William Vollmann - The Royal Family

The Queen nodded.

After this, none of the royal secretions seemed to have any effect, and soon the only members of the family who continued to crave them were Tyler and Sapphire.

You ever been here before? said Brady.

Never, the woman said.

Where can I meet you?

Right here at the bar.

Thought you never came here.

Oh, almost never. Six or seven times a year.

Can I meet you down on Turk Street?

That’s where a lot of tricks go and get beaten up.

Which do you like better, safe sex or unsafe sex?

Safe sex.

Why?

’Cause I wanna be safe. I like safe people.

Well, we’re safe people, laughed Brady, and all his boys sniggered.

What’s your name?

Chocolate.

If I pay you a hundred dollars, will you go on television and say that you left that no-good Queen?

There are good things, Chocolate said. I was warm during the winter and she prayed over me. She did help clear up my lung condition.

I don’t give a shit about the good things. I’m only interested in knowing whether you want to make that hundred dollars.

Chocolate was silent.

Hey, you. Guess what I do for a living.

I was wonderin’, but I didn’t wanna find out ’cause I didn’t wanna be in it.

My rent’s thirty-eight dollars a night but the manager is cool; he’ll work with me if I pay it a little late, in bits and pieces. I split it with Justin. He’s my boyfriend. Don’t worry about him. Soon’s I bring you in for a date, he’ll leave. He won’t say nothin’.

The two men sat in the car in the parking lot while Strawberry scuttled round and round them like a cockroach with its left legs pulled off so that it could only go around in circles. — I got to get back to work actually, she kept mumbling; in fact she merely wanted to motel up and take off her shoes, smoke a little bump with Justin, and that she couldn’t do until these temporary employers had gone. When the tall man finally came back, she ran into the motel room after him, leaving the door open so that the two johns wouldn’t think that they were being gaffled, although really they were being scammed by the tall man himself who razored off hunks and chunks of white girl from their purchase just as elegantly as the sixteen-year-old daughter of one of Tyler’s Berkeley friends could make heavenly chocolate chip cookies impregnated with cognac, sweet butter and all manner of excellent things; she’d insisted that he take all the leftovers with him as he departed into a warm Sunday morning whose coffeeshops proclaimed the forthcoming sixtieth anniversary of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. — Turkish women rally against Muslim leadership’s policies, a greyhaired man in a denim shirt read aloud while the radio played Purcell and the milk steamer hissed like a rock of crack inside a pipe, that breathy hissing wail like a lobster’s when it gets thrown into a pot of boiling water, the lid slammed down on its agony; that was the noise which the tall man and Strawberry made with the trimmings from the twenty dollar rock of the two ignorant johns who sat growing paranoid in the car, sweating with fear (which smelled the same as the sweat on Bernadette’s tendon-rooted neck with the tattoo below as her loving Queen clicked the heroin needle in and out) looking at watching faces, worrying about cops; to the tall man and Strawberry, however, the noise most resembled the whistle of a train entering a long dark tunnel beneath a mountain; now that love-pair came out on the other side where it was sunny and wild, and the two johns, who at the beginning of the evening had believed all too vividly that the perfect pleasures they could pick from were as numerous as all the translucent plastic cases of the compact disks at Amoeba Records on Haight Street (white price tags for new albums, yellow for used), tried to convince each other that they had nothing to worry about, but the parking lot did not feel very safe because the yellow eyes of black-and-whites kept roving down Ellis Street, and other eyes kept watching them from half-closed motel doors, and meanwhile the two poor johns were still waiting, and only the tiniest pebble of their white girl remained, so Strawberry snatched that out of her boyfriend’s hand and ran out to the parking lot, reaching into the open car window to give the john who was driving this preposterous bump of a bump. Before his disbelief could become anger, she said: We owe you twice as much, I know. The guys next door were out of it; just hold your horses while my boyfriend tries another room… — at which cue the tall man set out to borrow from either the Queen or generous Beatrice, who was easier to ask because she would never mention anybody else’s unkept promise. Knowing that now he owed her, she sighingly yielded up her own lump of happiness, which the tall man brought triumphantly into the motel room. Skilled operator, brain surgeon, he razored off his commission, delivering the net return into the hands of clever Strawberry, who flew back out to the car…

We gotta think for ourselves now, he said to her. No way we’re gonna pay Beatrice back. An’ we gonna start holding out on the Queen, ’cause we ain’t got no choice. Bitch, you hear me, bitch? We ain’t got no time left to be nice.

You’re my man, Justin. If that’s what you say, I’m gonna stay cool. But I love Maj—

Lemme tell you, girl… Oh, what’s the use?

Those two white boys are still out there, his white girl said.

Well, then sell ’em pussy, bitch. Gotta get some money.

Strawberry ran back out to the car and upraised her T-shirt all the way to the armpits so that the two men could see her breasts.

Kind of saggy, the driver said. What are you trying to do? First you gaffle us on rock we paid good money for, then you insult us by offering your skanky tits. What makes you think we have the hots for you? Open your mouth. Let’s see your teeth. Maybe you can give some head, I dunno—

What is this, asshole? You got the nerve to insult me? I’m gonna go get my boyfriend…

The tall man came out of open doorway and said: Know what I’m gonna do? Hit ’em from the front, then roll ’em over an’ hit ’em from the back.

Big fuckin’ deal, the driver sneered.

The tall man took a serrated kitchen knife out of his pants and came on toward the car. The two men started crying out in panic, and the car squealed off.

The tall man grinned. Strawberry embraced him admiringly and said: My man knows how to use his head.

Remember this, the tall man told her. Anybody else, they the enemy now. You hear me?

What about Maj?

That evil bitch just sittin’ there an suckin’ up, drinkin’ up my tears…

Strawberry fell silent in dreary terror.

Actually, everyone’s very nice, the bail bondsman was saying. We’re their best friend. Excuse me. I have a customer.

He hung up the desk phone and shouted: Well, if it isn’t my old friend Justin! What’s cooking?

Same old same old, said the tall man. How you been, Mr. Cortez?

Swamped.

You had a young lady working here who wasn’t so courteous to me, said the tall man. I ended up payin’ a visit to Mr. Norris.

Sorry to hear that, Justin, I am indeed. Was that Diana by any chance?

She never told me her name. But the Queen’s abreast of it.

Oh, yes, the Queen! laughed Mr. Cortez a bit too loudly. And how’s the Queen?

Just fine, Mr. Cortez.

Now, who are we here for today? Let me guess. Is it Beatrice? Chocolate? Domino’s out, I see…

Strawberry.

Wanda Hassig, if memory serves. Does it serve, Justin?

Mr. Cortez, you so smart, your head be bulgin’ out the edges.