The Royal Family

by William T. Vollmann

  A long, friendly message: Somebody wanted him to spy on her husband to see if he were being unfaithful.

  Tyler called back. —You know, lady, he said, divorce in California is no-fault. You don’t have to prove adultery to file.

  Oh, I understand that, the woman said. I just want to know. I really need to know.

  Knowledge is pretty expensive, said Tyler dreamily, checking boxes on his surveillance report. And I’m booked up shadowing royalty right now. Tenderloin royalty.

  How about a hundred dollars? the woman said.

  A hundred wouldn’t even prime my pump, said Tyler. If you want to prime my pump you have to give me five. And it could run into thousands. What if he only does her once a month? What if he takes her out of town? If he goes out of town then I’ve got to go out of town, too, and that’s going to cost you.

  You’re kind of discouraging, the woman said. Almost insulting, too, I should say.

  I aim to be, said Tyler. I want you to think long and hard before you decide to go through with this. Most people who come to me don’t like what I show them.

  Five hundred is an awful lot of money, the woman said. And you’re not very nice.

  I agree. So why don’t you think about it and go to your teller machine to check your bank balance and look your husband in the eye and decide if you want to hate him even more than it sounds like you already do? You’re welcome to hate me instead. That’s my advice, and it’s free advice.

  Thank you, the woman said palely.

  All right, said Tyler.

  He had another Black Velvet and called his brother’s place, but there was no answer. He started to call Brady at the hotel, but thought better of it and hung up.

  | 9 |

  He tried to locate Sapphire on three databases, but of the sixteen women he found, two supposedly dwelled in Ketchikan, Alaska, and none of the others showed up in California. Maybe the crazy whore was just crazy. More likely, Sapphire was an unregistered nickname.

  | 10 |

  I seen you! giggled the next girl. She had reddish-pale hair, and the bulb-light exposed her pimpled cheeks. —You was with that blonde Strawberry. No. That’s not Strawberry. That’s Domino.

  And what’s your name? said fresh-from-Vegas Brady, who always wanted to take charge.

  Why? said the smoothwaxed lips. You datin’? You datin’?

  Of course I’m dating, said Brady, oozing what Tyler considered to be unprofessional glee. My name’s Mr. Breakfast, and this is my friend Mr. Lunch. He says he’s not sexually or emotionally compromised. Do you believe him?

  I never heard names like that before, said the lips. Set just above that pale chin, they almost reached the gigantic sunglasses.

  Well, what’s your name then?

  Kitty.

  Kitty as in pussy?

  Hey, Mr. Breakfast, you got me wrong. I’m not a prostitute. I’ve just fallen on some hard times, that’s all.

  How much?

  How much you got to spend?

  Twenty.

  Uh huh. You wanna feed my kitty? And does Mr. Lunch wanna do somethin’? You can come in my mouth or anything you want.

  Speaking of mouths, Tyler broke in, guess what your friend Domino told us.

  Friend? That bitch ain’t my friend. Any friend she had she stabbed in the back long ago!

  She told us she was the Queen of the Whores.

  She did? Shit! And you believed her? That bitch must’ve been strung out. Too much junk!

  She told us all the other girls worked for her, said Tyler, sounding as stupid as he could. She said she’s the Queen.

  She’s not. There’s no such thing.

  But she said—

  I don’t care what she said. She’s full of shit. She don’t have shit. It’s a man’s world.

  You know, said Brady in wonder, she was really strange. She started getting friendly as soon as we started giving her money. Why do you think that is?

  Oh, shit! laughed Kitty.

  Tyler hung his head. —And Sapphire said . . . he whispered.

  What do you mean, Sapphire said? That retarded bitch can’t even talk! Only mouth she uses is the one between her legs . . .

  But the Queen . . .

  How many times I got to tell you there ain’t no Queen? If there was a Queen, she’d just be a pimp that’s got a pussy. Why should you care? You don’t want to hang out with no pimp.

  You think we should see Domino again? said Tyler. Maybe if we gave her more money she could explain things to us.

  Don’t have nothing to do with her would be my advice.

  Well, what should we tell her next time we see her?

  Her? Tell her get lost, man. She’s a nut! All she’s gonna do is get you in trouble. She probably has warrants and shit.

  Tyler nodded solemnly. —Well, Kitty, why don’t you and Mr. Breakfast go do your business in that parking garage over there? I’ll just sit here and jerk off.

  Mr. Breakfast is gonna make you wait on him? cried Kitty in amazement. Tell him he oughta pay you for that.

  I’ll tell him.

  You hear that, Mr. Breakfast?

  Yeah, I heard, Kitty. Now let’s go to that garage.

  I don’t trust that garage. I’ll take you to a better place.

  I’ll pay ten bucks extra to take me into that garage, said Brady caressingly.

