The Royal Family

by William T. Vollmann

  About what? Tyler said.

  Can I hire you for half an hour?

  We don’t do half an hour jobs, said Tyler, keeping the clipboard between them.

  Can you recommend somebody?

  Try Wessels on Stockton. He might do half-hours.

  Well, really what I wanted to do was put you back on Mr. Brady’s payroll. You know, help you out, cut a little deal . . .

  Go on inside, Consuelo, he said to the false Irene. I’m right behind you.

  He locked the man out and took Irene upstairs. She stuck her fishy-rotten tongue in his mouth. Gently he patted her between her shoulderblades, thinking: I participate in this not out of lust or disloyalty to my Queen, but out of duty. This is my religion now.

  You got ten dollars on you? said Irene.

  * * *

  •BOOK XXXII•

  * * *

  The Fall of Canaan

  •

  * * *

  Happiness follows sorrow, sorrow follows happiness, but when one no longer discriminates between happiness and sorrow, a good deed and a bad deed, one is able to realize freedom.

  The Teaching of Buddha

  * * *

  •

  | 462 |

  Who’s got a radio? said Harry. Okay, let’s have ’em on the desk. What number you got?

  Fourteen.

  Fifteen.

  Twenty-one.

  Nineteen.

  Outside, a car alarm was honking and honking

  Come on, boys. Radios, radios!

  Three. We’re gonna double up with Exercise.

  Twenty.

  Okay, said Harry, tell the slapper it’s time.

  What the fuck you talking like that to me for? said the slapper, his face empurpled. You think I don’t know what time it is? You think I’m working for Mr. Brady and I don’t know what time it is?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, said Harry, to humor him. And you can lead us to the whores, right?

  Told ya I don’t hang out with them anymore, the slapper said. I just know ’em.

  Harry yawned. —Big day. Queen’s day.

  That cunt, said the slapper. Trying to start shit with Mr. Brady . . .

  On Harry’s desk, an alarm clock began to buzz.

  Let’s pull everybody inside, please, called the slapper. (Majestic as a New York cop, he wore sunglasses, storm-blue duds and a wide orange belt. Spread-legged, he towered like a statue.) Everybody inside. Mannie! Mannie! Everybody inside.

  They came inside, and the slapper sang out: Hey! Lockdown! Can’t you show some respect? Mr. Brady’s about to speak!

  Okay, said bowling-pin-shaped Brady with his hands in his pockets, strolling slowly, his suspenders tight. Let’s listen up. I’m only going through the breakdown once, so when you hear your group number, listen for your name. Here we go. Group Apple: Chu, Darrah, Davis, Glovinski, Goebel, Haji, Hall, Hameed, Hamidi . . .

  The slapper kicked Harry’s desk and cried: Chuckles! Chuckles! Hey, you, fat boy! Dude, Brady’s talkin’! Gotta pay attention!

  Out front, a bunch of Brady’s Boys in the media brigade were signing the cast of a Puerto Rican in a wheel chair.

  You have Mannie’s group going out with the press, Brady was saying: Don’t show ’em anything they really don’t want to see. On Turk Street at five-minute intervals we have groups Apple, Bacon, Cabbage and Doughnut, with the usual squad leaders. Doughnut will record. Shazib, I want you to baby that microphone. Don’t swing it around, don’t whack some lowlife’s skull with it; you got other tools for that. Show ’em how you respect Allah, how the Queen of the Whores stinks in your nostrils. Got that? Halliday, you be ready with batteries and tapes and whatever the fuck Shazib needs. All right. Apple, Bacon and Cabbage, when history starts to go down, give Doughnut Group plenty of room. We have to document what we do. It protects us in court and it helps with our fundraising. All you apes understand that? Good. And no one had better lie to me. The slapper’s going to take charge of the new group and break ’em in. Slapper, keep ’em tight tonight; keep ’em alert. Now, on Ellis Street at five-minute intervals we have groups Exercise, Frantic, Gallop and Hunk. Hunk will be recording. Porterfield, you know your stuff now with the video camera? You gonna take the lens cap off this time? Good. And we have Group Ice on Market Street and Hyde, posted as reserves. Be ready to block their rabbit hole on Capp Street, too. Keep your engines running. Harry, I’m pulling you to run the command post tonight. Everybody got that? You call command, you don’t say C.P., you say Harry. Why make it easy on the enemy? And before you go out, make sure you let Harry know what radios you have on your patrols. Questions? No questions? All right. Chuckles, front and center. Situation report.

