The Royal Family

by William T. Vollmann

  They failed to exterminate the peoples,

  as the Lord had ordered them,

  but rather married with the nations

  and followed their ways.

  They served their idols,

  which entrapped them.

  They offered up their sons

  and their daughters to the demons,

  poured out innocent blood,

  the blood of their sons and daughters,

  whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan;

  and the land was polluted with blood.

  Thus they became unclean by their acts,

  and played the harlot in their doings.

  | 99 |

  At Ocean Beach, where Taraval Avenue ended, it was smoky and foggy that night. A small crowd stood around a bonfire which trembled and shivered behind a windbreak of wooden flats. The revelers, who were pretending to enjoy themselves (it was a solstice celebration) were shaking with cold. Sparks scuttered across the sand. Tyler stood on a street-level dune, looking down at them; their smoke stung his eyes. Behind them the dark ocean twitched.

  He had never taken Irene here, and yet in his heart the place was somehow associated with her. The night that she and John had come to his apartment for dinner—how long ago now? —and Irene had insincerely praised the overcooked chicken (he burned it! his brother had jeered in reply. Henry, you’ve got to get married!), he’d remembered the lovely red and white herringbone stripes of some codfish fillets he’d seen just that day in Chinatown; he should have bought those instead, but the truth was that he had never cooked a storebought fish in his life. As a boy he’d caught the occasional trout or sunfish up in the gold country; he’d cleaned them and roasted them on sticks over campfires with the other boys; but seafood had made only exceptional appearances in his mother’s home. Those had been the days when—for inland white Americans, at least—the thought of fish conjured up, at best, deep-fried frozen fish sticks dipped in tartar sauce; they’d smelled like wet dogs. The truth was that he’d gone by one of those markets on Grant Street, expressly to please Irene, and for a long time had observed the white fish-balls, the yellow scallops, the tentacle-crowned carrot-colored balloons of marinated octopi (how to characterize those in a details description report?), the pouting-lipped carp so fresh they still jumped in the balance pans, the black and white X-patterns of cod-skinned provender, the reeking raw conches on their beds of dripping ice—and immediately had become apprehensive of doing the wrong thing, of buying something that was no good, or cooking it wrongly so that it would taste foul not only to him and to his unpleasantly outspoken brother but also to Irene—and, after all, nothing tastes as bad as bad seafood. So, in the end, like many another politician, he’d fallen back upon mediocrity, and satisfied no one, either. Given his occupation, we can hardly accuse him of following always the pattern of safe thinking—although, indeed, what else should we have expected Tyler to do while walking a dangerous path, but to tread cautiously? As it happened, his undistinguished culinary efforts had been effective far beyond his imaginings; for Irene, seeing the dull red flush upon his neck and face when John insulted the chicken’s flavor and presentation, had immediately understood to what extent their awkward host had labored to the limit of his abilities, and pitied him—a pity no less sincere for her laughter on the drive home, when her husband apostrophized Henry’s dinner in picturesquely emphatic terms. Of course Tyler never knew of her feelings, not daring to raise a subject as potentially odorous as golden-red fish blood curdling on day-old ice; so after washing the dishes he drove out to the ocean, stood upon the sand, and indulged in feeling sorry for himself. He pretended that she was standing in the wave-shallows, that she smiled at him and (the goal of many a pervert) understood him. And yet, while the continuation of Irene’s heartbeat might not be an indispensable precondition to such fantasies, her death, precisely by universalizing her absence—he could not merely pretend that he wouldn’t see her in his apartment anymore; he’d never see her anywhere, never, never! —thereby legitimated his playing the game in any spot that he chose. All San Francisco belonged to her now, and Sacramento, too—and Los Angeles, of course, especially Forest Lawn . . . But not just Forest Lawn. Thus the magical energy of that spot began to decay.

  | 100 |

  He awoke with the taste of Irene’s cunt in his mouth.

  | 101 |

  They were underneath the Stockton tunnel that night, Smooth had said. He took Tyler down the dripping passageway to where the tall man waited, and then there was a room where a woman’s naked straining back pulsed, the vertebrae alien eruptions held in by frantic fingers.

  Hello, Sapphire, he said.

  L-l-luh . . . gurgled that pale masklike face.

  In the corner, he saw long arms, long legs scrabbling.

