LEVY PANTS WAS TWO structures fused into one macabre unit. The front of the plant was a brick commercial building of the nineteenth century with a mansard roof that bulged out into several rococo dormer windows, the panes of which were mostly cracked. Within this section the office occupied the third floor, a storage area the second, and refuse the first. Attached to this building, which Mr. Gonzalez referred to as “the brain center,” was the factory, a barnlike prototype of an airplane hangar. The two smokestacks that rose from the factory's tin roof leaned apart at an angle that formed an outsized rabbit-eared television antenna, an antenna that received no hopeful electronic signal from the outside world but instead discharged occasional smoke of a very sickly shade. Alongside the neat gray wharf sheds that lined the river and can*l across the railroad tracks, Levy Pants huddled, a silent and smoky plea for urban renewal.
Within the brain center there was more than the usual amount of activity. Ignatius was tacking to a post near his files a wide cardboard sign that said in bold blue Gothic lettering:
DEPARTMENT OF RESEARCH AND REFERENCE
I.J. REILLY, CUSTODIAN
He had neglected the morning filing to make the sign, spreading himself upon the floor with the cardboard and blue poster paint and
painting meticulously for more than an hour. Miss Trixie had stepped on the sign during one of her occasional pointless tours of the office, but the damage was limited to only a small sneaker print on one corner of the cardboard. Still, Ignatius found the tiny imprint offensive, and over it he painted a dramatic and stylized version of a fleur-de-lis.
“Isn't that nice,” Mr. Gonzalez said when Ignatius had stopped hammering. “It gives the office a certain tone.”
“What does it mean?” Miss Trixie demanded, standing directly beneath the sign and examining it frantically.
“It is simply a guidepost,” Ignatius said proudly.
“I don't understand all this,” Miss Trixie said. “What's going on around here?” She turned to Ignatius. “Gomez, who is this person?”
“Miss Trixie, you know Mr. Reilly. He's been working with us for a week now.” “Reilly? I thought it was Gloria.”
“Go back and work on your figures,” Mr. Gonzalez told her. “We have to send that statement to the bank before noon.”
“Oh, yes, we must send that statement,” Miss Trixie agreed and shuffled off to the ladies' room.
“Mr. Reilly, I don't want to pressure you,” Mr Gonzalez said cautiously, “but I do notice that you have quite a pile of material on your desk that hasn't been filed yet.”
“Oh, that. Yes. Well, when I opened the first drawer this morning, I was greeted by a rather large rat which seemed to be devouring the Abelman's Dry Goods folder. I thought it politic to wait until he was sated. I would hate to contract the bubonic plague and lay the blame upon Levy Pants.”
“Quite right,” Mr. Gonzalez said anxiously, his dapper person quivering at the prospect of an on-the-job accident.
“In addition, my valve has been misbehaving and has prevented me from bending over to reach the lower drawers.”
“I have just the thing for that,” Mr. Gonzalez said and went into the little office storeroom to get, Ignatius imagined, some type of medicine. But he returned with one of the smallest metal stools that Ignatius had ever seen. “Here. The person who used to work on the files used to wheel back and forth on this along the lower drawers. Try it.”
“I don't believe that my particular body structure is easily adaptable to that type of device,” Ignatius observed, a gimlet eye fixed upon
the rusting stool. Ignatius had always had a poor sense of balance, and ever since his obese childhood, he had suffered a tendency to fall, trip, and stumble. Until he was five years old and had finally managed to walk in an almost normal manner, he had been a ma** of bruises and hickeys. “However, for the sake of Levy Pants, I shall try.”
Ignatius squatted lower and lower until his great bu*tocks touched the stool, his knees reaching almost to his shoulders. When he was at last nestled upon his perch, he looked like an eggplant balanced atop a thumb tack.
“This will never do. I feel quite uncomfortable.”
“Give it a try,” Mr. Gonzalez said brightly.
Propelling himself with his feet, Ignatius traveled anxiously along the side of the files until one of the miniature wheels lodged in a crack. The stool tipped slightly and then turned over, dumping Ignatius heavily to the floor.
“Oh, my God!” he bellowed. “I think I've broken my back.”
“Here,” Mr. Gonzalez cried in his terrorized tenor. “I'll help you up.”
