Escape. Escape.

Ignatius looked in his wallet. The thirty dollars was gone, apparently confiscated by his mother at the hospital. He looked at the clock. It was almost eight o’clock. Between napping and assaulting the glove, the afternoon and evening had passed rather quickly. Ignatius searched his room, flinging Big Chief tablets around, mashing them underfoot, dragging them from beneath his bed. He came up with some scattered coins and went to work on the desk, where he found a few more. The total was sixty cents, a sum that limited and blocked escape routes. He could at least find a safe haven for the rest of the evening: the Prytania. After the theater had closed, he could pass along Constantinople Street to see whether his mother had come home.

There was a slipshod frenzy of dressing. The red flannel nightshirt sailed up and hung on the chandelier. He jammed his toes into the desert boots and leaped as well as he could into the tweed trousers, which he could hardly button at the waist. Shirt, cap, overcoat, Ignatius put them on blindly and ran into the hall, careening against the narrow walls. He was just reaching for the front door when three loud knocks cracked against the shutters.

Mr. Levy returned? His valve sent out a distress signal that established communication with his hands. He scratched the bumps on his paws and peered through the shutters, expecting to see several hirsute brutes from the hospital.

There on the porch stood Myrna in a shapeless olive drab corduroy car coat. Her black hair was braided into a pigtail that twisted under one ear and fell on her breast. A guitar was slung over her shoulders.

Ignatius was about to burst through the shutters, splintering slats and latches, and wrap that one hemplike pigtail around her throat until she turned blue. But reason won. He was not looking at Myrna; he was looking at an escape route. Fortuna had relented. She was not depraved enough to end this vicious cycle by throttling him in a straitjacket, by sealing him up in a cement block tomb lighted by fluorescent tubes. Fortuna wished to make amends. Somehow she had summoned and flushed Myrna minx from a subway tube, from some picket line, from the pungent bed of some Eurasian existentialist, from the hands of some epileptic Negro Buddhist, from the verbose midst of a group therapy session.

“Ignatius, are you in that dump?” Myrna demanded in her flat, direct, slightly hostile voice. She beat on the shutters again, squinting through her black-rimmed glasses. Myrna was not astigmatic; the lenses were clear glass; she wore the glasses to prove her dedication and intensity of purpose. Her dangling earring reflected the rays of the streetlight like tinkling glass Chinese ornaments. “Listen, I can tell there’s somebody in there. I heard you stomping around in that hall. Open up these crummy shutters.”

“Yes, yes, I’m here,” Ignatius cried. He tore at the shutters and pushed them open. “Thank Fortuna you’ve come.”

“Jesus. You look terrible. Like you’re having a nervous breakdown or something. Why the bandage? Ignatius, what’s the matter? Look how much weight you’ve gained. I’ve just been reading these pitiful signs out here on the porch. Boy, have you had it.”

“I’ve gone through hell,” Ignatius slobbered, pulling Myrna into the hall by the sleeve of her coat. “Why did you step out of my life, you minx? Your new hairdo is fascinating and cosmopolitan.” He snatched at her pigtail and pressed it to his wet moustache, kissing it vigorously. “The scent of soot and carbon in your hair excites me with suggestions of glamorous Gotham. We must leave immediately. I must go flower in Manhattan.”

“I knew something was wrong. But this. You are really in bad shape, Ig.”

“Quickly. To a motel. My natural impulses are screaming for release. Do you have any money on you?”

“Don’t put me on,” Myrna said angrily. She grabbed the soggy pigtail from Ignatius’s paws and threw it over her shoulder onto the guitar where it landed with a twang. “Look. Ignatius. I’m beat. I’ve been on the road since nine o’clock yesterday morning. As soon as I mailed you that letter about the Peace Party routine, I said to myself, ‘Myrna. Listen. This guy needs more than just a letter. He needs your help. He’s sinking fast. Are you dedicated enough to save a mind rotting right before your eyes? Are you committed enough to salvage the wreckage of that mentality?’ I came out of the post office and got in my car and just started driving. All night. Straight. I mean, the more I thought about that wild Peace Party telegram, the more upset I got.”

Apparently Myrna was very hard up for causes in Manhattan.

“I don’t blame you,” Ignatius cried. “Wasn’t that telegram horrible? A deranged fantasy. I’ve been in the depths of depression for weeks. After all these years that I’ve stuck by my mother’s side, she has decided to get married and wants me out of the way. We must leave. I can’t stand this house another moment.”

“What? Who’d marry her?”

“Thank God you understand. You can see how ludicrous and impossible everything has become.”

“Where is she? I’d like to outline for that woman what she’s done to you.”

“She’s out somewhere failing her blood test at the moment. I don’t want to see her again.”

“I guess not. You poor kid. What have you been doing, Ignatius? Just lying around in your room doping off?”

“Yes. For weeks. I’ve been immobilized by the neurotic apathy. Do you remember the fantasy letter about the arrest and the accident? I wrote that when my mother first met this debauched old man. It was then that my equilibrium started to fail. Since then, it’s been a continuously downward movement culminating in the schizophrenia of the Peace Party. Those signs outside were just one physical manifestation of my inward torment. My psychotic desire for peace was no doubt a wishful attempt to end the hostilities which have been existing in this little house. I can only be grateful that you were perceptive enough to analyze my fantasy life as embodied in my letters. Thank goodness they were distress signals written in a code which you could understand.”

“I can tell how inactive you’ve been from your weight.”

“I’ve gained pounds lying continuously in bed, seeking surcease and sublimation in food. Now we must run. I must leave this house. It has terrible associations.”

“I told you to get out of this place a long time ago. Come on, let’s get you packed.” Myrna’s monotonous voice was growing enthusiastic. “This is fantastic. I knew you’d have to break away sooner or later to preserve your mental health.”

“If only I had listened to you earlier, I wouldn’t have had to go through this horror.” Ignatius embraced Myrna and pressed her and her guitar flatly against the wall. He could see that she was beside herself with joy over finding a legitimate cause, a bona fide case history, a new movement. “There will be a place for you in heaven, my minx. Now we must dash.”

He tried to drag her out the front door, but she said, “Don’t you want to pack anything?”

“Oh, of course. There are all of my notes and jottings. We must never let them fall into the hands of my mother. She may make a fortune from them. It would be too ironic.” They went into his room. “By the way, you should know that my mother is enjoying the questionable attentions of a fascist.”

“Oh, no!”

“Yes. Look at this. You can imagine how they’ve been torturing me.”

He handed Myrna one of the pamphlets that his mother had slipped under the door of his room, Is Your Neighbor Really an American? Myrna read a note written in the margin of the cover: “Read this Irene. It is good. There is some questions at the end you can ask your boy.”

“Oh, Ignatius!” Myrna moaned. “What has it been like?”

“Traumatic and dreadful. At the moment I think they’re out somewhere lashing some moderate whom my mother overheard speaking in favor of the United Nations in the grocery this morning. She’s been mumbling about the incident all day.” Ignatius belched. “I’ve been through weeks of terror.”