  Like these visitor fees, a toothless old transvestite was saying. The Seville where I stay, that place hits up my tricks for ten bucks every time. Not five bucks, but ten bucks. And I don’t really care, Maj, ’cause it’s out of the trick’s pocket, not mine, you know? I’m making money and they’re making money. But the other day I brought my girlfriend in, and they wanted to charge her a visitor fee. So I went ballistic. I said: She’s a friend, not a date, and I’m not making any money off her, and what you’re doing is illegal, so if you want to call the cops you can but if I go to jail then you’re going to jail with me.

  Then what?

  Then they said, okay, forget it.

  Okay, said the Queen. So you don’t really have a problem.

  But it’s not right, Maj! They shouldn’t be trying to—

  All rightie. What hotel you say it was?

  The Seville.

  Oh, that place. Can you remember this, Justin?

  Yeah, said the tall man.

  Okay, Libby. We’ll take care of it. Now run along, sweetheart. Queen’s got other things to do.

  The Queen slipped her arm around Smooth and whispered something in his ear. Smooth opened his mouth wide until his tongue and palate became bulging cushions of mirth.

  Oh, cut the crap, Smooth, the Queen laughed. Henry, the things he says about you and me. Your ears should be burning.

  Seeing a familiar blonde and sullen face behind her shoulder, Tyler said with a wink: Well, maybe they are. I bet you said I was a misogynist, didn’t you, Smooth? That’s what Domino always says.

  Who the fuck are you? said Domino. I never saw you before in my life, cocksucker, so where do you get off using my name?

  Honk three times whenever I need you, Tyler said. Just like in the fairy tale. Oh, no, it was four times, wasn’t it? And you have a motorcycle scar on your leg.

  All right, Henry, the Queen said. What’s the point?

  The point is that I paid her good money to bring me to you and she took my money and said she didn’t know anything. I saw her watching me, too. Was that your policy at the time, Maj?

  Oh, now they got you callin’ me Maj, too, said the Queen. That’s nice.

  I don’t even remember you, Domino said. But it sounds like you were one of my johns. And it sounds like you were a misogynist, all right. And I just did as I was told. And what’s more, if I ripped you off, you just take your place in line before you complain about it. Anyone who would pay to have sex with a woman who has no options deserves to get ripped off. What’d I do, steal your watch or something? No, you’re wearing a watch . . .

  Now, Domino, that’s no way to do business, said the Queen. Maybe I was raised different. Some of you people just don’t show no respect, and that’s no way to run a business. ’Cause that’s what we’re out here doing, Domino, and I’m talkin’ to you. People wanna be nice to you, you wanna give ’em the same courtesy back.

  Queen tells it like it is, said the tall man.

  Aw, go to hell, Maj.

  All right, Domino. We’ll take this up later. Why don’t you go someplace else to be nasty? Now, Henry, excuse me, but it’s been a long night so far and lookin’ like it’s just gonna get longer an
d longer. What can I do for you?

  Oh, I just kind of came by.

  That’s nice.

  What kind of pudding is in here? whispered Smooth, patting the Queen’s breast.

  Plum. Plum pudding, child.

  What kind is in here? asked Smooth, reaching between her legs.

  Coconut.

  Are you my Ocean Queen or my Chocolate Queen?

  Both.

  Now he’s jealous, laughed Smooth. Tell me, Ocean Chocolate Queen, is Henry jealous of us or not?

  That would be private and confidential, said the Queen.

  Tyler stared at her, somehow hypnotized by her sagging, used-up face.

  | 102 |

  Here’s my business card, said Tyler.

  Thank you, said the Queen. Oh, you gave me two.

  So I did, he said.

  He took the extra one back, not touching it where she had touched it, and returned it to the little metal box in his shirt pocket.

  Why don’t you keep ’em in your wallet? asked the Queen.

  The condoms leak on them, said Tyler, and the Queen chuckled and shook her head.

