William Vollmann - The Royal Family

As autumn came on, the police sweeps of Capp Street almost ceased, but in the Tenderloin everyone frenziedly told and retold rumors, of which the most extreme and exaggerated were forwarded to the Queen’s parking garage, of approaching calamities for which no remedy existed except patience. Of course this ill wind increased in force only gradually, like Beatrice, who sucked men off as slowly as her Papa used to fill his wheelbarrow with dirt and stones. On Irene’s birthday (August ninth) it was scarcely a fetid breeze. But by late September it could not be denied. It was up to the Queen to interpret the keening and take steps to protect her family. As for the queenless others, they lay low, mumbling evil prophecies from the innermost wrinkles of their gaunt souls. The great street organism braced itself, expecting some nervous shock. (Imagine, if you will, some suspicious streetwalker holding herself rigid in the headlights of oncoming cars, her hands twisted nervously behind her back as if they concealed frightening weapons.) Meanwhile there was a minor construction boom of new multinational hotels and upscale restaurants, the kind that John and Celia liked; these establishments chipped away at the Tenderloin, like roads, camps and waystations penetrating into virgin forest. The inevitable result, since street life, like any other kind, determinedly struggled to survive, was that as certain blocks were “cleansed” to resemble the wide, skylit stalls of the mul-titiered parking garage at Saveco, the remainder became more concentrated, thick and rank and wiry like underbrush now teeming with animals which have fled an oncoming forest fire. When the Queen was questioned about the meaning of this strange feeling which made the whores’ short hairs prickle on their necks, she replied only to wait and see. She continued to expand her operation, as if she could go on supplying protection to everybody forever, maybe because she believed it or maybe because it was too late for her to stop or maybe because she thought it the upright thing to do, like the moral calculus of a man who cannot swim but dives into deep water in hopes of saving a drowning child. And so, in this whimsical world of ours where pickled intestinal worms may resemble high-quality ginseng roots, the Chinese prostitute Yellow Bird, whom careerism required to drink the colored water which her customers believed to be alcohol, decided to leave the bar in North Beach where she had sipped away at her hopes for months now, because she’d heard of the Queen. — China was better under Chairman Mao, she told the tall man. In that time, no money-money-money. Not do bad thing for money so cruel to the customer. My madam she cursing and screaming if I drink too slow. — Indifferent to Mao’s merits, the tall man led her past a dusty window with a red grating whose bars and squares resembled I Ching ideograms, then up tall narrow grey stairs ascending toward a single immensely powerful light. That light became her Queen. Her heart became as quiet as Chinatown on a rainy midnight.

My name it mean like Yellow Bird, she was explaining to Beatrice over her glass of colored water, while the tall man stood just beyond the doorway swivelling his head from side to side. I wanna be free like other yellow birds but my life is no good.

A Chinese was yelling.

What’s he saying?

He say some bargain with bartender. He want make qvarrer. Every night I see him. Sometimes he go with two girls. — Very ugly, she added venomously.

Beatrice was sorry for her. She wanted to bring this new girl to the Queen.

Today I go to my friend’s place to get some money, Yellow Bird said. I keep some money in her place for my mother. Just in Chinatown I go vin- dow shopping.

A few days later Beatrice saw Yellow Bird on the street and Yellow Bird said: Because I qvarrer wiv the boss. I buy a new suit, and she say new suit not from me, but from customer. I say no, and she swear at me. Then I say I don’t want to work here anymore. Then she want to give me another chance, and she say she love me, but I say no. Bar is no good for me. Now I try to find another job.

Just remember one thing, the tall man said. Nobody gonna force you.

I know somebody who wants to meet you, said Beatrice in the same breath.

The Queen agreed to meet her. Yellow Bird bowed four times. — All rightie, sighed the Queen. Now I’m going to spit in your mouth. I want you to…

But she was noticeably distracted now by her friendship with Tyler. A few of the whores had begun to question her fitness to rule, but then, they always did and always would.

Right now I would say the Queen is my best friend, but they change, Lily explained. Strawberry used to be my best friend but that was before I met the Queen. Domino used to be my best friend. Shit, she started stealing my tricks and then she broke my arm.

And where did you meet her? asked the trick. (He was really a vig. Later he’d make a report.)

From this guy in the salmon-packing plant.

But when the vig asked Domino where she’d met Lily, the blonde curtly replied: We met in jail. Some cop caught me kicking a crack pipe in a doorway…

Is she your best friend?

Who the fuck do you think you’re asking?

Needless to say, Domino was the most outspoken, but even she never said publicly that she had become unfriends with the Queen. Outwardly she and the Queen continued to be on the same loving terms as before. And inwardly, too, perhaps, little had changed.

Dan Smooth, who always heard everything first, said that the city was going to tear down all the crack hotels on Mission Street — surely an exaggeration. Dan Smooth said that vigs would get the Queen someday. Dan Smooth, one of whose eyebrows was higher than the other, sweated gloom and doom like some Mexicali bar from whose dark edges women flowed, the ceiling omniously tinseled like a rattlesnake’s scales. Bad stories flowed now even from the lips of the Wonderbar regulars with their crutches and moustaches and their caps pulled low over their eyes. Surely it couldn’t have been true about the hotels, though; nothing was true that Saturday night on O’Farrell and Jones, that night comprised of black women in translucent pastel skins which were neither bikinis nor raincoats; they shimmered like jellyfish in a dark sea.

Well, so what’s your story? they said. You want some company or not?

Well, you’re just so beautiful, I don’t know which to choose.

Don’t worry, Strawberry said, not seeing the man’s ferocious sarcasm about to un-sheath itself and attack her, it’s our business, her and me. You won’t hurt my feelings if you don’t pick me.

So you’re friends then, the man said.

Yeah, friends, the two women said in agreement.

If you don’t pick me, I’d rather have your money go to her than some stranger, Strawberry explained.

So can you buy me a pack of cigarettes? Domino said.

Sure, sweetheart. Here’s a dollar.

It’s more like three dollars. You’re living in the dark ages.

Grimacing, the man reached into his shirt pocket and withdrew a five. — Can you give me change for that? he said.

You bet, said Domino, who considered herself a class act.

You ever done any time?

What kind of a question is that?

I was just wondering.

Wondering what?

What’s jail like? the trick asked brightly.