The Royal Family

by William T. Vollmann

  | 313 |

  The backers in L.A. thought that there ought to be a floor show. Feminine Circus stock had just gone public and was rising fast. Brady decided to hire a starlet to be Queen of the Whores. At that time he remained unaware that there was in fact a real Queen of the Whores, and had he known he wouldn’t have cared. The slapper found an enthusiastic girl named Babycakes Reed who could croon Lotte Lenya-esque songs as she strode about the stageboards, licking the head of the cordless mike and hiking up her black sequin gown.

  | 314 |

  Gluing himself like a ruby to the silver rail, the successful dentist had brunch at Feminine Circus. The waiter opened the champagne bottle with a deep echoing pop. The dentist’s orange juice glass remained eternally filled; his champagne glass was poured very slowly by a black paisley arm that waited until the foam stopped. On the table, a white orchid nuzzled his hand. Outside the curved window, palm trees, a waterfall . . . Babycakes Reed (or one of her fifty lookalikes) had just given him her autograph. Her stage name was Queen Zenobia. The successful dentist browsed among the mountains of bread and the row of silver reliquaries, each the size of a small child’s casket, whose tops slid open at his command to show hash browns, pork chops, sausages and bacon, ravioli, potatoes au gratin . . . Then there was the fruit mountain, the calving ground of waffles, the omelette stand, the towering eagle made of ice, the parlsey-floored sashimi terarium.

  The last red thing is not a bicycle like the first blue thing, said the dentist.

  He’d heard that from the mortician and was trying to figure out what it meant.

  Oh, that tricky dog! he shouted, eating another omelette.

  He liked the mortician now. When he’d gone too far inside that paralyzed girl with Niemann-Pick’s disease, until she became turquoise like a seal rushing underwater, the mortician had come with a little stinger kit of embalming chemicals to make it look like natural causes. (Not that she was real, of course, but when you ordered take-out, that virtual blood stayed on your living room floor. —We need to sacrifice the unprofitable giveaways, said Brady.) Later the mortician had even rerouted her from the crematorium, preserved her perfectly, and plasticized her. After that, the dentist started giving the mortician free X-rays and cleanings—professional courtesy, he called it. He got the senator to sponsor a pro-undertaker’s bill in Congress. They all stuck together like dogs fornicating in epoxy. They loved each other.

  The successful dentist laughed. —Yes, I’m just bursting with seminal fluid!

  | 315 |

  As for the lord of it all, Dan Smooth, as for him who’d killed so many hearts (but that was a long time ago, those days of thick-and-fast), he swindled himself into nothingness (aside from the occasional tryst with a certain retarded girl named Sapphire), whereas Brady sat in a hightower suite which was loaded with blue hydrangeas. Three perfect pears, a grapefruit half as big as a basketball, and a leopard-spotted banana reclined in a silver vase, cushioned softly from the metal’s preciousness by leaves. —Message for Mr. Brady, apologized the concierge every ten minutes. Beside the banana stood a foot-high stack of the latest newspapers from around the world. Inside the credenza lurked a modem pre-dialled to the Brazilian Stock Exchange. Then there was a sliding panel behind which special cameras and telescopic lenses gave him a twenty-four-hour view of the guts of Feminine Circus, the engine room ceilinged with vast pipes shuddering, messes of heavy boilers, gauges, boilerplates; the utility halls of burning hot corrugated metal, the disposal rooms manned by illiterate, moustached, oily-fingered crews who ran and sweated in sandals, hauling shrouded bundles to the grinder well, the Lobotomy Factory’s diesel-powered unshielded belts turning, their condensers sucking up the desert water table; then more shuddering pipes, whirling spools, grey shouts he couldn’t hear . . . On the table where the third phone squatted, he sat drawing up new price lists, idly flipping through personnel figures. His accountants projected a thirty-two percent margin on property without the theme park; the theme park could make forty-five or fifty percent.

