“Like to take that cap off?” the bartender asked.
“No, I wouldn’t!” Ignatius thundered. “There’s a chill in here.”
“Suit yourself,” the bartender said and drifted off into the shadows at the other end of the bar.
“Really!”
“Calm down,” his mother said.
Ignatius raised the earflap on the side next to his mother.
“Well, I will lift this so that you won’t have to strain your voice. What did the doctor tell you about your elbow or whatever it is?”
“It’s gotta be massaged.”
“I hope you don’t want me to do that. You know how I feel about touching other people.”
“He told me to stay out the cold as much as possible.”
“If I could drive, I would be able to help you more, I imagine.”
“Aw, that’s okay, honey.”
“Actually, even riding in a car affects me enough. Of course, the worst thing is riding on top in one of those Greyhound Scenicruisers. So high up. Do you remember the time that I went to Baton Rouge in one of those? I vomited several times. The driver had to stop the bus somewhere in the swamps to let me get off and walk around for a while. The other passengers were rather angry. They must have had stomachs of iron to ride in that awful machine. Leaving New Orleans also frightened me considerably. Outside of the city limits the heart of darkness, the true wasteland begins.”
“I remember that, Ignatius,” Mrs. Reilly said absently, drinking her beer in gulps. “You was really sick when you got back home.”
“I felt better then. The worst moment was my arrival in Baton Rouge. I realized that I had a round-trip ticket and would have to return on the bus.”
“You told me that, babe.”
“The taxi back to New Orleans cost me forty dollars, but at least I wasn’t violently ill during the taxi ride, although I felt myself beginning to gag several times. I made the driver go very slowly, which was unfortunate for him. The state police stopped him twice for being below the minimum highway speed limit. On the third time that they stopped him they took away his chauffeur’s license. You see, they had been watching us on the radar all along.”