  When he got home he gloved himself in latex, opened the box, laid the card down on his glass slab. He had used the business card trick several times. The cards were imprinted on lightweight plastic sheets—a special order which had cost him an extra ten dollars. This nonabsorbent surface was an almost ideal base for latent fingerprints. Whirling the fingerprint brush between his hands as he pressed down on it so that the bristles fanned out into a configuration not unlike those at car washes, he worked it into soft readiness. Then with a plastic spoon freshly washed in rubbing alcohol and rubbed dry he sprinkled a pinch of fingerprint powder onto the business card—not too much, because that would have darkened the print excessively. Then, holding his breath, he caressed the brush across the card in a series of light passes, and brought to light the Queen’s finger-whorls, alternating white and black, like the wood-grain of German expressionist block prints. Now he could work more finely, and traced his gentle brush along her ridge-tracks, bringing his face down near the places she had touched and slowly allowing air to issue from between his lips, purging the unneeded fingerprint powder. Next for the fingerprint tape. Good cops needed only five or six inches, but he allowed himself eight, tacking down one end to the glass slab and then pressing his thumb along the rest of the tape until it lay flat and firm upon the first sharp print. He recognized his own prints (central pocket loop) and didn’t tape them over. Here was another whorl print, so he taped that. Then he reversed the card and powdered it. There were again the recognizable whorl prints, these somewhat smudged from contact with the adjacent business card, but he taped those anyway. Then he dropped the card into a plastic bag.

  He called up a detective he knew, but the detective had been transferred or quit, as it seemed.

  This is Henry Tyler, he said to the detective’s replacement. Who’s this? Let me see . . . —He snapped his fingers. —You must be Detective Collins. Didn’t we meet at the policeman’s ball last year?

  You have a good memory, said the woman with her trademark chirpiness. He remembered her as a trademark passive-aggressive bitch. —Now, Mr. Tyler, I’m very busy, and the whole office is swamped. What do you need?

  Gosh, that’s funny, said Tyler in wonderment. I’m swamped, too. Fancy that!

  I’m sure you are, said Dectective Collins, the angry edge already in her voice.

  I was wondering if you could run a check on a set of latents for me, said Tyler. That would really be helping me out.

  Does this have anything to do with our jurisdiction, Henry? asked Detective Collins with bitter alertness.

  No, it would just be a tremendous favor to me.

  Well, Mr. Tyler, as I just explained to you, we’re quite swamped around here. We’re in the midst of a major investigation.

  Yeah, I get that, but—

  Well, sir, it’s not going to happen, the woman said, irritation in her voice. I don’t even come in until ten o’clock, and I work until seven or eight.

  You’re the best, Detective Collins, said Tyler cheerily. I certainly understand your situation, yes siree. Detective Collins, I want you to know that I am your slave.

  Sighing, he unpeeled the tape and wrapped it around another business card. Then he got the magnifying glass and looked at the index fingerprint to get the secondary code. A ridge count of nine: inner loop, then. Now for the sub-secondary. He didn’t have both thumbs, so he couldn’t get the major division. He counted ridges on the thumb print, to get a partial key, then computed the second sub-secondary.

  The phone rang.

  She knew what you’re doing, said Smooth. Our Queen’s no fool.

  Tyler grimaced.

  Have you got a match yet?

  Detective Collins was not disposed, said Tyler drily.

  Oh, she’s a piece of work, said Smooth. She doesn’t like pedophiles, either. Let me give you another number. This is Detective Roy Gardner. No “i” after the “d.” You can mention my name.

  You’re an amateur, said Detective Gardner, inspecting Tyler’s tentative alphanumeric fractions. Well, you got the whorl group right. Secondary and sub-secondary correct. All right. Leave this with me and call me tomorrow.

  No match, said Gardner happily on the following day. She’s not in our files. She’s not in the FBI files, either.

  | 103 |

  What’s your name again? said the tall man.

  You know my name, said Tyler.

  What’s your name? said the tall man.

  Henry.

  I don’t want no trouble, said the tall man. You wait here and I’ll see if she want to talk with you.

  Tyler scratched his chin and said: While we’re at it, Justin, what’s your name?

  Aren’t you the wiseass.

  Alone now, Tyler sat in that world-famed rendezvous, the Wonderbar, and beside him sat his fears.

  The tall man returned and said: Not today. We all got too much shit goin’ on today to show you any heart . . .

  | 104 |

  That night Tyler was sad, and Smooth dreamed that his niece Darcy was a small child again, and that it was Christmas and he had given her a doll which resembled her. Suddenly he saw that Darcy had crawled into the fireplace and was silently convulsing and burning on the coals. He rushed up, removed the screen, and reached in with his bare hands to save her. His arms burst into flames. When he pulled her out, he found that it was not the real Darcy at all, but only the Darcy-like doll, which Darcy had rejected and thrown into the fire.

