V.

"Can't you see," growing excited though it was now the last thing he wanted, "that whenever I, any schlemiel, lets a girl think there is a past, or a secret dream that can't be talked about, why Rachel that's a con job. Is all it is." As if SHROUD were prompting him: "There's nothing inside. Only the scungille shell. Dear girl -" saying it as phony as he knew how - "schlemiels know this and use it, because they know most girls need mystery, something romantic there. Because a girl knows her man would be only a bore if she found out everything there was to know. I know you're thinking now: the poor boy, why does he put himself down like that. And I'm using this love that you still, poor stupe, think is two-way, to come like this between your legs, like this, and take, never thinking how you feel, caring about whether you come only so I can think of myself as good enough to make you come . . ." So he talked, all the way through, till both had done and he rolled on his back to feel traditionally sad.

"You have to grow up," she finally said. "That's all: my own unlucky boy, didn't you ever think maybe ours is an act too? We're older than you, we lived inside you once: the fifth rib, closest to the heart. We learned all about it then. After that it had to become our game to nourish a heart you all believe is hollow, though we know different. Now you all live inside us, for nine months, and when ever you decide to come back after that."

He was snoring, for real.

"Dear, how pompous I'm getting. Good night. . ." And she fell asleep to have cheerful, brightly colored, explicit dreams about sexual intercourse.

Next day, rolling out of bed to get dressed, she continued. "I'll see what we've got. Stand by. I'll call you." Which of course kept him from going back to sleep. He stumbled around the apartment for a while swearing at things. "Subway," he said, like the hunchback of Notre Dame yelling sanctuary. After a day of yo-yoing he came up to the street at nightfall, sat in a neighborhood bar and got juiced. Rachel met him at home (home?) smiling and playing the game.

"How would you like to be a salesman. Electric shavers for French poodles."

"Nothing inanimate," he managed to say. "Slave girls, maybe." She followed him to the bedroom and took off his shoes when he passed out on the bed. Even tucked him in.

Next day, hung over, he yo-yoed on the Staten Island ferry, watching juveniles-in-love neck, grab, miss, connect. Day after that he got up before her and journeyed down to the Fulton Fish Market to watch the early-morning activity. Pig Bodine tagged along. "I got a fish," said Pig, "I would like to give Paola, hyeugh, hyeugh." Which Profane resented. They moseyed by Wall Street and watched the boards of a few brokers. They walked uptown as far as Central Park. This took them till mid-afternoon. They dug a traffic light for an hour. They went into a bar and watched a soap opera on TV.

They came rollicking in late. Rachel was gone.

Out came Paola though, sleepy-eyed, benightgowned. Pig began to shuffle furrows in the rug. "Oh," seeing Pig. "You can put coffee on," she yawned. "I'm going back to bed."

"Right," Pig muttered, "right you are." And glaring at the small of her back, followed zombielike to the bedroom and closed the door behind them. Soon Profane, making coffee, heard screams.

"Wha." He looked into the bedroom. Pig had managed to get atop Paola and seemed linked to her pillow by a long string of drool which glittered in the fluorescent light from the kitchen.

"Help?" Profane puzzled. "Rape?"

"Get this pig off of me," Paola yelled.

"Pig, hey. Get off."

"I want to get laid," protested Pig.

"Off," said Profane.

"Up thine," snarled Pig, "with turpentine."

"Nope." So saying, Profane grabbed the big collar on Pig's jumper and pulled.

"You are strangling me, hey," said Pig after a while.

"True," said Profane. "But I saved your life once, remember."

Which was the case. Back in the Scaffold days, Pig had long announced, to anybody in ship's company who'd listen, his refusal ever to don a contraceptive unless it was a French tickler. This device being your common rubber ornamented in bas-relief (often with a figurehead on the end) to stimulate female nerve ends not stimulated by the usual means. From Kingston Jamaica last cruise Pig had brought back 50 Jumbo the Elephant and 50 Mickey Mouse French ticklers. The night finally came when Pig ran out, his last having been expended in the memorable battle with his onetime colleague Knoop, LtJG, a week before on the Scaffold's bridge.

Pig and his friend Hiroshima the electronics technician had a going thing on the beach with radio tubes. ET's on a destroyer like the Scaffold keep their own inventory of electronic components. Hiroshima could therefore finagle, which as soon as he'd found a discreet outlet in downtown Norfolk he proceeded to do. Every so often Hiroshima would heist a few tubes and Pig would stow them in an AWOL bag and run them ashore.