V.

Cesare waved. "A rivederci." Soon they had disappeared, dissolved in the darkness. Cesare put his hands in his pockets and started to stroll. He found a stone in the street and began to kick it aimlessly along the Lungarno. Soon, he thought, I will go and buy a liter fiasco of Chianti. As he passed the Palazzo Corsini, towering nebulous and fair above him, he thought: what an amusing world it still is, where things and people can be found in places where they do not belong. For example, out there on the river now with a thousand liters of wine are a man in love with Venus, and a sea captain, and his fat son. And back in the Uffizi . . . He roared aloud. In the room of Lorenzo Monaco, he remembered amazed, before Botticelli's Birth of Venus, still blooming purple and gay, there is a hollow Judas tree.

Chapter Eight

In which Rachel gets her yo-yo back, Roony sings a song, and Stencil calls on Bloody Chiclitz

I

Profane, sweating in April's heat, sat on a bench in the little park behind the Public Library, swatting at flies with rolled-up pages of the Times classified. From mental cross-plotting he'd decided where he sat now was the geographical center of the midtown employment agency belt.

A weird area it was. For a week now he'd sat patient in a dozen offices, filling out forms, having interviews and watching other people, especially girls. He had an interesting daydream all built up, which went: You're jobless, I'm jobless, here we both are out of work, let's screw. He was horny. What little money he'd saved from the sewer job had almost run out and here he was considering seduction. It kept the time moving right along.

So far no agency he'd been to had sent him anywhere for a job interview. He had to agree with them. To amuse himself he'd looked in Help Wanted under S. Nobody wanted a schlemiel. Laborers were for out of the city: Profane wanted to stay in Manhattan, he'd had enough of wandering out in the suburbs. He wanted a single point, a base of operations, someplace to screw in private. It was difficult when you brought a girl to a flophouse. A young kid with a beard and old dungarees had tried that a few nights ago down where Profane was staying. The audience, winos and bums, had decided to serenade them after a few minutes of just watching. "Let me call you sweetheart," they sang, all somehow on key. A few had fine voices, some sang harmony. It may have been like the bartender on upper Broadway who was nice to the girls and their customers. There is a way we behave around young people excited with each other, even if we haven't been getting any for a while and aren't likely to very soon. It is a little cynical, a little self-pitying, a little withdrawn; but at the same time a genuine desire to see young people get together. Though it springs from a self-centered concern, it is often as much as a young man like Profane ever does go out of himself and take an interest in human strangers. Which is better, one would suppose, than nothing at all.

Profane sighed. The eyes of New York women do not see the wandering bums or the boys with no place to go. Material wealth and getting laid strolled arm-in-arm the midway of Profane's mind. If he'd been the type who evolves theories of history for his own amusement, he might have said all political events: wars, governments and uprisings, have the desire to get laid as their roots; because history unfolds according to economic forces and the only reason anybody wants to get rich is so he can get laid steadily, with whomever he chooses. All he believed at this point, on the bench behind the Library, was that anybody who worked for inanimate money so he could buy more inanimate objects was out of his head. Inanimate money was to get animate warmth, dead fingernails in the living shoulderblades, quick cries against the pillow, tangled hair, lidded eyes, twisting loins . . .

He'd thought himself into an erection. He covered it with the Times classifed and waited for it to subside. A few pigeons watched him, curious. It was shortly after noon and the sun was hot. I ought to keep looking, he thought, the day isn't over. What was he going to do? He was, they told him unspecialized. Everybody else was at peace with some machine or other. Not even a pick and shovel had been safe for Profane.

He happened to look down. His erection had produced in the newspaper a crosswise fold, which moved line by line down the page as the swelling gradually diminished. It was a list of employment agencies. O.K., thought Profane, just for the heck of it I will close my eyes, count three and open them and whatever agency listing that fold is on, I will go to them. It will be like flipping a coin: inanimate schmuck, inanimate paper, pure chance.