William Vollmann - The Royal Family

On Washington Street he entered a very brightly lit Chinese ginseng place and had a cup of tea for fifty cents. On the topmost glass shelf lay some human-shaped roots for three hundred dollars a pound, but when he explained that he only wanted to eat some to get strong, the man recommended broken pieces like wood-chips. He bought five dollars’ worth and the man’s daughter put them in a little plastic bag for him. Then he went out, that good dirt taste of ginseng in his mouth, a strange feeling of excitement in his heart as he gazed upon the ruby-scaled snake of night-traffic, the families holding each others’ hands, the wide-striding loners with their paper bags.

New Year’s Day! A new orbit, new lies, new juries empaneled! The Queen had given him permission to go to Los Angeles; she said that it would do him good. She said that someday maybe he could love the whole world as much as he loved Irene. He asked her whether she knew that he loved her more than he loved Irene, and she said: I don’t care about that. I know you love me. — From his car he saw Irene’s relatives kneeling on plastic bags around the wet grave, scissoring away grass-tufts from the headstone, scrubbing with window ammonia, uncovering the flower-holder from the sod and filling it with water before they lowered the carefully trimmed carnations in. Now they were upraising their golden-foredged Korean hymnals, and they began to sing with closed eyes, the kids merely earnest, the older relations dabbing at their eyes. He wondered if they would prostrate themselves like the family two graves down, the mother in a sky-blue robe, the pigtailed daughter’s dress, snow-white, with bright red, blue, yellow and green stripes, the father in black — that family actually touched their heads to earth, but Irene had not been old enough to gain much ancestral seniority before she died. Besides, that other family appeared to be Chinese; their necromantic rites might be different.

By now maybe she would have been serving giant won tons with a baby tied to her back with a blue sash — but she was moving farther and farther away from that as it was, her rotten bones partially demineralized.

He stood on Sacramento Street, lonely and helpless, chewing his chunks of ginseng.

It was at that moment that time began to come undone for him, as if the Beasts of Light and the Beasts of Darkness were eating each other; and he truly believed that the Queen’s reign must close. A moment later, it seemed, he was harvesting the honey from days long past when Irene still lived; and a moment after that it was already a foggy Easter Sunday and he found himself trapped in a fair on Union Street, almost every float being an ad for some business. Peruvian musicians, in rain-bowed national or pseudonational dress, sweetly, liquidly piped, so that once again he remembered that hot day in Union Square last July, just after Irene’s suicide. Mostly he remained preoccupied with continuing to display his futile love and loyalty for his Queen. He had memorized her like a poem and now he could recite her; perhaps his mother’s books and all the hours he’d spent browsing at City Lights had done that much for him. He freely acknowledged, of course, that she was but the local solution to a universal equation. Other citizens solved each other’s philosophical and erotic problems in coffeeshops without any reference to her; and a bald man smiled, wrinkling his head all the way to the crown. A brown girl tossed her head, sulkish. It began to rain, and when he tore the already sodden parking ticket off his windshield and drove down Filbert Street, tiny drops appeared between him and the world, like the ominous spheres of the old “Space Invaders” game which John had been crazy about in law school. John had killed those electronic aliens very well. When they’d been children there’d been a fallen log in the river, and John had walked on it, keeping his balance, instructing his brother: If you don’t think about it, you won’t fall. — That would be a perfect epitaph for John, thought Tyler malevolently, crushing the space invader raindrops with his windshield wipers.

You feel like takin’ a ride with me? said Lily’s new trick, whose gaze was as hot as the ribbons of sunlight in the Tenderloin street-canyons.

If I’m pretty for you then that validates me up to Heaven, wept Lily. I could get drunk on validation. Last week I was dopesick and so I got drunk on cough medicine — oh, so drunk!

Are you drunk now? the trick asked.

No no no no no, trilled Lily, whose arms were streaked with the long red slit-scars of cut-open abscesses.

Where are you from? asked the trick, who was now driving her down Valencia Street past the Slanted Door where John sometimes came at lunchtime for the Vietnamese chicken salad.

I come from an ugly place, said Lily. I hope you don’t come from hell because I–I—

We’re almost there now, said the trick.

They passed the Mission district police station whose welcoming doorway said JUVENILE DIVISION (Lily had been there many times), and at Twenty-First just past Val 21 where John, seeing many trendy diners, had irritably insisted to Celia, who’d wanted to go home and lie down: This is a hot spot. I’m going to have a look! the trick turned left, crossing Mission, then Capp Street where Strawberry was working, then South Van Ness where Domino, blonde and dazzling, stood facing traffic with her hands in her hair, and then everything got darker and emptier.

I wish I was the prettiest and best, said Lily. Maybe I’m one of the top girls, but on account of a lot of financial stuff am I so down, so down to earth. Not to say I’m past the bloom. You know how Beatrice always has that expression on her face and how Domino always has that expression on her face? They think I’ve gone psycho. It’s frozen on my face. But what makes me simmer down just slightly, and then I go back to normal, is my Queen. She always hugs me or kisses me or gives me a suck, and then I want to give her a suck to make her feel good and show her that I love her. I don’t have a minor psychosis. I’m a neurotic fuck but I don’t have any psychosis. I’m on a hit list, but I don’t have any psychosis. I am so dumb, so dumb, I am the stupidest person in the world and it really pays off. Some people really like to fuck with me because some people just like to fuck hoes.

Okay, said the trick. We just have to turn in this alley here…

Lily’s dead, may she rest in peace, said Beatrice. They found her stabbed seventeen times in her throat. Our Mama she told me one of her titties got cut off…

Lily? laughed Domino, who was flying on crystal meth and could not bear to come down. She had already risen almost as high as the sky. Who was Lily to ballast her with sadness? — Don’t worry about her, laughed Domino. She’s not worth worrying about. Once I went on a date with Lily and her date, and my date didn’t have enough money, so fuckin’ Lily paid for both of them to get in—

That was so very nice of her, said Beatrice.

It was really stupid. Lily made about five bucks and I made twenty-five, she sneered.

But, Domino, Lily she is—

I’ll tell you a good one about her, the blonde scuttered on, hating to think about death because one day death might get her, too. She’s so desperate she smokes packets of sweet-and-sour sauce that she steals from that Chinese restaurant near the Thor Hotel… What scum!