William Vollmann - The Royal Family

His room stank. On the television, a woman screamed.

It was almost sunset. Leaving the television jabbering away, he descended to Capp Street and found a girl.

My room? the girl said.

No, come up to mine, he said. I’ve got all the equipment there.

What, are you into S & M or something like that?

Something like that, he said.

Where you staying?

The Karma.

They don’t let me in there.

Well, let’s try.

What the hell, the girl sighed. Just as a tired barmaid draws her paper towel across the beer cooler in slow arcs, with untouched space in between, so Providence had incompletely abscessed this person, who still possessed many strangely healthy places on her thighs here bared to the open air.

What’s yours, said Tyler, looking her over acutely, heroin?

Yup.

How many times a day?

Just five.

Well, that’s not too bad, he said.

They went back to Mission Street where at the street-grating he rang the buzzer, and someone let the lovebirds in, so they ascended the stairs to the second grating, which buzzed at their approach like the wing of an immense metallic insect, and then they were inside and facing the half-door behind which there had once been the smell of Indian cooking.

Can I help you? said the same woman.

Mutely, he showed her his key.

Don’t get smart with me, the woman sneered. I was nice to you before, but now I see what kind you are. You see this notice on the wall? NO VISITORS. You know what we call men like you? Trash collectors.

You gotta pay for my visit, idiot, the whore said.

He gave the woman a five, which she snatched with a snotty look. (He’d heard that the city planned to condemn this place.) Then she turned her back on them both, which he interpreted as permission granted for their private and consensual proceedings.

In his room the television was screaming again, because a murderer was eviscerating someone.

Pay me first, the girl said.

He gave her twenty.

Well, you gonna unzip or am I supposed to do that? she said.

You know the Queen, don’t you? he said.

Oh, great, the girl said. Another fucking cop trying to jack me up.

From his night bag Tyler withdrew a fat manila envelope called “EVIDENCE.”—This is from Dan Smooth, he said, breaking the seal. Can you remember that name? And I’m Tyler.

Tyler, huh? How about if I just call you Blowhard?

I thought that was your job, said Tyler.

He upended the envelope over the bed, and a fat blue crystal fell soundlessly out. — Now, this is one of the missing jewels to her crown, Tyler explained. You wouldn’t want to steal a jewel from your own Queen’s crown, now, would you?

The whore just stood there holding the twenty.

Now, am I a cop or not? he said.

You? You stink of cop.

All right. Fine. If I’m a cop, can I catch you anytime or not?

Not if I run fast enough, sucker.

If I put the word out, you’ll end up at Eight-Fifty Bryant faster than you can put a rubber on with your tongue.

I believe you, officer. You bastards always have all the power. But I’m no rat. I’d rather be put away than rat on my Queen.

No one’s asking you to be a rat, honey.

So what do you want? You want me to blow you and give you back the twenty? God knows, I’ve had to do it before.

I want you to take this jewel to the Queen, he said. Then you can do whatever she tells you to do. If you don’t take this to the Queen, if you keep it for yourself, then I’m going to have a problem with you, and once I tell the Queen, she’s going to have a problem with you, too. And tell her I’ll be waiting here.

That bitch downstairs isn’t gonna let me in again. You gonna give me five so I can—

That’s possible. Okay. So I’ll be waiting on Capp and Sixteenth in two hours, say, ten o’clock. If the Queen wants to give me any message or see me herself, she can find me there. So here goes the jewel back in this envelope, and there’s a letter in there, too, in case you forget my name and Dan Smooth’s name, and, darling, here you are.

Queen or no Queen, it’s getting old doing this, he thought — older if no Queen. I’m getting old. Open the night case. Unlock the hard case and open that. That’s not breaking the law, exactly, because a hotel room is a residence if you’ve paid for it, and even in California a citizen is allowed to play with his own possessions at home. The slide is open. Firmly thumb-nudge fifteen rounds into the magazine, which now waits ready to be fed into that oily hole, so do just that, then thumb the catch to close the slide: snick— a much less noisy sound than the bolt-slam of a street-sweeper shotgun, but authoritative nonetheless, and comforting to the proposective user. Now squeeze the release stud; catch the magazine as it returns to you, reborn from the grip. Fourteen rounds in it now, one left behind; add another copper candy (I recommend exploding hollowpoints). With the heel of your hand, shove the magazine back inside. Sixteen rounds, one of them chambered. Here it is now, your cold heavy little underarm pal. What would Smooth say about the smell of that? Zip up your jacket and look in the mirror to see how obvious the bulge is. If you feel so inclined, wash the lead off your fingers by means of this sink whose porcelain is stained yellow by the piss of whores and johns. Increasing the volume on the television, which now offered for his moral furthering a science fiction program about men kept as sex slaves in a world of beautiful hungry women, he went out, locked the door as far as it was capable of being locked, descended past the Indian woman, who cried out: Is she gone yet? If she isn’t, you’re gonna have to pay double. Is she still in your room? and after passing through both gratings, which is to say semipermeable steel membranes, found himself gazing upon the red letters of the Walgreens pharmacy shining like stars, the tail of the “g” flickering. A rush of hatred for everything he saw spewed out of his soul, spreading like the concentric circular patterns of the subway station’s tiles until it had reached the farthest building that he could see. Everything stank. A homeless man’s fat dog ran past as quickly as a whore can stuff fifty bucks down between her tits. His owner, vainly seeking to overtake him, stumped along on crutches, a bedroll upon his shoulders, cursing. Right at the curb a quartet of mariachi musicians in white cowboy hats formed and began singing loudly, their blank faces and sadly drooping moustaches as red as new bricks in the rain. The red Walgreens sign made them redder. Now the night-leaners began to come out from their burrows, thickening the bases of lampposts while they got the lay of the land, then striding shadow-legged across the light-stained street…

Five minutes before ten. He walked down Sixteenth past the old theater and waited. No whores at all, he saw; perhaps there’d been a sweep; let’s see, it was getting on the end of the month, so their general assistance checks ought to have been long spent by now; where were they? A sweep, then; this was an election year.

Across the street an addict was mumbling, his words, like Dan Smooth’s, reminiscent of the structure of graphite, which is to say comprised of slender hexagonal plates of atoms which slough off at a touch like the multitudinous crusts of a Turkish pastry.

Then, at long last, the tall man came, tall as some dancer on stilts, that tall dark man who moved with easy intelligence, flaunting under his arm, his long grey arm which drooped down like a freeway off-ramp, the envelope called “EVIDENCE.”

Tyler raised his hand, like a parachutist about to pull his rip cord. — I’m the one, he said.

I’m not here to hurt you, the tall man said. She’ll see you now.