The Royal Family

by William T. Vollmann

  Who is it?

  That sixty-year-old bastard with the cuff links. That one you call the sonofabitch.

  God, I hate him. I won’t go. I won’t go!

  What’s he do?

  He likes to stick his fist up me real violent-like and make me cry. For sixty bucks it’s not worth it. All right, tell him I’m coming. I hate that man. Goddamn him. Goddamn you. Goddamn all of you just sitting around on your asses waiting for a million dollar dick.

  I tole you there ain’t no mill in this town, said Bernadette complacently. Hey, Domino, can I borrow your silver high heels tonight?

  Oh, fuck off, said the blonde, grabbing her purse and running out.

  | 137 |

  Tyler called up his friend Jack Chin at the public defender’s office and asked him if he had ever heard about the Queen. —Sure, I’ve heard legends, laughed Chin. I mean, that stuff goes back—Christ, I mean, it predates DNA tests and rubber bullets. In fact, Henry, with all due respect, it’s probably an urban myth. Everybody loves to pin the rap on the Queen, but—

  How about Sylvia Fine? Does that name mean anything to you?

  You’re talkin’ about Domino, right? When she was in juvenile hall they used to call her Two Bits, I dunno why. Sure. Who works for the PD and doesn’t know Domino? That is one mean bitch, and I’m talkin’ about my client! Heh! If that bitch bought me a drink I’d check it out to make sure it wasn’t poisoned! Three pending cases, one involving stalking with a knife. I guess they’re just pals now. Oh, yeah. I got the acquittal . . .

  And how about Brenda Wiley?

  Brenda who?

  Chocolate’s the street name. She—

  There’s scores of Chocolates working in the Western Addition, I think I—anyway, what’s the point?

  They both work with the Queen.

  Look, Henry. This goes back to when the Tenderloin was boomin’. Street prostitution was—oh, man. And there was this vice cop who worked prostitution detail. He suddenly became kind of wealthy. In essence he was combin’ the Tenderloin to find the newbies, you know, the soft young chickies who’d just kinda fallen into the life. And he’d go up to them and say: I can protect you. I have a place. And he did, too! Had his own house, up in Pacific Heights, I think it was. Well, finally one of them turned on him. But the strange thing was, before it ever went to trial his heart just stopped even though he was a young guy in good shape. And all the girls kept talkin’ about the Queen, who’d waved her magic fuckin’ wand or whatever it was to punish him. Listen, Henry. It’s all bullshit.

  | 138 |

  Toward the end of that summer the police stepped up the vigor of their sweeps of Capp Street, which accordingly fell silent, and on those dark nights warmish like stale beer, the rattle of a trash can lid or the loom of a stuporous whore on somebody’s doorstep was a surprise, while a block away beneath the blonde streetlights of South Van Ness paced the girls in lavender leotards with clops like shoed horses. The Uptown Bar on Seventeenth and Capp had added new taps of microbrewed beers within the frosty nickel-plated organ pipes which readied themselves to play hymns upon that altar of alcohol. And just outside the Uptown, Bernadette was working.

  Hey, the man said, have you seen Sunflower?

  That’s funny that you should talk about Sunflower, because just the other day I was thinking about all the people who aren’t there, said Bernadette.

  She smiled, and from one eye a tear so slowly came, and even more silently than the number fourteen bus whose white face shone like radium in the night as it eased past the Ritespot Cafe, that wetness traveled down her nose.

  I used to date her, the man said. I was kind of looking for her.

  What’s your name?

  Bruce.

  You want a date, honey? Maybe I can help you out?

  Well, actually I was looking for Sunflower, he said. I feel something special for her.

  You know, said Bernadette, Sunflower and I were good together.

  Ah, said the man.

  I actually feel very pretty today, said Bernadette.

  So she’s not around? the man said.

  I’m sorry, baby. You won’t see her around anymore.

  What happened to her?

  Overdose. I’d rather not talk about it.