  Kitty scuffed her high heels sadly on the sidewalk. —No, thank you, Mr. Breakfast. I don’t never go in there.

  | 11 |

  The new hotel room smelled bad. Brady, who’d turned the TV on, ignored it, almost slicing the stack of photos with his nose. The bed sagged down toward him, the blue and white bedspread like the bottom of a canted swimming pool. The TV glowed orange and said: . . . the significance of this historic achievement. The two men stood discussing money over the round table. Tyler leaned, staring very hard at the stacks of expense money. The eyes in his grey face slowly narrowed as he thought: If only all this money belonged to me, I could run away with Irene. I could take her down a well and we’d stay there making babies and never get out . . . —Brady, whose feet hurt, leaned backward on his heels, looking softly down at the money while he was explaining. Although the greenbacks lay between them, it was obvious to whom they belonged: Brady kept pointing to them and sometimes touching them, while Tyler gazed down almost shyly. The window was open, and across the gulf between ratridden buildings another window was open, through which the blonde whore Domino was watching them. Tyler smirked and waved. Brady did not see.

  I think the garage is the place, said Brady.

  Well, boss, you might be right.

  You don’t think so, do you?

  It’s too early to say.

  | 12 |

  Arentcha cold? the whore said.

  A sunburst of hair, short arms over boobs bigger than the wheels of a Greyhound bus. Her sweater was as nice as light.

  You going to warm me up? said Tyler, as enthusiastically as if he hadn’t asked that question a hundred times already.

  The black girl’s hair was bright against the dirty white of a massage parlor wall. She leaned to nurse her hair as if it were some elaborately tender creature.

  Tell you the truth, said Tyler confidentially, I’m looking for the Queen.

  Honey, you done come to the wrong place. This here’s a hundred percent girl you’re talkin’ to! Try the Black Rose.

  You know what I mean. Not that kind of queen, but the one that runs things. The Big Spider. The Empress of Darkness.

  Honey, sure I know what you mean but it gonna cost you big. It gonna cost you.

  How much? he said.

  (Her eyes were the shadows behind fences.)

  Whatcha really wanna do?

  Let’s duck into that parking garage and you can give me a blow.

  Sure, honey. But not there. I know a better place.

  What’s wrong with that? I see girls go in there all the time.

  It’s just not a good place.

  So
Tyler went with her to the alley. As soon as he’d paid her, he saw her run into the parking garage.

  | 13 |

  Did she say she knew the Queen?

  No, but she implied it.

  Did she say she knew the Queen? his boss repeated.

  No.

  Okay. Do you believe she knows the Queen?

  Yes.

  Do you believe she knows that you believe it?

  Yes.

  Can you give me a basis for your belief?

  When I said that a pretty girl like her probably got a lot of people to tell her things, she was flattered. She relaxed. She opened up, so to speak—

  Are you emotionally compromised?

  Tyler sighed. —Not yet, boss.

  I think I understand. And then?

  She made a reference to the parking garage. She said she never goes there. It’s on the tape. You heard it?

  It’s not my policy to comment on what I did or did not hear. Not to you. So let’s keep rolling.

  Well, then I said I knew what parking garage she was referring to and I winked at her. Then she laughed.

  So it was nonverbal?

  Yes.

  I follow. Do you believe that she believes the parking garage is where the Queen stays?

  Yes.

  And do you also believe that the parking garage is where the Queen stays?

  Yes.

  Okay. So we’re ready to meet the Queen.

  Yes.

  Do you believe that we’re ready to meet the Queen?

  Yeah, I guess so.

  Are you sure?

  No.

  Why aren’t you sure?

  Maybe she’s dangerous.

  How might she be dangerous?

  I don’t know, boss. But I’ll tell you honestly. I didn’t believe in this at first, but now it’s starting to spook me.

  What can she do to you?

  Probably nothing that I can’t do back to her.

  Do you want to go in?

  I’ll do it.

  Would you rather have more time?

  Yes.

  Is it because you want more expense money?

  Oh, partly. And partly because I don’t know what we’ll find.

  Don’t worry about money, Henry, said his boss with surprising gentleness. I promise I’ll take care of you. Will you go in with me tomorrow?

  Okay.

  Do you want to go in with me or would you rather go in alone? Don’t lie to me.

  I’d rather go in alone. I don’t know how good your breaking and entering skills are, Mr. Brady. You already told me that private eye stuff isn’t your field. And it makes me uneasy when a client wants to help me break the law. But I don’t mind if you have a good reason, or if you get off on participating, just like Domino said. In my book, you’re emotionally compromised. But if you want to distract the ticket guy that’d be useful.

