The Royal Family

by William T. Vollmann

  Irene.

  Got your goat, didn’t I? You simple sonofabitch! You know, if you wear your heart on your sleeve, other people can see it and spit on it.

  People such as you, Dan.

  I expect so. Ha! Now you’re mad, aren’t you? You’re so cute when you’re mad.

  I’ll see you around, Dan.

  You know what? said Smooth.

  What? said Tyler, gritting his teeth.

  I think you never cared all that much for your sister-in-law. I think you only cared about losing her. It’s loss you’re in love with. That’s why you hang onto it. I’ll bet that before that Irene came along you were whining about someone else. Oh, I remember now. You grew up without a father, didn’t you? That explains it. Ain’t I clever? And now you want the Queen because you don’t believe it’ll work out with her. And if it does, maybe you’ll wreck it yourself just so you can mourn her. Aren’t I right, Henry? Just swallow hard and tell me I’m right. Aren’t you one of the most pitifully self-destructive, selfish bipeds that ever walked the streets? Well, aren’t you?

  I don’t need any deathbed regrets when I’m around you, said Tyler with a trembling laugh.

  There you go with your regrets again. And Irene—

  You want me to betray Irene’s memory, and I’ll never do that! It feels like betraying her just allowing you to spit her name out of your sneering lips . . . I’m leaving. You got what you wanted. You pissed me off. You can tell your Queen I failed the test.

  Sleep on it, Henry, said Smooth with a lazy smile.

  Tyler went out and drove all the way west until he was looking down from the freeway to the pavement and dead grass, plastic bags and long low barracks-like docks where San Francisco began, with Coit Tower ahead on its green and white hill, commanding the clouds. —I failed the test, he said aloud, with a jeering despairing smile. Soon it began to rain, and he came to the Tenderloin streets, passing glistening raincoats, loud laughs, fingers pointing at heaven and hell, with rain running down the camo-green crown of a rain-man’s head. He parked and locked, walking around a black man in a soaked wool sweater, a black woman in a black wool cap, swinging her arms, a couple huddled under a scaffold whose ribs were almost glorious with water, tourists with umbrellas like walking mushrooms, until at last he found the tall man.

  How’s business, Justin? he said.

  You might as well paint your car flaming pink. It makes me sick to see such a faggotty car.

  I was wanting to see her if she’s around.

  She ain’t, said the tall man.

  When will she be around?

  I’ll pass it on that you stopped by, the tall man said, darting a glance behind him at a brawny lap-dancer the length of whose blonde hair was somewhere between that of convict-fuzz and pooltable-felt. She was helping the manager put up brand new photos of semi-nude unionized girls on the outer wall. The tall man glared into her eyes, but she pretended not to see.

  All right, said Tyler, defeated.

  All right what?

  Tell her Smooth pissed me off. Tell her, if I failed some kind of test I’m sorry.

  Her pager’s only got seven digits, Henry. Better shorten that message.

  Oh, fuck you, said Tyler, returning to the driver’s seat.

