William Vollmann - The Royal Family

Might as well roll down your window at every black girl you see, said Brady abruptly.

My window’s always down, boss. I don’t care how chilly it is. What makes you think she’s black?

Just a feeling. That’s how I imagine her. Tell me how you imagine her, and don’t you dare lie to me.

Oh, I guess I could see her as one of those solarized naked blondes in an old Man Ray print. You know, with those haunting eyes. Are you into photography?

Well, I hired a guy to wire up a women’s locker room once.

I collect books on photography, admitted Tyler with a certain shyness. Brady, who prided himself on knowing people, could tell right away that here lay his hireling’s monomania, on which, given any encouragement, he’d discourse with arid learnedness, like other people on hockey, stamp collecting, their pets or children. — I collect photographs, too, Tyler was saying. It sort of goes with my profession. On Sundays I sometimes like to play around, you know, do nudes, double triple quadruple exposures… There’s one. You want to pull in toward the curb, boss?

A black whore was rubbing legs at the light, crunching potato chips. She wore a silver paper skirt. Tyler mouthed the word “Queen” at her and she shrugged and waved. Brady shook his head.

Pasty-faced white girls at the corner of an alley grinned as if at a party. Tyler jumped out and asked them if they’d seen the Queen.

She never comes before ten o’clock, a girl said. Why, you got something for her? You can give it to me. Honey, you can give it to me.

Lights hurt the mirror of a parked truck.

Between two dead grey towers, a girl in a sweater swung her tits like a waitress in a truck stop slamming down a plate of fried eggs. She whipped her hands at them, glaring fiercely.

That’s quite a luxuriant nigger girl, his boss said.

You from the South, Mr. Brady?

Why, do I have an accent?

No, I just wondered.

Well, stop wondering and ask her the question. That’s what I’m paying you for.

Tyler crooked his finger, but the girl only spat loudly on the sidewalk.

The Queen wouldn’t like that sort of behavior, you know, he said to her.

What the fuck do you know about what the Queen likes? the whore shouted. You think you’re good enough to jump the Queen?

Why? said Tyler. Are you trying to tell me you’re a big enough bitch to eat the Queen’s pussy? Does she let you do it on alternate Tuesdays?

I oughta cut you, the whore said. She wore silver stockings that came all the way up to her buttocks. Peering sulkily, she bent and picked something up from the sidewalk.

Find out what she grabbed, whispered Brady.

What did your friend say? cried the whore suspiciously. She came over to the car. Seeing Brady’s dark suit and necktie, she smiled, softly offering her goosepimpled thighs. — You datin’? she said. I’d much rather go wiv you than him.

Yeah, he’s dating, said Tyler. He wants to do you and the Queen at the same time.

What do you keep talkin’ ’bout the the Queen for? It’s bad to talk about the Queen.

Another girl walked past, her garters glittering like frosting and mica against the scaly diamonds of gratings. Shivering, she shot a bitter look at Tyler and shouted: Am I your only secret slave? Am I the only one you’re getting paid to practice slavery on?

Get lost, said Brady.

Look, said Tyler to the suspicious whore. A hundred bucks if you take me to the Queen.

The whore whirled and clip-clopped away in the direction that the other girl had come.

You scared her, said Brady reproachfully.

Let’s follow along, boss. We might learn something.

That’s a spurious and specious linkage, said Brady.

What?

Your assumption that because I say the word nigger I must be from the South. You’re trying to stereotype me.

We’d better follow the girl, boss.

You tag her?

Yeah, with that dime store earring she grabbed. Soaked in locator fluid. I dropped it out the window when she was yelling at me.

I don’t trust that locator fluid. If it’s so good how come the FBI doesn’t use it?

I don’t know, boss. I never worked for them.

Because you’re a loser?

Uh huh.

Are you evading me?

What would I want to evade you for, boss?

Because you’re spending my money and wasting my time.

I could try and pull some old court records, Tyler muttered, ducking his head.

Well, maintain visual. An earring, huh? That was a good one. — Brady smiled, recollecting multitudes of other girls seduced by tented alleyways sheltering cases of earrings; they slowly bent their heads in submission to that glitter. He was rich. — Come on, come on, come on.

Sure, said Tyler. We’ll just keep rolling and rolling along.

They tracked the suspicious whore through a dozen neon spiderwebs to some kind of overcast garageworks behind a grating, red car-skulls watching from beyond. Tyler sat listening to the heavy clop of that glossy-shoed girl so sour-sweet with the sweat-drops glistening from her meaty shoulders as she ran through the cold night. She’d gotten inside the grating somehow (a fat van had blocked the view), and now she vanished among the red cars.

Okay, boss. We can’t go in there now; it’s too obvious. It’s the same place that Blondie went to last night. We’ll check it out tomorrow.

Was her name really Blondie?

She called herself Domino.

Then call her Domino. Are you a misogynist? sneered his boss with a grunting laugh.

A tall black girl crossed the street with mincing clicking steps, drinking from something in a paper bag. There were frothy things on her breasts like silver spit. Other women were already smiling over her shoulder.

Lest it be believed that only Tyler indulged in monomania, I may as well mention that Mr. Brady was a devotee of the cottonwood tree. — A cottonwood plank in a horse stable will outlast an oak plank two to one, he said.

Is that a fact, said Tyler, counting receipts.

I personally laminated cottonwood four-by-fours to show what they could do for high-grade railroad crossings, said Brady, who reminded him of a camel-necked tan goat without ears he’d once seen, gnawing sadly on the railing of its cage. — I talked to the engineers and they just loved that idea. But I couldn’t get anywhere with the purchasing department. Mr. Brady, they said to me, I’m just gonna have to be real blunt with you. Unless you’re willing to pay these purchasing agents something under the table, it’ll never happen.

Is that right, said Tyler. There was a whore he knew that he thought he could go halves with. She could spout nonsense about the Queen on Brady’s money and give him a kickback. He didn’t want this job to end yet. Brady must be rich rich rich. He belonged in the kind of hotel lobbies where patrons whisper instead of shout.

We ran an experiment where we were grinding those cottonwoods for cowfeed, said Brady, while Tyler was thinking: I really ought to check my answering machine. — How about that, he said.

And we had to fight every pharmaceutical company in the country. They wanted to pollute our meat with that teramyacin, that auromyacin. Those idiots at the college up there are the equivalent of the prostitute press. They went right along with the pharmaceutical companies. We couldn’t get it off the ground because of the money pressure out there.

Well, I’ll be, said Tyler. Are you sure they weren’t evading you? — Later he went to look for the whore he could have gone halves with, but she’d been arrested.

Is he your boyfriend or is he your boss? said the crazy whore, her eyes gleaming like the wristwatches of hopeful young lawyers.