  A phone rang. —Yup, he said. No, that girl isn’t available anymore. She retired. —You’ll take your business elsewhere? Fine; take it and shove it. —What? You’re reconsidering. Well, reconsider.

  The maid was cleaning the bathroom mirror. She had to reach way up to clean the top, and when she did that, her breasts wiggled and her buttocks swayed. She was a Mexican with four children. —Nice stuff, said Brady.

  A phone rang. —Well, he said, the Wall Street projections are that we’ll make $7.50 to $7.75 a share. No, the other big players today are mainly from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Malaysia. The Arabs are history. They go to London. They don’t come to Las Vegas anymore. All right. Be my guest. I’m raising my offering price tomorrow.

  A phone rang. —Circus line, Brady speaking, he said. Yeah, we do. How many? No, we don’t do consignments. We buy outright. No, it’s irrevocable. Yeah, we pay five dollars a pound, that’s raw weight. Stripped. No high heels, no panties, nothing. I’ve been around the block, Buster. I’ve seen that trick with the weighted high heels. I’ve seen one on the open market where the seller even gave her lead suppositories—all three holes—just to make another ten bucks. Needless to say, we wouldn’t touch that company’s business with a ten-foot cottonwood dildo. On the other hand, I’ve seen the aproctous ones, you know what I mean? They don’t last long enough. You’re looking at it the wrong way. Think how much your staff saves when we take the pieces off your hands. No, it’s immaterial whether they’re sterilized; we doublecheck that ourselves. And their relatives can’t visit; I’ve seen that trick before, too. Once we have ’em, they’re virtual; they don’t exist. Pay the doctor off—are you kidding? You think we’re some fly-by-night business? Just forget the whole thing. Forget it, I said.

  He hung up, smacking fist in palm with savage triumph. He led the ranks of fighters now.

  | 316 |

  The senator came back. The mortician came back. (Babycakes Reed got a raise.) The successful dentist came back. So did the short lesbian with round glasses and long hair and the New York boy, stubbled and self-bared, who loved his toy company. At the Carnal Arcade the barker was shouting: You win, you win! and the New York boy’s boyfriend cried: You’re kickin’ butt! Keep it up! —(The impregnation tables were only marginally profitable, just a convenience for the customer.) One middle-aged woman afflicted with gargoylism was in high demand, as a result of her swollen lips. The lesbian took her. The lesbian loved every minute. The lesbian said: She’s as greenish and sweet as an Egyptian orange! —The junked-out salesman came back. Just last night, he’d gotten a hooker at the Nitecap. He drove with her all the way to Daly City. Then he found out she was a boy. He got so mad he smashed his own TV with an axe. So he was ready now for a close-and-kill at Feminine Circus; he wanted to kick those retard cunts around a little, teach ’em what buying and selling was all about. When he explained his needs, the customer support specialist took him to a hunched little cretin girl without breasts or body hair. At the state fair there’d been a blackheaded goat who whirled its ears and head around, splaying its legs, shitting, looking for escape; again and again the tail lifted, and green pellets like shot tumbled out into the hay. Before he was half through with her, the cretin was like that, squealing in sadness and terror—

  | 317 |

  Too withdrawn, the doctor said. A little reserpine. But not too much.

  That’s good; that’s good, the doctor said.

  No, the usual fee will be fine, the doctor said. I’m always glad to help. Really a very interesting operation you have here. Just think of the research!

  Ah, there’s a transitional period, of course, the doctor said. But when they begin to appreciate the opportunity they have, to interact with other females in their own ability range . . .

  | 318 |

  Babycakes Reed wants another raise, said the slapper.

  Give it to her.

  In which sense, boss?

  Give her the raise.
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  | 319 |

  Wild-eyed, shock-haired, she glared at the successful dentist with window-shadows blocking apart her face like savage pigments, and snot-slugs hung from her nose like ivory ornaments, and pearls of drool streaked down her lower lip like jeweled labrets, and sperm trickled out of her ear like bone earrings of some fantastically meaningless shape; she was hugging a fuzzy toy python around her neck and it was like an exotic fur collar —perfect! he shouted; per- fect!