  He drove homeward. His neighborhood exuded an air of unreality and sorrow doubtless unfelt by most of its other residents; surely it was less sorrowful than the Tenderloin. He had forgotten to ask what had become of Sunflower’s body. Perhaps there was no use in asking anything now; Smooth must have put in a bad word for him. How he hated Smooth! The man’s round, goading face floated up feverishly before him. He was like a disease that Tyler had contracted, a venereal disease, painful and shameful, which he must simply endure. But what if he gave it up? He had a quarter; he could telephone John this instant and beg for a ten thousand dollar loan. John would help him even now, for their mother’s sake. He could become something successful. If he relocated to Sacramento, he could take better care of his mother and also hook in with the Capitol politicians, hiring himself out to political action committees who wanted dirt on each other’s senators, or to “ethics” committees whose aim it was to prove some poor victim unethical. Or, better still, he could go to southeast Asia and return with a beautiful bride who resembled Irene. But then he’d have to support her. If only he knew what favor to ask the Queen! Smooth was right. He desired to be healed. What would heal him? Nothing in the Sunset district, that was for sure . . . Of course there was very little to do on Pacheco, where he lived, but after Pacheco the alphabetical pavements went Quintara, Riviera, Santiago and then Taraval, which was a busy street, at least for the Sunset; it was the mirror image of Clement Street or maybe Geary Street in the Richmond district across the park. Taraval Street sometimes soothed him. Before he knew it, he’d driven there. The habits of his profession made it easy to drive almost aimlessly, round and round as if he were stalking someone, when really he was but circling himself. Closing his eyes, he found himself remembering the old Parkside Theater where he’d once gone alone to watch “The Sorrow and the Pity.” Taraval was largely comprised of Asian establishments now. He’d always wanted to take Irene out to Dragon City Restaurant, but it wasn’t fancy enough for her, he’d feared, so he hadn’t gotten around to it. He’d kept thinking: Someday, when I’m more relaxed and comfortable around Irene . . . After Dragon City, Taraval rolled down to the foggy ocean, past a Walgreens sign so red in the night, down along fogslimed trolleycar tracks with their empty pedestrian islands; Marco Polo’s was on Twenty-Fourth, right by the coin laundry place that always glowed pale yellow; then pizzerias, and the Tropical Reef at Twenty-Eighth; a huge new Korean restaurant awaited him on Thirtieth that he’d not yet tried; their sign proclaimed that they catered. Well, if he could marry Irene . . . After the bird hospital he didn’t remember anything until Thirty-Third, where the Elegance Ballroom failed to persuade him. On Thirty-Fifth the Knights of Columbus chapter marked a lower, darker and greyer part; more pizza places, and already his memory had slid down to Forty-First where he almost never saw anyone; the only things which had any existence there were the burning houselights—well, he recollected one hardware store at Forty-Seventh . . .

  Turning back, he pulled up in front of his dark apartment and wished that the Queen were with him holding his hand.

  He went upstairs, unlocked the door, turned on the hall light and checked his messages. A Mr. McBean wanted him to trace somebody’s Dominican bank account, provided that Tyler would charge him less than five hundred dollars. He resolved to charge McBean four-fifty. His mother hadn’t called. From the refrigerator he awarded himself a cardboard takeout box imprinted with a red pagoda. He ate the Chinese food cold. It was soggy, salty, spicy and greasy. He couldn’t finish it. He felt nervous. He reclosed the boxflaps and threw the carton into the garbage. Then he wiped his mouth on his sleeve, rinsed off the fork, soaped it, rinsed it again, and set it tines up in the dish drainer. He sat down listlessly in the living room. He didn’t feel like reading. Sighing, he switched on his computer, and watched the hellish white globule of light in the center of the dark green monitor sizzle and replicate until the whole thing had come alive. Accessing MoneyScape, InterQuick, and a pirated version of Full Disclosure, he was able to read and print out the full story of the Dominican bank account. The three searches had cost him fifty-four dollars. He invoiced McBean a hundred and twenty for expenses and three hundred for his labor. Should he charge thirty dollars more for something else, and bring it up to four-fifty? Why bother? He sat there gazing at the screen with burning eyes, feeling weary and useless.

  The phone rang.

  He checked the clock. It was nearly eleven.

  Yeah, he said.

  She’ll see you now, said the tall man.

  His heart soared. —It’ll take me forty minutes, he said.

  That’s fine. Meet me in front of the New Century at midnight sharp.

  Then came the click and the harsh, dependable buzz
of the dial tone.

  | 170 |

  So that’s your car, huh? said the tall man. It really is your car. You must have asked me that a million times. Hop in.

  Looks like a faggoty car, said the tall man. More I look at it, more I think you got to be some on the faggoty side to own a car like that.

  Tell you what, Justin, said Tyler. Why don’t you just grease up your asshole and hop in the back seat and see what happens.

  Man, you are pure bullshit, grinned the tall man.

  Hey, Justin, do you call all the girls faggots? Don’t they all eat the Queen’s pussy, too?

  Now that be different, said the tall man. Queen’s the Queen.

  You got that right, Tyler said.

