William Vollmann - The Royal Family

He’d dreamed the very same dream before, when Irene was alive, and he’d said to her only: I dreamed about you. That’s what I wanted to tell you.

Irene said nothing.

I know you don’t love me the way I love you… he muttered.

His face flushed. He didn’t remember the rest. But the Queen knew it all.

Lie still now, she said, clambering onto his face. He opened his mouth obediently. She gripped his head firmly between her thighs and began to make water in his mouth, more and more and more until he couldn’t swallow anymore; he was retching, and her urine was coming out his nostrils. It felt as though her piss had become his tears. Desperate and confused to the very bottom of his soul, he struggled among square tomblike openings far-spaced in the yellow walls of death, wanting to escape back into pure numb death but the Queen would not let him. It hurt so much! Tear-streams gushed like pale urine from his eyes. He was weeping for Irene and gagging on his own grief; grief was trickling out of his nose; but the grief was really the Queen’s painful water which she was giving him so that he wouldn’t feel so all alone. Her piss was in his lungs now and he was coughing and vomiting but she wouldn’t let go until her bladder had given its last drop. Then she lifted herself off him and sat on the soaking sheet, laying his head on her lap. His chest ached. She stroked his hair while he vomited. — That’s a good boy, she whispered. Queen’s good little boy. Never be ashamed, Henry. Irene’s crying for you, too. Never mind. Never mind. Now you’ve cried my tears, and it hurt you. Never mind, baby. Henry, you’re my baby. Can you breathe now? Try to breathe. You’re gonna feel better now, ’cause you cried so hard and it hurt you. You got punished, and now it’s all right, so never mind. Queen knows everything about you, Queen adores you, Queen’s good little boy…

And, exhausted as he was, he realized that his sadness had been eased. He’d come out from a tunnel into the wide, stinking, sunlit world.

Hurt me, the Queen whispered.

He hardly slept all night, and in the morning felt headachey and nauseous. He wanted to vomit up the Queen’s urine, but he also longed to retain it. A double cappuccino picked him up slightly, but almost made him puke, so he drove to Muddy Waters with its bad paintings and ordered a double espresso with the brownish-yellow foam in the little cup, and some exciting crazy music that he’d never heard before was playing, causing him to grin and laugh. He was happy. He drank coffee until suddenly his fatigue shattered like windowglass and he was in the world of excitement and joy.

I will pay you back today, the snowy-bearded panhandler said. I live right here in the neighborhood.

Don’t worry about it, said Tyler.

I will pay you back when I see you again.

Okay. And if you don’t, why, don’t worry about it.

Tyler wanted to give away everything he had. He was so proud, because his Queen loved him. He felt as if he had been cured of an incurable wound. For Canaanites, such moments are the most treacherous.

So many girls in the rain like black rubber butterflies! It was Friday night in the Tenderloin, and Justin leaned up against a grating, glaring. — Gun up! said the Queen. Keep yourselves sharp, now. — Long black and blonde hair waterfalls illuminated the hearts of heat-seeking men; ivory legs glistened in the rain. (It’s those legs that just jump out! Brady always used to say. — Wet, bare legs. But Domino, sideways against the wall, bent herself into a backward letter C, her breasts and belly jutting out.) There was Beatrice, leaning up against her private piece of streetwall with one knee up and the sole of her foot planted firmly against that wall as if she were a competition swimmer getting ready for the referee’s signal to push herself into the water of her life, racing to be the first to reach that same sad finish line which Sunflower and Irene had already crossed. Heat-seekers auto-crawled down from the heights of Jones Street, looking out across a plain of lights toward the horizon and then descending with the regularity of cable cars, lizard-silver in their swift inclinations. Heat-seekers emerged from the financial district, their wallets full of cash. Heat-seekers came from Chinatown. They sought wordlessly or garrulously, but they all sought without knowing why, each of them an animal, a body like some monstrous imbecile-prostitute at Feminine Circus, some speechless being deep red and swollen like a pregnant sow.

Take Sapphire to the little girls’ room, would you, Bea? said the Queen. Sapphire’s got to pee.

Let’s go, angel; doan be scared, said Beatrice, taking the retarded girl’s hand. Sapphire went with her trustingly to the alley.

A Ford Escort pulled up for Chocolate. The man inside said: How do you stay so beautiful?

I just keep prayin’ it up, the black woman chuckled, leaping in.

All right, muttered the tall man. I got that sonofabitch’s license plate number in my head.

A black-in-white rolled by, and the Queen waved at the open passenger window and said: How you all doin’, officers?

Shaking their heads in disgust, the cops rolled on.

Justin, go on by the parking garage and get our messages, please, said the Queen.

Just lemme…

Do as you’re told, Justin.

Swearing, the tall man strode off. He came back and said: Vigs. That’s all they talk about now. Rumors of vigs and more vigs.

All rightie. We got enough trouble night by night. Thank you, Justin.

Maj, I got a bad feeling about these vigs.

Okay. We’ll talk about it later. In private.

You gonna let me go now?

Where to? This here’s the busy time.

Gonna make a run. Gonna score a big rock of white girl.

Who wants white girl? laughed the Queen, and all the prostitutes eagerly raised their hands, like schoolchildren who knew the answer to the most important question of all.

I’m sick of that shitty yellow rock you’ve been bringing back, Domino said. We can hardly get high off that stuff.

Know what we call that kinda crack? laughed the tall man. Call it Oriental girl.

Are you prejudiced? What the fuck do I have to be around prejudiced people for?

Chill out, Dom, said the Queen.

Don’t you tell me to chill out! I don’t like it when you pay forty dollars for a twenty dollar feeling. I never would have copped from that connection again.

Oh, lordy, said the Queen.

Chocolate returned from her trip around the block. She gave the Queen five for the general fund, and the tall man ten for crystal meth. Now she was whispering into the Queen’s ear, relating how a free agent named Feather had passed on a complaint about the management of the Mehta Hotel on Mission Street, whose managers insulted both the hookers and the tricks they brought. — Shit, that’s fucked up, Chocolate commiserated. Somebody I know is gonna hear about that. Why the fuck they gotta do that? Specially when it’s us girls that be bringin’ ’em in their money. ’Less that’s how they get down, she chuckled. — All rightie, sighed the Queen. I’ll look into it.

Another black-and-white came. The Queen waved; the cops waved back. When Beatrice waved, too, the tall man snarled: Don’t suck up to the bulls. — Beatrice, scared and silent, ran to embrace the Queen. — Mama, I were be very happy, she said. — There was an air of sweetness and patience in her face, with its red-brassy cheeks.

All rightie now. That’s my good little girl.

Maybe on November the twenty-sixth, I’m gonna make a party, said Beatrice. I’m gonna be nineteen. Maybe I can ask my Mama for this.