  Ah, the man said again.

  So do you want a date or don’t you?

  The man hesitated.

  Come on, said Bernadette. I give really good head if that’s what you’re into.

  How much?

  Twenty.

  Sunflower gave pretty good head for ten.

  Well, honey, Sunflower’s dead so you gotta respect the living.

  Slowly the man began to reach into his pocket. Bernadette’s heart now beat most gleefully, and according to her long since memorized stage directions she murmured: Listen, baby, if you pay me now and wait just five minutes while I go get well it’ll only cost you fifteen.

  Oh, the man said. Well, all right.

  He gave her a ten, four ones, and four quarters.

  Bernadette ran so happily, vanishing so joyously into the night while the man sat against a wall. She looked back two blocks later and could dimly see him sitting. She laughed.

  Justin, Justin, gimme a full dime bag! she commanded, thrusting the tenner into the tall man’s palm. He looked at her without joy or sorrow. Then he went around the corner and in a moment returned with the bag.

  Hey, what’s this? This is no full bag.

  Took the Queen’s commission, the tall man grunted. You know you owe her. And don’t get in my face about it. You lucky I was here. Look at you. Ran all the way back to lie down before that monkey hopped on your back. Looks like you just beat the monkey. Where is he now? He gnawin’ at your neck? You look like you’re gonna puke, so don’t you ever dare accuse me of gafflin’ you. Better go do your business, bitch.

  You can take your commission but don’t call me bitch or I’ll tell the Queen.

  He looked at her. —All right. I’m sorry, Bernadette, he said.

  Somebody was asking about Sunflower, she said then.

  Who?

  I dunno. Some jerk.

  Outside the Uptown the man sat, getting angrier and angrier. Bernadette was long gone, upstairs in her room with two fingers on her clit and a needle hanging from her ass.

  | 139 |

  Domino had done the same thing to Dan Smooth once. The next time she saw him, Smooth had only laughed and said: I don’t recognize your authority. —That was about the time he’d stopped sleeping with anybody over fifteen. Domino claimed that Smooth couldn’t get it up anyway . . .

  * * *

  •BOOK IX•

  * * *

  “Easier Than You Might

  Ever Dream”

  •

  * * *

  Behold, I will feed them with wormwood, and give them poisoned water to drink.

  JEREMIAH 23.15

  * * *

  •

  | 140 |

  Can I buy you a drink? the trick said, his face shady like Market Street with its glowing windows.

  Sure, said Strawberry without looking at him. Misery loves company.

  Which are you?

  Excuse me?

  Which are you—misery or company?

  Oh, don’t play them games, mister, the whore said. If you’re that kind, you can just get lost. I’m tired.

  Once when Strawberry was in jail she saw another girl eating candy, so she asked her for a piece but the other girl said: Get away! Go stand back away from me! and Strawberry felt angry and hurt but couldn’t show it because if she did then somebody would have preyed on her. But when she was negotiating with johns she could show whatever feelings flowed through her, or even make up feelings, because no one could hurt her in a public place and it was up to her whether or not to rent herself; she became the Queen.

  Just then she saw the Mexican girl, and turned to her with relief, like a child who, losing the game of locked stares, pretends a physical need to bli
nk. —Well, Beatrice! she cried. Where you been? All us girls been asking about you. And Maj, she—

  I got an abscess on my titty, said Beatrice. They had to take me to the hospital to drain it. Mama knew all about it.

  Well, she didn’t tell me.

  Maybe you doan ask her, Beatrice thought to herself, but she only smiled and fanned herself with a piece of newspaper. —So what’s up with you? she said finally. You meet some nice friends? If you doan meet some nice friends soon maybe I can pray for you—

  Oh, I need to make some money, Strawberry sighed. Domino owes me a rock and—

  Me too! Me too! Because she gimme ten dollars but then—

  The trick smiled shyly at her. —I like fat girls, he whispered.

  She’s not fat, said Strawberry. She’s heavily challenged.

