William Vollmann - The Royal Family

I keep quiet about what I do, usually, he said to the blonde. You understand me, I think. You know that I…

It’s very isolating, Domino agreed. You know, I was very sexual as a girl and couldn’t talk about it.

Now this one is not so obvious, said Smooth. Watch how she moves around. I don’t know how to describe how she moves. It’s like eating chocolate while admiring stained glass windows in some fabulous church, you know, some… Now watch this. Watch how she kind of hops around.

The video continued with one long white leg up, and a strange crow, a diver, an astronaut, a black pelican’s beak darting in and out between white cliffs.

In silence, Domino and Dan Smooth listened to the Queen’s husky moans: Ohh, oh, oh, ohhh, oaah, aoh, uh, oh, oh, uh, uh, I’m coming, I’m o-o-o-oh, uh, uh, uh, uh!

Wow, said Domino with her crooked little smile. I was never able to make her come like that. When she comes she comes.

Yeah, sighed Smooth.

And lookit him coming. There he goes. Hah! There he goes! Lookit his face. That stupid fuck. I always hated that guy. Now he’s smiling. He thinks he’s really something, since he’s had our Queen.

Ah, so you’re jealous. Me too. Watch his hips now. So much of this, it’s hard to know what is esentially male and what’s conditioned.

That stupid fuck! she shouted.

Domino, I want you to shut up now.

Domino’s eyesockets were like twin bites taken out of an apple core which had been forgotten on the grimy dresser of some whore hotel and so oxidized dark brown.

People think I always push them away, she said. It’s not that I like to push them away. But so many times they just become something untrue. They cheat me once, and then I can’t forgive. I never forgive.

And what’d she do to you? said Kitty, applying lipstick.

Oh, nothing. I’m becoming more and more alienated.

Where are you gonna try tonight?

Ellis is too hot. Maybe in front of the Wonderbar. Why, you wanna double date?

No, I got a regular I gotta meet. But seriously now, Dom, you gotta…

Don’t start bullshitting me.

Aw, why don’t you make up? How can you not be friends with the Queen?

I just don’t want to.

You trust me?

I trust you, Kittypie.

Then listen to me. I’m tellin’ you for your own fuckin’ good. Get along with the Queen.

I don’t love her anymore.

Ooh, that’s cold. You think she don’t know? Besides, what could you do to her? Get her raped and gaffled? Shit, Domino, she’s got the power.

Black Pam stuck her head in and said: Kitty, don’t talk to her, don’t talk to her; she be bad.

Now why is that? laughed Kitty.

She’ll rob you.

Ooh. How’ll she do that?

I don’t know, said Pam.

I was fixin’ to learn, said Kitty, and Domino laughed so hard she almost puked.

What — how to rob people? said stupid Pam.

That’s right, Domino cut in. Now get out of here, bitch, and don’t snitch or else I’ll cut your little nigger pussy out.

Pam squeaked, and ran away.

Don’t worry, said Kitty. I’ll be watchin’ her.

Stupid little fraidy-cat bitch, laughed Domino.

Remember what I said, whispered Kitty. Queen’s got the power.

By some bit of synchronicity I once met up with the fellow who had stolen three hundred and sixty dollars from me two weeks before. He was so charming that for an instant I couldn’t believe in his indisputable guilt. He’d had his film stolen since. — I’m so glad I met you, he said. You’ll help me! — This he said with the absent-mindedness of the truly ruthless.

Yes, very nice to see you again, I said politely. He shook himself, beginning to realize that I just might be cool toward his problems.

Domino’s ego was a similarly expensive jewel. Although she well understood the expedient consequences of her actions, she remained so precious to herself that no efforts of others on her behalf, voluntary, coaxed, or coerced, could ever strike her as excessive. In every crisis, Domino assumed that aid would arrive. Her attitude was complicated by an increasingly justified mistrust of the aid-givers. The man who robbed me could still believe that he needed but to exhibit his difficulties for me to solve them for him, no questions asked. But Domino was experientially speaking several million years old. She’d reached her millionth birthday when she was a fifteen-year-old runaway coughing, blowing her nose and leaning up against the wall of the San Bernardino bus station (her corn-yellow hair was richer back then). She shivered and her thighs trembled in the pink tights. What to do? A security guard with a T-shaped night stick came to move her on. But Domino had nowhere to go. She was stupid enough to plead. The man took her into the women’s toilet and made her blow him. That bought her an ass-pinch and an hour of peace. Then his shift ended, and her bus of salvation hadn’t come, and the next guard called the police. What was there to learn from this?

Domino believed as strongly as ever in her right to freedom, cash, drugs and happiness. But she had long since been forced to acknowledge the entirely mistaken attitude of the withholders and nay-sayers who swarmed about. What to do then? What indeed, but lie, trick, cajole, deceive, compel, intimidate…

She was a good person exactly as often as she could afford to be. What she thought of as standing up for herself might sometimes appear to others as bullying; for her it represented the exercise of a sacred moral principle. As for friendliness, she showed her goodwill whenever she could. By keeping track of all the favors she did, she not only honed their edges, so to speak, into glittering utility — for what favor, once forgotten, gets returned? — but also verified her own goodness. And when necessity struck, as it so often did, then she laid friendship aside, and proceeded by the most direct route to manage whatever needed to be managed. If someone took offense, that was unfortunate, but to Domino’s way of thinking, almost everyone was either a declared or an undeclared enemy anyhow. Domino thus was one of the most reasonable women in the world. Her moral calculus was honest, practical and consistent.

And now at last the time had come for Domino to appear in superior court, face to face (as she thought) with her pasty-faced ex-regular out of whose glove compartment the pistol had fallen and under whose passenger seat the cops had found that baggie of methamphetamine. — Gun up, Dom, said the Queen. I’ll be prayin’ over you. You want me to be in court? Or can I send Henry? — Oh, what the fuck’s the difference? said the blonde. If you even have to ask, that means you don’t want to be there for me… — C’mere, whispered the sad Queen, but Domino would not. — All rightie, then, Henry and I will both come. Beatrice can watch over Sapphire…

Just to make her feel good, the Queen said in Tyler’s ear, and he nodded. A Mr. Munif had requested his professional services for an infidelity case, but it would have conflicted with Domino’s court date, so he turned the job down.

The public defender had warned the blonde that her exposure was four years of potential jail time. He tried to explain how all the counts added up but she didn’t even bother to listen. Brisk and enterprising, she only wanted to know what she could do now. She could have pled guilty and gotten probation except that she had already violated probation and parole and everything else long since.

You haven’t been showing up, have you? the public defender said.

No, not everytime, Domino replied wearily.