  When the dentist came out, he walked just a bit more rollingly, like a man in bulky coveralls.

  | 320 |

  Sorry to bug you, boss, said the slapper, but Babycakes Reed wants royalties on the salaries of all her lookalikes.

  Tell her we can’t do that.

  She’s gonna be a pain in the ass about it, boss.

  Give her a pain in the ass—no, better not. She’s high-profile. She might sue. See if you can dope her up and get her fired.

  She’s wise to that one.

  All right, send her in.

  | 321 |

  Thank you for seeing me, Mr. Brady, said Babycakes Reed. I know you must be busy.

  Yeah.

  I surely do it appreciate it, Mr. Brady.

  Listen, Babycakes, we’ve given you what you asked for up to now, but if you keep being greedy I’m going to have to cut you loose.

  Why, Mr. Brady!

  Don’t you Mr. Brady me. Your shit is the same color as mine. I know that for a fact. I’ve got video cameras in all the restrooms.

  Mr. Brady, I’m sorry to say that if you take that line with me I’ll be forced to employ a lawyer.

  I’m sure you will, Baby. Now why don’t you get out of my office.

  It was a week or so after that that the slapper told him about the real Queen of the Whores. Brady decided to hire her. Otherwise, he’d capture and lobotomize her; what a fine novelty fuck she’d make . . . That was why he’d hired Henry Tyler for what (to be honest) had also been a little slumming vacation. Later, he realized that moral crusades were good for business.

  * * *

  •BOOK XIX•

  * * *

  A Meditation on the Stock Market

  •

  * * *

  The tenth kingdom says of him that his god loved a cloud of desire. He begot him in his hand and cast upon the cloud above him some of the drop, and he was born.

  GNOSTIC SCRIPTURES, The Apocalypse of Adam V, 5, 15–20 (1st or 2nd cent. ?)

  * * *

  •

  | 322 |

  Across the street from Feminine Circus a Canadian consortium had just opened the Parthenon, so there was a press conference and the C.E.O. was saying: Tomorrow there’ll be close to a hundred and forty thousand people in this town who are going to say: What do you want to do today?

  Get a whore, mumbled the newsman next to Tyler. Get a whore at Feminine Circus.

  So it’s pretty good over there? said Tyler.

  Fantastic, man. You get all your feelings out. And it’s not real, so there are no repercussions. You know what I did? I got me this virtual retard bitch and I—

  The C.E.O. raised his voice. —And we’re hoping that they’ll say: Let’s check out the Parthenon.

  The Sphinx and Robinson Crusoe’s were hoping the same thing—vainly, perhaps, because the Parthenon was going to serve more beer than any place in the world; but on the other hand the Luxor did possess the Sphinx, under whose hollow stuccoed whiteness you could park your car; everywhere was nowhere, and the vista outside was but another show. Bags of money wriggled in the neon sign below the Mirage (this was the owner’s wet dream, whereas the gambler’s wet dream had to do with the long brass bird-neck handle with the black ball on it, inviting you to pull it when you put your money in—thirty-five hundred of those in the MGM Grand). Money was water like those granularly frosted bathroom doors; money was puffs of fire shooting up at the edge of the long Strip that straightarrowed down past the Sands and Harrah’s to the luminescent pink breasts of Feminine Circus, where Tyler saw the cars on the roof of a tall wide garage; and as he watched, one car’s headlights come on, and it turned down into the chucklehole that led it to the Strip’s lights so separate from the Las Vegas skyline whose lights shimmered so quickly and crazily, unlike the steady white lights at the base of palm trees; then Tyler saw a huge coconut palm hung with skulls below Robinson Crusoe’s sign: the effect was all light, an ugly, disposable magic that glowed and sucked the desert’s soul. That was why he decided to go in the opposite direction.