“No! You must never move a person with a broken back unless you have a stretcher. I won't be paralyzed through your incompetence.”
“Please try to get up, Mr. Reilly.” Mr. Gonzalez looked at the mound at his feet. His heart sank. “I'll help you. I don't think you're badly injured.”
“Let me alone,” Ignatius screamed. “You fool. I refuse to spend the remainder of my life in a wheel chair.”
Mr. Gonzalez felt his feet turn cold and numb.
The thud of Ignatius' fall had attracted Miss Trixie from the ladies' room; she came around the files and tripped on the mountain of supine flesh.
“Oh, dear,” she said feebly. “Is Gloria dying,Gomez?”
“No,” Mr. Gonzalez said sharply.
“Well, I'm certainly glad of that,” Miss Trixie said, stepping onto one of Ignatius' outstretched hands.
“Good grief!” Ignatius thundered and sprang into a sitting position. “The bones in my hand are crushed. I'll never be able to use it again.”
“Miss Trixie is very light,” the office manager told Ignatius. “I don't think she could have hurt you much.”
“Has she ever stepped on you, you idiot? How would you know?”
Ignatius sat at the feet of his co-workers andstudied his hand.
“I suspect that I won't be able to use this hand again today. I had better go home immediately and bathe it.”
“But the filing has to be done. Look how behind you are already.”
“Are you talking about filing at a time like this? I am prepared to contact my attorneys and have them sue you for making me get on that obscene stool.”
“We'll help you up, Gloria.” Miss Trixie a**umed what was apparently a hoisting position. She spread her sneakers far apart, toes pointing outward, and squatted like a Balinese dancer.
“Get up,” Mr. Gonzalez snapped at her. “You'regoing to fall over.”
“No,” she answered through tight, withered lips. “I'm going to help Gloria. Get down on that side, Gomez. We'll just grab Gloria by the
elbows.”
Ignatius watched pa**ively while Mr. Gonzalez squatted on his other side.
“You are distributing your weight incorrectly,” he told them didactically. “If you are going to attempt to raise me, that position offers you no leverage. I suspect that the three of us will be injured. I suggest that you try a standing position. In that way you can easily bend over and hoist me.”
“Don't be nervous, Gloria,” Miss Trixie said, rocking back and forth on her haunches.
Then she fell forward onto Ignatius, throwing him on his back once again. The edge of her celluloid visor hit him in the throat.
“Oof,” gurgled from somewhere in the depths of Ignatius' throat. “Bra ah.”
“Gloria!” Miss Trixie wheezed. She looked intothe full face directly beneath hers. “Gomez, call a doctor.”
“Miss Trixie, get off Mr. Reilly,” the office manager hissed from where he squatted beside his two underlings.
“Braah.”
“What are you people doing down there on the floor?” a man asked from the door. Mr.
Gonzalez' chipper face hardened into a mask of horror, and he squeaked, “Good morning, Mr. Levy. We're so glad to see you.”
“I just came in to see if I have any personal mail. I'm driving back to the coast right away. What's this big sign over here for? Somebody's going to get his eye knocked out on that thing.”
“Is that Mr. Levy?” Ignatius called from the floor. He could not see the man over the row of filing cabinets. “Bra ah. I have been wanting to meet him.”
Shedding Miss Trixie, who slumped to the floor, Ignatius struggled to his feet and saw a sportily dressed middle-aged man holding the handle of the office door so that he could flee as rapidly as he had entered.
“Hello there,” Mr. Levy said casually. “New worker, Gonzalez?”
“Oh, yes sir. Mr. Levy, this is Mr. Reilly. He's very efficient. A whiz. As a matter of fact, he's made it possible for us to do away with several other workers.”
“Braah.”
“Oh, yeah, the name on this sign.” Mr. Levy gave Ignatius a strange look.
“I have taken an unusual interest in your firm,” Ignatius said to Mr. Levy. “The sign which you noticed upon entering is only the first of several innovations which I plan. Braah. I will change your mind about this firm, sir. Mark my word.”
“You don't say?” Mr. Levy studied Ignatius with certain curiosity. “What about the mail, Gonzalez?”
“There's not much. You received your new credit cards. Transglobal Airlines sent you a certificate making you an honorary pilot for flying one hundred hours with them.” Mr. Gonzalez opened his desk and gave Mr. Levy the mail. “There's also a brochure from a hotel in Miami.”
