The Royal Family

by William T. Vollmann

  | 492 |

  The Hotel Liverpool on Turk Street had been taken over by Romanians since the last time he’d stayed there, which had been a good six or seven years ago. Tired burly middle-aged men worked in Reception and mopped the floors. When he saw somebody mopping the floors he was impressed. Upstairs, of course, the same old carpet lingered on, fuzzed, linted, worn and grimed, with pale stain-islands of urine and beer and toothpaste. Thirty-five by the day, one forty-five by the week. His room was spacious. On its blue walls some creative tenant with a felt tip marker had portrayed whores in fishnet bras and fishnet stockings, and then all around the lintel marched well-rendered ants and spiders. There was an attached bathroom with a tub and toilet; on its walls one of the middle-aged men had too frugally attempted to whitewash away those magnificent insect studies, but as only one coat of paint had been employed the great spiders still lurked, more cunning and sinister now than ever, because they seemed to be hiding themselves in ambush.

  He opened the window to let the smell out. The room quickly filled with flies.

  It wasn’t a bad place, though. The lock on the door was solid, and the dresser had all its drawers.

  He went out to search for the Queen, street by street. The Tenderloin was nothing but a blighted, darkened, stained place in his heart. Shadows oozed beneath the signs of the Oriental massage clubs. Returning in the darkness, he learned where the entomological inspiration on the wall had come from, for upon that sea of mildew called “carpet” sailed a goodly fleet of cockroaches.

  Seven o’clock, eight o’clock, night. His throat was raw; maybe he was crying in his sleep. Night, then night. (When the crazy whore finally believed and accepted that the Queen had been taken, she cried: No hope for my electricity! then threw herself headfirst out of a fourth-storey window.) Early in the morning his sleep was ended by the cheeps of a backing truck almost drowned out by rain, while somewhere nearby the new Queen was butt-fucking the other girls with dildoes. He parted the grimy curtain and saw that the streetlamp still burned; at that instant a pale seagull occluded that fierce yellow globe and then flew on up Mason Street. His eyes watered and he sneezed. A fly crawled on his hand. On the street, a man shouted. A pigeon uttered its liquid purring from some nearby window-ledge. Two leaners stood under the awning of the Greek food place because it was not yet seven-thirty and so the Greeks didn’t know or care that their home island was being used by non-payers. He listened to the rain. The sidewalk sweepers were all wearing yellow raincoats. The streetlamp was the same color. He had a sore throat.

  His mind fled down long halls made longer and spookier by the peephole’s lens. He yearned for the lamp’s warm shadows.

  It rained all day. Finally he flicked the switch and watched the lamp’s groping wings of light and shadow upon the wall’s sad blue sky.

  That night Red was loudly singing: Baby, baby, oh-h-h-h-h, bay-bee in the street-garbage. Someone had smeared an immense brownish-red turd across the sidewalk where Red pranced.

  Halloween dawned rainy. He feared Halloween because it was the day of the dead. Now that his Queen was gone, she wouldn’t be able to protect him anymore from Irene’s ghost. He found a Gideon’s Bible, but it spoke to him artificially, like Irene’s drab voice on the telephone toward the end, her sad voice which told him nothing; which was why for her, because she had never really let him into her heart, he’d begun to cultivate dislike, even hatred, thinking to kill his love and make the sadness go away, the result being that he ached for her when he thought of her, and whenever he saw her was cold to her (as was she to him) and he longed to get away from her; his wish being gratified, he then immediately despaired once again. By seven o’clock the bearded old panhandlers with top hats and cane were already leaning or squatting under papered-up windows, sharing cigarettes, rubbing their eyes, too hung over to sing. In the hallway a new tenant, longterm most likely from all the trouble he was going to, had been banging and creaking already for over an hour, trying bullheadedly to fortify his door with screw-eyes and padlocks.

  Just before eight the sun came out. The tops of the grubby old brick buildings looked almost handsome in that new light. Somebody was vacuuming. A black-and-white eased softly round the corner, stalking criminals and undesirables. A man crept across the sidewalk, his face and cigarette angled straight down.

