'Rumble?' Profane said. She came flying off the table, knocked him over. He lay on the floor, his head against a cue rack. Her sudden movement dislodged an avalanche of pool balls on his stomach. 'Dear God,' he said, covering his head. Her high heels tapped away, fading with distance, over the empty dance floor. He opened his eyes. A pool ball lay even with his eyes. All he could see was a white circle, and this black 8 inside it. He started to laugh. Outside somewhere he thought he heard Angel yelling for help. Profane creaked to his feet, zipped his fly up again, blundered out through the darkness. He got out to the street after tripping over two folding chairs and the cord to the jukebox.
Crouched behind the brownstone balusters of the front stoop he saw a great mob of Playboys milling around in the street. Girls were sitting on the stoop and lining the sidewalk, cheering. In the middle of the street Lucille's late partner the board chairman was going round and round with a huge Negro in a jacket that read BOP KINGS. A few other Bop Kings were mixing it up with the Playboys at the fringes of the crowd. Jurisdictional dispute, Profane figured. He couldn't see either Angel or Geronimo. 'Somebody is going to get burned,' said a girl who sat almost directly above him on the steps.
Like tinsel suddenly tossed on a Christmas tree, the merry twinkling of switchblades, tire irons and filed-down garrison belt buckles appeared among the crowd in the street. The girls on the stoop drew breath in concert through bared teeth. They watched eagerly; as if each had kicked in on a pool for who'd draw first blood.
It never happened, whatever they were waiting for: not tonight. Out of nowhere Fina, St. Fina of the Playboys, came walking her sexy walk, in among fangs, talons, tusks. The air turned summer-mild, a boys' choir on a brilliant mauve cloud came floating over from the direction of Canal Street singing O Salutaris Hostia; the board chairman and the Bop King clasped arms in token of friendship as their followers stacked arms and embraced; and Fina was borne up by a swarm of pneumatically fat, darling cherubs, to hover over the sudden peace she'd created, beaming, serene.
Profane gaped, snuffled, and slunk away. For the next week or so he pondered on Fina and the Playboys and presently began to worry in earnest. There was nothing so special about the gang, punks are punks. He was sure any love between her and the Playboys was for the moment Christian, unworldly and proper. But how long was that going to go on? How long could Fina herself hold out? The minute her horny boys caught a glimpse of the wanton behind the saint, the black lace slip beneath the surplice, Fina could find herself on the receiving end of a gang bang, having in a way asked for it. She was overdue now.
One evening he came into the bathroom, mattress slung over his back. He'd been watching an ancient Tom Mix movie on television. Fina was lying in the bathtub, seductive. No water, no clothes - just Fina.
'Now look,' he said.
'Benny, I'm cherry. I want it to be you.' She said it defiantly. For a minute it seemed plausible. After all, if it wasn't him it might be that whole godforsaken wolf pack. He glanced at himself in the mirror. Fat. Pig-pouches around the eyes. Why did she want it to be him?
'Why me,' he said. 'You save it for the guy you marry.'
'Who wants to get married,' she said.
'Look, what is Sister Maria Annunziata going to think. Here you been doing all these nice things for me, for those unfortunate delinquents down the street. You want to get that all scratched off the books?' Who'd have thought Profane would ever be arguing like this? Her eyes burned, she twisted slow and sexy, all those tawny surfaces quivering like quicksand.
'No,' said Profane. 'Now hop out of there, I want to go to sleep. And don't go yelling rape to your brother. He believes in his sister shouldn't do any jazzing around but he knows you better.'
She climbed out of the bathtub and put a robe around her. 'I'm sorry,' she said. He threw the mattress in the tub, threw himself on top of it and lit a cigarette. She turned off the light and shut the door behind her.
II
Profane's worries about Fina turned real and ugly, soon enough. Spring came: quiet, unspectacular and after many false starts: hailstorms and high winds dovetailed with days of unwintry peace. The alligators living in the sewers had dwindled to a handful. Zeitsuss found himself with more hunters than he needed, so Profane, Angel and Geronimo started working part-time.
More and more Profane was coming to feel a stranger to the world downstairs. It had probably happened as imperceptibly as the fall-off in the alligator population; but somehow it began to look like he was losing contact with a circle of friends. What am I, he yelled at himself, a St. Francis for alligators? I don't talk to them, I don't even like them. I shoot them.
Your ass, answered his devil's advocate. How many times have they come waddling up to you out of the darkness, like friends, looking for you. Did it ever occur to you they want to be shot?
He thought back to the one he'd chased solo almost to the East River, through Fairing's Parish. It had lagged, let him catch up. Had been looking for it. It occurred to him that somewhere - when he was drunk, too horny to think straight, tired - he'd signed a contract above the paw-prints of what were now alligator ghosts. Almost as if there had been this agreement, a covenant, Profane giving death, the alligators giving him employment: tit for tat. He needed them and if they needed him at all it was because in some prehistoric circuit of the alligator brain they knew that as babies they'd been only another consumer-object, along with the wallets and pocketbooks of what might have been parents or kin, and all the junk of the world's Macy's. And the soul's passage down the toilet and into the underworld was only a temporary peace-in-tension, borrowed time till they would have to return to being falsely animated kids' toys. Of course they wouldn't like it. Would want to go back to what they'd been; and the most perfect shape of that was dead - what else? - to be gnawed into exquisite rococo by rat-artisans, eroded to an antique bone-finish by the holy water of the Parish, tinted to phosphorescence by whatever had made that one alligator's sepulchre so bright that night.
When he went down for his now four hours a day he talked to them sometimes. It annoyed his partners. He had a close call one night when a gator turned and attacked. The tail caught the flashlight man a glancing blow off his left leg. Profane yelled at him to get out of the way and pumped all five rounds in a cascade of re-echoing blasts, square in the alligator's teeth. 'It's all right,' his partner said. 'I can walk on it.' Profane wasn't listening. He was standing by the headless corpse, watching a steady stream of sewage wash its life blood out to one of the rivers - he'd lost sense of direction. 'Baby,' he told the corpse, 'you didn't play it right. You don't fight back. That's not in the contract.' Bung the foreman lectured him once or twice about this talking to alligators, how it set a bad example for the Patrol. Profane said sure, OK, and remembered after that to say what he was coming to believe he had to say under his breath.
Finally, one night in mid-April, he admitted to himself what he'd been trying for a week not to think about: that he and the Patrol as functioning units of the Sewer Department had about had it.
