V.

So Slab sat thinking and Esther waved the paper ball at the end of her finger to a private tune, maybe an old love song. Though neither would admit it, they also waited for Raoul and Melvin and the Crew to arrive for the party; while all the time the colors in the wall-size painting were shifting, reflecting new wavelengths to compensate for the wasting sun.

Rachel, out looking for Esther, didn't arrive at the party till late. Coming up the seven flights to the loft she passed at each landing, like frontier guards, nuzzling couples, hopelessly drunken boys, brooding types who read out of and scrawled cryptic notes in paper books stolen from Raoul, Slab and Melvin's library; all of whom informed her how she had missed all the fun. What this fun was she found out before she'd fairly wedged her way into the kitchen where all the Good People were.

Melvin was holding forth on his guitar, in an improvised folk song, about how humanitarian a cove his roommate Slab was; crediting him with being (a) a neo-Wobbly and reincarnation of Joe Hill, (b) the world's leading pacifist, (c) a rebel with taproots in the American Tradition, (d) in militant opposition to Fascism, private capital, the Republican administration and Westbrook Pegler.

While Melvin sang Raoul provided Rachel with a kind of marginal gloss on the sources of Melvin's present adulation.

It seemed earlier Slab had waited till the room was jammed to capacity, then mounted the marble toilet and called for silence.

"Esther here is pregnant," he announced, "and needs 300 bucks to go to Cuba and have an abortion." Cheering, warmhearted, grinning ear to ear, juiced, the Whole Sick Crew dug deep into their pockets and the wellsprings of a common humanity to come up with loose change, worn bills, and a few subway tokens, all of which Slab collected in an old pith helmet with Greek letters on it, left over from somebody's fraternity weekend years ago.

Surprisingly it came to $295 and some change. Slab with a flourish produced a ten he'd borrowed fifteen minutes before his speech from Fergus Mixolydian, who had just received a Ford Foundation grant and was having more than wistful thoughts about Buenos Aires, from which there is no extradition.

If Esther objected verbally to the proceedings, no record of it exists, there being too much noise in the room, for one thing. After the collection Slab handed her the pith helmet and she was helped up on the toilet, where she made a brief but moving acceptance speech. Amid the ensuing applause Slab roared "Off to Idlewild," or something, and they were both lifted bodily and carried out of the loft and down the stairs. The only gauche note to the evening was struck by one of their bearers, an undergraduate and recent arrival on the Sick Scene, who suggested they could save all the trouble of a trip to Cuba and use the money for another party if they induced a miscarriage by dropping Esther down the stairwell. He was quickly silenced.

"Dear God," said Rachel. She had never seen so many red faces, the linoleum wet with so much spilled alcohol, vomit, wine.

"I need a car," she told Raoul.

"Wheels," Raoul screamed. "Four wheels for Rach." But the Crew's generosity had been exhausted. Nobody listened. Maybe from her lack of enthusiasm they'd deduced she was about to roar off to Idlewild and try to stop Esther. They weren't having any.

It was only at that point, early in the morning, that Rachel thought of Profane. He would be off shift now. Dear Profane. An adjective which hung unvoiced in the party's shivaree, hung in her most secret cortex to bloom - she helpless against it - only far enough to surround her 4' 10" with an envelope of peace. Knowing all the time Profane too was wheelless.

"So," she said. All it was was no wheels on Profane, the boy a born pedestrian. Under his own power which was also power over her. Then what was she doing: declaring herself a dependent? As if here were the heart's authentic income-tax form, tortuous enough, mucked up with enough polysyllabic words to take her all of twenty-two years to figure out. At least that long: for surely it was complicated, being a duty you could rightfully avoid with none of fancy's Feds ever to worry about tracking you down on it, but. That "but." If you did take the trouble, even any first step, it meant stacking income against output; and who knew what embarrassments, exposes of self that might drag you into?

Strange the places these things can happen in. Stranger that they ever do happen. She headed for the phone. It was in use. But she could wait.

III

Profane arrived at Winsome's to find Mafia wearing only the inflatable brassiere and playing a game of her own invention called Musical Blankets with three beaux who were new to Profane. The record being stopped at random was Hank Snow singing It Don't Hurt Any More. Profane went to the icebox and got beer; was thinking of calling Paola when the phone rang.