While everybody else was screaming, Fina leaned toward Profane till their foreheads touched and whispered, 'Benito,' her breath light and acid with wine.
'Josephine,' he nodded, pleasant. He was getting a headache. She continued to lean against his head until the next set when Geronimo grabbed her and they went off to dance. Dolores, fat and amiable, asked Profane to dance. 'Non posso ballare,' he said. 'No puedo bailar,' she corrected him and yanked him to his feet. The world became filled with the sounds of inanimate calluses slapping inanimate goatskin, felt hitting metal, sticks knocking together. Of course, he couldn't dance. His shoes kept getting in the way. Dolores, halfway across the room, didn't notice. Commotion broke out at the door and half a dozen teenagers wearing Playboy jackets invaded. The music bonged and clattered on. Profane kicked off his shoes - old black loafers of Geronimo's - and concentrated on dancing in his socks. After awhile Dolores was there again, and five seconds later a spike heel came down square in the middle of his foot. He was too tired to yell. He limped off to a table in the corner, crawled under it and went to sleep. The next thing he knew there was sunlight in his eyes. They were carrying him down Amsterdam Avenue like pallbearers, all chanting, 'Mierda. Mierda. Mierda . . .'
He lost count of all the bars they visited. He became drunk. His worst memory was of being alone with Fina somewhere in a telephone booth. They were discussing love. He couldn't remember what he'd said. The only other thing he remembered between then and the time he woke up - in Union Square at sundown, blindfolded by a raging hangover and covered by a comforter of chilly pigeons who looked like vultures - was some sort of unpleasantness with the police after Angel and Geronimo had tried to smuggle parts of a toilet under their coats out of the men's room in a bar on Second Avenue.
In the next few days Profane came to tally his time in reverse or schlemiel's light: time on the job as escape, time exposed to any possibility of getting involved with Fina as assbreaking, wageless labor.
What had he said in that phone booth? The question met him at the end of every shift, day, night or swing, like an evil fog that hovered over whatever manhole he happened to climb out of. Nearly that whole day of slewfooting drunk under February's sun was a blank. He was not about to ask Fina what had happened. There grew a mutual embarrassment between them, as if they'd been to bed after all.
'Benito,' she said one night, 'how come we never talk.'
'Wha,' said Profane, who was watching a Randolph Scott movie on television. 'Wha. I talk to you.'
'Sure. Nice dress. How about more coffee. I got me another cocodrilo today. You know what I mean.'
He knew what she meant. Now here was Randolph Scott: cool, imperturbable, keeping his trap shut and only talking when he had to - and then saying the right things and not running off haphazard and inefficient at the mouth - and here on the other side of the phosphor screen was Profane, who knew that one wrong word would put him closer than he cared to be to street level, and whose vocabulary it seemed was made up of nothing but wrong words.
'Why don't we go to a movie or something,' she said.
'This here,' he answered, 'is a good movie. Randolph Scott is this U.S. marshal and that sheriff, there he goes now, is getting paid off by the gang and all he does all day long is play fan-tan with a widow who lives up the hill.'
She withdrew after a while, sad and pouting.
Why? Why did she have to behave like he was a human being. Why couldn't he be just an object of mercy. What did Fina have to go pushing it for? What did she want - which was a stupid question. She was a restless girl, this Josephine: warm and viscous-moving, ready to come in a flying machine or anyplace else.
But curious, he decided to ask Angel.
'How do I know,' Angel said. 'It's her business. She don't like anybody in the office. They are all maricon, she says. Except for Mr. Winsome the boss, but he's married so he's out.'
'What does she want to be,' Profane said, 'a career girl? What does your mother think?'
'My mother thinks everybody should get married: me, Fina, Geronimo. She'll be after your ass soon. Fina doesn't want anybody. You, Geronimo, the Playboys. She doesn't want. Nobody knows what she wants.'
'Playboys,' Profane said. 'Wha.'
It came out then that Fina was spiritual leader or Den Mother of this youth gang. She had learned in school about a saint, called Joan of Arc, who went around doing the same thing for armies who were more or less chicken and no good in a rumble. The Playboys, Angel felt, were pretty much the same way.
Profane knew better than to ask whether she was giving them sexual comfort too. He didn't have to ask. He knew this was another work of mercy. The mother to the troops bit, he guessed - not knowing anything about women - was a harmless way to be what maybe every girl wants to be, a camp follower. With the advantage that here she was not a follower but a leader. How many in the Playboys? Nobody knew, Angel said. Maybe hundreds. They all were crazy for Fina, in a spiritual way. In return she had to put out nothing but charity and comfort, which she was only too glad to do, punchy with grace already.
The Playboys were a strangely exhausted group. Mercenaries, many of them lived in Fina's neighborhood; but unlike other gangs they had no turf of their own. They were spread out all over the city; having no common geographical or cultural ground, they put their arsenal and streetfighting prowess at the disposal of any interested party who might be considering a rumble. The Youth Board had never taken a count on them: they were everywhere, but as Angel had mentioned, chicken. The main advantage in having them on your side was psychological. They cultivated a carefully sinister image: coal-black velvet jackets with the clan name discreetly lettered small and bloody on the back; faces pale and soulless as the other side of the night (and you felt that was where they lived: for they would appear suddenly across the street from you and keep pace for a while, and then vanish again as if back behind some invisible curtain); all of them affecting prowling walks, hungry eyes, feral mouths.
Profane didn't meet them in any social way until the Feast of San' Ercole dei Rinoceronti, which comes on the Ides of March, and is celebrated downtown in the neighborhood called Little Italy. High over all Mulberry Street that night soared arches of light bulbs, arranged in receding sets of whorls, each spanning the street, shining clear to the horizon because the air was so windless. Under the lights were jury-rigged stalls for penny-toss, bingo, pick up the plastic duck and win a prize. Every few steps were stands for zeppole, beer, sausage-pepper sandwiches. Behind it all was music from two bandstands, one at the downtown end of the street and one halfway along. Popular songs, operas. Not too loud in the cold night: as if confined only to the area below the lights. Chinese and Italian residents sat out on the stoops as if it were summer, watching the crowds, the lights, the smoke from the zeppole stands which rose lazy and unturbulent up toward the lights but disappeared before it reached them.
