The Royal Family

by William T. Vollmann

  Represented, came the hearty, remorseless voice of his enemy, whom he’d never met until now. He and his enemy were sitting alone together in the front row, inches from that forehead-high railing whose sign commanded NO GUM, FOOD OR DRINKS IN COURT. His enemy was a pale, somewhat flabby young man in a blue blazer. Perceiving Tyler’s inspection, his enemy rewarded him with a sincere and indeed rather sweet smile whose only odious quality, if any, would have been its self-confidence. Tyler could not help liking him. His enemy’s colleagues, the agents who’d haunted and infested Tyler’s telephone for months now, who’d nagged, then warned, then threatened, and finally, in a stunning abrogation of their personalized ill will, offered to negotiate for pennies on the dollar, just so they could close Tyler’s case, these ghosts had never meant any more to him than entities which must be kept off; they shamed him and he dreaded them, for which cause he’d been rude to them, faithful to his cardinal axiom that one’s only choice lies between belligerence and cravenness. Now all that lay buried deeper than Irene’s bones. He loved his enemy. He longed to turn the other cheek.

  We do have stipulated judgment forms that you will be required to fill out, said the official voice.

  The previous case had finished now. A businessman had come in rolling an immense flat tire, Exhibit T. A cop had held the courtroom door open as he came. The door closed; the cop stood scratching his thigh beneath the holster. Now the tire was gone; likewise the businessman with his anger, his shame, his sweaty armpits and tire-grimed hands. —Judgment suspended, ruled the court.

  And Tyler himself, he hung suspended above his own future, just as he had throughout that instant longer and more barren than infinity when he had watched his twitching fingers begin, in utter disobedience to his will, to strain toward Irene’s thigh for the very first time; just as he had when, learning from his mother that Irene was dead, he’d resolved to be faithful to her forever; just as he had when the tall man had led him down that dark and dripping tunnel to the Queen and he had allowed himself to believe in her, giving up his gun and kneeling to receive her saliva; just as he had when she’d offered him the false Irene to love and he’d accepted; just as he had when he’d known that he could not love the false Irene anymore; just as he had when he’d accepted the Mark of Cain as his own emblem of damnation and integrity forever; just as he had when the Queen had offered him her soul, her magic, her heart and her cunt; just as he had when he’d realized that she was doomed; just as he had when she’d left this earth and he’d searched ever more unavailingly; just as he had when Dan Smooth had turned to him in need; just as he had when Irene’s ghost rushed back into his arms to love and hate and smother him; just as he had when, understanding that the Queen, Sunflower and Sapphire were all holy by virtue of being degraded unto the very death, he’d resolved likewise to go in the highest, lowest direction he could, determined at the eleventh hour to make something of himself, to become “authentic” or honest or purified or more like one of those three prostitutes, no matter what it cost him; and now the next thing was about to occur. He knew that it was a trivial thing, but still it was the next thing.

  He did not feel present anywhere anymore. Did this constitute a failure spiritual or otherwise? Sapphire had been present only in the most unearthly way. Sunflower had died sleepy and confused. Only the Queen had continued ever aware.

  He did not understand what he should do now. He needed his Queen—oh, how he needed her! If only he’d thought to ask her more questions, or—

  Summoned, Tyler and his creditor approached their respective lecterns. Tyler felt shabby. Erect, his creditor proved more resplendent yet from the waist down—wool slacks, shiny shoes. He required no Mark!

  And suddenly I get served with these papers, Tyler explained, hardly listening to himself. So I actually got so upset that I just stopped payment. You know how it is, your honor.

  Knees apart, his creditor nodded sympathetically, gazing into Tyler’s eyes. Tyler admired him more and more.

  So, uh, the way I see it, your collections people violated the law, Tyler concluded. For an instant he felt awed by his own righteousness, but then his creditor’s shining eyes made him sleepy, submissive, ready to settle on any terms.

  His new friend said: Mr. Tyler, we can either request a continuance to find out what they promised on the phone, or we can resolve this matter right now . . .

