William Vollmann - The Royal Family

The next morning John telephoned him.

Yeah, he said.

How’s business? John said.

Fine.

Don’t bullshit me.

You’re wrong. You’re trying to force the issue, John, and everybody’s always saying I’m forcing the issue but—

How are you doing, Hank?

All right, he said, his heart aching, remembering not Irene at all, strangely enough, but the Queen standing before the mirror with her arms raised, affixing the pink plastic curling set that Beatrice had gotten her, her armpits full of darkness.

Bullshit, said John.

How about you, John? How’s Celia? How’s business?

Listen, Hank, his brother said. What do you need to get your life together?

Oh, hell, said Tyler. I, uh—

I’m not asking this for you, John continued in a shriller voice. I don’t give a damn about you. But I promised Mom before she died. I’m doing it for Mom.

All right, great. You’ve done your duty to Mom. Now let her bones and my bones and Irene’s bones rest in peace, said Tyler, slamming down the receiver savagely.

My slaves know what to do when they’re in there, don’t they? drawled Domino.

The reaching arms in the cage, the stroking Queen, the strange squeals and squeaking in parallel with the black dildo that stank, still gave off an insect hive impression. A woman muttered: Well, it stinks because you haven’t… — Yes, she was talking about the Queen’s long black shiny dildo in that cage filled with women playing with each other. Beatrice with quick and fearful side-smiles told the Queen she loved her.

Snapping her whip in the air, Domino chuckled, I’m not just going to break the sound barrier, I’m going to break the skin barrier.

A shaved head began gliding up the Queen’s thighs.

Let me just pet you, Domino purred. You’re such a gentle little thing. You’re so…

That hurts, the girl said.

Speak when spoken to, Domino chuckled, slapping her across the face.

Walking slowly around her little cherubs, her little girls (who included a whore as wide as Australia), her little toys — how nicely they played for her! — she admired rosy arms and legs in the cage, tongues and laughs, swollen labia. They’d all forgotten the old Queen, she was sure. (But I am starting to feel better about myself, she mumbled. I don’t think about myself as much as I used to.) And, indeed, it would be surpassingly easy for us to forget the old Domino as well — which is to say, the young Domino, the runaway. Go back fifteen years and see her barefoot and dirty. The pale unsmiling face kept blinking, lost, the blonde hair tarnished, as she sat there in the American Embassy in Mexico City, cradling a dirty blanket about her. The tall boy in the white shirt, grimacing, took a pen out of his pocket. — First you tell me one name, then another, he said. Is there anyone else?

Please let me think, she whispered. Please. Leave me alone and let me think.

Oh, so there is another father? said the clerk.

Mr., uh, Northway. Please. This time it’s for real. He’s my real father. His name’s Mr. Northway and I know he lives on Northway Lane…

Oh, so now you want me to call Mr. Northway on Northway Lane. No, I won’t call him. I’ve had it. It’s too much.

Yeah, I’m Northway, Tyler would have said, butting his way into the conversation. I’ll take custody of my daughter right now. Come on, honey, I’m taking you home.

Hey, who the fuck are you? slurred the girl in semiconscious alarm.

You can call me Dad, Tyler would have said, grabbing her hand and pulling her out before she shredded his cover story any further.

They got in the elevator and she said: You gonna hurt me?

No, Domino, Tyler sighed. No, probably not.

They went out. The guard gave them back their passports, and they passed through the tall steel gate.

You wanna french me? said the girl vaguely.

Sure, said Tyler, popping an antacid. I know French. Ne pencher pas au dehors means don’t pinch the whores.

But none of that happened; nobody came along to rescue Domino until the old Queen did and by then it was already too late.

And so, kneeling outside the door and mewing like mice, they welcomed their long-thighed new Queen coming out from the closet to whip their tattooed flesh with black movements and gritting teeth while their friends kept singing and giggling and kissing each other, laughing in the cage, Queen Domino now leaning on the cage, black-clothed with her black eyes peeling blue-black jewels away from their souls, positioning shining leather girls in each other’s arms, terrifying them with her stranger’s teeth, wide open lips, applying jewel-like bruises down their tattooed backs, hugging them, shaking breasts, playing, rubbing the triple-pink lips, pinching and licking buttocks, devouring alike the wise and the lovely heads, the shadowed eyes, Strawberry’s heels clicking on the floor, Bernadette’s fat heart-shaped buttocks (she could have been any old varicose slut with sneakers and a slave’s upturned eyes). A whore knelt, cage-shadows on her flesh, praying to the Queen’s apples…

I reach into that little place right inside of me, Domino said to them. I feel everything. I am everything. I’m your Queen.

She slowly sank her fingernails into Strawberry’s nipple until the woman screamed. She drank the cool feel of Bernadette’s navel.

We’re playing with each other, she whispered, because we’re reaching inside…

Terrified, Chocolate cleared her throat.

I’ve always been a showgirl, Domino murmured to them all. Every time you walk onstage, every time you do a lap, every time you rise some man, that’s about bravery. Then he has to cough the fuck up —not necessary money, but something. And so do you. If I can sit here and spread my legs for money and not know any of these people, can you take off your bras? Can you let me stick my dildoes up you? Can you suck me? I guess that would depend on what you wanted, wouldn’t it? But I’m telling what what I want — oh, you sluts, you cunts, you fucking whores!

And she was happy, coasting the long curves of back and pussy, until Bernadette started lifting her hands and going a-a-a-a-a-a-a-aaaaaah—

Oh, she’s going into one of her convulsions, said Domino, bored. Forget it! The ritual’s ruined.

Domino’s reign was supposed to go on forever. But one night when she was walking across the freeway in her dazzling silver hotpants, a car swerved toward her. With a started cry, Domino raised her hand to her mouth, then began to back away just as the car struck her. That was months later, long after she’d been established and other amusing things had happened. (She was real cranky, Chocolate later recalled. I was, like, I didn’t wanna be on the other side from that bitch.)

On the anniversary of Irene’s death the false Irene was out selling pussy on Eighteenth and Capp when a gentleman picked her up, a nice old gentleman she knew named Brady, who paid well for a quick no-nonsense suck. She’d just been beaten up by two tall black men, and told him so. He grinned a little and said: Why don’t you girls stick together more and protect each other?

We used to do it like that, she said, but the girls have changed. They’re usin’ too much. You just can’t trust another girl no more.

As for Beatrice, she finally went back to Mexico where she wore pink cotton dresses and walked slowly in the heat, swaying from side to side.

Here in America we aren’t willing to treat each other as human beings anymore, Smooth was saying, standing in the air-conditioned darkness with a cigarette flame shooting like escaping treasure from his lips.