William Vollmann - The Royal Family

And you just sit there and let it happen? Shame on you! Remind me never to trust Bubbles to either of you!

John hates dogs, Tyler explained. You wouldn’t believe how vitriolic he gets.

Well! said Mrs. Adams. I never knew that about John. And to think that I even let him sit our dog once — not Bubbles, of course. That was before Bubbles’s time. I let him sit Jessie. Do you remember Jessie?

Why, sure I do, Tyler lied.

And I paid John very well, too, at that time, Mrs. Adams said. Twenty-five dollars. Do you think he mistreated her?

Oh, I don’t think so, said Tyler, continuing to play the part most masterfully. Although with John you never know.

You never know, repeated Mrs. Adams, hypnotized. I never knew that about John. I never, never knew.

His mother was resting. He’d already filled up the refrigerator and telephoned his answering machine which connected him to San Francisco like still another long foul snail-track of memory. One message: A lady wanted him to find out why her husband got off work at eleven every night but never came home until one. Maybe four hundred dollars if he got lucky — half of October’s rent. The Sacramento Bee reported two more robberies in midtown and a rape-murder in Oak Park, the latter possibly perpetrated by some of the gangbangers in peaked or tasseled wool caps who leaned up against the window of Ray’s Taco Rico on Broadway, which had been around under various names since the 1930s; he used to go there for shakes and burgers with his high school co-inmates who’d believed that they had important things in common; maybe they did; maybe they had; Tyler had lost touch with all of them. He drove down to Ray’s and ordered a burger. On the wall hung a calendar, courtesy of a beer company, which sang the praises of the GREAT QUEENS OF AFRICA, in this case Queen Amina of Zaria. The gangbangers came in. Ray kept saying: Right here, cheese and chicken salad, right here.

Are you happy, dear? said his mother weakly.

Don’t worry about me, Mom. I’m more worried about you.

You sound just like John.

I get it, he chuckled. A headache was coming on — the same kind of headache as when some long snort of speed-cut cocaine wears off. He massaged his eyebrows.

Henry?

Yes, Mom.

Did Irene actually borrow my copy of The Possessed? I can’t seem to find it. I remember when I told her… oh, dear. She probably thought she had to read it to please me.

I’ll go look in the living room, he said.

There it was, in the third shelf down of the bookcase by the piano, in its usual place in the five-volume set of Dostoyevsky, with every book crowned by distinguished dust.

By late afternoon Tyler was going south on I-80 with the Bay on his right, shining blue, brassy and silver — a worked surface, as an artist would say. His friend Adrienne said that there was going to be an illegal Survival Research Laboratories performance down on Second and Natoma; they’d been banned in the city; maybe sooner or later they’d get tired or burned out and the strange furtive machine performances in night parking lots would come to an end, so he probably should have gone; he kind of wanted to, but he was feeling sick and tired.

He opened his mail, which said:

Dear Henr Tlyyyr & Mrs. Henr Tlyyyr,

We are pleased to offer you our unique financing program to bring instant, guaranteed relief from the burdensome payments you may be making on outstanding credit card balances, mortgage payments, automobile loans, and other consumer debt.

He crumpled that letter up and threw it at the wastebasket, but missed. Then he opened a beer.

He was behind on the rent again.

He telephoned the court clerk he used to go out with and asked her to please look up an Africa Johnston’s misdemeanor case from 1978, but the lady said: Henry, those records no longer exist. They have been deleted. Paperwork Reduction Act.

But I have the case number, he said.

I’m sure you do, she laughed. Listen, Henry, I really really really have to go.

Soon after that the vigs started coming around everywhere, terrorizing the street girls, calling the cops on them, and sometimes even going undercover to date them in order to ask where the Queen was, because, as Stalin once said, Cut off the head and the body dies. Once the whores knew who those men were, they rejected them and their money in scared, angry voices, but the only way to find that out was to go with them the first time. A vig whose gaze was as sick and ugly as one of those dark bars in which the regulars celebrate their own birthdays went up to Chocolate’s trick pad at the Royal Hotel for a fifty-and-ten,* fucked her without a rubber, then offered her a hundred dollars more to introduce him to the Queen. He said he wanted her for a bachelor night.

I’m the Queen of the Tenderloin, said Chocolate. I got my own line. I lay out my line. They follow me themselves.

She was lying sideways on the stinking bed with her reddish-chocolate thigh up on the pillow. She hadn’t taken off her pair of copper bracelets all summer because they eased her tendonitis, which tortured her more than ever now because she was an old bitch as she put it. — You’ve jerked off too many pricks! sneered Domino, to which Chocolate, never tongue-tied, replied simply: Your time gonna come, Dom, just like mine.

The vig said: Don’t bullshit me, bitch. This is the last time I’m gonna ask you nice. Now take me to the Queen.

Chocolate with her beautiful kissable mouth and those sweet, hurt eyes of hers lay gazing at the man with an almost flaming gentleness, in order to conceal her intense fear and hatred, and she was silent, thinking to herself: If he starts trouble I got to grab my high heeled shoe an’ bang on the door till the manager comes. Then I’ll get eighty-sixed from here but at least I…

How about it, bitch? said the vig with a tight little grin. Ain’t you girlfriends with the Queen?

I have one girlfriend. Me. Me alone.

You know the Queen?

Nope.

You know Henry Tyler?

If I did, would I tell you? I don’t know you.

You know me now, the vig said.

Yeah, right.

And I’m watching you.

Well, watch me all you want, ’cause I ain’t doin’ anything illegal, and if I am, you ain’t gonna catch me!

What about what you just did with me here?

That ain’t nothin’. That’s only entrapment.

Are you the Queen?

You’re full of it.

Looking her in the face, the vig said: I hear the Queen does magic. Black magic. Listen carefully, Chocolate. I’m going to quote you Leviticus 20.27. A man or a woman who is a medium or a wizard shall be put to death; they shall be stoned with stones; their blood shall be upon them. Amen.

Uh huh, said Chocolate.

Are you the Queen?

Are you a jerkoff?

You gonna miss me when I go?

No.

Can I miss you?

No.

What’ll you do if I miss you?

Fine. You can miss me all you want.

Come blow me again, bitch.

Uh- uh, said Chocolate, sitting up and reaching for her high heel. — I already done my job. I’m gonna give you my mouth motor, first you gonna gimme that hundred dollars…

The man leaped up, overtowering her, and snatched the shoe out of her hand, so Chocolate began to scream as loudly as she could, and right away the manager came and she was safe…

And Jesus elevated Mary Magdalene above the rest, said Smooth. You know why?

Because she was a whore, said Tyler, bored. He could not imagine why he had wished to solicit the man’s advice on anything. Smooth was as lively as a bumblebee, buzzing and buzzing about. He exhausted Tyler like Mission Street’s slow and stinking sunlight.