William Vollmann - The Royal Family

Irene having returned with smiling apologies, and the other couple deducted from the scene, the saleswoman presently approached. Tyler still thought it strange that John was not there. But Irene already had a good idea of what she wanted. Perhaps John had given her instructions.

There’s your platter, salad plate, gravy boat, very unusual looking, said the saleslady. So there’s your basic picture. The covered vegetable is two-sixty; the platter is one-forty-five. Did you want to make a purchase today?

No, we’re just looking today, said Irene with surprising timidity.

Okay. Well, there’s a four dollar charge in tax. But you’re asking me to hold everything here, which must be respected.

Yes, said Irene.

When’s the day? said the saleslady with a whore’s grin, realizing, as any whore not too far gone sometimes will, that she had pressed the pecuniary side of the matter too quickly.

February twenty-seventh, said Irene, slipping her arm around Tyler’s neck.

That was the first time that she had ever touched him. He would not forget.

You know what we’ll do, said the saleslady, if it’s a hardship on anybody to call, we’ll work with you. We’ll call ’em right back. You can verbally pass that along. We always understand people on fixed incomes (this with a glance at Tyler’s grubby shirt). We’ve been in business since the sixties.

Do you think it’s too expensive? Irene whispered in his ear.

If the Crania is too much, we also have the Slovenia and the Russell, said the saleslady, who evidently had good hearing.

Tyler felt ill at ease. — Maybe we should call John, he said.

John? Who’s John? said the saleslady with sudden shrillness. You two are getting married and you can’t even decide for yourselves?

Pink spots appeared in Irene’s cheeks, and she squeezed his hand. Her hand was burning.

My assets are tied up in stock, John would have said. John would have gazed swiftly and critically at everything, with owlish eyes. Not even a solid platinum gravy boat would have satisfied him. But he would make a good husband in certain respects. Alert, cautious and solvent, he’d exemplify the phrase “to husband one’s resources.” Fat-jowled and pigheaded though he’d certainly become, he’d help Irene die rich.

You think we should call him? said Irene.

Oh, forget it, said Tyler.

It’s two-ninety for the burgundy, the saleswoman was saying. Now, what are we doing about the registry?

It’s a little hard for me, Irene was saying. Can we just write up an order and decide if we’re going to go through with it?

Sure, said the saleswoman. Now, we’re going to need your name, address and telephone number.

He heard the fat, gentle saleswoman at the next table saying of every choice: Oh, that’s pretty.

What did they all signify, these pale blank plates which stimulated no desire in him? Irene doubtless felt the same way about the vaginas of Turk Street or Capp Street. It was not what the commodity was, but the fact that it existed in so many varieties, each available, each with its own signature and price, so that choosing became a weariness. He wondered what effect this must have upon a person who became accustomed to believing that joy consisted of selecting and collecting one’s bought pleasures. This way of living sometimes struck him as monstrously evil. And yet Domino and the crazy whore were hardly happier. It was not that he objected to people enjoying their cutlery; it was the knowingness, the connoisseurship without enjoyment, the wastefulness of it all that depressed him.

On the way home he let her drive for the practice she said she wanted, and the separation between gas pedal and brake compelled her slender thighs apart. He sat there wanting to put his hand there, but didn’t. A billboard said: YOU’RE GOING THE WRONG WAY. When they got to the apartment where she lived with John, she kissed him many, many times on the mouth, but with closed lips. He wanted to lick her throat and didn’t.

The sound that the first shovelful of dirt had made when it hissed down upon her coffin, more or less where her chest must have been, was, he supposed, much less definitive than the clank of china being set upon a glass shelf.

It was a beautiful, beautiful service, his mother had said. I was so sorry that you couldn’t attend.

Bloodshot tail-lights of squat cars toiled up the Marina hill. The Union Street fair had just closed for the night, and on the sidewalk he saw giggly girls in short skirts drinking beer from plastic cups, attended by boyish fraternity types, one of whom, exultantly drunk, leaped onto the hood of Tyler’s car at the intersection, squatted, and gibbered at Tyler through the windshield. Making a peace sign, Tyler put the car in first and slowly let the clutch out. The young man hooted, and admiring girls laughed with their mouths open. The car began to increase its speed; the boy swayed, half-leaped, half-tum-bled off; from the looks of things he’d sprained his ankle. Tyler made a quick right to get away from them all, and then a left on Broadway, passing in due course the Broadway Manor Motel where for hire he had once broken up still another marriage. Following a black stretch limo through Chinatown, he felt suddenly nauseated by his own negative mediocrity, which had not only prevented him from doing anything good or important, such as making Irene happy, or getting her to love him, let alone saving her life, but actually compelled him to acts of petty evil. The Mark of Cain! He asserted that John was not a good person, either, but since John could not do much about that, having come from the womb ungood (and he also recognized that others, such as Celia, or his mother, or Mr. Rapp and Mr. Singer, dealt with his brother almost without irritation — a notable fact, tending to convict one Henry M. Tyler of prejudice), Tyler granted his own utter lack of justification in having, for instance, made advances to his brother’s wife.

He turned into the Tenderloin. Secrets wept behind grilles’ richly patterned speckles of pure silver and pure black, which resembled the pewter beads in the store called Gargoyle on Haight and Masonic. Once Irene had asked him how he went about his work in bad neighborhoods, and he’d said: You go in during the day, figure out where you’re going. And, sure, you’ll go back during the night, but you’re pretty much in a direct line, you know where you’re going, although of course it remains pretty fluid and things can always go south on you.

But I worry about you! she’d said.

Oh, my stuff is all sportcoat and tie, he’d lied.

He drove back and forth on Turk Street, looking for the Queen.

It was very foggy that night outside his apartment. Tyler poured himself a shot of tequila, no salt, no lime, with the phone trapped between right ear and upraised right shoulder as he said: Oh, I’ll hire that stuff out if you make it worth my while. I’m kind of a one-man operation here. To do good surveillance you really need three players on the team. No, my prices aren’t really that competitive. In all honesty, I can’t recommend my services. You might try Stealth Associates. All right. All right. Yeah, no problem. Thanks for calling. Uh huh. That’s right. Good luck.

He tore a details description sheet off the pad and wrote:

SEX female

RACE ?? [African-American?]

AGE ??

No shit, Sherlock, he said with a laugh.

He was afraid to turn off the light. In his mid-thirties, he had by strange starts developed a skin disease which prevented him from thoroughly sleeping anymore. He’d doze off for a couple of hours, and then a sensation as sharp and sudden as being stuck with a red-hot needle would awaken him, his heart clanging with panic. But it was not pain that he felt, but itching. The first dermatologist was too busy to see him for two months, and the second (or, I should say, the second’s receptionist) estimated that it would be at least a month and a half before the meeting of minds, so he went to a G.P. who said that it was scabies and charged him a hundred and twenty dollar consultation fee and wrote a prescription for an ointment that didn’t work at all. Every night he woke up scratching his legs and stomach until they bled. Sometimes his arms itched, or the insides of his ears. The next doctor said that it was atopic dermatitis, and prescribed a moisturizing cream which worked for about two weeks, until the itching suddenly proclaimed its malicious midnight presence. After that he adopted a routine. For three nights he’d scratch and fight with his flesh. On the fourth, too exhausted to carry on, he’d take a sleeping pill. Soon he became habituated and had to double up his medication and then switch to ever stronger brands. Finally a whore told him to try Vaseline, which worked like a charm. But sometimes he still awoke itching. He was afraid that tonight would be like that.