V. (52 page)

"Sure," he said later, as they headed into the Berkshires. "Paola, did you know I have been blowing a silly line all this time. Mister Flab the original, is me. Lazy and taking for granted some wonder drug someplace to cure that town, to cure me. Now there isn't and never will be. Nobody is going to step down from heaven and square away Roony and his woman, or Alabama, or South Africa or us and Russia. There's no magic words. Not even I love you is magic enough. Can you see Eisenhower telling Malenkov or Khrushchev that? Ho-ho."

"Keep cool but care," he said. Somebody had run over a skunk a ways back. The smell had followed them for miles. "If my mother was alive I would have her make a sampler with that on it."

"You know, don't you," she began, "that I have to -"

"Go back home, sure. But the week's not over yet. Be easy, girl."

"I can't. Can I ever?"

"We'll stay away from musicians," was all he said. Did he know of anything she could be, ever?

"Flop, flip," he sang to the trees of Massachusetts. "Once I was hip . . ."

chapter thirteen

In which the yo-yo string is revealed as a state of mind

I

The passage to Malta took place in late September, over an Atlantic whose sky never showed a sun. The ship was Susanna Squaducci, which had figured once before in Profane's long-interrupted guardianship of Paola. He came back to the ship that morning in the fog knowing that Fortune's yo-yo had also returned to some reference-point, not unwilling, not anticipating, not anything; merely prepared to float, acquire a set and drift wherever Fortune willed. If Fortune could will.

A few of the Crew had come to give Profane, Paola and Stencil bon voyage; those who weren't in jail, out of the country or in the hospital. Rachel had stayed away. It was a weekday, she had a job. Profane supposed so.

He was here by accident. While weeks back, off on the fringes of the field-of-two Rachel and Profane had set up, Stencil roamed the city exerting "pull," seeing about tickets, passports, visas, inoculations for Paola and him, Profane felt that at last he'd come to dead center in Nueva York; had found his Girl, his vocation as watchman against the night and straight man for SHROUD, his home in a three-girl apartment with one gone to Cuba, one about to go to Malta, and one, his own, remaining.

He'd forgotten about the inanimate world and any law of retribution. Forgotten that the field-of-two, the twin envelope of peace had come to birth only a few minutes after he'd been kicking tires, which for a schlemihl is pure wising-off.

It didn't take Them long. Only a few nights later Profane sacked in at four, figuring to get in a good eight hours of Z's before he had to get up and go to work. When his eyes finally did come open he knew from the quality of light in the room and the state of his bladder that he'd overslept. Rachel's electric clock whined merrily beside him, hands pointing to 1:30. Rachel was off somewhere. He turned on the light, saw that the alarm was set for midnight, the button on the back switched to ON. Malfunction. "You little bastard"; he picked the clock up and heaved it across the room. On hitting the bathroom door the alarm went off, a loud and arrogant BZZZ.

Well, he got his feet in the wrong shoes, cut himself shaving, token he had wouldn't fit into the turnstile, subway took off about ten seconds ahead of him. When he arrived downtown it was not much south of three and Anthroresearch Associates was in an uproar. Bergomask met him at the door, livid. "Guess what," the boss yelled. It seemed an all-night, routine test was on. Around 1:15, one of the larger heaps of electronic gear had run amok; half the circuitry fused, alarm bells went off, the sprinkler system and a couple of CO2 cylinders kicked in, all of which the attendant technician had slept through peacefully.

"Technicians," Bergomask snorted, "are not paid to wake up. This is why we have night watchmen." SHROUD sat over against the wall, hooting quietly.

Soon as it had all come through to Profane he shrugged. "It's stupid, but it's something I say all the time. A bad habit. So. Anyway. I'm sorry." Getting no response, turned and shuffled off. They'd send him severance pay, he reckoned, in the mail. Unless they intended to make him cover the cost of the damaged gear. SHROUD called after him:

Bon voyage.

"What is that supposed to mean."

We'll see.

"So long, old buddy."

Keep cool. Keep coal but care. It's a watchword, Profane, far your side of the morning. There, I've told you too much as it is.

"I'll bet under that cynical butyrate hide is a slob. A sentimentalist."

There's nothing under here. Who are we kidding?

The last words he ever had with SHROUD. Back at 112th Street he woke up Rachel.

"Back to pounding the pavements, lad." She was trying to be cheerful. He gave her that much but was mad with himself for going flabby enough to forget his schlemihl birthright. She being all he had to take it out on,

"Fine for you," he said. "You've been solvent all your life."

