V.

  They passed the can as the train was pulling into Times Square. Profane closed his eyes before they got to him. They sat on the seat opposite, counting the take, feet dangling. Kook was in the middle, the other two were trying to push him on the floor. Two teen-age boys from their neighborhood entered the car: black chinos, black shirts, black gang jackets with PLAYBOYS lettered in dripping red on the back. Abruptly all motion among the three on the seat stopped. They held each other, staring wide-eyed.   Kook, the baby, could hold nothing in. 'Maricon!' he yelled gleefully. Profane's eyes came open. Heel-taps of older boys moved past, aloof and staccato to the next car. Tolito put his hand on Kook's head, trying to squash him down through the floor, out of sight. Kook slipped away. The doors closed, the shuttle started off again for Grand Central. The three turned their attention to Profane.   'Hey, man,' Kook said. Profane watched him, half-cautious.   'How come,' Jose said. He put the coffee can absently on his head, where it slipped down over his ears. 'How come you didn't get off at Times Square.'   'He was asleep,' Tolito said.   'He's a yo-yo,' Jose said. 'Wait and see.' They forgot Profane for the moment, moved forward a car and did their routine. They came back as the train was starting off again from Grand Central,   'See,' Jose said.   'Hey man,' Kook said, 'how come.'   'You out of a job,' Tolito said.   'Why don't you hunt alligators, like my brother,' Kook said.   'Kook's brother shoots them with a shotgun,' Tolito slid.   'If you need a job, you should hunt alligators,' Jose said.   Profane scratched his stomach. He looked at the floor.   'Is it steady,' he said.   The subway pulled in to Times Square, disgorged passengers, took more on, shut up its doors and shrieked away down the tunnel. Another shuttle came in, on a different track. Bodies milled in the brown light, a loudspeaker announced shuttles. It was lunch hour. The subway station began to buzz, fill with human noise and motion. Tourists were coming back in droves. Another train arrived, opened, closed, was gone. The press on the wooden platforms grew, along with an air of discomfort, hunger, uneasy bladders, suffocation. The first shuttle returned.   Among the crowd that squeezed inside this time was a young girl wearing a black coat, her hair hanging long outside it. She searched four cars before she found Kook, sitting next to Profane, watching him.   'He wants to help Angel kill the alligators,' Kook told her. Profane was asleep, lying diagonal on the seat.   In this dream, he was all alone, as usual. Walking on a street at night where there was nothing but his own field of vision alive. It had to be night on that street. The lights gleamed unflickering on hydrants; manhole covers which lay around in the street. There were neon signs scattered here and there, spelling out words he wouldn't remember when he woke.   Somehow it was all tied up with a story he'd heard once, about a boy born with a golden screw where his navel should have been. For twenty years he consults doctors and specialists all over the world, trying to get rid of this screw, and having no success. Finally, in Haiti, he runs into a voodoo doctor who gives him a foul-smelling potion. He drinks it, goes to sleep and has a dream. In this dream he finds himself on a street, lit by green lamps. Following the witch-man's instructions, he takes two rights and a left from his point of origin, finds a tree growing by the seventh street light, hung all over with colored balloons. On the fourth limb from the top there is a red balloon; he breaks it and inside is a screwdriver with a yellow plastic handle. With the screwdriver he removes the screw from his stomach, and as soon as this happens he wakes from the dream. It is morning. He looks down toward his navel, the screw is gone. That twenty years' curse is lifted at last. Delirious with joy, he leaps up out of bed, and his ass falls off.   To Profane, alone in the street, it would always seem maybe he was looking for something too, to make the fact of his own disassembly plausible as that of any machine. It was always at this point that the fear started: here that it would turn into a nightmare. Because now, if he kept going down that street, not only his ass but also his arms, legs, sponge brain and clock of a heart must be left behind to litter the pavement, be scattered among manhole covers.   Was it home, the mercury-lit street? Was he returning like the elephant to his graveyard, to lie down and soon become ivory, in whose bulk slept, latent, exquisite shapes of chessmen, backscratchers, hollow open-work Chinese spheres nested one inside the other?   This was all there was to dream; all there ever was: the Street. Soon he woke, having found no screwdriver, no key. Woke to a girl's face, near his own. Kook stood in the background, feet braced apart, head hanging. From two cars away, riding above the racketing of the subway over points, came the metallic rattle of Tolito on the coffee can.   Her face was young, soft. She had a brown mole on one cheek. She'd been talking to him before his eyes were open. She wanted him to come home with her. Her name was Josefina Mendoza, she was Kook's sister, she lived uptown. She must help him. He had no idea what was happening.   'Wha, lady,' he said, 'wha.'   'Do you like it here,' she cried.   'I do not like it, lady, no,' said Profane. The train was heading toward Times Square, crowded. Two old ladies who had been shopping at Bloomingdale's stood glaring hostile at them from up the car. Fina started to cry. The other kids came charging back in, singing. 'Help,' Profane said. He didn't know who he was asking. He'd awakened loving every woman in the city, wanting them all: here was one who wanted to take him home. The shuttle pulled into Times Square, the doors flew open. In a swoop, only half aware of what he was doing, he gathered Kook in one arm and ran out the door: Fina, with tropical birds peeking from her green dress whenever the black coat flew open, followed, hands joined with Tolito and Jose in a line. They ran through the station, beneath a chain of green lights,