“You'd better start making my spring practice reservations. I gave you my itinerary of practice camps, didn't I?”
“Yes, sir. By the way, I have some letters for you to sign. I had to write a letter to Abelman's Dry Goods. We always have trouble with them.”
“I know. What do those crooks want now?”
“Abelman claims that the last lot of trousers we shipped him were only two feet long in the leg. I'm trying to straighten out the matter.”
“Yeah? Well, stranger things have happened around this place,” Mr. Levy said quickly. The office was already beginning to depress him. He had to get out. “Better check with that foreman in the factory. What's his name? Look,suppose you sign those letters like always. I have to go.” Mr. Levy pulled the door open. “Don't work these kids too hard, Gonzalez. So long, Miss Trixie. My wife asked about you.”
Miss Trixie was sitting on the floor relacing one of her sneakers.
“Miss Trixie,” Mr. Gonzalez screamed. “Mr. Levy is talking to you.”
“Who?” Miss Trixie snarled. “I thought you said he was dead.”
“I hope that you will see some vast changes the next time that you drop in on us,” Ignatius said. “We are going to revitalize, as it were, your business.”
“Okay. Take it easy,” Mr. Levy said and slammed the door.
“He's a wonderful man,” Mr. Gonzalez told Ignatius fervently. From a window the two watched Mr. Levy get into his sports car. The motor roared, and Mr. Levy sped away within a few seconds, leaving a settling cloud of blue exhaust.
“Perhaps I shall get to the filing,” Ignatius said when he found himself staring out the window at only an empty street. “Will you please sign that correspondence so that I can file the carbon copies. It should now be safe to approach what that rodent has left of the
Abelman folder.”
Ignatius spied while Mr. Gonzalez, painstaking, forged Gus Levy to the letters.
“Mr. Reilly,” Mr. Gonzalez said, carefully screwing the top onto his two-dollar pen, “I am going into the factory to speak with the foreman. Please keep an eye on things.”
By things, Ignatius imagined that Mr. Gonzalez meant Miss Trixie, who was snoring loudly on the floor in front of the file cabinet.
“Seguro,” Ignatius said and smiled. “A little Spanish in honor of your noble heritage.”
As soon as the office manager went through the door, Ignatius rolled a sheet of Levy stationery into Mr. Gonzalez' high black typewriter. If Levy Pants was to succeed, the first step would be imposing a heavy hand upon its detractors. Levy Pants must become more militant and authoritarian in order to survive in the jungle of modern commercialism. Ignatius began to type the first step:
Abelman's Dry Goods
Kansas City, Missouri
U. S. A.
Mr. I. Abelman, Mongoloid, Esq.:
We have received via post your absurd comments about our trousers, the comments revealing, as they did, your total lack of contact with reality. Were you more aware, you would know or realize by now that the offending trousers were dispatched to you with our full knowledge that they were inadequate so faras length was concerned.
“Why? Why?” you are in your incomprehensible babble, unable to a**imilate stimulating concepts of commerce into your retarded and blighted worldview.
The trousers were sent to you (1) as a means of testing your initiative (A clever, wide-awake business concern should be able to make three-quarter lengthtrousers a by-word of masculine fashion. Your advertising and merchandising programs are obviously faulty.) and (2) as a means of testing your ability to meet the standards requisite in a distributor of our quality product. (Our loyal and dependable outlets can vend any trouser bearing the Levy label no matter how abominable their design and construction. You are apparently a faithless people.)
We do not wish to be bothered in the future by such tedious complaints. Please confine your correspondence to orders only. We are a busy and dy namic organizationwhose mission needless effrontery and hara**ment can only hinder. If you molest us again, sir, you may feel the sting of the lash across your
pitiful shoulders.
Yours in anger,
Gus Levy, Pres.
Happily pondering the thought that the world understood only strength and force, Ignatius copied the Levy signature onto the letter with the office manager's pen, tore up Mr. Gonzalez' letter to Abelman, and slipped his own into the correspondence Outgoing box. Then he tiptoed carefully around the little inert figure of Miss Trixie, returned to the filing department, picked up the stack of still unfiledmaterial, and threw it into the wastebasket.