  On Mission and Fifteenth he saw Beatrice with a little bag of bananas, and she greeted him gladly, so he put his arm around her and asked where she was off to. She said: In Mexico my people teach me how to feed the dead ones who we love. Now I want to do that for Mama my Queen.

  What do they do?

  They make like a little house and fill it with fruits and mole and stuff for the dead people. You have to go in the window.

  Where are you going to do that?

  In the tunnel, you know, by South Van Ness.

  I get it.

  Because I believe.

  You believe that the dead people come?

  Maybe I doan know if I believe or if I doan. My Mom does, my first Mama, but she passed away. There are signs that tell you that the dead people arose. Like the animals are nervous, or a little bug running like around for the food. They say the bug is the dead person coming back for his stuff. If you eat before the dead, you get a stomach-ache.

  And then noon and sunny and cool were the labels for this moment of Tyler’s life. The smell of piss and dirt from the pigeon-trees in front of the bus terminal were almost garden-fresh; piss-rain even if from drunks and unclean persons had brought out the good smell of soil even in that abused earth studded by cigarette butts. Downtown’s cubescape coolly shadowed the emboldened Halloween ghouls already creeping out from under the tombstones which roof the collective unconscious—let’s be psychoanalytical! The woman at the Greyhound desk was witch-garbed. Two Brady’s Boys came as themselves, standing shinyshoed, the senior partner telling the other: You don’t wanna cover the same pattern. You have a sector. We’re working P Sector today. —But Tyler hardly ever saw Brady’s Boys anymore. Having accomplished their mission, they’d dwindled away. (He thought about burglarizing their headquarters to search their files, but by the time he’d gotten his courage or recklessness to full steam the office had closed.) The film guy downstairs at Adolph Gasser’s had come as a robot comprised of silver-painted cardboard boxes, his circuit-board heart upon his breast. Up First Street came a woman dressed as a cow, with an immense pink rubber udder suspended from her crotch, the many nipples thrashing like keys upon a jailor’s belt.

  A thin black boy in goggling sunglasses clung to a fire hydrant in the style of a praying mantis.

  As he stared at the hydrant, Tyler felt himself begin to succumb to a terrible sense of filth and death because he had passed through here for too long; that was all anyone could do in that world, pass through: stay, and it ate you; go, and you were gone; and while you were there your alternatives were the stale and stuffy stench inside or the smell of piss outside—actually, it wasn’t that bad; he was forgetting the Vietnamese restaurants, the sheer beauty of the night women decked out for maximum sexual recognition; in other species that was most often the role of the male—but he could not deny that whenever he came out of one of those hotels he felt as if he just escaped being stifled, or as if he could practically unpeel from his face, like the gauze curtains in some bar which halftoned the passers-by into quasi-silhouettes, a film of congealed malice and despair; and whenever he went back inside, it was worse. Still, he had bars. Who could fail to value the Cinnabar’s late afternoon goldenness, its warmth like the inside of a whiskey bottle? —And I don’t mind being unable to explain it, said the television; would you call this a miracle? —Outside, rotten bananas, gorgeously black and yellow like some scrambled tiger, lay on top of the pay phone.