  Beatrice screamed with laughter. Where Beatrice came from, they painted barber poles on the walls of barber shops. Fat, big-breasted beautiful women in blue shirts were proud of their own flesh. Beatrice remained proud of herself.

  Well, he obviously likes you better, so why don’t you date him, said Strawberry. I’m tired. I think I’ll go on home. See you, guapa.

  The trick moved two barstools closer. —Is she mad at me? he whispered.

  I doan think so, Beatrice said. Doan worry about it, ’cause she has to go chase her nice friend. Where you from, baby? What’s your name?

  I’m from Modesto and my name is, uh—

  Oh, doan bother, said the fat whore. Why lie? I won’t complain. If you doan wanna tell me, then doan tell me. Mother Maria, it’s not my business. Hey, Strawberry, darling, please you stick around one minute.

  You know what? said the trick.

  What?

  I don’t think I like your attitude.

  Then fuck off, said Beatrice. Go kiss your Mama’s ass. Strawberry, sister, let’s go.

  You goin’ out, too? said the other whore.

  Of course.

  What about him?

  The hell with him. He doan like my attitude.

  Strawberry laughed drunkenly and said: You wanna try Seventeenth and Capp with me, an’ maybe we can double date? It’s safer that way.

  No, sweetie, I gotta meet one of my regulars. Because I met two friends, the nicest two friends, and I tell one I go only with him. And the other I tell I go only with him. And one nice friend, he even want me to come back in the morning to his hotel, and he gimme twenty, and the other paid me twenty last night and the first one gimme twenty last night and when I show Mama, she so happy. But the other one want to take photos of me naked, so I say, Okay, you can take my pussy, but you doan take my face. And Mama say why? I say ’cause I’m ugly, Mama. You know that. And she say, no, Beatrice. You’re not ugly. Here’s some makeup. And now I—

  Okay. Well, you be careful, guapa.

  You too, said Beatrice.

  She stood with her hands on her generous hips, watching the other woman strolling into the darkness.

  Across the street, a police light flashed and amplified robot voices went wrurr wrurr wrurr step out of the car. STEP OUT OF THE CAR. Turn around slowly and place your hands on the car. It was nobody she knew. Strawberry should really be getting out of here, but she could still see her dawdling at the first corner with cracked bravado, shooting looks and waves against the cars which she hoped to prey on and crack open like mussel-shells to suck out the sweet money-meat inside. No cars slowed. Place your hands on your head. Slowly. I said slowly.

  Suddenly, Beatrice realized that the cops were busting Domino.

  | 141 |

  Weak and mechanical though such side-episodes may be, like the subplots in Shakespeare’s plays, the fact remains that reality does on occasion most slyly change the dials of our fate-settings, like Bernadette, who always liked to steal at least one thing from each of her tricks. So it had happened on that foggy twilight that when Domino was sitting in a station wagon with one of her regulars, a pasty-faced man whose name she’d long since forgotten and cared not to ask, and they were en route to the parking lot on Golden Gate where she always blew him, a black-and-white came up out of nowhere and pulled them over for expired plates. After that, things went from bad to worse. When the cop asked for the registration, the trick opened the glove compartment and a pistol fell out. Domino rolled her eyes and said: You asshole! —Both of you out of the car with your hands on your heads! said the cop. His partner started searching the car, and immediately found a bag of meth under the passenger seat. —It’s hers, the trick said desperately. I never knew anything about it, I swear, officer. —Well? said the cop. Which of you wants to own up? —Yeah, sure, and it’s my gun and my car and my penis, too, sneered the blonde. Why don’t you dust it for prints? —Oh, so you want to tell me how to do my job, huh? said the cop. You think I feel like wasting my fingerprint dust on your shitty little life? Who are you, lady? Let’s see some I.D. —May I take one hand off my head to get it, officer, or are you going to reach into my pants and get it? —My, my, my, said the cop cheerfully. You just resisted an officer. I’m going to have to write that into the arrest report. What’s your name? —Domino, said Domino. —The world-famous Domino, said the officer with mock awe. Aren’t you the cat’s pajamas? Is there any man in San Francisco who hasn’t gotten lapdanced by Domino? But I’ll tell you something, sweetie. That was in the last century. You need a new titty job. —Remind me not to go to the same doctor who did your dick job, officer. I bet you couldn’t get it up if it were strapped to a telephone pole.

