The Royal Family

by William T. Vollmann

  Pretty stupid, said the blonde. How much do you spend on catfood?

  Oh, shit, Domino! Catfood’s not good enough for them. I feed ’em fresh milk and chicken breast, said that wrinkled old whore who never ate decent food herself.

  You have eight cats, huh? I just bet.

  Come on to my house. I’ll bake you a cake.

  A greedy light came into the blonde’s eyes at the thought of free food, and she thought to herself: This bitch makes fifty-sixty dollars a day because she represents herself. No Queen’s cut. She’s got her own place; she’s got her red light. I cannot deal with this. I gotta . . . —Where are you staying, honey? she purred.

  I . . . I . . . Oh, this john named Henry . . . See where he . . . Hey, Dom, I feel faint. I need to cop. I need to take a leak . . .

  So all that stuff about cats was just bullshit, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it? You’re just another stinking homeless tramp. You’d better run, honey. You’d better run fast and far. You know why? Because if the Queen sees you, she’s going to cut out your eyes . . .

  Screaming, the false Irene fled as fast as she could, step by shaking step, all the way to Magic Burgers & Donuts on Twentieth and Mission (OPEN 25 HOURS, said the sign), and then from inside her greasy bra she fished out four quarters with her blackened hands so that she could buy a doughnut and sit inside for an hour to hide and lurk and weep, while Domino laughed, her hands on her hips, and swaggered up and down Capp Street like the queen of the entire world.

  | 184 |

  You over thirty-five? said the old man at Muddy Waters coffeeshop, where Tyler had ultimately gone without Lily, and without giving Lily a dollar, either, being akin to Domino who in the course of business games which called into play all her calibrations of volition and capability could rapidly compute the prudence of any given expense. Tyler had computed that the dollar would be wasted. So he sat at a table drinking espresso as rich and reddish-brown as Chocolate’s flesh, wondering what to do. Perhaps this old man could see this, and was the latest incarnation of Christ come to help him, for as long as Tyler was willing to entertain such ideas about the Queen of the Whores, why not believe similar nonsense about any stranger?

  Yeah, he said, waiting for the pitch.

  Then marry for money, not for love, the old man advised. Love you can always pick up someplace else. It won’t last, so marry for money.

  Good thinking, said Tyler, draining his espresso.

  Some girl wants to marry me, but I says to her, I’m choosy. I like to pick my own wife, and that don’t mean you! the old man concluded gleefully.

  Mm hm, said Tyler.

  Having proven that he was the boss in this world, that not just any woman could have him, the old man went cheerfully back to his vocation, which was panhandling. On the way out, Tyler handed him a quarter.

  | 185 |

  He was so lost now like Dante’s pilgrim at the very beginning of the Inferno that this new love of his, which perhaps we should simply call an engagement, had already split his life into many additional doublings and halflings through which he wandered as if through a maze of dripping ice-caverns, the terrible directionlessness of his journeying growing and growing before him like concretions of solid hydroxic acid which his touch could melt only a little and so he felt wearily frozen, unable to visualize either his future or his past. Everything was good and bad together. Everything was mixed together like Domino’s grey strands of hair amidst the blonde. In other words, his way had become as open to the lamplight of all possibilities as the Mission, where you can leave the drug dealers literally waiting at the door when you go into some bluegrass-riddled bookstore or other to admire the acquerelles of Moreau or the engravings of Dan Smooth. Only a native California psychic can see all the way to the freeway sign which says LAST SF EXIT. Only a fast-talking Tenderloin girl can see half a block ahead to the car that might be slowing down, and so she’ll run out into traffic, beckoning, muttering: Come on, come on, come on . . . —Did Tyler stand on the threshold of infinity or of a narrow grave? How could he advance a step, not knowing? He remembered the time that Irene had gotten lost in traffic when she was supposed to meet his mother and John for the weekend in Sacramento, and when she arrived two hours late she stood outside the door for another fifteen minutes, too afraid to go in. Inside, the three of them had just finished their cold dinner. It was Tyler who found her, when he went out in the dark to empty the trash.

  Please, you go in first, Irene whispered. Her eyes were as clear as light bulbs reflected in a drop of spilled tequila on the bar.

