The Royal Family

by William T. Vollmann

  Shit. What am I doin’ this for?

  It’s up to you, said the Queen flatly. You don’t have to do nothin’.

  Maj, I want us, together, to keep on comin’ up. An’ you keep sayin’ we gonna go down. When they gonna get us? Why they gonna get us? I wanna drag ’em under Henry’s car, take that gun of his an’ blow they heads right off they necks. And you—

  An’ I what?

  Oh, it’s hopeless, Maj. Just hopeless.

  Hey now. You believe in me or not?

  I been down for you so long. An’ you not even gonna fight. It’s like you just punked out.

  So you feel like I been givin’ you no respect, so you don’t wanna respect me no more. Oh, Justin, that made me so sad.

  Maj—

  Stay or go, but promise me this: No payback when they get us. You gonna make it. You gonna move on. Don’t pay ’em back. Just let it go.

  If that’s how you want it, I’m gonna quit.

  He took off his sunglasses then, and his gaze resembled the white cold glare of the sun in a Tenderloin window at evening, red cars, red barfronts, green barfronts, pale tea-colored buildings, and above all this a cold and skittish glance of light refracted by flat dark awareness behind which perhaps somebody was minutely watching the street but no one on the street could see into that darkness. But the Queen, could she see? A dark face, a soul, lurked behind a curtain’s membrane.

  C’mere, she said.

  But the tall man shook his head and told her: I been close to death at times, Maj. And you know what? Up close I can’t see nothin’. Not a damned thing. ’Cause they ain’t nothin’.

  | 372 |

  The tall man had the number of the O.G.’s main bitch, a hot young thing named Tashay who’d never turned a trick in her life, so she said. He dropped a quarter into the pay phone on Turk and Powell and dialled her up. The O.G. answered.

  Justin here, said the tall man. You remember me? I tole you I’d be callin’ . . .

  Okay, nigga, said the O.G. You ready to keep your mind on you life? You ready to use you head?

  Yeah, said the tall man, submissive like a child.

  Okay. I know you ain’t no coward. I did some checkin’ around. I heard you got a rep. Not a real decent gangbangin’ rep, but at least you got you name known out on the street. You was in Quentin, right?

  Yeah.

  For auto theft. Well, that ain’t even chickenshit. An’ pimpin’, I know you still be pimpin’. That ain’t nothin’. You got any exes, any one eighty-sevens?*

  Yeah.

  How many?

  One.

  I guess you did tell me that. Well, so you got your rep. An’ it wasn’t no True Blue. ’Cause we all be True Blues over here.

  No.

  An’ they made you on that one-eighty-seven, right? You was in Soledad?

  Yeah.

  How many bullets† they give you?

  Five years. They tried to get me on conspiracy, but they—

  An’ you be makin’ good money now, sellin’?

  Yeah.

  Where is it?

  I don’t keep it, the tall man said. I spread it around.

  Righteous. But that Big Bitch sittin’ on you face (and these words the O.G. uttered in tones of the utmost bitterness, like a man’s mistress using the phrase your wife) she don’t take all that scratch out of you hand, huh? ’Cause any man let some bitch rule his finances, well, Justin, my man, he ain’t got no rep. He be the laughingstock. See what I’m sayin’?

  It ain’t like that, the tall man said.

  Don’t bullshit me, the O.G. said. Now, what you gotta do, you gotta bring her down. Mark her face with acid or a razor or a screwdriver, so can’t nobody say she still be keepin’ you balls between her teeth. You do that, an’ then I can tell my homeys you got heart, okay? An’ at that time, Justin, I can promise you a good place in my organization. You’ll be taken care of. I’ll feed you, dig what I’m sayin’? In one goddamned week you’ll be drivin’ a car, I mean a real car. You can even keep the white bitch, if that’s the way you wanna go. An’ if not, cut her loose. Tashay she got a real sweet li’l sister, I mean real sweet, see what I’m sayin’?

  Yeah.

  In fact, if you really wanna make a splash, kidnap the Big Bitch. Plan it out, bring her to the homeboys. Then we gonna rape her like two three four five days runnin’ till she good an’ cold. Then you can keep runnin’ her hos down in their area, an’ collect yo scratch. Ain’t no more Queen, man. You be the King, awright?