  I don’t think they’ll try to fight back or burn us or rush our HQ, Chuckles said. They was all drunk or cranked up last time I looked.

  And when was that, Chuckles?

  ’Bout half an hour ago, Mr. Brady.

  Well, they’re tricky bitches and vicious sons of bitches. Be ready for anything, boys. And do what you have to do. Don’t start anything, but do what you’ve been sent out to do, and if they get in your faces, you get in their faces. Questions?

  Uh, Mr. Brady . . .

  What is it, Porterfield?

  If they get serious with us, how bad can we hurt ’em?

  Don’t worry about a thing. It’ll take a quarter of an hour for the police to come. Anyway, we’re just doing what the police don’t have the guts to do. We’re gonna shut the bitch down.

  Shut ’er down!

  Nuke the bitch!

  Out, out, out! Let’s go, crazies!

  | 463 |

  Look at those Brady’s Boys! a woman called happily.

  I haven’t seen them for a while, her husband said.

  Like a green serpent, the column flanked the theater crowds. Young and fast, it offered to the public a constellation of solemn, wide-eyed expressions, reminiscent of Marines.

  Brady’s Boys! a girl cried.

  People came up and shook their hands.

  An old black lady came up to the head of the column and said: I pray for Mr. Brady.

  Thank you, dear.

  Have a good night, ma’am, another vigilante said.

  Oh, you Brady’s Boys are so polite.

  I love it, man! the vig shouted.

  Ten-shun! a man on the sidewalk sneered.

  The Brady’s Boys looked him up and down, saying nothing.

  Just before the tunnel, George, the black shoeshine man, basking on his throne, raised his palm in an Indian salute.

  | 464 |

  Gimme more bump, begged Strawberry. I swear I’m gonna pay you . . .

  Oh, you don’t have to do that, said the trick with a patronizing smile.

  That’s just the type I am, Strawberry replied, feeling very proud of her rectitude even though she and the trick both knew that she would never pay him. —Hey, where you goin’?

  She stood cleaning the pipe and then slowly uplifted it like a monstrance and breathed blue flame while the TV’s blueness whirled with hubcabs, dogs and falling cereal.

  I said where you goin’?

  I don’t talk much, said the trick, already at the door. He flipped the switch, and the bare bulb on the hotel ceiling flickered on, sizzling and glaring uneasily.

  Dim the light! the whore cried in a panic. She rushed to the window, peering around the curtain as if she were waiting for something.

  What for?

  I’m tweaking. I’m naked. Dim the light.

  Hey, this is my room, lady. I paid for it. I don’t wanna be in the darkness.

  Come on. Dim it.

  Grimacing, he turned it down. He was a well-built and steelyhearted man in his fifties or very late forties. She thought that she’d seen him somewhere. But of course her memory illuminated all comers as evenly as the dun-colored light deep in pedestrian under-passes.

  You’re making me nervous, he said to her. Are you setting me up?

  I’m just tweaking, th
at’s all.

  In the hall, when he opened the door, a black face, woeful and baleful, wanted and needed and promised something. On the TV, a four-wheel drive rushed to the edge of a cliff. He stared gloomily outward for awhile, then closed the door again and double-locked it, employing both the lock that functioned and the lock that didn’t.

  What’s your name?

  Strawberry.

  Hey, Strawberry, you know what I want you to do?

  Shhhh! she whispered in a panic. Don’t say my name.

  Slow footsteps crept in the hall outside. Then they stopped outside the door.

  Is it locked? she whispered in terror.

  The door burst open, and two Brady’s Boys came in. —Good work, they said to the trick. The boss is waiting.

  All right. See you, Strawberry.

  Before the wide-eyed girl could even begin screaming, one of the men clapped a hand over her mouth and shoved her down onto the bed so that the other man, having locked the door again (which she saw only too clearly now that her supposed trick had only pretended to lock), could sit down on her stomach with his full weight so that she could scarcely breathe. They kept her there for a good five minutes while she desperately squirmed, unable to utter even the most muted sounds, and the stink of her fear-sweat was occluded by the smell of the cigarettes which the two men sat placidly smoking.