  * * *

  •BOOK VI•

  * * *

  Ladies of the Queen

  •

  * * *

  Megacles, who was doing badly in the party rivalry, made an offer of support to Pisistratus again . . . and reinstated him in a primitive and over-simple manner. He circulated a rumor that Athena was reinstating Pisistratus; and found a tall and impressive woman called Phye, dressed her up to rememble Athena, and brought her in with Pisistratus . . . the people of the city worshiped and received him with awe.

  A PUPIL OF ARISTOTLE, The Athenian Constitution

  (ca. 332–22 B.C.)

  * * *

  •

  | 105 |

  This is the heart of it, the scared woman who does not want to go alone to the man any longer, because when she does, when she takes off her baggy dress, displaying to him rancid breasts each almost as big as his head, or no breasts, or mammectomized scar tissue taped over with old tennis balls to give her the right curves; when, vending her flesh, she stands or squats waiting, congealing the air firstly with her greasy cheesey stench of unwashed feet confined in week-old socks, secondly with her perfume of leotards and panties also a week old, crusted with semen and urine, brown-greased with the filth of alleys; thirdly with the odor of her dress also worn for a week, emblazoned with beer-spills and cigarette-ash and salted with the smelly sweat of sex, dread, fever, addiction—when she g
oes to the man, and is accepted by him, when all these stinking skins of hers have come off (either quickly, to get it over with, or slowly like a big truck pulling into a weigh station because she is tired), when she nakedly presents her soul’s ageing soul, exhaling from every pore physical and ectoplasmic her fourth and supreme smell which makes eyes water more than any queen of red onions—rotten waxy smell from between her breasts, I said, bloody pissy shitty smell from between her legs, sweat-smell and underarm-smell, all blended into her halo, generalized sweetish smell of unwashed flesh; when she hunkers painfully down with her customer on a bed or a floor or in an alley, then she expects her own death. Her smell is enough to keep him from knowing the heart of her, and the heart of her is not the heart of it. The heart of it is that she is scared. She is scared like the Ellis Street Korean woman in the white halter-top who charged twenty for a blow job or sixty for an hour of converse with her incredibly tight and dry vagina, moaning with pain as her clients fucked her (unless, of course, she could take the sixty and run); she’d been raped by a white guy two weeks before and then dropped off half naked in the street; she said it didn’t hurt in her cunt as much as it had hurt in her heart; for a year she had been carrying pepper spray which another white guy, a nice one, had bought for her, but she didn’t dare to use it when some big tall black gangster in the Tenderloin mugged her, which happened almost every week; gimme your dough, bitch! the tall man would command, and she’d obey. (His name was Justin. He’d not yet joined the Queen.) And every one of those other semi-clean or rotten-crotched women is scared. Each one walks in fear, waits alone—please, she does not want to go alone! Read from her list of if-onlys (which of course includes more important wishes connected with money, drugs and sleep): She needs a friend to go with her. She needs someone to watch her. Maybe she has a sweet young black boyfriend with rasta dreadlocks who if he could look up from the video games at the liquor store might find out where the man is taking her. Maybe she has a business type boyfriend, older, wiser, crueler or not, who talks with her there on the sidewalk in a low and angry voice. Their guardianship is not enough. The sweet young boyfriend, whom she doesn’t make wear a rubber, couldn’t accompany her even if he felt willing, because that would scare off the trick, and even were the trick one of those happy sloppy middle-aged exhibitionists who’d let her boyfriend in while he did her, she still wouldn’t want the boyfriend to see her naked with another man; she’d have to yell at him: Hey! Stop watching or I’m gonna beat you up again tonight! —The older business boyfriend would definitely scare off the trick. She’s alone. She waits for money or death. The heart of it is the fear, because she knows that sooner or later she will get raped, gaffled, and sodomized again and the last time a man did that to her it really hurt; she had to go to the hospital to shit blood for weeks and it permanently messed up her insides. Sooner or later she’ll get AIDS or she’ll get put away by the cops again or she’ll end up inside separate plastic bags in widely spaced dumpsters. In short, she needs the Queen.