  Yeah.

  You better do it, brother. You hear me?

  Yeah.

  You gonna do it or you just wastin’ my time like some li’l wannabe buster?

  I’ll do it.

  ’Cause she the enemy, man. You wanna get you heart back, you gotta retaliate. Call me when you’ve done it. Then we’ll talk.

  The O.G. hung up.

  The tall man stood there for a moment. Then he smashed his fist against the phone and he screamed.

  | 373 |

  Then there came the day when Chocolate, unable to trick because she had an excruciating running sore on her mons veneris, and being unable to trick was unable to cop, approached the Queen with a whine and an opened mouth like a little baby bird. For a long time the Queen regarded her sadly. She seemed to be trying to make up her mind about something. At last she spat into the other woman’s mouth as usual. But this time there came no instant rush, and Chocolate’s withdrawal pangs did not go away. The whore sat for five immense minutes, fidgeting. Then suddenly she leaped up and screamed: Bitch, you lost your power, bitch!

  The Queen nodded.

  After this, none of the royal secretions seemed to have any effect, and soon the only members of the family who continued to crave them were Tyler and Sapphire.

  | 374 |

  You ever been here before? said Brady.

  Never, the woman said.

  Where can I meet you?

  Right here at the bar.

  Thought you never came here.

  Oh, almost never. Six or seven times a year.

  Can I meet you down on Turk Street?

  That’s where a lot of tricks go and get beaten up.

  Which do you like better, safe sex or unsafe sex?

  Safe sex.

  Why?

  ’Cause I wanna be safe. I like safe people.

  Well, we’re safe people, laughed Brady, and all his boys sniggered.

  What’s your name?

  Chocolate.

  If I pay you a hundred dollars, will you go on television and say that you left that no-good Queen?

  There are good things, Chocolate said. I was warm during the winter and she prayed over me. She did help clear up my lung condition.

  I don’t give a shit about the good things. I’m only interested in knowing whether you want to make that hundred dollars.

  Chocolate was silent.

  Hey, you. Guess what I do for a living.

  I was wonderin’, but I didn’t wanna find out ’cause I didn’t wanna be in it.

  | 375 |

  My rent’s thirty-eight dollars a night but the manager is cool; he’ll work with me if I pay it a little late, in bits and pieces. I split it with Justin. He’s my boyfriend. Don’t worry about him. Soon’s I bring you in for a date, he’ll leave. He won’t say nothin’.

  The two men sat in the car in the parking lot while Strawberry scuttled round and round them like a cockroach with its left legs pulled off so that it could only go around in circles. —I got to get back to work actually, she kept mumbling; in fact she merely wanted to motel up and take off her shoes, smoke a little bump with Justin, and that she couldn’t do until these temporary employers had gone. When the tall man finally came back, she ran into the motel room after him, leaving the door open so that the two johns wouldn’t think that they were being gaffled, although really they were being scammed by the tall man himself who razored off hunks and chunks of white girl from their purchase just as elegantly as the
sixteen-year-old daughter of one of Tyler’s Berkeley friends could make heavenly chocolate chip cookies impregnated with cognac, sweet butter and all manner of excellent things; she’d insisted that he take all the leftovers with him as he departed into a warm Sunday morning whose coffeeshops proclaimed the forthcoming sixtieth anniversary of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. —Turkish women rally against Muslim leadership’s policies, a greyhaired man in a denim shirt read aloud while the radio played Purcell and the milk steamer hissed like a rock of crack inside a pipe, that breathy hissing wail like a lobster’s when it gets thrown into a pot of boiling water, the lid slammed down on its agony; that was the noise which the tall man and Strawberry made with the trimmings from the twenty dollar rock of the two ignorant johns who sat growing paranoid in the car, sweating with fear (which smelled the same as the sweat on Bernadette’s tendon-rooted neck with the tattoo below as her loving Queen clicked the heroin needle in and out) looking at watching faces, worrying about cops; to the tall man and Strawberry, however, the noise most resembled the whistle of a train entering a long dark tunnel beneath a mountain; now that love-pair came out on the other side where it was sunny and wild, and the two johns, who at the beginning of the evening had believed all too vividly that the perfect pleasures they could pick from were as numerous as all the translucent plastic cases of the compact disks at Amoeba Records on Haight Street (white price tags for new albums, yellow for used), tried to convince each other that they had nothing to worry about, but the parking lot did not feel very safe because the yellow eyes of black-and-whites kept roving down Ellis Street, and other eyes kept watching them from half-closed motel doors, and meanwhile the two poor johns were still waiting, and only the tiniest pebble of their white girl remained, so Strawberry snatched that out of her boyfriend’s hand and ran out to the parking lot, reaching into the open car window to give the john who was driving this preposterous bump of a bump. Before his disbelief could become anger, she said: We owe you twice as much, I know. The guys next door were out of it; just hold your horses while my boyfriend tries another room . . . —at which cue the tall man set out to borrow from either the Queen or generous Beatrice, who was easier to ask because she would never mention anybody else’s unkept promise. Knowing that now he owed her, she sighingly yielded up her own lump of happiness, which the tall man brought triumphantly into the motel room. Skilled operator, brain surgeon, he razored off his commission, delivering the net return into the hands of clever Strawberry, who flew back out to the car . . .