  Cool, the man who was leaning on her mouth finally said. —Now, are you ready to listen? Nod your head if you’re ready.

  Frantically, she nodded.

  Just think of all the time she’s stolen from your life, the man said. Know who I mean? You can move your head yes or no.

  Strawberry shook her head.

  I’m referring to your so-called Queen. I’m not saying you should be bitter, but this is your chance to get even. Now, Strawberry, what we need is a location. An up to date location. If you tell us, I think you’ll feel a great sense of relief.

  Oh, cut to the chase, would you? the other vig said. This little tart probably can’t even sign her own name. Can you, bitch? Can you, bitch?

  He slammed the heel of his hand into her left breast while the other man clamped his palm even more tightly down over her mouth so that her shriek could not come out.

  Maybe you can tell we’re serious, the first vig said. We’re here to find out where the Queen is. Now, if I take my hand off your mouth for a minute, will you be a good girl and answer me or will we have to hurt you a little bit? Shake your head yes or no. Yes means you’ll be a good girl.

  Strawberry nodded very very quickly.

  | 465 |

  One down, one down! laughed the Brady’s Boys.

  The breast-slammer’s cell phone rang, and he answered, listened, and said: He says he’s issued by John Deere but he doesn’t know the policy number. Yeah, that’s right. The guy says don’t touch me, I says who ya talking to? No, we got one here. We chalked up another one. Don’t worry. We always get there before the cops.

  | 466 |

  That was the future; that was July. Right now it was June twenty-seventh, one year to the day since Irene’s death. Tyler sat in the Wonderbar all day, drunk and paralyzed. Then it was June twenty-eighth. Then it was June twenty-ninth.

  Crack smoke didn’t taste bitter and clean to him anymore. It tasted bitter and dirty. Of course maybe he wasn’t getting the good stuff.

  At the Cinnabar, the shouting and bullying of the television made him sick. It stank of cigarette smoke in there, and nausea unballed itself within his stomach, extending curious tendrils to probe him. —You gotta pick one, the television commanded. That’s how it works here.

  He remembered how when Irene and his mother were putting on their coats to go meet John for a movie (he had needed to stay by the phone for an infidelity job) and when his mother was in the bathroom he asked what they were going to see and Irene told him and he said: Hey, haven’t you seen it before? and she said: Yes, but please don’t tell anybody because I want to make her happy.

  He remembered seeing her in a corner of the kitchen table later that night, stroking the dog’s furry ears and trying to explain something to his mother, who gazed at her in a deeply searching and skeptical manner, and he wanted to shout: Leave her alone! Don’t you know how good she is?

  He dwelled among the whitish mist and ice-plants at Ocean Beach, one of several silhouettes in beach fog. Fleeing south, a solitary jogger in a yellow sweatshirt vanished like a yellow sunset, and then Tyler was left alone to stare at the lovely white foam of greyish waves. Fog rode the foam and the waves. He gazed at the silhouettes of fishermen.

  He sat drinking amidst the ruins of the Sutro Baths, which once must have been like an ocean greenhouse with a view of Seal Rock, and ranks of young women in black one-piece bathing suits, everything clean for the people’s aristocracy (so at least it appears in the old photographs). Now the baths are roofless. Rebar protrudes from their concrete honeycombs, which do not remain quite ornate enough to be stately or “pretty” like Roman ruins.

  His apartment reeked. The false Irene kept pissing on the carpet, and two nights before the Queen had defecated in his mouth; he’d washed the sheets, but he couldn’t get rid of the smell, which was now also Irene’s smell. His Mark of Cain was becoming more literally evident night by night, and his home resembled a cast-off snakeskin. (On the television, Brady was laughing: Nine Hydras in every realm.) Irene sometimes tried to thank him and even to love him, for which he ought to have been grateful because she was his sister, but he did not much want to talk.

  Have you ever had the feeling that something isn’t on the level? Smooth had said. Well, of course you do—every time you look in the mirror.

  Knock it off, said Tyler.

  But seriously.

