V.

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.

Profane, Angel and Geronimo were out prowling for cono. It was Thursday night, tomorrow - according to the nimble calculations of Geronimo they were working not for Zeitsuss but for the U. S. Government, since Friday is one-fifth of the week and the government takes one-fifth of your check for withholding tax. The beauty of Geronimo's scheme was that it didn't have to be Friday but could be any day - or days - in the week depressing enough to make you feel it would be a breach of loyalty if the time were dedicated to good old Zeitsuss. Profane had got into this way of thinking, and along with parties in the daytime and a rotating shift system devised by Bung the foreman whereby you didn't know till the day before which hours you would be working the next, it put him on a weird calendar which was not ruled off into neat squares at all but more into a mosaic of tilted street-surfaces that changed position according to sunlight, streetlight, moonlight, nightlight . . .

He wasn't comfortable in this street. The people mobbing the pavement between the stalls seemed no more logical than the objects in his dream. "They don't have faces," he said to Angel.

"A lot of nice asses, though," Angel said.

"Look, look," said Geronimo. Three jailbait, all lipstick and shiny-machined breast-and-buttock-surfaces, stood in front of the wheel of Fortune, twitching and hollow-eyed.

"Benito, you speak guinea. Go tell them how about a little."

Behind them the band was playing Madame Butterfly. Non-professional, non-rehearsed.

"It isn't like it was a foreign country," Profane said.

"Geronimo is a tourist," Angel said. "He wants to go down to San Juan and live in the Caribe Hilton and ride around the city looking at puertorriquenos."

They'd been moseying slow, casing the jailbait at the wheel. Profane's foot came down on an empty beer can. He started to roll. Angel and Geronimo, flanking him, caught him by the arms about halfway down. The girls had turned around and were giggling, the eyes mirthless, ringed in shadow.

Angel waved. "He goes weak in the knees," Geronimo purred, "when he sees beautiful girls."