  Sapphire always be playin’ with herself, but that bitch ain’t in her right mind. She just pathetic. Domino’s lez, but I got my dick wet inside her one two three times, so she ain’t all lez; she’s part woman, know what I’m sayn’? An’ the others, they’re just the others. Turn left.

  What’s your favorite hotel?

  Don’t have one. Left again.

  What’s your least favorite?

  All of ’em.

  What’s the best thing that ever happened to you?

  The Queen! But I don’t want her to know that. That old bitch’ll be gettin’ a swelled head . . . Hey, listen, Henry, my man, I can cut you a deal on some kickass indica weed . . .

  Now where?

  In here, said the tall man. So long. I gotta make a run.

  Tyler was alone in another hotel room with an unmade bed, the wall covered with poems.

  Then the Queen came in, and he was happy.

  You said you love me, she said.

  Yeah, said Tyler.

  You don’t love me. Everybody loves me. Nobody loves me.

  Let me admit something, Maj. I don’t know anything, not even who I am or what I want or whom I love. I, uh, I confess that up front.

  Okay. C’mere. Look at me, Henry. I want you to look at me. What do you really want? You still want that happiness?

  What do you mean?

  You still don’t understand, huh? Henry, you stupid sometimes. You want that happiness or you want me?

  I want both.

  Ain’t you just sayin’ that? All rightie then, she said with a sigh. Go over there. You see that closet door? There’s a girl behind that door. Go an’ open that door and take the girl by the hand. Henry, you’re always gonna be my baby. Don’t think I ever wanted to pawn you off. Go an’ get her. That’s right. Bring her to me.

  | 171 |

  This girl’s gonna be your Irene now, said the Queen very gently, and a strange dark intoxication of sadness rose up from his bowels into his chest, expanding, funneling ever more widely, like smoke as it rises, bracing and almost revitalizing him with the immense, flavorful richness of that pain, loving pain, painful love which he had never felt before, that heart’s rush of anguish comparable only to the uplift from white cracksmoke whistling through the pipe to numb his lips and race his heart like a competition driver’s engine. —Are you all right? Irene sometimes used to say to him on the phone when his voice got sad and slow. You’re my honey, Irene had said. I love you, Irene had said. But then she called him “brother-in-law.”

  | 172 |

  When the Queen promised to give him another Irene, Tyler had for some reason imagined a beautiful young black girl with gold-dyed hair, but the false Irene was nothing like that.

  You look pretty tired, he said. You want to have sex or you want to just sleep?

  I want to make love, Irene muttered.

  He did it to her and she uttered sleepy moans.

  Then she was quiet.

  What are you thinking about?

  My Mom.

  They lay down on the sofa and he reached and turned out the light. The smell of her was like rotten sardines. It got stronger and stronger all night. She laid her head on his shoulder and instantly fell alseep, breathing in rapid shallow little snorts like a child with asthma. Every few minutes she’d awake with a start and mutter: Oh!

  Where am I? she said once. Where the hell is this?

  You’re with me, he said.

  She was already asleep.

  He had begun to itch from contact with her body. Tiny insects, imaginary or not, crawled on him.

  He dreamed that she was taking a shower but when she finished and began to dry herself off the towel was soaked with stinking blood. He brought her more towels and more, but they ended up in a stained and reeking heap.

  All night it was her instinct to bend her knees and rest her stinking feet on his legs. She was so light and so unconscious that he let her do it. In the morning her abscessed thigh was so swollen that she could not arise without tears.

  Well, he said, you have anything you want to say to me?

  You got thirteen dollars?

  Well, here’s five. I can skip breakfast.

  You will? Oh, it hurts!

  He had to let her lean on him all the way downstairs, and she wept with pain. When they got to the street he held her hand and she walked as she had last night, slowly, painfully, with her head hanging crookedly down and her hair in her eyes. Her gaze was fixed almost like a corpse’s, and thick whitish drool unspooled itself from the left corner of her mouth.

  He said to her: We can’t walk in the street like this or you’ll get run over.

  I don’t care if I get run over. Shit, it hurts. I don’t give a fuck.

  At Seventeenth and Shotwell they intersected with a Mexican family whose members laughed and pointed, the fat teenaged girl especially, making witty comments in Spanish as the false Irene stumbled and wept. A block later, Tyler glanced around and saw that they were still pointing.