  Oh, probably when I come across something like a staged accident. All the sudden, nothing adds up, and so somebody must be bullshitting. You just get to know people. You go back to the attorney and say, hey look, this client’s lying to you.

  Tyler looked in the mirror and said: I’m nothing. I’m a phony. I want to be something real like her. Help me, please. Help me, help me. I’ll give up everything.

  It now seemed to him that Smooth was correct, and his love for Irene had never been genuine, that had she been alive, unmarried and interested in him, he would not even necessarily have been drawn to her, although at the same time he was capable of doubting that supposition, for his heart lunged toward her in odd surges like a compass needle in a magnetic storm—what if it had all been one of those impermanent distractions falsely dignified as “escapes”? The terrible thing was that here had been no escape then or now. Love meant nothing, solved nothing, being but a garment of hypocrisy or desperation thrown over naked solitude. He awoke anxious. Did life have no purpose? Or had he merely failed to discover that purpose? What if he never found it, or, worse yet, learned it too late, as he lay dying?

  Hoping for work, he went out to the beach while Irene snored and drooled. An hour later he ascended the carpeted stairs and approached his answering machine, knowing that the round red eye would not wink at him, shocked to hear himself muttering aloud: Please, please, please. —No one had called. —He said to himself: It’s not gonna happen. It’s not gonna happen. —He said it like a mantra. He was trying to convince himself not to expect anything ever again. He wanted to die. He wanted to be dead. It’s not gonna happen. He fell down onto his bed without even taking his shoes off, and he wept. He dreamed that he was with Irene. When he awoke, his eyes were swollen, aching and wet. He masturbated, imagining that his tongue was inside Irene’s cunt and that he was giving her happiness.

  Suddenly it occurred to him that he might not have gazed carefully enough at the red light on his answering machine. What if the battery were weak? He went and studied it again, but it was dark. He pushed the replay just in case, and heard silence, followed by a fatuous beep.

  He drove to the Tenderloin, taking what John would have referred to as the scenic route on that hot day when Chinatown sme
lled like barbequed pork, urine and fresh oranges: He drove past the Sam Wong Hotel, then turned into the shade of Bow Bow Cocktails and the Hop Yick Meat Market. In a window, tongs moved barbequed duck legs. Then came a produce market, proudly showing off its cherries which resembled iridescent pink eyeballs. He turned down Powell Street in the direction of Pine, with the deep valley of the Tenderloin lying ahead. Celia bought faux jewelry somewhere around here. Then his way went down and down and down. Traversing the northern border of the Tenderloin, he followed Geary Street west, as if he were searching for the Queen as in the old days. Geary and Taylor was Walgreens and news, cafes and delis. Then it became harder at the Hob Nob bar, but Wing Fat Travel and Tomiko’s Beauty Saloon reminded him that the Tenderloin was much softer than it used to be even five years earlier, let alone fifteen. So it went, right to Polk Street, where Sophia Spa and Adult Video reminded him of the existence of nude celebrities. Down that cold grey slope of Polk Street was a motor lodge outside which the tall man stood bloody-eyed and smelly, trying to sell Street News to tourists. Tyler waved to him and then drove aimlessly for hours. He was killing time to avoid killing himself. —One of the moves we make at Eight-Fifty Bryant, another weary public defender had told him year ago, is what we call a convenience move. If you’re already serving life for one crime, why waste everyone’s time and money trying the guy on another charge? Shuffle some papers. If the other verdict is overturned, then you can always bring the guy up for trial. —But Tyler was shuffling his own papers now, driving uselessly round and round and round. As night fell he was rolling up Columbus where he saw a long restaurant with many people at many tables all sitting behind glass; he perceived a woman’s bluejeaned buttocks and blonde hair at a bank machine, then cars cold and fishy in the night, all framed by a string of lights. A red Chinese sign dwelled upon a white wall. Then he drove to the wharf, in downslop-ing smooth silence. The bright boiled-crab red neon sign of the Safeway directed him onward toward a multi-tier parking garage which was open and lit like those “pretty” Roman ruins. It was foggy in Cow Hollow, and foggy going down Gough Street. When he crossed Jackson, a yellow light winked at him like a friend, and so he let himself coast back into the Tenderloin again.