William Vollmann - The Royal Family

Sure, honey, Tyler said with a bitter and sophomoric grin.

The Queen parted her lips slowly to let the cracksmoke out and said: Now listen up. If something happens to me, part of me gonna go inside Sapphire. Not every part, but the love part, yeah, the soul part. So please please please take care of her.

What the fuck’s that supposed to mean? shouted Domino. What does that idiot slut have that I don’t have?

Anxious Bernadette combed back her hair over and over, swaying back and forth as if she were listening to rap music through her headphones as she usually did when she was waiting to get dated at Sixteenth and Capp because that shut life out, and now she was pretending that if she rocked her body she could shut out what was happening here, but she could not, and her liquid eyes stared sidelong at Domino, whom she pitied and of whom she was afraid.

Dom, you ever made love with Sapphire?

I—

Answer the question, bitch! cried the tall man, who stank of fear and rage.

I — Justin, I — no.

Allrightie then, said the Queen. Saph, wake up, little sweetie. Open that eye up again. Now the other one. That’s right. That’s right. Are you my honey? Are you my good girl? Saph, go over there an’ suck Domino’s pussy. Gotta teach her something. Don’t be afraid. She won’t hurt you.

No! screamed Domino. Not with all of you looking! You fuckers!

Sorry, bitch, but tonight I just don’t have no more patience, hissed the Queen, staring into Domino’s eyes. This can’t always be just about you.

And, rising, she strode over to the blonde and breathed once into her face. From where he sat, Tyler could see only the back of Domino’s head, but the Queen’s features were plain to him now: flat, steep, hard and blank like one of those high Tenderloin brickfronts studded with dark curtained windows whose lurking inmates could see out and not be seen, brickfronts painted with the names of long bankrupted businesses, walls dropping remorselessly down to steel gratings and dull parking meters and then dark and dirty streets. The Queen was slender, but so were the old Tenderloin skyscrapers seen from a long way off; and he felt that she was already so far away from him and everyone, and perhaps her immense isolation had simply been hidden all this while by everyone’s longing to be taken care of without questions or reservations, and now what if she were actually evil?

(Irene had always been afraid of the devil. She couldn’t bear to watch a thirty-second television commercial for a horror movie, in case there might be something satanic. She was godfearing, yes, but she feared the devil even more, and in her last moments of life what if she’d fallen into a maze of horror, believing that now she’d killed herself the devil would have her in his claws forever? What if the Queen were really the devil, and Tyler now had crossed the demarcation which made him irrevocably hers to sadistically or simply implacably torment as she was about to torment Domino?)

Now you can’t move, can you? Justin, take her into the bathroom an’ take her pants down an’ lay her down in that bathtub. That’s right. Sapphire, you go in an’ do your thing. Close the door. I said close the door.

They sat in silence listening until Domino began to moan. She moaned until she screamed. Sapphire was a drug like no other, intense-acting almost to fatality, who gave such deep gratification with her purring, licking mouth that Domino despite herself and the fact that she was being raped could not forbear to feel for at least one instant absolutely and unequivocally loved. Then at last she understood why the idiot girl was called Sapphire.

You all get it now? said the Queen. Maybe Sapphire’s the one he’s really after. You gotta all take care of Sapphire…

After a long time Sapphire crept out on her hands and knees, licking her lips and mewling. The tall man got up and closed the door. Then they heard Domino sobbing inside. They heard her buckle her belt, and then the door slammed open and Domino came out, scarlet in the face with her lower lip trembling, and she did not look at the Queen who regarded her with expressionless sorrow, if such a thing is possible, but unlocked the deadbolt and then the other lock and stumbled into the hall and down the stairs.

Close the door, Lily, the Queen said. This here’s your house. You don’t wanna leave your house open to strangers.

Giggling in terror, Lily shut the door and locked it.

Tyler sat very still, feeling sick to his stomach. He could hardly bear to wrest himself from his illusion that the Queen was perfect. But he had seen for himself just how she could be. He could hardly believe it. Her face had altered yet again. It was rounder and older, with glowing globules of radiance dribbling from her mouth and eyes in a strange wormy blur which obscured her from him and all humanity as if she were some waxen golem melting into something squat, ruthless and terrible. He knew that Domino must be sitting on the street somewhere nearby, bent forward, weeping, herself likewise blurred body and soul in the night whose fog was as thick with sadness as wool or old sackcloth, and garish signs announced 99¢ so that she’d know what she and the world were worth, and globes and globules of streetlight, Queenlight attacked her like biting insects.

But no! She was his Queen! Small and slender, she sat there on the edge of Lily’s mattress gazing at him steadily through her dark and wide-open eyes, the wool cap pulled down all around the top of her skull and her parka buttoned up to her neck and her mouth pouted outward and tight in a calm sad challenge to those who would not know her or understand her, and tears of light ran down her cheeks.

Henry, you’re so quiet now, she said. What you thinkin’ about all this?

What do I think about what?

Whatever.

Well, the issue of the vigs, I don’t know what to say about that. I — well, what should I think? We’re all waiting for you to tell us how to react. And what you did to Domino just now, well, I guess it seems a little cruel, to me at least. I don’t get it. But I want to believe it’s another test like the false Irene you gave me, because you love Domino, I know you do, and I…

Even you, Henry, she said, slowly shaking her head. Even you.

Look, Henry, said the tall man. She a leader or not?

She is.

Okay. Well, how can she be a leader if she don’t make herself known, eh? And wasn’t Domino tryin’ to obstruct her again?

Maj, I believe in you, he said. And I’m going to keep trying to believe.

And what about what we all came here for? said Chocolate. We gonna let Domino just put her hand on us and derail everything? I mean, what we s’posed to do? What did we decide?

L-luh-luh, replied Sapphire.

At five o’clock the next morning Sapphire was out on South Van Ness trying in her inarticulate slobbering way to get a trick so that her sisters would be proud of her because their caresses resembled all the murals on Capp Street whose bright colors comforted Beatrice; so, trusting in the world with all the luminosity of her rotting consciousness, Sapphire crawled and squatted, underwearless, past two blindeyed strutting cops, until she spied in the deep-staired doorway of an old Victorian a bare foot, bluish-white, jerk suddenly out from beneath a blanket, twitch violently, and stiffen. Sapphire looked both ways, just as the Queen had taught her. Inside the dead man’s pocket she found, in addition to three dollars which she hid inside her shoe, as she had seen Beatrice do, a much-handled letter from overseas which said: Dearest husband, to day I’m very happy to get your letter and the Bible from you thank’s for giving me every thing and sad when I never heard from you now about you come to me again. Do you still love me. You don’t know how my heart painful every day waiting for you never have hope now. I know you are so busy than before and maybe my love doesn’t mean for you any more. I don’t know what to do with my life. I’m so lonely and missing you some night I dream about you. Like I walk in the darkness no job no money and you don’t love me like before may be I can have my way finish my life soon. Without you how my life can be. You are my nice husband. To night I can’t sleep so much think about you. I know I no good enough for you I who have nothing you have everything life with someone you love more than me. If I didn’t heard from you and then I know what to do with my life may be kill myselfbecause I always make you trouble. Love my husband to much. P.S. the Bible from you I promiss alway read . Sapphire, who could not read, took this letter to the Queen.