  His belly itched. An insect was moving on it.

  That night he was walking down Eighteenth Street toward Capp when he ran into the false Irene’s smell again, a sickening smell which permeated the sidewalk; then he realized that it was the smell of garbage.

  The next morning, passing a car one of whose windows had been kicked out and methodically ground to powder on the sidewalk, he gazed at the grains, at the shockingly beautiful greenness within them which had been liberated by the vandals—there was the car; there were the other windows still intact, mere tinted transparencies giving his eye access to the car’s interior; the radio had been stolen, and larger shards lay dark and dull upon the upholstery-slashed seats—but it was only the pane which had been broken, its surface area increased many fold, which allowed him to see the stuff and essence of that glass, the wonderful greenness now so rich as to trap sight within the opacity of grain heaped on grain.

  | 173 |

  At that time he trusted entirely in his Queen. He had touched her; how could he doubt her? The false Irene surely comprised not only a medicine but also another test, a pair of royal eyes like some herald sent out to meet a desert caravan and report back to the Big Bitch of Nubia. He had better treat her with every diplomatic attention. Meanwhile no proposals of employment visited his answering machine, although he checked in as conscientiously as Celia ticking off her latest list, which went:

  schedule session for approval with ICD

  greet Iris

  redraft proposed maternity policy exclusion

  shop for new sofa (ask John for color ideas)

  Tues. 4:15 gynecologist: can I get pregnant?

  find new restaurant to take John

  order blue update chart

  so, feeling himself to be a conveniently idle passenger on the ship of time, he weighed anchor with the false Irene for North Beach, where waves of greyish-white houses overhung each other frozenly on the hills, and darker grey waves of pigeons flurried across the grass of parks in search of crumbs, sea-foamed here and there with paler scatterings of feathers; across this ocean, with his incurious Irene, Tyler sailed in his shuddering old car, rolling down his window as if in hopes that the laundries of Grant Street, whose hot fragrance of cleanliness curiously resembled the
smell of freshly baked bread, might make Irene happy as it sometimes did Tyler himself, but she remained as isolated in her passenger seat as those old men in grey coats and grey hats who stood in the parks of North Beach with their hands behind their backs as the pigeon-waves roiled between their feet; because neither wholesomeness nor vitality attracted Irene. They made landfall at the Café Greco where he’d always wanted to bring the dead Irene but never had. Thus the false Irene sat across from him at one of those little round black tables topped with fake marble, positioned among newspaper readers, crossword puzzle conquerors, spoon-lickers, chin-rubbers and the layers-down of cards so happy and rule-less that black spade-schools and crimson diamond-flocks trembled as if about to take wing. Tyler and the false Irene drank new espresso which trembled with foam, dark espresso beside white gelato; while outside, traffic shot down the double yellow lines like those electromechanical toys which ride in slots. —This coffee tastes shitty, Irene mumbled. I really gotta get well. I gotta go in the ladies’ room and . . . —The other patrons were already holding their noses. Irene moaned like trains crawling over dry rivers; she begged to lie down; she fell down and her head cracked open against the floor.

  | 174 |

  The next time he went by the Queen’s, that crew had moved to a brickwork tunnel under a vacant lot in Chinatown, and it was dawn. —How much money did you gals make tonight? the Queen said. —If it’s money, you’ll see some of it, Domino said. —Henry Tyler again, said the tall man, but the Queen wouldn’t let Tyler in. She said to tell him that he had a mission right now and he should stick to it. Tyler bowed his head, humiliated.

  The crazy whore felt sorry for him and scuttled out of the tunnel to explain: They have to greet everybody on the telephone so nobody will get left out. And they have to be sure no bullies will come in. And they have to be sure that every whore who’s got good pussy will get three meals a day. That’s why the Queen’s so busy. I dream of making sure that there’s nothing bothering the lions at the zoo. The Queen says that’s up to me, too. When I take a hit of crack, it makes me feel sure I can stay up forever if I need to, so nobody will get hurt. That’s how I help the Queen. That’s why I’m so busy.