  Oh, come on, he said. Nobody’s mad at you.

  Laying his palm between her shoulderblades, he nudged her in. John refused to speak to her.

  | 186 |

  Shot of tequila, he said.

  Shot of to kill ya? laughed the barmaid. Okay.

  How was your day, Loreena?

  Well, for starting out slow, I can’t complain. Made almost two hundred bucks for greedy old Heavyset.

  An hour ago, Strawberry’s face had been tilted, her mouth hanging open, her eyes swollen as she wept over the baby she’d lost in crib death eleven years ago, and gravity pulled down the side of her face. Now her head lay on her clenched fists on the bar, her long, greying hair blanketing her naked shoulders. The barmaid gently shook her, calling her sweetheart, but she didn’t wake up. Tyler drank on in silence. The barmaid sighed and went to the cash register. —She’s been here a helluva long time, she finally said to the Queen, who replied: She’s dreamin’ about her pain, Loreena. —The barmaid laughed as if that were a joke, and yelled into Strawberry’s ear: Fire, FIRE, FIRE! but Strawberry didn’t move. The barmaid sighed again. Tyler ordered another drink. The Queen smiled at him, gliding out into the Tenderloin night. The serious old john gazed patiently down at Strawberry, and his chin wobbled as Strawberry ground her nose into the bar and slept harder.

  Give her about another half hour, the barmaid said to the world. When thirty minutes exactly had passed, she said: Strawberry, honeybunny! and made a kissing sound, but Strawberry didn’t move. —I have to start serving now, she said to the john. Would you kind of keep an eye on her until Laura comes on at six? ’Cause Laura will give her a hard time. You gotta get her up before then.

  Strawberry woke up suddenly, sweating and nauseous, and weakly patted her john.

  I was a little worried about you, he said.

  The tall man came in and said: Somebody buy me a drink or I’m gonna shoot this whole fuckin’ goddamn place up!

  Oh, take a chill pill, said Loreena.

  Awright, I’m gonna start shootin’ then. Henry, what’s goin’ on, my man?

  Not much, said Tyler.

  Still drivin’ that faggotmobile?

  Naw, I stuck my dick up the exhaust pipe just like you taught me and the damn car went and exploded on me.

  You too fuckin’ much—heh, heh! Anybody else talk to me that way, they be takin’ a trip to the emergency room.

  Strawberry opened one eye, her purse strap clenched into her fingers as she muttered into her arms. Loreena leaned back against the register, stuck out her paunch, coughed, and laughed ha-ha-ha from her fat flushed face.

  How ya doin’, kid? the tall man asked her.

  Fucked up.

  Well, what else is new?

  Justin . . .

  What?

  Justin, will you follow me anywhere I go?

  Well, not anywhere, laughed the tall man, kissing her.

  You know what? said weary-eyelidded Strawberry. I’m sorry I’m drunk. I’m fucked up. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

  Don’t worry about it, the tall man said.

  I’m sorry.

  Tyler started chuckling sadly in the corner.

  Why are you laughing? asked Strawberry painfully.

  Oh, something weird happened to me, Tyler said.

  Pathetic, said the tall man, walking out.

  Tell me. Why are you laughing?

  Just a funny thing, he said.


  Tell me, said the whore, struggling upright while her john watched over her as anxiously as a father overseeing his baby’s first steps.

  Well, I fell in love with somebody I shouldn’t have fallen in love with.

  And what happened? Strawberry patiently asked.

  I won’t be seeing her anymore.

  (Even I know about Henry and his Oriental girl, said Loreena complacently.)

  Are you hurting? Strawberry asked him.

  Huh?

  I said are you hurting?

  Yeah. Yeah. I guess so.

  She stared at him with her heavy-lidded eyes. She was sorry for him.

  Oh, hell, he muttered.

