That’s right.”
“Well, there will be no Foundation.”
“Susan and Sandra will hate to know that your bum’s attitude toward the world almost ruined them, that because you won’t even take the time to supervise your own company, we have somebody suing us for half a million. The girls will really resent that. The least that you’ve always given them has been material comfort. Susan and Sandra will hate to know that they could have ended up as prostitutes or worse.”
“They might at least have made some money at it. As it is, they’re all for free.”
“Please, Gus. Not another word. Even my brutalized spirit has some sensitivity left. I can’t let you slander my girls like that.” Mrs. Levy sighed contentedly. “This Abelman business is the most dangerous of all your mistakes and errors and evasions through the years. The girls’ hair will curl when they read of it. Of course, I won’t frighten them if you don’t want me to.”
A Confederacy of Dunces Page 29