  | 493 |

  The Queen was gone, but the world did not end. The Tenderloin half opened one eye, smelled itself, scratched itself, and went back to sleep. (I’m the last to go to sleep and the first to get up, bragged
a sad vig; he was almost the last of the Brady’s Boys.) Time will not stop. Living in the past is as illegal as possessing a fellow citizen’s rap sheet. Once upon a time, the Tenderloin used to be the Barbary Coast with its Chinese opium dens, which now have gone, obliterated in the great fire after the quake of 1906, and now the Tenderloin, too, with its danger and its hard, vibrant blackness has begun to slip away. Japanese high-life hotels and jazz clubs punctuate the streets. And Capp Street without the Queen, that was like some old Roman amphitheater revivified by the shouts and laughs of little Arab schoolgirls. Time-blasted columns rise everywhere around them, and, like the thistles and flowers, the girls don’t care. They form in a circle and dance around their teacher to cassette music played loud on a ghetto blaster, singing Arab disco songs. San Francisco without the Queen forgot the Queen. She’d been an interesting chapter, to be sure, as unforgettable while she lasted as the sensations of unlucky johns who sat clutching their balls, clipboards on their knees as they waited for the pain to pause so that they could complete their health questionnaires. —Wait a minute, said the lady behind the glass. Her muffled voice called the petitioners back and back. Children cried in the corner, playing with plastic toys which stank of anger. A little boy screamed. Domino was there too. She experienced a fiery feeling whenever she made urine. She pushed her blonde hair up, wrinkled her forehead and scowled at the baby. She was thinking about some money which she’d heard was hidden under a certain old man’s mattress. She wondered whether she could get him to stand up beside the bed so that he wouldn’t notice while her hand explored the boxsprings. Of course she could hold him close to her and give him a good suck to distract him while she . . . Meanwhile Chocolate smiled and swirled her high heels, her eyes getting bigger and more frightened by the moment. Chocolate was wearing a black rayon windbreaker which she believed made her look glamorous. It stank of the streets. She got up when her name was called, slung her purse over her shoulder, brushed her hair back with one hand, stuck out her chin and approached the appointment window where a plastic bottle and a key attached to a theftproof plastic block were waiting for her. She took these items to the women’s toilet, which she unlocked with the key, then entered. Groaning with pain, she pissed into the plastic bottle. Then came the doctor, then the prescription, and three days later she’d forgotten all about it.

  | 494 |

  His uninvited guest, the FBI man, sat down in the chair once occupied by Irene during that ill-fated chicken dinner so long ago now when John had advised him to find another girlfriend and Irene had remained so sad and silent. Tyler could scarcely prevent his face from splitting open with rage, to see another person sitting in her chair. It seemed like desecration to think of Irene in front of this intruder, so he tried to think about something else. Into his mind came an image of the genital-less child on the family sculptural column of the Pacific Stock Exchange. The hypocrisy of that rendering charged him with a salutary Canaanite bloodlust; he longed to sink his teeth into the FBI man’s throat.

  They gazed out the window at the fog for a while, and then the FBI man said: May I ask you something?

  Shoot, chuckled Tyler. Or is that the wrong thing to say to a G-man?

  What do you honestly think of Dan Smooth?

  I honestly think that he has sacrificed himself and others for something beyond human comprehension. You can put that in your case report.

  Let’s keep this on the level, the FBI man said. You want to worship snakes or hug a tree, you can do that on your own time. I don’t have a problem with that. This is a free country. But come down to earth for a minute, Henry. Let’s talk about Dan Smooth. First of all, anything to do with kids will get to me. I just love kids.

  So does Dan Smooth bugger little kids? Is that what you’re asking me?

  Well, does he, Henry?

  I wish you the best of luck in your investigation.

  Just answer me this. Do you like him? Do you approve of him?

  Not particularly. There. I answered you honestly.

  This guy is in trouble, Henry. You know that. Felonies up the kazebo.

  Is that dorsal or ventral to the blazzazza?

  All you have to do is cooperate.

  Said the spider to the fly. Hey, I hear the Bureau is so behind the times today, still back in the 1950s and 1960s that they use three-by-five index cards. Is that just a rumor?

  You’re a private detective, Henry, said the FBI man. In a very loose sense, you could be said to be part of this justice system of ours. Now, Henry, this is a case about justice. This is good against evil, Henry. Which side do you stand on?

  As long as we have professionals on both sides, drawled Tyler, this great justice system of ours will be in good shape.

  | 495 |

  Tyler refused to cooperate with the FBI partly because after that first interrogation flanked by the posters which warned PARENTING IS DIFFICULT the memory of Dan Smooth’s face sat heavy on his chest. No matter what Smooth had done, he would not betray him. Perhaps Smooth’s semicontrovertible arguments that as it was he had already betrayed Irene, the Queen, his mother and John swayed his unconsciousness’s deliberations in the direction of silence, which after all defined the ethos of the entire royal family.

  | 496 |

  Biting his lip, he telephoned Detective Hernandez again.