  She nuzzled up to the complacent old john, who’d just bought her a hamburger. The john put his arm around her, and she flinched.

  | 187 |

  Irene had once given him a spare key, but it would have been just like his brother to change the lock. Tyler didn’t even know where that key was anymore. He drove over and rang the bell twice just to make sure that no one was there. Then he sprayed oil into the lock and worked a half-diamond pick against the pin stacks until they’d all dropped, one at a time. Fifteen seconds. He was belly-up against the glass front door so that from behind no one could see what he was doing. He counted the clicks of the falling pins: a six-pin lock, which come to think of it he had already known. Now for the tension wrench. That was the part he always enjoyed. Twenty-five seconds. He eased the hook pick all the way to the back of the cylinder, as gently as if he were penetrating a virgin; slow and careful, metal sliding lovingly deeper into metal, until he reached the uterine wall, so to speak. Now, slowly, slowly, raise the bottom pin above the shearline. Thirty-five seconds. That pin was picked; five more to go. In slightly under two minutes he had the job done. He slipped his wrench and picks back into his pocket and opened the door. Three carpeted steps, then a left turn hallway to the elevator. John lived on the sixth floor. The apartment was double-locked, so it took him more than five minutes to get in.

  There would have been no point in going to the clothes hamper anymore, of course; all he would have gained was his brother’s smell. The bedroom door was open, the bed unmade (Irene had always made it every morning). He went to the bottom drawer of the dresser which had once been a treasurehouse of her bras and panties scented with rose petal sachets and cedar wood. Empty. He should have known it. (In old Korean custom the brother-in-law must never enter the sister-in-law’s chamber.) John had not been slothful there. Then desperately he went into the living room, thinking that at least he might steal a photograph from their wedding album; he could always cut John out. Over the fireplace the eight-by-ten of John and Irene still commanded him by means of what he had always been convinced was a false double smile, but beside that now stood in a silver frame a photo of Celia—an old photo, evidently, which she must have given John, for she looked much, much younger; a breasty young girl in a loose blouse, her head tossed back, her arms at her sides but just beginning to reach out at the world: a self-conscious picture of a girl who really wanted to let herself go and didn’t know how to do it, a would-be narcissistic picture, and ultimately a very sad one.

  Those last few months when Irene spoke to him on the phone in a sad and anxious whisper, he could have done something. Now there was nothing to do, nothing, nothing.

  On the shelf beneath the television, he saw Irene’s Korean–English New Testament, which her mother had given her shortly before her marriage. Tyler lifted it, vaguely hoping that one of Irene’s long black hairs might have gotten caught in it. The place marker-ribbon was at Ephesians 5.14:

  Therefore it is said:

  Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead,

  and Christ will give you light.

  He felt a lump in his throat.

  | 188 |

  Everyone that doeth evil hateth the light, Smooth whispered.

  Yeah, yeah, said Tyler. Lest his deeds be punished. That’s in John 3 somewhere, isn’t it? John’s in the Bible. All johns are in the Bible. You think private eyes don’t know that one?

  All right, said Smooth with the utmost lordliness. Now I want you to tell me. What did her piss smell like?

  Tyler cleared his throat. —Like fresh vitamin tablets, he said in a trembling voice.

  Okay, that’s a start. You want me to find you some fresh female piss like that? I’ve got sources.

  Dan, I know you mean well, but I don’t think—

  And there you were on some kind of goddamned panty raid, as if you were a college frat boy! Smooth roared. You’re a panty-sniffer and you’re saying that fresh piss won’t help! Just how do you explain that contradiction?

  I don’t feel like explaining it.

  In his mind he now heard Irene’s voice. After quitting a temporary job at a travel agency, she’d said to him: They’re such cruel people! Sometimes I think I gotta be trying harder, but I don’t know what they want . . . —At that time he had felt sorry for her, and hated the people who had been cruel to her. But now he was surprised to experience within himself a sharp anger at Irene. It seemed to him now that she had always complained, that she had shopped for her victim’s attire as she would have shopped for anything else. And who had forced her to? He hated Irene! Was that why he now longed to part from the false Irene?

  You know I have an in with the coroner’s office, Smooth was saying. I got some autopsy photos of her for you. They’re under the floormat on the driver’s side of your car . . .

  Thanks, Dan, he said wearily. I know you have a good heart. How does she look?

