William Vollmann - The Royal Family

Cancun, said Joy. But my boyfriend just dropped me. Now I have nobody to go with. And I paid for the tickets and everything. So I was just thinking I’d meet somebody and, you know, try to have some fun.

Can I get you another round? said Loreena.

Okay, Joy said quickly. John frowned and looked at his watch.

Having already gone shopping where Mason Street was shinily striped with cable car tracks, Celia now lay on the sofa, waiting for John’s promised telephone call, in each unrequited minute seeing further evidence that his regard for her was dying, but nonetheless or perhaps consequently needing him so acutely that her hand crawled to the back of the lefthand kitchen drawer where she had stashed a half-pack of cigarettes on the third and last occasion that she had quit, just in case there might be some emergency which justified nicotine. She freely admitted that she was what they called “an addictive personality.” But that didn’t shame or worry her, because she had observed, or perhaps merely convinced herself, that every person she had ever gotten to know was possessed by at least one need whose divine purpose it was to counter virtue. Celia was often bored or angry when she was with John, and sometimes jealous, but, with occasional bitter exceptions, these feelings comforted her rather than otherwise. Her grandfather, before they took his license away, used to drive with his seat belt off, because the shrill concern for him expressed by the car alarm “kept him company,” as he put it. Celia for her part needed something to shout out the silence of herself, of the apprehensiveness of her lonesome incompletion, of the life she sometimes thought worse than death (because she had no familiarity with death). It often seemed to her that she was as sievelike, punched through, as the skyscrapers of the financial district with its thousands of dark square windows honeycombing them so that they bled from these wounds, or sweated from these pores, perpetually losing their essence. They towered, wearisomely existing, hollowed out, living like a coral reef inhabited by pale office organisms. — Where were her cigarettes? There, behind the worn-out can opener, the packing tape, the book of now underpowered twenty-cent stamps, the instruction manual for her food processor. The cigarettes weren’t even crushed. (She thought she heard the click of the answering machine, but it was nothing.) Now for her lighter — oh, she’d been a good girl; she’d thrown it out. Matches for the stove. Close cover before proceeding any further. The cigarette smoke became happiness as soon as she breathed. She lay down on the sofa, with an ashtray in easy reach on the floor, clicked the remote control, and waited for the television to speak to her.

It kept me out of jail, kept me out of trouble, said a cute kid in a red uniform, peering sincerely into Celia’s face. He was a television manifestation. — No one’s encouraging me to accept chastity, he said. No one’s pressuring me. I’m just doing it because it’s the right thing to do. I just want to thank everybody.

A long cylinder of ash trembled at the end of Celia’s cigarette.

The phone rang.

Hello, I’d like to speak with Miss Celia Caro, said an uncertain girl, obviously a telephone solicitor just starting out. I’d like to tell you a little about our new—

I’m waiting for a really important phone call, Celia said. And I’m really tired of people trying to sell me things over the phone.

Is this Miss Celia Caro?

Yes, it is, said Celia, gritting her teeth.

Dope-sucking, home-poisoning, home-wrecking sex machines are being manufactured even as we speak, the television said.

Well, Miss Caro, if I could, I’d like to just briefly tell you—

I said I’m really not interested, and I have a really important phone call that I’m waiting for.

Could I call back at another time?

Please don’t, Celia said. I mean, I hate to be rude, but I’m just really really tired of—

The solicitor hung up on her.

We have to increase visible security in the streets, the TV was saying. We need a security guard at every corner. And above all we need to teach those young girls the street smart techniques to avoid being targeted. We got the fire marshal on our side.

Well, thank you, Mr. Lovinson, replied the TV. We’ve just been speaking with Mr. Manuel Lovinson of the controversial new Network Against Public Vice, known to most of us as “Brady’s Boys.” And tonight we have Mr. Brady himself to answer a few questions.

The TV went on talking to itself. Celia grunted, got up, went to the kitchen, brought matches and the rest of the pack, just as she had known she would do. Then she reached for her little yellow pad and wrote:

mask face

complete taxes

med. shelf for kitchen $69

all things in boxes

adopt kitten?

cancel account

The phone rang. Celia was sure that it wasn’t John.

Hello, I’d like to speak with Miss Celia Caro, said the same uncertain telephone salesgirl, and this time Celia hung up on her.

She lit another cigarette.

The phone rang.

Hello? she said wearily.

Guess who? said John.

Hey, babe! cried Celia, trying to be happy.

You want me to come over?

Where are you?

I’ll be downstairs in ten minutes, he said, hanging up.

In eight minutes the buzzer rang. She muted the television.

He looked tired and harrassed. He took his coat off and she hung it up for him. She went to the kitchen and poured them each a glass of wine, then gave him his and sat down on the sofa. He came and sat beside her.

Smoking again, he said, looking at the ashtray.

Celia said nothing, but her lips tightened bitterly. Lonely or not, this was hardly what she took pleasure in, to wait half the evening for this half-stranger to come and nag her.

So, she said. How’s work?

Oh, Rapp’s being a sonofabitch, and Singer’s making retirement noises. I’m sick of both of them, he said, raising the glass to his lips. His hand trembled.

How about with you? he said.

I’ve got two projects that I’m working on, and Sunday I’ve got a corporate brunch, she said. Today I was really jammin’, like they say. On top of everything else I had to get some some last minut e-mail out to a client in Thailand, and then I went to see this woman whom I’m helping with data entry and when I got back home, just after I’d heated up a big plate of food, the data entry woman called and—

She saw that as usual he was not listening.

You want to go see that crime documentary tomorrow night? she said, clenching the glass.

What do I want to see that movie for? laughed John. That movie’s all about reality. It’s depressing. I’m more interested in trying to get away from reality.

Celia nodded miserably.

It’s like reading The Diary of Anne Frank, he went on, rubbing it in. It’s a really good book, they say, a great book. That’s just why I don’t want to read it. Not even the unexpurgated edition where she’s talking about her period or something.

Did your mother make you read it? asked Celia with sudden understanding.

Leave my mother out of this.

He gulped the rest of his wine.

She picked up the remote control and was just about to turn on the television with the volume up loud when he said in an almost terrified voice: Celia…

She looked at him. Her heart began to pound again.

Celia, he said, I need you, Celia.

With a sense of sad and cruel triumph, she understood that at this moment — and probably for this moment only — she had license to torment him as much as she pleased. Just as one can tell when men in neckties and shiny shoes stop in front of monuments and reach into shoulderbags that they will pull out cameras which operate with a quiet and elegant click, so Celia recognized John’s purpose, and the mechanisms of it, and the rules for operating those mechanisms. She was not a vindictive woman, but she had met more pleasant men than John in her life, and it infuriated her that through some chemical accident she loved him. She knew all too well that he did not love her and never would, that he could not love anyone (with the exception of his mother), that he had made Irene miserable — but, that being said, he was as well disposed toward her as he could be.