William Vollmann - The Royal Family

I love you, darling, he said.

Love you, too! she whispered, kissing him again.

She had dressed up for him, and her long brownish-black hair fell warmly down to her shoulders in a spill of glorious asymmetry which dominated her gold necklace and the careful leather buttons of her long red dress. Impassively cleaning his glasses, he imagined his mouth on her cunt for the rest of their lives. How long could that be under such circumstances? A week? Just as a sashimi barman must continually wipe down the counter, so Tyler felt compelled to touch this woman as often as he could, in order to thereby scour away the sooty gloomy thoughts that blew in upon his shining mind. He would not think about the ordinary, unforgivable sadness of the world for as long as he could be next to her. She ordered flying fish roe, a salmon skin handroll, some yellowtail, unagi, and octopus. To give him pleasure, she ordered a beer for herself; she knew that it made him happy when she drank with him.

Did you work today? she said.

Yeah, still with that crazy rich guy from Missouri, he said as the barman’s knife began flickering across the translucent windowpanes of fish, cutting them into shutters.

What does he want from you?

Oh, he wants me to find somebody in the Tenderloin.

Is it dangerous?

Not at all. It’s kind of interesting actually…

You look sad, she said.

Sometimes I get so goddamned sad, so sad for everybody. Well, sad for myself most of all, I guess, since I’m as selfish as the next guy, but you know, Irene, all the time in my job I see people hurting themselves, hurting each other, pissing on each other, sleeping in their own piss. I wish I could help just one of them, but I don’t know how.

You’re an angel, Irene said. You really are. I feel so selfish compared to you. All I ever worry about is my own little life…

You’re the angel, not me, he said, finishing his beer. The waitress looked at him as she took the bottle away, and he nodded. Irene hadn’t finished hers yet. She was extraordinary to gaze on, but he didn’t know why, her face being in fact puzzlingly ordinary in each of its parts; it was the affection and gentleness that animated it which made her so sweet to look at.

How’s life at home? he said.

You know how it is, she said.

Sure, he said. Should we try the fugu?

After he’d paid the bill he helped her on with her raincoat which was yellow like a child’s and walked her past the sharp-cornered marble pillars of hotels pimpled with raindrops, their lamps reaching smeary fingers of light up into the cool grey sky. Tourists were hurrying out of closing shops. He glanced down into the Tenderloin and saw the folded neon leg of a woman winking but never unkinking.

Please don’t tell any of this to John, his sister-in-law was saying.

Don’t worry, honey. The car is up this way.

You know, I told my mother about you. She thinks it’s funny that you and I are so close.

Have you told her how you feel about your marriage?

That would hurt her too much. I always tell her I’m so happy, John’s so good to me… Because, you know, when he was making me cry before we got married, she told me to break it off, but I wouldn’t…

A big drunk black man sauntered up to them and shouted in Irene’s ear: I’m gonna fuck you up, you slanteyed stinking Chink, stinking Chink—

Tyler put his right arm tightly around her and slipped his left hand into his coat pocket where the pistol was. — Don’t feel bad, sweetheart, he said to her, never taking his eyes off the man’s face. You’re not Chinese, so he’s not talking about you.

He led her around the man, who stood there swearing and muttering.

Her hand was fiery with hot sweat. Her fingers were squeezing his with all their strength. He could not stop himself anymore. He brought her fingertips to his lips and begin to lick the hot, delicious sweat.

Now Irene was gone. He almost couldn’t bear it.

Driving across the cable car tracks, which offered rain-light more glancing than the tips of hustlers’ cigarettes, he heard someone yelling from the direction of Glide Memorial but couldn’t see a soul. He spied a man and a woman doing business by a grating. He saw a woman, drunk, shaking her dead-snake hair and spreading her fingers from which raindrops fell as if she were a Calico hundred-shot assault pistol ejecting bullet casings onto the concrete. He turned on the windshield wipers to control this very fine rain like sooty static crawling down the building-fronts, and discovered directly in front of him a man slowly walking as though his feet hurt, dragging an immense vinyl gripsack; he braked until that man was out of the street. He rolled down the window and drove to Turk and Leavenworth, where a callipygian woman snailed her way through the rain, too wet to bother lowering her head anymore. Rain began to dribble down onto the passenger seat. He saw a single darkly brilliant strand of Irene’s hair on the headrest. Somebody honked behind him, but the orange hand of a DON’T WALK sign thrust itself balefully into his perceptions. He rolled up the window. The light changed. Advancing west on Turk Street, he saw a man drinking from a styrofoam cup and gazing at the reflection of his shoe on the pavement; then he saw a man whose raincoat resembled some sea mammal’s skin, sleeping in a puddle of urine and rain.

He saw Domino go skittering into the parking garage, shot three souvenirs of her with the four hundred millimeter lens, and noted down the time and frame numbers on the surveillance report form on his clipboard.

He drove up to North Beach to see if Irene’s living room window were still lit. It was not. Perhaps John had come home and they were already fucking, but he didn’t think so because she’d told him that they hardly ever did it anymore. Maybe she was reading in the bathtub. Maybe she had gone to sleep. Perhaps John had asked her to pick him up at work.

Easily and rapidly now he rolled down the shining streets to the Tenderloin where outside the XX and XXX preview booths, guys in baseball caps were having a discussion. Extending the antenna microphone, he heard:

They be tryin’ to say they ask for it.

Shit, baby, yeah. My ho done ast for it. I give huh a good smack upside the jaw.

Hey, you s’pose it’s true what they say?

(Somebody honked behind him. He pulled into a loading zone and let the car pass, which it did, angrily blaring its horn.)

You better shut your lip. Lookit that honky in the car over there like some spy for Vice.

He don’t have nothin’ on me!

Nothin’ but parole violation, mothafuckah.

Hey, I’m goin’ to court, I say I sold dope on a bet. That’s all it was, Your Honor, just a mothafuckin’ bet.

And yoah ho won’t nevah bail you out!

If she doan bail me out, she done ast for it. I’m gonna break huh teeth. She’ll give bettah head then anyways…

Hey, remembah what I said. Maybe it’s true what they say.

Maybe honky over there needs a piece of rock. A nice big piece of white girl.*

What they say?

They say when you talk vi’lent ’bout yoah ho, sometimes the Queen be listening…

Fuck that bitch! I ain’t scared a no goddamn bitch! Brain’s in her cunt; my dick is twice her I.Q.!

An’ my dick’s the othah twice of yours!

Hey, check out that honky sittin’ there. I doan like that honky. He come out here, I fuck him up—

Tyler, bored anyhow, but glad to learn that the Queen might represent justice, pulled out of the loading zone and drove to Eddy and Jones where a knowing pimp was explaining something grand to his knowing wife-employee; there walked Domino in the rain; he remembered the shape of her bullet-scar. Her nose looked longer than usual, as if she’d been telling more lies about the Queen. The red neon whisper HOTEL made rain-sweating bricks blush, as if on fire with the slumlord’s lust.