William Vollmann - The Royal Family

Domino glided back into the Wonderbar, pale and sweaty. Tyler wanted to whisper into her ear: Are we pregnant? but just then the other door gaped, and in came the owner, coked up or cracked up or methed up, manic and red-eyed. Seeing the Queen, he started yelling: No more napkins for you! Now get out, nigger!

That’s a shame, said the Queen. I was just fixin’ to blow my nose again.

Loreena came rushing busily up to her and slipped a dozen napkins into the Queen’s hand. — Don’t take it personally, Maj, but you’d better go, she whispered. Heavyset gets really out of control when he’s like this…

Buy you a drink, Heavyset? the Queen said loudly.

The owner stopped short, licking his lips foolishly. — Well, I didn’t know you were a paying customer, he said. Have you bought something already?

I was fixin’ to buy you a drink, Heavyset, since you love me so much. Henry, would you kindly buy this gentleman a drink?

What’ll you have, Heavyset? said Tyler wearily.

Oh, is this lady a friend of yours? said Heavyset. I’ll take a beer. I never turn down beer. Loreena! Bring me a beer!

That’ll be three dollars, sweetheart, said Loreena impassively.

And you can give her an extra napkin, Loreena. On the house.

Well, thank you, Heavyset, said the Queen. Now why don’t you just run along and let me transact a little business with Henry…

Heavyset, said Loreena quickly, do you want me to change the channel to the football game?

Hey, Heavyset, leave the Queen alone! shouted Domino. Come on over here an’—an’—what you always… shit, I feel so fucked up…

What about me? said Domino’s john. I was here first.

What about you? Go sit over there by the pool table and chill out for ten minutes and then you can… oh, I feel so sick…

You need to lie down, said Heavyset triumphantly. Come on in the back room and—

Henry, said the Queen, when you have no money, why you always comin’ in here every night?

Looking for you.

Lordy lordy day, said the Queen.

I want to be with you.

Well, don’t you just want to be with everybody that’s got a pussy? Henry, you don’t know what you want.

I want to live with you. The girls live with you. Lily lives with you—

Lily was living with us, and one day she walked out and didn’t come back for two years. She don’t even remember where she was at. I been keepin’ her clothes for her in a box…

I figured she’s—

I’m scared about Lily, the Queen said. Lily makes me scared. I can see her going down and down…

And Beatrice, too, he said.

Thank you for sayin’ that. Yes, and Beatrice, too. Anyway, Lily she like to stay by herself at the Lola Hotel, Room Twenny-Six—

But you weren’t sad when Sunflower died…

It was her time. You thinkin’ Queenie don’t have no strength nor knowledge? You thinkin’ Sunflower wasn’t ready?

Lily reminds me of Sunflower. More than my pretend Irene…

But Lily’s still Lily. She still got some Lily things to do. Sunflower was finished. She went beyond all that. When she passed away, Henry, she was already pure sunny happiness. Do you believe what I’m tellin’ you?

I don’t know, said Tyler. That’s the honest truth.

How can I condemn you for that? You don’t put on airs. You know you don’t understand. It’s all right, child, ’cause I never yet laid my hand on your eyes to make you see.

Are you going to do that to me?

You want it?

I trust in you to do what’s right for me, he said in a low voice, so that the other alcoholics wouldn’t hear.

She took his hand. They sat together for a while in that bar which was darker and shabbier than the snotty cleanliness of the Cinnabar on Ellis and Jones, whose bar’s wood-grain spread itself under a million coats of plastic while Diana Ross and the Supremes on the jukebox sang It hurts so bad —the Wonderbar was the best.

When the Queen went to the ladies’ room, he tore off a scrap of his soggy napkin and wrote on it AFRICA I LOVE YOU. Then he clenched it tight in his hand.

Domino had left her little silver purse on a barstool when she went back with Heavyset, whom she actually valued in a way because although in her years of growing older she had learned enough to avoid any barmaid’s eye so that the barmaid could not immediately sell her another three-dollar beer, still, that strategy could preserve a girl’s finances only so far, and when she inhabited the Wonderbar waiting and waiting for some trick to wander in, her expenses rose faster than cracksmoke because she really could not afford to alienate Loreena; but as long as she permitted Heavyset to bear her away to his little “office” whenever the fancy struck him, then afterward she could sit for as long as she liked beneath the nice mural of the girl with nipples like Hershey’s kisses; and maybe even shoot a little pool or watch football or hockey on the screen, saving up money and thirst until she was ready to drink the kind of classy bottled beer that made her spit thick. Now it was time to pay. Loreena would look out for her, she thought, but then she suddenly viciously distrusted Loreena and would have gone back for her purse; however, Heavyset, misconstruing her reluctance to be something less trivial than that, whispered in her ear that he had some crystal meth in his office, at which any other ideas which the blonde might have had went rushing up through the ceiling. So there lay her purse. Toilet paper, condoms, keys, lipstick, spermicide, a pocket mirror, change and three self-defensive razorblades had long since forced apart the zipper’s broken lips, so that the purse presented to the world a defiantly overt character not unlike that of its owner. Tyler worried about Domino sometimes when he saw that purse because its silveriness and inviting openness seemed to him to offer an invitation to evildoers, but doubtless Domino knew best. Picking it up by one safety-pinned strap, he slid it across the bar to Loreena, who was working the register, and asked her to keep it safe for the tipsy girl. Loreena nodded wordlessly and stuffed it behind the beer keg where only she could reach it. Returning to his spot, Tyler encountered Domino’s john, who’d dug both hands into the Queen’s shoulder, trying to date her. The Queen was smiling.

Tyler drained his drink and put the balled-up napkin in the Queen’s hand. He said to her: Maybe this will come in handy. — Then he went out.

Just as he reached the swinging doors, he heard Domino’s john say sneeringly: So what the fuck did that turkey give you, a get out of jail free card?

What the doctor sees on the other end of the speculum is your cervix, explained the woman in the blue jumpsuit who now was washing Domino with Betadyne. — Do you want to see?

Sure, grinned Domino, and the woman tilted a mirror until Domino could see the brown stain around her vulva through a hole in the plastic. The woman in the blue jumpsuit sounded the depth of the os to determine how far along she was.

You’ll feel a little pinch now, the woman in the blue jumpsuit said.

The needle entered the hole in the plastic and quivered like a mosquito. It twinkled and hummed. The efficient woman in blue stood over her, hands spread; the needle slid in slowly, deeper and deeper. Domino was enjoying the woman’s attentions, perhaps because the woman was so tense-faced, determined, probably quick to take offense. The blonde had already sized her up back in the waiting room where all the very quiet women kept watching each other out of the corners of their eyes and the woman in blue, placidly brushing back her hair, explained: And this is a canula. You notice that it is plastic and it is flexible. — The patients watched the ring on her hand move, all of them sitting cozy together. It was Domino’s pleasure not to offend her, for now. Moreover, she liked the stinging of the needle, which she pretended was a part of the woman in blue’s body, that the woman in blue was entering her lovingly, sexually and above all subserviently.