  Yo, buddy, what’s up? Any luck with that broad you were checking out?

  Still looking, said Tyler. I had something else I wanted to ask you about. You remember that Dan Smooth guy you turned me onto that time?

  Oh, hey, Danny Smooth! Do I remember? Do frogs catch flies? Hoo, boy, is that old lech in a heap of trouble! Kind of sorry to see him go down in a way, because he did help us out a few times, but them’s the breaks. You can’t be messin’ around with twelve-year-old nookie.

  Well, Mike, I was wondering if there’s anything we can do for the guy. You know, he—

  Henry, my very good chum, listen up. Dan Smooth knew what he was doing and he deserves whatever he’s going to get. He’s seen it coming for years. I know, because he told me. You know what I think? A guy can get away with things and keep getting away with things for so long, and then one day some insignificant little episode wraps around his ankle, and then he can’t get away with a damned thing more, because he’s done, kaput. Know what I’m saying? Dan Smooth is at that stage, Henry, and there is nothing that you or I or anybody can do except maybe grease the drop he’s gonna fall through after the hangman puts the noose around his goddamn stinkin’ child molestin’ neck . . .

  | 497 |

  What sort of proof do you want? he gently asked the telephone.

  What do you mean? the woman said. Just proof.

  In a hit-and-run homicide, is a fingerprint on a car enough to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt? I mean, for a probation revocation hearing, yes, but . . .

  Mr. Tyler, I really don’t understand.

  All right. Do you want eight-by-ten glossies of the two of them having intercourse, or will it be enough for me to call you up and tell you that I saw them going into such-and-such a motel together for one hour in the middle of the afternoon?

  I—

  Do you want to know or don’t you want to know? I’m not trying to bully you, ma’am. This is what I say to all my clients.

  I . . . I guess if you tell me you saw them together in a hotel, that would—I mean, I . . .

  I understand. What you never want to do in a situation like this is to go halfway. Better either to resolve to trust your husband absolutely, or else you gotta go for the nitty-gritty. It’s so hard to know anything, I mean really know anything. There’s always another explanation if you want to believe it enough. Let’s say you see the two of them humping under the covers; maybe you can convince yourself he’s helping her find her car keys—

  Mr. Tyler, do you really have to be so graphic?

  Sure I do. Lemme give you another example. Let’s say you’re in love with somebody who maybe doesn’t even exist and you—a
nd you—oh, forget it.

  Are you okay? the woman whispered. I thought this was about my problem but somehow it’s starting to feel like it’s about you, I mean, I . . .

  Because you can’t ever know anything. What if the woman you love doesn’t even have a social security number or fingerprints? Then how can you believe anything? So maybe you want those eight-by-ten glossies so that years from now if you ever regret divorcing him and your mind starts trying to be kind you can take ’em out of the drawer and see how ugly they look together and then you’ll believe, yeah, this was real; this happened.

  I see.

  What’s your religion?

  I’m a Catholic.

  Then you do see. Because don’t all those crosses and relics and holy pictures help you believe? Don’t they make it all real?

  I feel like we’re kind of going on a tangent here, Mr. Tyler.

  All right. Well, let me just say one more thing. The reason that Jesus worked miracles was to provide material proof that what He was saying was true. If you feel bad when you get those photos, just remember that proof is a miracle. It’s a spiritual thing. Because it’s so goddamned hard to get proof of anything, and even with proof I sometimes . . .

  Mr. Tyler?

  Yeah?

  Is there anything I can do to help you?

  I’m sorry. I know I was going off on tangents like you said. Chalk it up to professional enthusiasm. Tell you what. I feel embarrassed now. How about if I follow your husband and the other woman for nothing? I mean, I . . .

  | 498 |

  Lifting his head, he could just see above the wooden railing the rival lecterns whose black nameplates read respectively DEFENDANT and PLAINTIFF.

  Henry Tyler, said the voice of judgment.

  Here.

  V. T. & R. Credit, Incorporated, said judgment.