The Royal Family

by William T. Vollmann

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s

  Imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business

  establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  THE ROYAL FAMILY

  A Viking Book / published by arrangement with the author

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright© 2001 by William T. Vollmann

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission.

  Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement

  and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.

  For information address:

  The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is

  www.penguinputnam.com

  ISBN: 0-7865-2439-1

  A VIKING BOOK®

  Viking Books first published by The Viking Publishing Group,

  a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  Viking and the “V” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.

  First edition (electronic): May 2002

  For Lizzy Kate Gray,

  the million-dollar vegan boxcar queen

  Theme of the Work:

  Steadfastness, or the Addict

  • Funeral Sermon For A Fly •

  * * *

  Who dies best, the soldier who falls for your sake, or the fly in my whiskey-glass? The happy agony of the fly is his reward for an adventurous dive in no cause but his own. Gorged and crazed, he touches bottom, knows he’s gone as far as he can go, and bravely sticks. I sleep on. In the morning I pour new happiness upon the crust of the old, and only as I raise the glass to my lips descry through that rich brown double inch my flattened hero. I drink around his death, being no angler by any inclination, and leave him in the weird shallows. The glass set down, I idle beneath the fan, while beyond my window-bars a warm drizzle passes silently from clouds to leaves.

  How to die? How to live? These questions, if we ask the dead fly, are both answered thus: In a drunken state. But drunk on WHAT should we all be? Well, there’s love to drink, of course, and death, which is the same thing, and whiskey, better still, and heroin, best of all—except maybe for holiness. Accordingly, let this book, like its characters, be devoted to Addiction, Addicts, Pushers, Prostitutes, and Pimps. With upraised needles, Bibles, dildoes and shot glasses, let us now throw our condoms in the fire, unbutton our trousers, and happily commit

  THIS MULTITUDE OF CRIMES.

  * * *

  But seriousness commands us to recognize that it’s the multitude of laws that is responsible for this multitude of crimes.

  DE SADE (1797)

  * * *

  * * *

  •BOOK I•

  * * *

  The Reduction Method

  •

  * * *

  It would be madness and inconsistency to suppose that things which have never yet been performed can be performed without employing some hitherto untried means.

  FRANCIS BACON, Novum Organum (1620) Book I, paragraph VI

  * * *

  •

  | 1 |

  The blonde on the bed said: I charge the same for spectators as for participants, ’cause that’s all it takes for them to get off.

  I can get a hint, said Brady.

  Oh, it’s not a hint, the blonde said. I don’t give a fuck if you stay. You just have to pay me, is all.

  That’s exactly why he’s not going to stay, Tyler explained.

  I’ll be at the bar across the street, said Brady. Try to not take as long as you did last night. This is getting really old.

  My heart bleeds, laughed Tyler. Of course, it always bleeds around now. It’s that time of the month.

  Are you a misogynist? said the blonde.

  What do you mean?

  Do you have it in for women just because they menstruate and you don’t?

  I’m going now, said Brady.

  I said, do you hate women? the blonde went on.

  Have a beer, sweetheart, said Tyler in disgust. The things I put up with.

  The door closed behind Brady. Tyler continued to sit on the edge of the bed for a moment, listening to his footsteps fade down the hall. He heard a door open and a woman begin yelling in Chinese. Then that door closed, too, and he heard Brady’s footsteps a little longer. When they had entirely died away, Tyler sighed and put his legs up. He did not bother to remove his shoes.

  I’d prefer a wine cooler instead of a beer, the blonde said. I see you have plenty.

  Help yourself, doll.

  I’m not a doll. I’m a human being, and my name’s Domino.

  Pleased to know you, he said. My name’s Henry.

  I used to date a guy named Henry once. He was a real asshole.

  It goes with the name.

  Whatever. Are you going to get undressed or not?

  I am undressed. Do you see me wearing a necktie? My brother wears neckties. He works downtown.

  Look. I’ve got other dates to take care of, so can’t we please move things along? Just tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it.

  Tyler untabbed his beer and burped. The hard grey beetle-shell of his face seemed to express embitterment, but it was only tension. His narrowed eyes guarded his soul by occluding and devaluing it. Tonight he was vulgarizing himself still further to play some conception of an appropriate part, perfectly aware of his inconsequentiality to the blonde but habit-driven to conform and mimic, just as when, spying on some potentially unfaithful banker in the financial district, he’d wear his old London fog and stand with the suspect’s photograph hidden inside the latest Wall Street Journal. And tonight he was a nasty old whoredog. —Let’s see what you look like naked, he said.