  Tyler discovered a sign which read: DO NOT ARGUE, QUESTION OR INTERRUPT EACH OTHER. When his turn came round again, he tried to respect the sign, and said: Look, I don’t want to be a jerk or anything. Just tell me what you think we should do.

  If you want to compromise with me, replied his friend in a tone of the utmost kindness. I can certainly take a down payment. Meanwhile, what I’m gonna do is request a continuance. But my question is, we called you several times and—

  Well, I don’t know about the several times, Tyler lied, hanging his head.

  Mr. Tyler, you’re not to interrupt.

  Sorry, Your Honor, I just . . .

  Yeah, Mr. Tyler, I understand, his friend told him sympathetically. But all you had to do was call us. V. T. & R. is always just a phone call away. Anyway, that’s history. Here’s the balance you owe, and I’m gonna . . .

  Tyler stopped listening. He longed for the moment when all the muffled underwater voices would cease, and his creditor would sit down next to him again in the front row, drooping his wrists between his thighs, gazing lovingly into space. Or maybe they’d meet in the corridor and go out afterward for a drink at the Wonderbar. His creditor wanted to help him; his creditor would save him—

  | 499 |

  Past the body-piercing shop Haight Street begins to steepen, and at Baker commences the plateau called Upper Haight, with Buena Vista Park a slanted wall of green on the left, bearing its loungers, panhandlers, sleepers, tourists, map-readers, and bus-watchers; here it was on an afternoon of sweetness infused with the perfectly pitched almost painful bugling of bus brakes and the smell of just-cut grass that Tyler, paying homage to a compulsion he could not control, went into the bead store and bought some pewter and bone beads. An hour swirled by like the new Queen slowly unwinding the chain from her wrist as the latest bitch in trouble knelt, not daring to gaze upon her tattooed glitter-frescoes. He sat on the grass and strung unhappiness on a piece of silver wire.

  A boy with long blond hair and eyes whose lids resembled Tyler’s tattered leather wallet sat beside him and said: Where are you staying?

  Capp Street.

  Oh. Oh.

  And what are you about? sighed Tyler, stringing beads.

  Meeting you! —and with this the boy thrust out his hand and left it hanging weirdly in midair until Tyler took it. It felt like white bread soaked in milk.

  I like how your hand feels, said the boy yearningly.

  Well, glad you enjoyed it, said Tyler. You have anything to tell me before I go?

  You’re going? You’re going?

  Yep.

  Where?

  To pick up some prostitutes.

  Boys or girls?

  Girls.

  Girls! said the boy, stunned.

  See you, said Tyler, but the boy didn’t answer.

  Nodding at the blonde stubble-headed girl whose skull was tattooed or dyed with sky-blue stars, at the cat-quick skinny runaways who giggled and then suddenly spilled out shrill obscenities like blowfishes puffing themselves menacingly against some threat; bowing to black girls whose dreadlocks were chased in gold—not as many tie-dyed people as ten or twenty years ago; the thing now seemed to be short hair and T-shirts—Tyler strolled, playing with his beads.

  At Shrader Street he noticed two Brady’s Boys excitedly pacing, one saying to the other: See that guy in the trenchcoat? He’s a pickpocket. He used to work for the Queen. Let’s bust his ass! —Sutro Tower’s red and white backbone rose headlessly above the Victorian houses, its hollow vertebrae blue with sky. At the end of Haight Street, Golden Gate Park drew its green line against the evil wo
rld. More people stationed themselves on the grass than he remembered, cigarette smoke rising at a slow slant between coughing and spitting heads and greasy little backpacks and ball caps pointed backward. They shared cartons of french fries. Sometimes a man would stride across the grass, his shirt opened to the tanned or tainted flesh, and another shirt tied around his waist, and pigeons would flock around his head. In a year or so, just as Strawberry had prophesied on that day when the tall man came home from the hospital, our local government would build a fence here to keep them out. A boy in a cap, a hooded sweatshirt and tall rubber rainboots which came up to his knees struggled in the hot sun, dragging his pack behind him; sighing, he threw it down and lay on it. A girl dressed in blue denim from head to toe wandered past him, sipping from a paper cup.

