V.

'You can't ever be alone,' Profane mumbled, tiptoeing along a passageway. He spotted a mousetrap on deck, picked it up carefully and heaved it down the passageway. It hit a bulkhead and went off with a loud SNAP. Sound of the footsteps quit abruptly. Then started again, more cautious, moved under Profane and up a ladder, toward where the mousetrap lay.   'Ha-ha,' said Profane. He sneaked around a corner, found another mousetrap and dropped it down a companionway. SNAP. Footsteps went pattering back down the ladder.   Four mousetraps later, Profane found himself in the galley, where the watchman had set up a primitive coffee mess. Figuring the watchman would be confused for a few minutes, Profane set a pot of water to boil on the hotplate.   'Hey,' yelled the watchman, two decks above.   'Oh, oh,' said Profane. He sneaky-Peted out of the galley and went looking for more mousetraps. He found one up on the next deck, stepped outside, lobbed it up in an invisible arc. If nothing else he was saving mice. There was a muffed snap and a scream from above.   'My coffee,' Profane muttered, taking the steps down two at a time. He threw a handful of grounds into the boiling water and slipped out the other side, nearly running into the night watchman who was stalking along with a mousetrap hanging off his left sleeve. It was close enough so Profane could see the patient, martyred look on this watchman's face. Watchman entered the galley and Profane was off. He made it up three decks before he heard the bellowing from the galley.   'What now?' He wandered into a passageway lined with empty staterooms. Found a piece of chalk left by a welder, wrote SCREW THE SUSANNA SQUADUCCI and DOWN WITH ALL YOU RICH BASTARDS on the bulkhead, signed it THE PHANTOM and felt better. Who'd be sailing off to Italy in this thing? Chairmen of the board, movie stars, deported racketeers, maybe. 'Tonight,' Profane purred, 'tonight, Susanna, you belong to me:' His to mark up, to set mousetraps off in. More than any paid passenger would ever do for her. He moseyed along the passageway, collecting mousetraps.   Outside the galley again he started throwing them in all directions. 'Ha, ha,' said the night watchman. 'Go ahead, make noise. I'm drinking your coffee.'   So he was. Profane absently hefted his one remaining mousetrap. It went off, catching three fingers between the first and second knuckles.   What do I do, he wondered, scream? No. The night watchman was laughing hard enough as it was. Setting his teeth Profane unpried the trap from his hand, reset it, tossed it through a porthole to the galley and fled. He reached the pier and got a snowball in the back of the head, which knocked off the cowboy hat. He stooped to get the hat and thought about returning the shot. No. He kept running.   Paola was at the ferry, waiting. She took his arm as they went on board. All he said was: 'We ever going to get off this ferry?'   'You have snow on you.' She reached up to brush it off and he almost kissed her. Cold was turning the mousetrap injury numb. Wind had started up, coming in from Norfolk. This crossing they stayed inside.   Rachel caught up with him in the bus station in Norfolk. He sat slouched next to Paola on a wooden bench worn pallid and greasy with a generation of random duffs, two one-way tickets for New York, New York tucked inside the cowboy hat. He had his eyes closed, he was trying to sleep. He had just begun to drift off when the paging system called his name.   He knew immediately, even before he was fully awake, who it must be. Just a hunch. He had been thinking about her.   'Dear Benny,' Rachel said, 'I've called every bus station in the country.' He could hear a party on in the background. New Year's night. Where he was there was only an old clock to tell the time. And a dozen homeless, slouched on wooden bench, trying to sleep. Waiting for a long-haul bus run neither by Greyhound nor Trailways. He watched them and let her talk. She was saying, 'Come home.' The only one he would allow to tell him this except for an internal voice he would rather disown as prodigal than listen to.   'You know -' he tried to say.   'I'll send you bus fare.'   She would.   A hollow, twanging sound dragged across the floor toward him. Dewey Gland, morose and all bones, trailed his guitar behind him. Profane interrupted her gently. 'Here is my friend Dewey Gland,' he said, almost whispering. 'He would like to sing you a little song.'   Dewey sang her the old Depression song, Wanderin' Eels in the ocean, eels in the sea, a redheaded woman made a fool of me. . .   Rachel's hair was red, veined with premature gray, so long she could take it in back with one hand, lift it above her head and let it fall forward over her long eyes. Which for a girl 4'10' in stocking feet is a ridiculous gesture; or should be.   He felt that invisible, umbilical string tug at his midsection. He thought of long fingers, through which, maybe, he might catch sight of the blue sky, once in a while.   And it looks like I'm never going to cease.   'She wants you,' Dewey said. The girl at the Information desk was frowning. Big-boned, motley complexion: girl from out of town somewhere, whose eyes dreamed of grinning Buick grilles, Friday night shuffleboard at some roadhouse.   'I want you,' Rachel said. He moved his chin across the mouthpiece, making grating sounds with a three-day growth. He thought that all the way up north, along a 500-mile length of underground phone cable, there must be earthworms, blind trollfolk, listening in. Trolls know a lot of magic: could they change words, do vocal imitations? 'Will you just drift, then,' she said. Behind her he heard somebody barfing and those who watched laughing, hysterically. Jazz on the record player.   He wanted to say, God, the things we want. He said: 'How is the party.'   'It's over at Raoul's,' she said. Raoul, Slab, and Melvin being part of a crowd of disaffected which someone