  All his cab drivers liked Las Vegas. The economy was good, and they could afford to buy homes there.

  I’ve been blowing a ten-dollar roll of quarters a day, to see if Santa would give me something, but so far no good, the driver said.

  You mind taking me downtown, just to see what things look like?

  That’s all I do anyways, go round and round and round and round.

  (Fremont Street was incredibly bright, Binion’s Horseshoe a blue block of wriggling lights.)

  Now, the California here, they cater primarily to the Hawaiians, the cab driver said. But these are all locals’ casinos, that put a few rooms out just for tourists, but they’re more diverse, the service is better, the plays are looser, the covers are cheaper—only five bucks at Arizona Charlie’s. The big hotels? We usually stay clear of them.

  Downtown, everything’s straight up instead of spread out, he went on a moment later. This here’s the railway station; that’s what formed downtown in the first place. Now they’re uprooting the whole railroad, putting it on the outskirts to develop this part. Right now they’re purifying the soil by cooking it to eight thousand degrees. They’re going thirty-forty feet deep.

  All right, Tyler said, now show me the worst neighborhood there is.

  Oh, I’m not doing that. There’s some streets, their domain is so established, they’ll just block off the street and take all your money. But I can find some crummy places if that’s what you want. Not far away at all.

  Maybe Tyler halfway expected to see what Brady had shown his brother on that special tour of Feminine Circus’s service areas: a vast hall called Cleopatra Road, another called Ozma Ave with stacks of empty computer boxes; forkloads of beer and diapers somewhere under the South Tower, the bakeshop so fragrant with rolls on wheeled trays with long dips for the subway; the room service prep hangar in which people in white assembled blue napkins folded into Alps on white-garbed wheeled tables, fleets of which stretched all the way to the concrete horizon; that is how the bad parts of Las Vegas should have been, just the ventricles of paradise. Past the Moulin Rouge it got darker and darker, then much too dark, with fences, greyish hedges and pulled down steel shutters.

  Does the Mafia still run this town? Tyler asked.

  Big business has replaced the Mob with organized legal crime, he said bitterly.

  What do you mean by that?

  Oh, nothing. That new Jonas Brady, he’s just one of many. Now you see the opening in this alley? Right here where the car is, this is where the guy took off on me. I ran, but I couldn’t catch him. I’d dropped off his girlfriend, so I knew where she was. I staked her out for a week or two, but never caught her. At this point, anytime someone opens the car door before he pays me, I unstrap my seat belt and get ready to run.

  How long have you lived in Vegas? Tyler asked.

  I’ve been here for seven years, and in that time Vegas has grown from four hundred to eight hundred thousand.

  How’s the crime generally?

  We’ve only had two cab drivers murdered in Vegas this year, as compared to New York, where it’s is almost forty, he said, rolling past low clubhouses and occasional streetlamps.

  Well, with all the development, with the doubling in size, with new casinos opening all the time, has the crime gotten better or worse?

  The cab driver just laughed.

  They now rolled between Gerson Park’s low pale cubes close together, the roofs reminiscent of those toys they make by hand
in Madagascar out of insecticide tins; here and there a few Christmas trees; calm and vacant, fences in place. Alienated by many nights of light, Tyler nonetheless did not find this darkness restful. It was ugly, monotonous, and dangerous. The ugly realness of the night crouched chillingly around him. He saw Grace Temple with its Biblical murals, then another brick cube: PAWN with some letters missing; and it occurred to him that a pawnshop is really the same as a casino. —Yeah, the owner of the Nugget lost a lot of money on his boxers . . . the driver was saying, almost to himself. As for Robinson Crusoe’s, this guy’s on a lucky streak . . .

  On the corner stood some kids who looked as evil as the brass skulls on the Treasure Island’s doors.

  We have a police substation here now, and walking police, the driver said. Now, over that way is Nucleus Plaza. That place got burned during the Rodney King copycat riots.