V.

knows, ha, ha. They will sell out the human race.'   Behind the far door came the thud of Trench's knife practice. Rachel sat with her legs crossed tightly.   'Inside,' she said, 'what does it do to them there. You alter them there, too. What kind of Jewish mother do they make, they are the kind who make a girl get a nose job even if she doesn't want one. How many generations have you worked on so far, how many have you played the dear old family doctor for.'   'You are a nasty girl,' said Schoenmaker, 'and so pretty, too. Why yell at me, all I am is one plastic surgeon. Not a psychoanalyst. Maybe someday there will be special plastic surgeons who can do brain jobs too, make some young kid an Einstein, some girl an Eleanor Roosevelt. Or even make people act less nasty. Till then, how do I know what goes on inside. Inside has nothing to do with the chain.'   'You set up another chain.' She was trying not to yell. 'Changing them inside sets up another chain which has nothing to do with germ plasm. You can transmit characteristics outside, too. You can pass along an attitude . . .'   'Inside, outside,' he said, 'you're being inconsistent, you lose me.'   'I'd like to,' she said, rising. 'I have bad dreams about people like you.'   'Have your analyst tell you what they mean,' he said.   'I hope you keep dreaming.' She was at the door, half-turned to him.   'My bank balance is big enough so I don't get disillusioned.' he said.   Being the kind of girl who can't resist an exit line: 'I heard about a disillusioned plastic surgeon,' she said, 'who hung himself.' She was gone, stomping out past the mirrored clock, out into the same wind that moved the pine tree, leaving behind the soft chins, warped noses and facial scars of what she feared was a sort of drawing-together or communion.   Now, having left the grating behind, she walked over the dead grass of Riverside Park under leafless trees and even more substantial skeletons of apartment houses on the Drive, wondering about Esther Harvitz, her long-time roommate, whom she had helped out of more financial crises than either could remember. An old rusty beer can lay in her path; she kicked it viciously. What is it, she thought, is this the way Nueva York is set up, then, freeloaders and victims? Schoenmaker freeloads off my roommate, she freeloads off me. Is there this long daisy chain of victimizers and victims, screwers and screwees? And if so, who is it I am screwing. She thought first of Slab, Slab of the Raoul-Slab-Melvin triumvirate, between whom and a lack of charity toward all men she'd alternated ever since coming to this city.   'What do you let her take for,' he had said, 'always take.' It was in his studio, she remembered, back during one of those Slab-and-Rachel idylls that usually preceded a Slab-and-Esther Affair. Con Edison had just shut off the electricity so all they had to look at each other by was one gas burner on the stove, which bloomed in a blue and yellow minaret, making the faces masks, their eyes expressionless sheets of light.   'Baby,' she said, 'Slab, it is only that the kid is broke, and if I can afford it why not.'   'No,' Slab said, a tic dancing high on his cheekbone - or it might only have been the gaslight - 'no. Don't you think I see what this is, she needs you for all the money she keeps soaking you for, and you need her in order to feel like a mother. Every dime she gets out of your pocketbook adds one more strand to this cable that ties you two together like an umbilical cord, making it that much harder to cut, making her survival that much more in danger if the cord ever is cut. How much has she ever paid you back.'   'She will,' Rachel said.   'Sure. Now, $800 more. To change this.' He waved his arm at a small portrait, leaning against the wall by the garbage can. He reached over, picked it up, tilted it toward the blue flame so they both could see. 'Girl at a party.' The picture, perhaps, was meant to be looked at only under hydrocarbon light. It was Esther, leaning against a wall, looking straight out of the picture, at someone approaching her. And there, that look in the eyes - half victim, half in control.   'Look at it, the nose,' he said. 'Why does she want to get that changed. With the nose she is a human being.'   'Is it only an artist's concern,' Rachel said. 'You object on pictorial, or social grounds. But what else.'   'Rachel,' he yelled, 'she takes home 50 a week, 25 comes out for analysis, 12 for rent, leaving 13. What for, for high heels she breaks on subway gratings, for lipstick, earrings, clothes. Food, occasionally. So now, 800 for a nose job. What will it be next. Mercedes Benz 300 SL? Picasso original, abortion, wha.'   'She has been right on time,' Rachel said, frosty, 'in case you are worrying.'   'Baby,' suddenly ail wistful and boyish, 'you are a good woman, member of a vanishing race. It is right you should help the less fortunate. But you reach a point.'   The argument had gone back and forth with neither of them actually getting mad and at three in the morning the inevitable terminal point - bed - to caress away the headaches both had developed. Nothing settled, nothing ever settled. That had been back in September. The gauze beak was gone, the nose now a proud sickle, pointing, you felt, at the big Westchester in the sky where all God's elect, soon or late, ended up.   She turned out of the park and walked away from the Hudson on 112th Street. Screwer and screwee. On this foundation, perhaps, the island stood, from the bottom of the lowest sewer bed right up through the streets to the tip of the TV antenna on top of the Empire State Building.   She entered her lobby, smiled at the ancient doorman; into the elevator, up seven flights to 7G, home, ho, ho. First thing she saw through the open door was a sign on the kitchen wall, with the word PARTY, illuminated by pencil caricatures of the Whole Sick Crew. She tossed the pocketbook on the kitchen table, closed the door. Paola's handiwork, Paola Maijstral the third roommate. Who had also left a note on the table. 'Winsome, Charisma, Fu, and I. V-Note, McClintic Sphere. Paola Maijstral.' Nothing but proper nouns. The girl lived proper nouns. Persons, places. No things. Had anyone told her about things? It seemed Rachel had had to do with nothing else. The main one now being Esther's nose.   In the shower Rachel sang a torch song, in a red-hot-mama voice which the tile chamber magnified. She knew it amused people because it came from such a little girl:   Say a man