  Then she took her dress off, presenting to his secret-loving eyes belly-wrinkles like sandbars, and she took her bra off to let him see her round breasts bulging with silicone, and for him she took off her panties to give to his view her crusty blackish-reddish crotch. Lying on the bed long-legged with her red shoes on, she let him finger-trace the highway of a motorcycle wound, the white island of a bullet wound pigmented with granules or black hairs. Then the pipe’s orange reflection glowed on her cheek as she squatted, inhaled, took the pipe out, kissed him, exhaled her smoke into his mouth: taste of bubblegum breath, her tongue in his mouth, then the numbness and heartracing happiness.

  Thank you, he said. That was good of you. (When he said it he meant it. But after all, he thought a moment later, it isn’t as though doing that cost her anything. Everybody has to breathe out.)

  You want some gum? she said.

  No, thanks.

  Well, what do you want?

  I was wondering if you knew the Queen of the Whores.

  Hell, no, the blonde said.

  She lit the pipe again and got on all fours to blow her drugbreath into his mouth, looking very pretty with her buttocks high. Probably she meant to outshine his glimmer of unreadiness, since quick beginnings help make quick endings. She had things to do. He put an arm around her, pulling her toward him as he returned her kiss. Without knowing why, he’d begun to like her, drawn perhaps to the quickwitted, sarcastic rudeness and desperation of her. But business barred him from showing it. Brady wouldn’t have cared if he laid her, but sexually she did not speak to him because he was in love with another woman whom he was not supposed to think of in that way and therefore perpetually did,
now imagining the blonde to be her so that the blonde saw his hard face soften and his eyes dreamily open into nothingness as she pressed her mouth tighter against his, believing then, not unreasonably, herself to be the cause. Domino liked the world to think well of her. Gesturing, her arm incredibly jointed yet smooth like her breast, smooth and multi-lit like a wax pear in rainbow light (he knew perfectly well that it was the crack that so pleasantly exaggerated things), she lay on her side, caressing the mattress while her folded shoulder-shadows flickered.

  Well, said jocular Tyler, if you did know, who would she be?

  She might be me! laughed the whore, throwing herself onto her back with disconcerting suddenness. Then she took his hand and funnelled it down into her crotch.

  That’s true, he said, pretending to consider. Why, she might even be me, or Mr. Brady.

  That your friend? He sure looked like a loser.

  He is a loser. But he pays me.

  You gonna pay me?

  Yep.

  You’d better pay me. I don’t take to being gaffled.*

  Now honestly, said Tyler. Do I look like the gaffling type?

  As soon as he’d breathed down the clean and bitter smoke well moistened by her lungs, his heart had begun to beat even faster, so that he felt as alertly alive as if he had been terribly afraid instead of being perfumed with delight.

  Anyway, what do you want to find the Queen for? I couldn’t care less about that bitch. I don’t work for anyone but me.

  I guess you and I are through then, he replied.

  But we didn’t do anything! You still going to pay me?

  Yeah, I’ll pay. And maybe sometime we’ll even do it. (Tyler said this to all the whores. He was very polite that way.)

  You’d better pay me or I’ll get tough, said the blonde, not entirely able to eyelid her pleasure at winning something for not engaging in an act she usually hated (and Tyler, perceiving all this through his now renarrowed eyes, felt illogically, ridiculously hurt).

  How can I get in touch with you? he said.

  That’s easy, honey. I’m at the El Dorado on Sutter between Taylor and Jones. Sometimes I change my room, but wherever I am, I always face the street, get it? Just stand under the windows and whistle four times. Or if you’re in a car, honk four times. Do you have a car?

  The loser does.

  He does? What kind?

  Here’s fifty bucks, Domino. I guess I’ll be seeing you.

  Lying naked on that bed, playing boredly with the gold chain that lay across her breasts, she waggled her ass, hoping to interest him so that maybe she could charge him more. But he’d gotten up and was looking out the window. She sighed and got dressed.

  Don’t forget me, she said in a way that showed she’d already forgotten him.

  He didn’t think he would. He thought he could remember the long white track, the eye-shaped bullet scar.

  | 2 |

  The hotel had improved since the Indians took over. It didn’t stink as much, and there was no litter on the floor. Behind the white curtains stained with round brown spots like old blood, the window (which he’d opened to let the staleness out) faced a gulley walled by bricks, kindred windows, and fire escapes. From down below shouts floated up like seagulls. The windowsill smelled like urine. Tyler leaned out and saw a black man who stood smoking a cigarette, the man’s hair very black and shiny against the dun evil of the alley. —This has gotta be my low point, he muttered. What a stupid job. —He waited until Domino emerged from the hotel. When she didn’t look up, he felt oddly disappointed. She’d barely sipped her wine cooler, so when she’d gone and the black man had sauntered away, he threw the bottle out the window and listened to it smash . . .

  | 3 |

  Any luck? said Brady, whose tone implied that Tyler would never own any of that commodity.

  Of course she said she didn’t know anything.

