The line jerked.
'Ha, ha,' said Profane. 'Made you look.' Not that his mood tonight was suicidal. But with the inanimate line, antenna, building and street nine floors below, what common sense could he have?
The center of gravity calculation, it turned out, was way off. As Profane inched down toward Eigenvalue's window, his body's attitude slowly tilted from nearly vertical to face down and parallel with the street. Hanging thus in the air, it occurred to him to practice an Australian crawl.
'Dear God,' muttered Stencil. He tugged at the line, impatient. Soon Profane, a dim figure looking like a quadruply-amputated octopus, stopped flailing around. Then he hung still in the air, pondering.
'Hey,' he called after a while.
Stencil said what.
'Pull me back up. Hurry.' Wheezing, feeling his middle age acutely, Stencil began hauling in line. It took him ten minutes. Profane appeared and hung his nose over the edge of the roof.
'What's wrong.'
'You forgot to tell me what it was I was supposed to do when I got in the window.' Stencil only looked at him. 'Oh. Oh you mean I open the door for you -'
'- and you lock it when you go out,' they recited together.
Profane flipped a salute. 'Carry on.' Stencil began lowering again. Down at the window, Profane called up:
'Stencil, hey. The window won't open.'
Stencil took a few half-hitches round the antenna.
'Break it,' he gritted. All at once another police car, sirens screaming, lights flashing round and round, came tearing down Park. Stencil ducked behind the roof's low wall. The car kept going. Stencil waited till it was way downtown, out of earshot. And a minute or so more. Then arose cautiously and looked after Profane.
Profane was horizontal again. He'd covered his head with his suede jacket and showed no signs of moving.
'What are you doing,' said Stencil.
'Hiding,' said Profane. 'How about a little torque.' Stencil turned the rope: Profane's head slowly began to rotate away from the building. When he came around to where he was facing straight out, like a gargoyle, Profane kicked in the window, a crash horrible and deafening in that night.
'Now the other way.'
He got the window open, climbed inside and unlocked for Stencil. Wasting no time, Stencil proceeded through a train of rooms to the museum, forced open the case, slipped that set of false teeth wrought from all precious metals into a coat pocket. From another room he heard more glass breaking.
'What the hell.'
Profane looked around. 'One pane broken is crude,' he explained, 'because that looks like a burglary. So I am breaking a few more, is all, so it won't be too suspicious.'
Back on the street, scot-free, they followed the bums' way into Central Park. It was two in the morning.
In the wilds of that skinny rectangle they found a rock near a stream. Stencil sat down and produced the teeth.
'The booty,' he announced.
'It's yours. What do I need with more teeth.' Especially these, more dead than the half-alive hardware in his mouth now.
'Decent of you, Profane. Helping Stencil like that.'
'Yeah,' Profane agreed.
Part of a moon was out. The teeth, lying on the sloping rock, beamed at their reflection in the water.
All manner of life moved in the dying shrubbery around them.
'Is your name Neil?' inquired a male voice.
'Yes.'
'I saw your note. In the men's room of the Port Authority terminal, third stall in the . . .'
Oho, thought Profane. That had cop written all over it.
'With the picture of your sexual organ. Actual size.'
'There is one thing,' said Neil, 'that I like better than having homosexual intercourse. And that is knocking the shit out of a wise cop.'
There was then a soft clobbering sound followed by the plainclothesman's crash into the underbrush.
'What day is it,' somebody asked. 'Say, what day is it?'
Out there something had happened, probably atmospheric. But the moon shone brighter. The number of objects and shadows in the park seemed to multiply: warm white, warm black.