  We gotta think for ourselves now, he said to her. No way we’re gonna pay Beatrice back. An’ we gonna start holding out on the Queen, ’cause we ain’t got no choice. Bitch, you hear me, bitch? We ain’t got no time left to be nice.

  You’re my man, Justin. If that’s what you say, I’m gonna stay cool. But I love Maj—

  Lemme tell you, girl . . . Oh, what’s the use?

  Those two white boys are still out there, his white girl said.

  Well, then sell ’em pussy, bitch. Gotta get some money.

  Strawberry ran back out to the car and upraised her T-shirt all the way to the armpits so that the two men could see her breasts.

  Kind of saggy, the driver said. What are you trying to do? First you gaffle us on rock we paid good money for, then you insult us by offering your skanky tits. What makes you think we have the hots for you? Open your mouth. Let’s see your teeth. Maybe you can give some head, I dunno—

  What is this, asshole? You got the nerve to insult me? I’m gonna go get my boyfriend . . .

  The tall man came out of open doorway and said: Know what I’m gonna do? Hit ’em from the front, then roll ’em over an’ hit ’em from the back.

  Big fuckin’ deal, the driver sneered.

  The tall man took a serrated kitchen knife out of his pants and came on toward the car. The two men started crying out in panic, and the car squealed off.

  The tall man grinned. Strawberry embraced him admiringly and said: My man knows how to use his head.

  Remember this, the tall man told her. Anybody else, they the enemy now. You hear me?

  What about Maj?

  That evil bitch just sittin’ there an suckin’ up, drinkin’ up my tears . . .

  Strawberry fell silent in dreary terror.

  | 376 |

  Actually, everyone’s very nice, the bail bondsman was saying. We’re their best friend. Excuse me. I have a customer.

  He hung up the desk phone and shouted: Well, if it isn’t my old friend Justin! What’s cooking?

  Same old same old, said the tall man. How you been, Mr. Cortez?

  Swamped.

  You had a young lady working here who wasn’t so courteous to me, said the tall man. I ended up payin’ a visit to Mr. Norris.

  Sorry to hear that, Justin, I am indeed. Was that Diana by any chance?

  She never told me her name. But the Queen’s abreast of it.

  Oh, yes, the Queen! laughed Mr. Cortez a bit too loudly. And how’s the Queen?

  Just fine, Mr. Cortez.

  Now, who are we here for today? Let me guess. Is it Beatrice? Chocolate? Domino’s out, I see . . .

  Strawberry.

  Wanda Hassig, if memory serves. Does it serve, Justin?

  Mr. Cortez, you so smart, your head be bulgin’ out the edges.

  All right, I’m going to call up Room 201. —Five thousand for misdemeanor assault, he reported cheerfully a moment later.

  Motherfuckers, said the tall man mechanically.

  What happened this time, Justin?