  I get the hint, said Brady with a grin. It’s okay. I trust you.

  | 14 |

  Past the boarded-up bakery on Larkin Street Tyler wandered the following forenoon, his hand on his wallet as if life were really good, past the school sign and into the dark garage. —It’s a perfect place, Brady had said. Nobody’s ever here. Nobody but whores. —Tyler walked back to the bakery, got into his car, and drove up the slanting urine-smelling tunnel. On the second floor he backed the vehicle against the wall and sat watching the ramps—the standard orientation of any prudent man getting a blow job. As a matter of fact, Tyler did not like blow jobs. But backing against the wall remained prudent. The cold friend in his armpit did not show. The ramp to the third floor was cut off by a grating which seemed to have been down for a long time. There was light behind it, light sweating and stinking on concrete.

  Nobody around, Brady tying up the attendant with some endless complaint . . . Perfect. He stuck a straw into the little spray can of Wallylube and tooted the lock. Then he thrust a half-diamond pick into the keyway and started lifting pins. They all dropped, one by one; the lock was in good working order, as a Queen’s lock ought to be, especially on her chastity belt. He listened as they fell: a six-pin lock. Now for the tension wrench and the plug spinner . . . Just enough tension, thank you . . . He decided against the raking method and went by feel. He was holding the pick in just the same way that Brady held that fat vulgar rollerball pen of his. With the hook pick he raised the driver pins above the shearline, chamber by chamber; the plug rotated three or four degrees, making a shelf on which the top pins must rest so that they couldn’t slam back down like a vindictive whore’s teeth. (No sidebar, fortunately; this was not a General Motors car lock.) Now the bottom pins could move unobstructedly in their channels of vileness.

  The lock opened on the fifth bounce. He stepped into the greasy light.

  * * *

  •BOOK II•

  * * *

  Irene

  •

  * * *

  “Generous, chivalrously generous!” Keller assented, much touched. “But, you know, prince, it is all in dreams, and, so to say, in bravado; it never comes to anything in action!”

  DOSTOYEVSKY, The Idiot (1869)