  Did she say that she knows the Queen?

  No, she didn’t say exactly that.

  Had a Pinkerton team work for me once, chuckled Brady, opening a bottle of pills. They told me they have a rule that you’re not supposed to get emotionally or sexually compromised. But I don’t give a shit.

  Tyler was silent.

  I said, I don’t give a shit what you do.

  Let’s keep this professional, boss.

  Did you ever get the impression that she was lying to you?

  Why should she lie to me?

  You care to answer my question?

  She said that she doesn’t give a damn about the Queen. Usually when somebody goes to the trouble to say that, that means that she does give a damn. But if that’s a lie, it’s not a very important lie.

  It’s not my policy to tell you what I do or do not consider important, said Brady.

  Yeah, boss, I know it isn’t.

  Brady took a dictaphone from his shirt pocket, pushed the button, and intoned into it: There were days and days of such false starts, but since this is one of those rare occasions when discretion actually serves the turn of narrative interest, I shall refrain from dragging those people and episodes into this.

  That’s beautiful, boss. Are you what they call extemporaneous?

  Nope. And a year from now my common stock is going to split two for one. You tag her?

  Locator fluid under my thumbnail. She let me touch a scar on her leg. I worked it in good.

  How good we’ll know in a minute. Anything else?

  Said you were a loser.

  I must be, to hire you. Well, show me.

  It’s all wired up, said Tyler. Pinkerton guys were the only other private eyes you did anything with? Somehow I figured you worked in the security field. Guess I was wrong. Turn the TV to channel seven and then click the remote three times, like this. Uh huh. Now wait a minute. Okay. See that blue dot? That’s Blondie, and she’s staying on the grid. Going down Leavenworth—now see; she’s turning at Turk. Stopping for a minute, probably having a little chat with her dealer, but we’ll mark it . . . okay, now she’s coming up Jones; she’s just done three sides of a square; she’s back on her beat. And I’d guess she’s scratching her scar; that’s why the blue dot flickered there for a minute. I’d say she’s not going to lead us to any Queen. You never know, though. That’s the beauty of this job, Mr. Brady. This place she keeps going to is probably just a bar, but we’ll mark it, too. Computer says it’s a parking garage. Maybe she takes guys there to give head. Anyhow, it’s in the system. See her walking up and down the block? A slow night. But at least she got picked up by us losers.

  | 4 |

  Dark tracks of ecstasy down which slid blinking lights and fluffy lights, rays of warmness on cold tracks; these carried Tyler and Brady past brick hofbraus and pavement-holes. Ahead, a police car turned the corner. Pizza lights marked the edge. Then all the brightnesses started getting skinnier. White-lit arches launched them down long white slides tulipped with lamps, and they passed the Peacock Club, outside of which the first whore of the evening stood fussing with her science-fiction garter belt. Whores white and black swayed in the light. Their legs shook automatically. Tyler looked steadily out the passenger window, photographing that huddle of girls with his brother’s old Minox. Expense account stuff, so gaffle me, sister. He’d thought the camera was practically invisible, but clippety-clop: three whores were running away. —Such sweet scared little fishies! cried Brady. —Tyler cleared his throat, wondering whether he might be catching a cold. His brain ached. They oozed down Hyde Street, waiting to breast the current of lights whose source-spring was a single rectangle of yellow high up above the corner; then there were yellow market-lights, gold lights, apartment-lights and lady-lights issuing from a hotel awning and its grating, and sex-light coming from the girl against the wall. Lonely sparks and tangents strung on hills tried to siren them away from the square rectitudes of ordinary stores. Brady would not be distracted. He stopped at an arched brick building whose scaffolding mutated against its glass. There a fat lady hiked up her skirt and preten
ded to masturbate, staring straight into his eyes. Through the open window Tyler said: Can you take a message to the Queen? It involves money. —Don’t start shittin’ me, said the fat lady. I’m not datin’, so you can’t haul me in for datin.’ —We’re not cops, said Brady brightly, but the fat lady only said: Uh huh, and you really love me and you won’t come in my mouth and the check is in the mail. — Winging chevrons of gratings vanished her between vertical stripes of garage-light. Dauntless Brady swung the car back into the groove of traffic, undazzled by blinking lights on metal, dazed only by the other cuntsharks. Tyler smiled gently at the square buttocks of a van just ahead. For a moment he thought of Domino. Then the nauseating glitter on fences and gratings caught him. Breaking through a yellow lurch of hotel-lights, he saw a man checking his watch on the corner. Tyler knew that the man resembled him. The man was up to something. He winked at the man, who flinched, and then they were past. Above an awning like the roof of a mouth, a whore was smiling and bending from an orange-lit window. Tyler exposed two rapid frames (no flash, 6400 ASA) and noted the location.

  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.