  Some john pulled a knife on her, so she socked him. That bitch got balls.

  Well, cash or credit card?

  Stolen credit card okay, Mr. Cortez?

  No one can say you don’t have a sense of humor.

  I got that when I fell wrongways from my Mama’s ass. Now, Mr. Cortez, Queen only gimme three hundred today.

  Someone needs to cosign, then, returned the bondsman with smiling wariness.

  You want me to go bothering the Queen for this?

  I floated you last time, Justin.

  No, last time I went to Mr. Norris.

  Okay, but we’re still outstanding for fifty. That was for Lily.

  That bitch was supposed to pay you back. That no-good lowdown he-she crackhead bitch . . .

  Be that as it may, I can’t make a living floating people. Now if you want to get the Queen in here I’m sure we can work out a payment plan. I’m as anxious as you are to keep this friendly.

  Queen’s your best customer, said Justin.

  That she is, replied the bondsman, making no movement.

  Beaten and grinning, the tall man counted fifty ten-dollar bills onto the desk.

  Do you have fifty more to settle Lily’s account?

  I’ll take care of her, Mr. Cortez. I guarantee that.

  Well, don’t be harder than you have to. I’d hate to see Strawberry or Beatrice coming down here to bail you out again.

  Yeah, at Eight-Fifty Bryant all the girls an’ bitches, they be talkin’ about your kind heart day and night, said the tall man sarcastically.

  I’m sure they love you, too.

  I was just curious, said Justin. How often you get heat from some nigger or somebody can’t pay?

  Everyone’s your friend in this business, said Mr. Cortez complacently. I was just explaining that to somebody when you came. Everyone knows everybody. Everybody loves everybody. Life is great. And speaking of which, my old friend, I need your check stub or California I.D.

  The tall man, stricken by a momentary and (he realized) entirely senseless bitterness, flipped his laminated card down beside the money, with almost the same motion as a boy skipping a stone across a river.

  * * *

  •BOOK XXIV•

  * * *

  Sapphire

  •

  * * *

  If any man serve me, let him follow me; and where I am, there shall also my servant be.

  JOHN 1
2.26

  * * *

  •

  | 377 |

  The threatened dissolution of the royal family, as we have seen, alarmed its members no less, for all that they were themselves much of the cause. As soon as they began to admit the seriousness of the matter, they withdrew to varying degrees into fear and greed, laying up secrets, opportunities, connections and bad faith promises like outcast ants stealing grain from the treasury of their sunken, gravid queen, in order to prepare for separate winters. Why? Because they feared that their sovereign could protect them neither from their enemies nor perhaps from each other.

  The miracle of authority has always astonished me even more than that bizarre miracle of money whereby an ever deferred promise printed on a piece of paper is believed by people no more trusting or disinterested than the Queen’s children. In the case of authority, many follow one. Again, why? Tolstoy wrote War and Peace in order to answer this question. He concluded that authority (at least of the secular variety) is an unwholesome fiction, that although Napoleon thought himself in charge of his soldier-ants come to plunder the Russian hives, the potency he possessed to command came from something external to himself. Or, to put it even more plainly, the Emperor of the French was stupefied by his own egotism into believing that he had made history, when really the only history-maker is history itself. I don’t quite accept this, for the obvious reason that thousands of lives might have run uncut, had Napoleon never seized power. History expressed itself in him, no doubt, but without him history would surely have been compelled to express itself differently.

  And yet in the case of our royal family, Tolstoy’s deterministic view enlightens the understanding. For it might well have been that the Queen owned no supernatural powers whatsoever, that her spit and piss had never gotten anybody high, and that, like money, she represented only a promise among her children to love one another. Why shouldn’t it be, that if I owe you a hundred dollars, you and I could meet in the presence of an authorized functionary of the Federal Reserve, then burn that hundred-dollar bill, because all three parties agreed that you would be entitled to help yourself to a hundred dollars’ worth of gold from Fort Knox at any time of day or night? But it doesn’t seem so. Money is a promise ultimately too absurd to be believed. We require symbols, verification, materiality, just as churches require altars. And now it seemed that the Queen’s promise could no longer verify itself.