Profane finds a job hunting alligators in the sewers under New York City, where he encounters a rat named Veronica, who has lived in the sewers for many years. During one of their appointments, Esther and Schoenmaker become romantically involved.
When Stencil learns about Schoenmaker, he sends Esther to the surgeon to receive rhinoplasty. Schoenmaker swore that he would learn to perform cosmetic surgery properly, though he has since become disillusioned with his profession. In WWI, Shale Schoenmaker witnessed the disfigurement of a handsome pilot named Evan Godolphin and, while visiting Godolphin in the hospital, saw the effects of poorly performed cosmetic surgery.
The common thread was Victoria Wren, considered to be the original incarnation of V. Interrupting the narrative, Stencil explains that at the end of the 19th century, in the British community in Egypt, eight people delved into the world of spies and murders. Stencil’s investigation has led him to Paola, who now shares a New York apartment with Rachel and Esther. There, a deeply agitated man named Herbert Stencil obsesses over the death of his father Sidney Stencil, a secret agent who died in Malta while working for British intelligence agencies, and the true identity of a woman known only as V. Later, Rachel attends a party with the Whole Sick Crew. Rachel Owlglass accuses cosmetic surgeon Shale Schoenmaker of driving her roommate Esther Havitz into debt.
The group spends a week or so drinking heavily and, after New Year’s Eve, Profane and Paola travel to New York on a bus before parting ways. After a riot breaks out, the military police raid the bar, but Profane escapes with his new acquaintances.
In a bar in Norfolk, Virginia, Profane meets a group named the Whole Sick Crew: the short, violent, and toothless Ploy musician Dewey Gland Pig Bodine and a teenage bar worker from Malta named Paola Hod. In the mid-1950s, Benny Profane, recently discharged from the Navy, is traveling along the east coast without any real direction in life. This guide is written using the 2005 Perennial Modern Classics edition, based on the revised Cape/British edition of the text.Ĭontent Warning: The source material features depictions of sexual abuse and exploitation, graphic violence, substance use, and suicide.
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