  It’s just not fair to bust me for her meth, inserted the trick. You see how she talks. It’s her meth, officer. Cut me some slack just this once, okay?

  It went like that all the way to jail. But when the trick, sitting handcuffed in the back seat of the patrol car beside her, finally understood that his denials of methamphetamine possession would not change the stance of the arresting officers by a single iota, he turned toward Domino, who sat rigidly trembling and gazing out the window, and, clearing his throat with a noise as of a tired panhandler’s shuffle up a sidewalk, he whispered that he was sorry. Domino burst into tears and cried: I’m so ashamed of your life!

  | 142 |

  It used to be that when they busted Domino they merely cuffed her and maybe kicked her down onto her face once or twice if she’d given them lip or shown what they called “attitude”; then they took her to the Mission Street substation where after rephotographing her and adding a new entry to her sin sheets they drove her to Eight-Fifty Bryant, formally known as the Hall of Justice, where in a windowless little room which offered a sometimes-broken television and a sometimes-broken toilet she joined her sisters sitting on benches, all of them searched and half stripped, their high heels confiscated because not long ago in that room, so the story went (nobody Domino knew had actually witnessed it), one prostitute, angered by another, had killed her with a spike heel; and there Domino sat until they let her out. But this time she faced no mere misdemeanor charge of prostitution, which usually meant a quick release on her own recognizance, but felony drug and gun possession charges, as well as interwoven complications and disgraces—to wit, five thousand dollars bail for the weapons charge, ten thousand for the meth, ten thousand for being the principal in a narcotic sales case while knowing that another principal was armed, five hundred for resisting an officer in the performance of his duties, twenty thousand for a prior serious felony (she actually had two on her record but they’d luckily forgotten the other one), ten thousand for a prison prior when she’d been compelled to defend her honor against a woman who’d called her nigger-sucker, and so she stole a spoon from the cafeteria and slammed it into that bitch’s eye—all of which came to a fifty-five point five grand price of readmission to the luminous Tenderloin streets for something she hadn’t even done. Life is crappy, she said to herself.

  And so she made landfall upon the grey squarish isle of the Hall of Justice, and they took her upstairs to the jail, where they made her sign the white SFPD property release form.
She didn’t want to check the box which emunerated her “TOTAL” cash because she was sure that she’d had much more money than that, but she lost that argument, as she had known she would, because they were stronger than she was and they didn’t care. —My shitty fuckin’ life, she muttered. She heard the public defender mumuring into a man’s ear: If they can make the actual constructive claim, then the misdemeanor goes to superior court trailing the felony and then . . . —Ahead of her waited the judge who always said to her public defender just like a used car salesman: I’ll give you a very early pretrial tomorrow. —The public defender warned her: Sylvia, you gotta beat every count if you wanna escape the Three Strikes Law. —They said she could make one phone call. Domino wanted to telephone Dan Smooth, but they said that it had to be local. There was a rich doctor from Marin who sometimes dated her in his own house while his wife masturbated in the corner (the doctor’s pride: amyl nitrate sequences with Domino, the wife’s silver body moving back and forth), but his phone merely rang and rang. So Domino called Mr. Cortez the bail bondsman.

  * * *

  •BOOK X•

  * * *

  An Essay on Bail

  •

  * * *

  Excessive bail shall not be required.

  U.S. Constitution, VIIIth Amendment (1792)

  I tell you, that to every one who has more will be given; but to him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.

  LUKE 19.26

  * * *

  •