  * * *

  •

  | 15 |

  To say that there were times when Henry Tyler knew his life was ashes would have been an understatement in the English manner. People who possess no backbones whatsoever (and preferably no minds, either) can be most easily pleased, like children eating ice cream; where the ice cream money comes from, and under what conditions they receive it—to say nothing of the sanguinary destiny of even the most miraculous vanilla-chocolate cow—never breaches the barriers of their victorious vacuity. Next case: Roman senator types, so prodigiously favored or ossified with backbones that they can scarcely sit down, constitute the second most fortunate regiment of souls; when events fail them, pride carries on, and when the latter dies they will probably succeed in staggering a few steps farther, fortified by philosophic resignation, until they fall at last into their open graves, muttering: At least I did the right thing. —Tyler, like most of us, had not so much claimed membership in as been claimed by the third group, comprised of those who know, and are shamed, but do not or cannot act. If the grim first half of that black Book (rarely to be met with in Tenderloin hotels because its pages were long ago cannibalized for rolling papers) truly knows whereof it speaks, why, then Tyler’s own losers’ club got inaugurated in the days of Cain and Abel, whose parents, like evicted junkies who boast that even now they can wrap the landlord around their grimy little fingers, had continued to insist that they could still get right with God. Why, sooner of later He’d have to forgive them! It just wasn’t Christian for Him to go on holding a grudge like that. After all, they’d only eaten one apple—they hadn’t even finished it, if you consider the core, which had borne a worm or serpent or something (and wasn’t that God’s fault, to provide them with rotten fruit?); no, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, that apple had scarcely been worth saving. (Thus spake the whore who’d stolen a mere twenty from Tyler’s pocket while he was on Mason Street calling his answering machine.) Remembering Eden’s swanky landmarks—the silvery river of vodka, the meadows of opium poppies springing white and orange in a nutmeg breeze, the Chinese-style zen rock garden whose sparkling pebbles were all refined crack cocaine—Adam and Eve could scarcely believe that their happy pre-Lapserian eternities had become dust. Anyhow, they weren’t damned; they were on parole. Nothing was final. If I put a gun to my head, I know perfectly well that even after I’ve pulled the trigger I can always duck out of the way or even blow the bullet back down the barrel with a cheery gust of breath, because it was I who initiated the cause; what injustice if I couldn’t control the effect!—No matter, the expelled spouses said to one another; He could come talk to them anytime and they’d help Him see the light. (Call this no backbone at all, or else backbone so well crystalized as to occupy the cranial cavity.) But Adam and Eve’s boys, sullen, lice-infested, and pallid from too many seasons of hunting blind-f
ish in the familial cave, never owned that solace. Imperfection had not originated with them, nor had responsibility. They were cursed without meaning or recourse. Cain, unable to believe this at first, crept near Eden as soon as he was grown, and found only an angel with a flaming sword who threatened him with death. Cain wanted to know why. Still unable to believe in reality, prepared to bow and beg to make life other than it was, Cain somehow retained in his mind the image of the Hall of Justice in San Francisco, where a steady or lucky customer may well meet with the expressionless lordliness of the white-moustached, paunchy, black-uniformed guardian of the entrance, who stands with his arms at his sides while Cain, the man with a problem, explains and explains. Finally, in a clear and even friendly voice, the guardian settles everything: Go to Room 101 tomorrow. That’s really the best way. —Okay, thank you, says the man rushing furtively away. —Cain was certain that there must be a Room 101 thereabouts, within which mercy would be served on little plates, glistening like slices of fresh-killed fish. And, although he never would have thought himself capable of doing this, he fell down on his knees before the angel and bowed his head. The angel struck him a glancing blow with his sword, and Cain’s garments burst into flames. He rolled in the dust until the fire was quenched, cupped mud on his burns, then rose and again uttered the word: Why?—It has nothing to do with you or me, replied the angel. But understand this, boy: you’re going to be punished as long as you live. Automatic bench warrant. Now I’m going to count three. If you’re not running back to your cave by then, I’m going to burn your legs off. Don’t ever come back here. One . . . Two . . . —Cain told his younger brother everything. —Maybe it isn’t the same for you, he said. Maybe God likes you. I’ll show you where the place is. Then you can ask the angel to take pity on our family. —But Abel had already made up his mind not to tempt wrath with more impulsive sallies. Hadn’t they been warned? He whispered to his brother that he was afraid because he was still too little, that he couldn’t run quickly, but the truth, which he had expressed in the language of expediency only because that would produce the best effect upon his brother, was that he actually accepted lifelong submission as a moral principle. Who was correct, then; who was exemplary—Cain or Abel? I don’t care, as long as the angel wouldn’t let anyone speak. (By stating the matter thus, I fall perhaps a shade on Abel’s side, being unconvinced that his visit to the the gates of Eden would have been any more pleasant than for Cain.)—Enough of all this. Let’s just get on with it, as Tyler’s proudly impatient brother John would have said. —History with its taints, reverberations, irrevocable deeds and preexisting conditions may temporarily explain how a soul finds itself shackled, or not, but, while questions of how may be resolved to any degree of satisfaction, questions of why remain unanswered, merely slimed over by arbitrariness. Do you believe in original sin? It seems awfully unfair, and ultimately inexplicable. For Eden, take for instance the squiggles of light on the sunny dance floor of Pearl Ubungen’s Tenderloin studio, where Pearl, pretty and a little famous, sat with her baby in her lap saying tatatatatatititi and her dancers’ obliging heels going bimbimbimbimbimbimbimbim. They were rehearsing for some “event.” A church bell tolled in the tower. In the sunken courtyard, barefoot Asian children played. Then came the fence, and then came outside where a shivering man in a hooded sweatshirt slowly urinated in his trousers, whispering obscenities. Where did he come from? Why did he stink? Why were he and the children, separated only by that fence through which each party could see the other, clothed in such different fortunes?—To put a point on it, Abel prayed timidly to a God Whom he feared, of Whom he expected nothing—correctly, as we know from the tale’s round words, for God declined to protect him. As for Cain, he abandoned himself to anger and crime. He couldn’t kill God or the angel, so he killed Abel. Somewhat wanting in backbone that murderer was, too, for he pleaded innocent, just like any cheap pimp who’s gotten busted. But grant him this: In the end he did at least wear his Mark with defiant pride, and set out most adventurously to take up housekeeping with Lilith’s daughters and other whores in the Land of Nod, which I’ve always assumed was the place that heroin addicts go to, somewhere far past Jackson Street’s ideograms white and red on different colored awnings, somewhere out of Chinatown, maybe behind the Green Door Massage or in the Stockton tunnel or even Union Square where a red substance resembling Abel’s blood offered itself for purchase in the windows of Macy’s. And Cain, I read, begat Pontius Pilate, who begat firstly innocent bystanders, and secondly good Germans, and thirdly Mr. Henry Tyler, that newly ageing lump of flesh with the same stale problem of an irremediable spiritual impotence—nay, rottenness—of which he had not been the cause and for which there could be no solution. Acquiescence would render him more contemptible than he already was, and quite possibly doom him—I cite the precedent of Abel—while backbone would get him into trouble just as it had Cain. And yet Tyler said to himself: Someday I want to show backbone. I want to do something daring, good and important, even if it destroys me. —And he waited to be called to that worthwhile thing. —Sometimes he saw the narrow face of an angel opening to utter languages which he could not speak, enmeshing her words in that crazy metal spiderweb of ceiling which characterizes certain fancy poolhalls. He wanted to believe in these annunciations sufficiently to act, but the difficulty was that such backbone-showing demanded legal if not biological incest, for Tyler’s angel was his Korean sister-in-law, Irene, who, not beautiful but dear, came to him for help with all her marital problems because she knew him to be on her side. Sometimes she kissed him on the lips.