"Solvent enough to keep us going till me and Space/Time Employment find something good for you. Really good."

Fina had tried to shove him along the same path. Had it been her that night at Idlewild? Or only another SHROUD, another guilty conscience bugging him over a baion rhythm?

"Maybe I don't want to get a job. Maybe I'd rather be a bum. Remember? I'm the one that loves bums."

She edged over to make room for him, having now those inevitable second thoughts. "I don't want to talk about loving anything," she told the wall. "It's always dangerous. You have to con each other a little, Profane. Why don't we go to sleep."

No: he couldn't let it go. "Let me warn you, is all. That I don't love anything, not even you. Whenever I say that - and I will - it will be a lie. Even what I'm saying now is half a play for sympathy."

She made believe she was snoring.

"All right, you know I am a schlemihl. You talk two-way. Rachel O., are you that stupid? All a schlemihl can do is take. From the pigeons in the park, from a girl picked up on any street, bad and good, a schlemihl like me takes and gives nothing back."

"Can't there be a time for that later," she asked meekly. "Can't it wait on tears sometime, a lovers' crisis. Not now, dear Profane. Only sleep."

"No," he leaned over her, "babe I am not showing you anything of me, anything hidden. I can say what I've said and be safe because it's no secret, it's there for anybody to see. It's got nothing to do with me, all schlemihls are like that."

She turned to him, moving her legs apart: "Hush . . ."

"Can't you see," growing excited though it was now the last thing he wanted, "that whenever I, any schlemihl lets a girl think there is a past, or a secret dream that can't be talked about, why Rachel that's a con job. Is all it is." As if SHROUD were prompting him: "There's nothing inside. Only the scungille shell. Dear girl -" saying it as phony as he knew how - "schlemihls know this and use it, because they know most girls need mystery, something romantic there. Because a girl knows her man would be only a bore if she found out everything there was to know. I know you're thinking now: the poor boy, why does he put himself down like that. And I'm using this love that you still, poor stupe, think is two-way to come like this between your legs, like this, and take, never thinking how you feel, caring about whether you come only so I can think of myself as good enough to make you come . . ." So he talked, all the way through, till both had done and he rolled on his back to feel traditionally sad.

"You have to grow up," she finally said. "That's all: my own unlucky boy, didn't you ever think maybe ours is an act too? We're older than you, we lived inside you once: the fifth rib, closest to the heart. We learned all about it then. After that it had to become our game to nourish a heart you all believe is hollow though we know different. Now you all live inside us, for nine months, and when ever you decide to come back after that."

He was snoring, for real.

"Dear, how pompous I'm getting. Good night. . ." And she fell asleep to have cheerful, brightly colored, explicit dreams about sexual intercourse.

Next day, rolling out of bed to get dressed, she continued. "I'll see what we've got. Stand by. I'll call you." Which of course kept him from going back to sleep. He stumbled around the apartment for a while swearing at things. "Subway," he said, like the hunchback of Notre Dame yelling sanctuary. After a day of yo-yoing he came up to the street at nightfall, sat in a neighborhood bar and got juiced. Rachel met him at home (home?) smiling and playing the game.

"How would you like to be a salesman. Electric shavers for French poodles."

"Nothing inanimate," he managed to say. "Slave girls, maybe." She followed him to the bedroom and took off his shoes when he passed out on the bed. Even tucked him in.

Next day, hung over, he yo-yoed on the Staten Island ferry, watching juveniles-in-love neck, grab, miss, connect. Day after that he got up before her and journeyed down to the Fulton Fish Market to watch the early-morning activity. Pig Bodine tagged along. "I got a fish," said Pig, "I would like to give Paola, hyeugh, hyeugh." Which Profane resented. They moseyed by Wall Street and watched the boards of a few brokers. They walked uptown as far as Central Park. This took them till mid-afternoon. They dug a traffic light for an hour. They went into a bar and watched a soap opera on TV.

They came rollicking in late. Rachel was gone.

Out came Paola though, sleepy-eyed, benightgowned. Pig began to shuffle furrows in the rug. "Oh," seeing Pig. "You can put coffee on," she yawned. "I'm going back to bed."

"Right," Pig muttered, "right you are." And glaring at the small of her back, followed zombielike to the bedroom and closed the door behind them. Soon Profane, making coffee, heard screams.

