William Vollmann - The Royal Family

(So he’s a little drunk, Tyler thought.)

And how’s the home life?

Couldn’t be happier, said John, drumming his fingers on the edge of his beer glass. — Irene’s a great gal, terrific gal.

They sat there awhile, and John’s throat jerked, and John said: How about you?

Lucrative.

That’s a switch. You ought to quit while you’re ahead. Get a decent tie; find a respectable job…

Tyler ducked his head. — Where’s the best place for ties?

Gaspard’s, said John, his face lighting up again. That’s a hell of a classy place. Even that clod Roland knows enough to go there. But — well, sometime I’ll have to take you to Donatello’s. That’s my little secret. You wouldn’t know a decent tie if it strangled you. But I can run you over there sometime. Actually, Irene has got a pretty good eye. Maybe she—

I guess silk is the thing, Tyler said, a little uncertainly.

At Donatello’s you don’t even wipe your ass with less than a hundred percent handmade silk. But it’s not cheap, I’ll tell you that. Last Christmas Irene bought me one of their Fog City Paisleys, a unique print actually, and though it almost killed me I made her take it right back. Irene was not happy. It one of those nights. But the next day my bonus came, and that’s the tie I’m wearing right now.

Pretty fancy, John. You’re lucky you married someone with such good taste.

She knows what I like, said John complacently. Well, I guess I should be getting back. Celia can run me home.

Okay. Let me just get this barkeep’s attention.

Forget it, said John. I’ve got a running tab here. No, I mean it. You took Irene out tonight. Don’t think I don’t keep track of those things.

Tyler went to a pay phone and checked his messages. Pressing the three digits of his secret code (which he knew from professional experience would not be much of a secret to anyone who cared), he heard the tape rustling backward, and for a moment was certain that Irene was calling him, or maybe Brady, but it was only some unfaithful husband he’d nailed who was threatening pathetically and drunkenly to sue him for invasion of privacy. Tyler had the geek’s home number. Composing himself to be a mouthpiece of friendly warnings, he telephoned, but got no answer, although it was already after eleven. The mistress had left town in a hurry, and he didn’t think that the man would be staying at her place anymore. Who knows; could he have shot himself? He was a gun collector. That would be convenient, Tyler thought. I hate dealing with these assholes, in or out of court.

He drove down to Larkin Street, photographed a drug deal for his friend Robert the cop, rolled past the parking garage and noted no traffic in or out, an observation which would not thrill Brady (although Brady nonetheless kept a notebook filled with such tabulations as Mamie [from Atlanta], age 28, on 8th betw 38th and 42nd; $20 + $5 for drinks—30 min) but just the same Tyler recorded No traffic in his surveillance report; then, via North Beach (where not far from the sequinlike neon beads of Adam & Eve a crowd of bus-attenders stood outside City Lights, ignoring the delicious books in the window, indifferent even to the black and white paperbacks of Howl stacked up in pyramidal altars to the 1960s), he returned to Union and saw John’s car still parked in front of Celia’s. If he had to guess, they were quarelling, not smooching, because his visit would have left Celia defensive and John simply mean. Not that it was his business. Why didn’t he go back to North Beach? Sometimes he stopped at City Lights to buy an issue of Industrial Photography Quarterly, which proferred tips on espionage, displayed photographs of pistols he couldn’t afford to own, and in its back pages sometimes consented to carry mail-order ads for locator fluid, not the good stuff that he bought with his special I.D. at the film department of Adolph Gasser’s, but stuff that was good enough to cut the good stuff with. He thought about calling Irene just to hear her voice, but that would be wrong. Sometimes zeal accomplishes the opposite of its objectives. He started toward City Lights, but by the time he’d emerged from the Broadway tunnel, whose sparkling yellow walls were that night silhouetted by hooting roller bladers, he’d changed his mind. Back to Polk Street — he remembered when Johnny Love’s was Lord Jim’s, actually not so long ago now. It had begun to drizzle, so that the car ahead was smeared and glowing. Crawling reflections made his own vehicle bubble inside like an aquarium. Hoping that John would be good to Irene when he did come home, he cruised down to the Mission, yawned, and checked out Capp Street where a weary old junkie was breaking in a spring chicken, explaining: Put your leg out, way out, and bend at the knee — that’s right! God, my feet hurt. You know how your toenails hurt when they’re too long? And I hate all this traffic. It’s just too hectic. It’s not calm. Now bend your back leg, too; okay, honey, straighten it out, lock it and wiggle your butt; yeah, show ’em some ass just like the Queen said… — but then the two whores saw Tyler’s slow-cruising detectivemobile and he had no more reason to linger, so he stopped at a gas station for unleaded and a stick of cheese-flavored sausage, admired the grand old curvy-cylindered-windowed Victorian houses on South Van Ness, swam past the parking garage, from which two whores were just then emerging (he photographed them and scribbled something down in the DESCRIPTION OF ACTIVITIES line of his surveillance report), wound his way back to Union Street and found John’s car gone. Grimly grinning, he said to himself: Am I my brother’s keeper?

The following morning, when John arrived at the office (in the corner of his eye Irene’s car just beginning to pull away), a new doorman was there. They gazed at one another’s uniforms and passed without speaking; John had never even known the old doorman’s name. In the elevator beside him rode his plump secretary, Joy, whose spectacles goggled at the world from an unbeautiful but serene round face. She’d cut her hair short, and was wearing a blue dress. — Hi, Mr. Tyler, how are you? she began breathlessly; I’m a little harried but I did call him today…

Who are you talking about? said John. Say, is my tie straight?

Mr. Brady, she said.

What did he say, Joy?

He got the deposition, and he said to tell you that he’s very satisfied.

John smiled.

The elevator arrived. Pink-cheeked Joy scurried into her little cubicle, of which a cassette player and tapes took up a quarter, and John, passing by, glimpsed the baby seat for when she worked on weekends, the filing cabinet and the two desks crammed end to end. — Good morning, Mr. Rapp, he said.

Morning, John. Congratulations on getting Brady.

Oh, thanks, Mr. Rapp, laughed John, blushing with happiness.

Joy peeked out of her lair, her smile expressing full unity with Mr. Rapp’s mazel tov.

The amber button buzzed on John’s desk phone. Lifting the receiver, he depressed that unnerving crystal of luminescence, and said: What is it now, Joy?

Mr. Rapp and Mr. Singer would like to bring you to a private lunch, said Joy’s voice, a little arch at the knowledge that it bore imperious tidings.

When — today?

Mmm hmmm.

What time?

One-thirty.

Okay. Thank you, Joy, he said, hanging up. He made a note on his memo pad: Call Mom tonight. — He e-mailed a memo to Joy to do a search for Brady, Jonas A. on both the LEXIS and NEXIS databases and bring him hard copy. Returning to the Veblen brief he’d been preparing since yesterday, he pecked in three cunning additions to the boilerplate; he thought they’d lure an approving smile to Mr. Rapp’s face if he read them, which Mr. Singer certainly wouldn’t. At one-twenty-five his screen chimed. His stomach ached, and his fingers were feeling sweaty. He went to the men’s room, washed his face, and adjusted his tie.