Sahha

 I

 Sunday morning around nine the Rollicking Boys arrived at Rachel's after  their night of burglary and lounging in the park. Neither had slept. On the  wall was a sign:

I am heading for the Whitney. Kisch mein tokus, Profane.

"Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin," said Stencil.

"Ho, hum," said Profane, preparing to sack out on the floor. In came Paola  with a babushka over her head and a brown paper bag which clinked in her  arms.

"Eigenvalue got robbed last night," she said. "It made the front page of the  Times." They all attacked the brown bag at once, coming up with the Times in  sections and four quarts of beer.

"How about that," Profane said, scrutinizing the front page. "Police are  expecting to make an arrest any time now. Daring early morning burglary."

"Paola," said Stencil, behind him. Profane flinched. Paola, holding the  church key, turned to gaze past Profane's left ear at what glittered in  Stencil's hand. She kept quiet, eyes motionless.

"Three are in it. Now."

At last she looked back at Profane: "You're coming to Malta, Ben?"

"No," but weak.

"Why?" he said. "Malta never showed me anything. Anywhere you care to go in  the Med there is a Strait Street, a Gut."

"Benny, if the cops -"

"Who are the cops to me? Stencil's got the teeth." He was terrified. It had  only now occurred to him that he'd broken the law.

"Stencil, buddy, what do you say to one of us - going back there with a  toothache and figuring out a way . . ." He tapered off. Stencil kept quiet.

"Was all that rigmarole with the rope just a way to get me to come along?  What's so special about me?"

Nobody said anything. Paola looked about ready to burst from her tracks,  bawling and looking to be held by Profane.

All of a sudden there was noise in the hallway. Somebody began banging on  the door. "Police," a voice said.

Stencil, jamming the teeth into one pocket, dashed away for the fire escape.  "Now, what the hell," Profane said. By the time Paola did open up Stencil  was long gone. The same Ten Eyck who had broken up the orgy at Mafia's stood  there with one arm slung under a sodden Roony Winsome.

"Is this here Rachel Owlglass at home," he said. Explained he'd found Roony  drunk on the stoop of St. Patrick's Cathedral, fly open, face awry, scaring  little kids and offending the solid citizens. "Here was all he wanted to  come," Ten Eyck almost pleaded, "he wouldn't go home. They released him from  Bellevue last night."

"Rachel will be back soon," said Paola gravely. "We'll take him till then."

"I got his feet," Profane said. They hauled Roony into Rachel's room and  dumped him on the bed.

"Thank you, officer." Cool as any old-movie's international jewel thief,  Profane wished he had a mustache.

Ten Eyck left, deadpan.

"Benito, things are falling apart. The sooner I get Home -"

"Good luck."

"Why won't you come?"

"We're not in love."

"No."

"No debts outstanding, either way, not even au old romance to flare up  again."

Shook her head: real tears now.

"Why then."

"Because we left Teflon's place in Norfolk."

"No, no."

"Poor Ben." They ail called him poor. But to save his feelings never  explained, let it stand as an endearment.

"You are only eighteen," he said, "and have this crush on me. You will see  by the time you get to be my age -" She interrupted him by rushing at him as  you would rush at a tackling dummy, surrounding him, beginning to soak the  suede jacket with all those overdue tears. He thumped her back, bewildered.

So it was of course then that Rachel walked in. Being a girl who recovered  fast, fast thing she said was:

"Oho. So this is what happens behind my back. While I was at church, praying  for you, Profane. And the children."

He had the common sense to go along with her. "Believe me, it was all  perfectly innocent." Rachel shrugged, meaning the two-line act was over,  she'd had a few seconds to think. "You didn't go to St. Patrick's, did you?  You should of." Waggling a thumb at what was now snoring in the next room:  "Dig."

And we know who it was Rachel spent the rest of the day with, and the night.  Holding his head, tucking him in, touching the beard-stubble and dirt on his  face; watching him sleep and the frown lines there relax slowly.

After a while Profane went off to the Spoon. Once there he announced to the  Crew that he was going to Malta. Of course they held a going-away party.  Profane ended up with two adoring camp followers working him over, eyes  shining with a kind of love. You got the idea they were like prisoners in  stir, vicariously happy to see any of their number reach the outside again.

Profane saw no street ahead but the Gut; thought that it would have to go  some to be worse than East Main.

There was also the sea's highway. But that was a different kind entirely.

II

 Stencil, Profane and Pig Bodine made a flying visit to Washington, D. C.,  one weekend: the world-adventurer to expedite their coming passage, the  schlemihl to spend a last liberty; Pig to help him. They chose for  pied-a-terre a flophouse in Chinatown and Stencil nipped over to the State  Department to see what he could see.

"I don't believe any of it," said Pig. "Stencil is a fake."

"Stand by," was all Profane said.

"I suppose we ought to go out and get drunk," Pig said. So they did. Either  Profane was growing old and losing his capacity, or it was the worst drunk  he had ever thrown. There were blank spaces, which are always, of course,  frightening. As near as Profane could remember afterward they had headed  first for the National Gallery, Pig having decided they ought to have  company. Sure enough, in front of Dali's Last Supper they found two  government girls.

"I'm Flip," said the blonde, "and this is Flop."

Pig groaned momentarily nostalgic for Hanky and Panky. "Fine," he said,  "That is Benny and I am - hyeugh, hyeugh - Pig."

"Obviously," said Flop. But the girl/boy ratio in Washington has been  estimated as high as 8 to 1. She grabbed Pig's arm, looking around the room  as if those other spectral sisters were lurking somewhere among the  statuary.

Their place was near P Street, and they had amassed every Pat Boone record  in existence. Before Pig had even set down the large paper bag containing  the fruits of their afternoon's sortie among the booze outlets of the  nation's capital - legal and otherwise - 25 watts of that worthy, singing Be  Bop A Lula, burst on them unaware.

After this overture, the weekend proceeded in flashes: Pig going to sleep  halfway up the Washington Monument and falling half a flight into a  considerate troop of Boy Scouts; the four of them in Flip's Mercury, riding  round and round Dupont Circle at three in the morning and being joined  eventually by six Negroes in an Oldsmobile who wanted to race; the two cars  then proceeding to an apartment on New York Avenue occupied only by one  inanimate audio system, fifty jazz enthusiasts and God knows how many  bottles of circulating and communal wine; being awakened, wrapped with Flip  in a Hudson Bay blanket on the steps of a Masonic Temple somewhere in  Northwest Washington, by an insurance executive named Iago Saperstein, who  wanted them to come to another party.

"Where is Pig," Profane wondered.

"He stole my Mercury and he and Flop are on the way to Miami," said Flip.

"Oh."

"To get married:"

"It's a hobby of mine," continued Iago Saperstein, "to find young peo............