William Vollmann - The Royal Family

Tyler could not shake off a certain respect, even pride (strange to say) in the vastness of this place! It was an American place, big and colorful and hollow; probably ninety percent of the people on earth would give anything to spend money in places like this. The reflection of a flashing star above a quarter slot (more favored by the “average gambler” than nickel, dime or dollar) beat within a forgotten glass of wine as if it were a heart. Two media blondes in short red skirts sat side by side at a Jackpot Jungle and a Home Run, drinking margaritas. — No, we’re not virtualettes, they kept telling everybody, we’re real!

Tyler approached these ladies and said: Excuse me, but could you help me get Queen Zenobia’s autograph?

Sir, said the nearest blonde, I’m terribly sorry, but Queen Zenobia is terribly, terribly busy.

Well, I’ll be, said Tyler, open-mouthed.

You probably will, said the blonde.

The other blonde, pitying him, said: Never mind. She’s not the real Queen Zenobia. She’s just a stand-in. Mr. Brady is still trying to cast the real Queen.

Ah, said Tyler wisely. Well, thank you so much for your time. Let me just ask you one thing.

Mm hm? said the blonde.

Would Jesus demand that we reject all this?

The woman stared at him.

Cain would say it was up to us, said Tyler with a sinister chuckle. And he walked away.

He felt very hungry, but figures streamed so urgently between the weird cold rainbows in the niches of slot machines that for the moment he gave up the effort to fill his plate. A pharmacist was coming out of an unmarked door muttering: Norpramine, desapramine… — Tyler considered that a little strange. Somewhere beneath the triple-decker ledges of silk flowers which ascended to the starry ceiling, a man’s hands almost touched, one being wrapped in a twist of napkin, holding his plate, the other seizing a taco on the plate to bring it to his mouth; Tyler saw only this detail of him without the wholeness. A middle-aged woman stood at the center of an aisle between slot machines, throwing back her head and smiling. There was a lot of talk and happiness, and Tyler wondered if that was because so many machines were off. — They say it’s virtual, a woman said, and another woman said: They say he’s got the Queen. — People walked purposefully, stood speaking to one another, looked into each other’s eyes, and enjoyed the food, which was quite good; Tyler finally snagged a squishy handful of steak tartare. When he caught his breath, he found himself in a large bay in the wall-coast papered with what were in fact very beautiful butterflies and weeping willows ( those murals are actually handpainted on real canvas and then put up like wallpaper! one of the guides imparted reverently.) A virtualette identified for Tyler by a change girl as Sweet Pickins’ writhed her six arms above a bank of dollar slots beneath a LOVEBUCKS kiosk whose red telltale of millions kept going up and up and up, by perhaps a dime a second, and from afar Tyler glimpsed friendly monsters passing.

There was another kind of virtual reality, too, as the procession of tourists who went up Las Vegas Boulevard from the MGM Grand to the Luxor learned when they reached the corner trodden with soiled fliers, and at this corner a boy stood trying to pass the fliers out discreetly folded so that they didn’t look like what they were. A man accepted one, and as he bemusedly opened it, the silicone-pumped boobs leaped out and he, his wife and the children opened their mouths and then he strode back to the guy and said: Listen, buddy. You, take this back! I don’t want this crap.

This ad, which Tyler philanthropically retrieved from the unfazed herald of good times, described a young Guatemalan girl (later he forgot whether she was “beautiful,” “eager,” “sexy” or “submissive”) — and no agency, oh, by no means; so of course what he got was a blonde from Alberta in a red Jeep Wrangler; she said that the hundred and twenty-five an hour was just for the agency, and she wanted a tip. He made it four hundred and she sulked because she usually got eight hundred to a thousand, which at first he did not believe. But maybe it was true, because during the half-hour that she stayed and fidgeted, the agency called every ten minutes in amazement that she was still there.

Usually I’m in and out in five minutes, she explained. That way the guy doesn’t have time to get mad before I’m done.

What can you do in five minutes? Even a blow job takes longer than that!

Well, I give him a full body massage, but he has to use his own hand.

It took him a moment to calculate the sum of these convolutions. — You mean he pays you a thousand bucks to jerk off to you?

Yeah, she shrugged. I guess you could put it that way. I’m not really a sex girl.

What are you then?

Let’s just say when I’m through they usually don’t do it again! she said with the same valley girl smile of the digitized Queen of Diamonds whose lavender breasts got obscured every second by the PLAY 5 COINS sign. — But sometimes I do get repeat customers. It still amazes me. But in Vegas it’s different. This is the big money, man. You get high rollers and they don’t care what they spend.

I guess that means you’ve got to be going, huh? said Tyler.

Why are you like that? At least I’m not a Brady Girl — I’m real, I’m me, I’m—

Then can I touch you?

Nobody touches me, mister.

Oh. So you’re not real, either. Hey, listen, did you ever hear of the Queen of the Whores?

Wake up, mister, she said, rising. We live in a democracy. And by the way, I stayed an extra five minutes. Do I get a bonus?

Nope.

Shrugging, the blonde dialled the agency and said: OK, I’m leaving. He’s not going to give me any more.

It’s kind of different here in Vegas, he said in his best hayseed voice.

She lit a cigarette. — The other thing that’s different about Vegas is that in all these hotels, even the real fancy hotels, the windows never open.

Because the people who lose big money might…?

Exactly. Same reason there are no long flights of stairs.

She was already putting her coat on and then she left him — rich, beautiful, contemptuous, and he felt only a little more empty than before.

Even divinities such as Jonas Brady need to procure business licenses, and although their articles of incorporation may list for their addresses such public-deflectors as John’s office address at Rapp and Singer (my client does not want to be contacted, John explained), still they need to get financing somewhere, and so for a snoop such as Henry Tyler of Tyler & Associates, Investigative Services, it’s but a fingersnap’s worth of effort to run a T.U. or a T.R. W. or any other number of credit checks, cognizant of the fact that Brady must have filled out a loan application or two in his time. No mention of cottonwood trees, but here on the blue computer screen crawled and quivered electronic proof of a pinball machine franchise, then a conspiracy to market office supplies, then the Sleep-O Hotel chain, each of them affixed in the credit bureau’s memory to a name, an address, a social security number. Back in San Francisco, Tyler had run a Uniform Commercial Code listing and learned that Brady was by definition a big shot: he owned a lot of secured collateral. — And it’s Union Bank, too, he muttered. That’s where John always refers his clients. Okay, and what about the Dun and Brad? LOOKING UP HOST, it says. Oh, come on.

COLLATERAL: Inventory and proceeds

FILING NO.: 8714060005

TYPE: Original

SEC. PARTY: Union Bank of California, N.A.