  She’s got a real peaceful expression on her face, Smooth said. You know, like she’s glad to be out of it. And her breasts, well, you know I’m not ordinarily a tit man, but I think you’ll like those photos. But the ones after they started to cut her open, well, I only gave you the crotch shots. I didn’t want to make you feel bad.

  | 189 |

  That afternoon Tyler was walking down Seventeeth past the Uptown Bar on Capp, and saw across the street a police car with flashing lights and then the cop’s back and shoulders and helmet; the cop was doing something to someone—yes, of course, to a scared young girl in a miniskirt. He was twisting the girl’s hands painfully behind her back, looping and knotting the strap of her purse around her wrists before he put the cuffs on. Tyler crossed the street and slowly passed the two actors. Gazing backward as he went, he could now see the girl’s scarred and pimpled face shining with tears. Something about her quivering lip made his heart ache through and through. It was Strawberry.

  Hold still, the cop commanded. Hold still.

  I am, the girl sobbed.

  Tyler turned away and walked on, shocked to realize that he hated the cop, hated him not as a man but as a function. He thought he could understand now how terrorists could justify killing people. The cop was probably not a bad man. But what he was doing was wrong. He was hurting this girl who had hurt no one. Tyler didn’t look back. He was too sickened.

  Of course she’s no angel either, said Smooth, who now telephoned him every day and who always stuck up for cops. That officer might have been having a bad day, see. And maybe he’s seen her rob people, or maybe someone like her gave him some shit . . .

  I guess she does have an attitude sometimes, he dully agreed.

  How’s married life?

  It’s not going so well.

  Hang in there, Henry. Show some responsibility. Irene’s yours. She depends on you. And you have to obey the Queen . . .

  | 190 |

  Every night the false Irene was always in the bathroom for a very long time, not unlike the dead Irene who used to spend a good half hour on makeup every morning, and with entirely consistent motives sat with the television on, reading in one of her women’s magazines about how to tell if a man was lying (this article having been written by a traitor to his sex who sought to ingratiate himself), or why electrolysis must be considered the best choice for removing hairs from a woman’s upper lip, although shaving remaine
d preferable for legs and armpits, while depilatory creams were comme il faut for the bikini line. To Tyler, free from the necessity to master such processes, these directives partook of comedy—still more so thanks to their very solemnity. (Irene for her part had always been amused by Tyler’s subservience to cameras, and his craving to browse the incoming books at City Lights—friends and oracles to him, to her alien trash.) We all like to know the latest things. And even if there were no latest things and the magazine articles all repeated each other, still, Irene was so interested in the subject of beautification (which, after all, stands next to beatification in importance) that she could not stop reading about it, just as a man who knows pretty well what sex is cannot stop driving down to Capp Street every Saturday—doubtless for verification purposes only. Yes, the real Irene spent her life in the bathroom—and so did the false Irene, but only to shoot up. For this reason, bathrooms not infrequently reminded Tyler of the dead Irene. About two months before her end he had driven over at John and Irene’s on a Sunday morning, more anxious than pleased to have been invited. Yes, he’d see Irene, but they’d be constrained—and what if John sat between them? Irene was pretending to be wholesomely contented. Tyler pretended that his financial affairs were prospering. They would go out for brunch as soon as John got off the phone. On the coffee table, one of Irene’s magazines lay open to an article which explained how a woman could tell if her best friend were really not her best friend. —I can’t guarantee that, John was saying. —Tyler went to use the bathroom, from which Irene had just emerged, and in which she would soon kill herself. Longing so bitterly for her that he almost departed his body, he closed the door, raised the toilet lid while the television warned and whined down the hall, turned on the fan, like a whore in a Tenderloin hotel trying to drown out the sounds of her commerce—and then, his fly already unbuttoned, saw beneath the sink the wicker hamper of dirty clothes. (Remembering all this later, he understood Dan Smooth all too well.) Irene, Irene, Irene! Tyler made sure that the bathroom door was locked. He lifted the cover and most happily found on top of the pile a pair of Irene’s panties fresh from last night. He knew from Irene that she and John didn’t make love anymore, so he was not afraid of encountering his brother’s spoor. Along that slender white strip of polyester which had been between Irene’s legs he found what Dan Smooth would have gloried in: a tiny blot of gold. But raising the panties to his face and inhaling deeply, even there he could not smell Irene, only a faint odor of perfume that masked whatever human scent there might have been. Almost in a rage, he smelled the panties again and again. But there was nothing.