"Wha." He looked into the bedroom. Pig had managed to get atop Paola and seemed linked to her pillow by a long string of drool which glittered in the fluorescent light from the kitchen.

"Help?" Profane puzzled. "Rape?"

"Get this pig off of me," Paola yelled.

"Pig, hey. Get off."

"I want to get laid," protested Pig.

"Off," said Profane.

"Up thine," snarled Pig, "with turpentine."

"Nope." So saying, Profane grabbed the big collar on Pig's jumper and pulled.

"You are strangling me, hey," said Pig after a while.

"True," said Profane. "But I saved your life once, remember."

Which was the case. Back in the Scaffold days, Pig had long announced, to anybody in ship's company who'd listen, his refusal ever to don a contraceptive unless it was a French tickler. This device being your common rubber ornamented in bas-relief (often with a figurehead on the end) to stimulate female nerve ends not stimulated by the usual means. From Kingston Jamaica last cruise Pig had brought back 50 Jumbo the Elephant and 50 Mickey Mouse French ticklers. The night finally came when Pig ran out, his last having been expended in the memorable battle with his onetime colleague Knoop, LtJG, a week before on the Scaffold's bridge.

Pig and his friend Hiroshima the electronics technician had a going thing on the beach with radio tubes. ET's an a destroyer like the Scaffold keep their own inventory of electronic components. Hiroshima could therefore finagle, which as soon as he'd found a discreet outlet in downtown Norfolk he proceeded to do. Every so often Hiroshima would heist a few tubes and Pig would stow them in an AWOL bag and run them ashore.

One night Knoop had OOD watch. All an OOD usually does is stand on the quarterdeck and salute people going on and off. He is also a sort of monitor, making sure that everybody leaves with their neckerchief straight, fly zipped and wearing their own uniform; also that nobody is swiping anything from the ship or bringing anything on board they shouldn't. Lately old Knoop had been getting hawkeyed. Howie Surd the drunken yeoman, who had two grooves worn bare in the hair of his leg from adhesive-taping pints of various booze under one bellbottom by way of providing the crew with something tastier than torpedo juice, had almost made it the two steps from quarterdeck to ship's office when Knoop like a Siamese boxer fetched him an agile kick in the calf. And there stood Howie with Schenley Reserve and blood running over his best liberty shoes. Knoop of course crowed in triumph. He'd also caught Profane trying to take over 5 pounds of hamburger swiped from the galley. Profane escaped legal action by splitting the loot with Knoop who was having marital difficulties and had somehow come up with the notion that 2-1/2 pounds of hamburger might serve as a peace-offering.

So only a few nights after that Pig was understandably nervous, trying simultaneously to salute, produce ID and liberty cards, and keep one eye on Knoop and another on the tube-laden AWOL bag.

"Request permission to go ashore, sir, hey," said Pig.

"Permission granted. What is in the AWOL bag."

"In the AWOL bag."

"That one, yes."

"What is in it." Pig pondered.

"Change of skivvies," suggested Knoop, "douche kit, magazine to read, duty laundry for Mom to wash -"

"Now that you mention it, Mr. Knoop -"

"Radio tubes, also."

"Wha."

"Open the bag."

"I would like, I think," said Pig, "maybe to just dash in ship's office there for a minute to read the Naval Regulations, sir, and see if maybe what you are ordering me to do might not be a little, how would you say it, illegal . . ."

Grinning horribly, Knoop made a sudden leap in the air and came down square on the AWOL bag, which went crunch, tinkle in a sickening way.

"Aha," said Knoop.

Pig came up for captain's mast a week later and got restricted. Hiroshima was never mentioned. Normally larceny of this sort is rewarded with a court-martial, the brig, a dishonorable discharge, all of which strengthen morale. It seemed however that the Scaffold's old man, one C. Osric Lych, commander, had gathered round him an inner circle of enlisted men, all of whom you could call habitual offenders. This troupe included Baby Face Falange, the machinist mate striker, who periodically would put on a babushka and let the members of the A gang line up in the compartment to pinch his cheek; Lazar the deck ape who wrote foul sayings on the Confederate monument downtown and was usually brought back off liberty in a strait jacket; Teledu his friend who one time avoiding a work detail had gone to hide in a refrigerator, decided he liked it and lived there for two weeks on raw eggs and frozen hamburger until the master-at-arms and a posse dragged him away; and Groomsman the quartermaster, whose second home was sick bay, being as how he was constantly infested by a breed of crabs which unhappily only thrived on the chief corpsman's super-formula crab-killer.