  Why don’t you sleep in the park? said the hooded boy to the girl.

  Tried that once but it’s too cold.

  It’s not so bad. Anyone can do it.

  Tyler listened, strangely excited and encouraged, he didn’t know why.

  It’s a secret, the boy went on. The manager he don’t know I sleep here.

  What time does he get there?

  Eight o’clock. I hear the first bus, and then the second bus, and then I know I gotta be awake and out of here.

  On a bench, three Brady’s Boys were looking at a tourist map, one of them laughingly reciting: There’s scum on the streets! We got right on our side! —But the second Brady’s Boy, who was older, sadly shook his head and said: It’s called rapport, guys. You don’t want treat ’em like crap. You wanna develop ’em.

  Sighing, Tyler clattered his beads.

  | 500 |

  The pink form said in English and Spanish:

  * * *

  —NOTICE TO DEFENDANT—

  YOU ARE BEING SUED BY PLAINTIFF

  To protect your rights, you must appear in court on the trial date shown . . .

  * * *

  Let’s see, there was his small claims case number: 97SC08089 . . .

  It was some bank in South Dakota this time. His other credit card company used them.

  DEFAULT ON A REVOLVING CHARGE ACCOUNT DATED 22/20/93

  A. _x__I have asked defendant to pay this money but it has not been paid.

  Maybe I’ll challenge the venue, he muttered to himself. Bastards.

  Oh, the hell with it. I’ll just default.

  For a moment, he imagined himself in court, looking into his debtor’s eyes. Then he said to himself: Hell, I don’t care what they think.

  One of the first indications that a person is becoming an addict is that he loses interest in others. A love-addict masks this symptom by virtue of the addiction itself, which is others.

  He still had his computer, on whose monitor sailed a pretty screen saver depicting the outer planets. Accessing Webscape Crawler, he grimaced at the familiar connecting noise and ran a nationwide credit check on himself.

  Oh, fuck, he said. This really is not too good.

  Hardened in his defiance, like any sinner destined for hell, which must be as hot as the Greyhound station in Marysville on a July day, Tyler had long since walled his pallid heart away from embarassment, so that when Irene was still alive he’d tortured her with endless declarations of that submission which really is not submission at all since it insists on being accepted; he’d yielded himself to what he believed was Irene, but in reality was nothing but his own terrible passion which drove him day after day to telephone Irene and leave such messages as: Irene, I wanted to tell you how happy I was to hear your voice on the answering machine last night because you know that I love you so much; I’m passionate about you, Irene; Irene, I wish I could be the ground you walked on. Irene, I’m yours. I belong to you. —Did he know or care that John could call in from work at any time and by pressing two keys of the touchtone phone play back every recorded message? Once when he and John and Irene were all staying at Mrs. Tyler’s house in Sacramento, Irene and John had gone home a day early due to a crisis at John’s office, and the lovesick man stayed on with his mother, then left a message for Irene (who was out buying oranges, halibut and long green beans in Chinatown) that he had slept last night between the sheets she’d slept in and on her pillow found two long, beautiful strands of her black hair which he would keep forever; he felt happy uttering these words for the record, or at any rate relieved; but as soon as he’d hung up, sadness welled up through his chest, flooding and drowning his heart, rising into his throat so that he almost choked and then burst out of his eyes in very painful tears; rising still higher, it flooded his skull, sinking into his brain to make him almost drunk; he stared at the telephone, licking his lips, craving to take the receiver into his hand and dial Irene’s number again (it hadn’t even been five minutes). He didn’t call her for the rest of the day. That night at seven and then at eight and at nine he glanced at the phone but it did not ring. When he went to bed he brought the telephone close, just in case, but she never called. The next day he was so sad and anxious he felt almost crazy. He wanted to dial her but said aloud: Don’t you have any shame?

  (Oh, he was entirely capable of shame. One windy afternoon when John, Irene, Tyler, the dog and Mrs. Tyler drove across the Golden Gate Bridge for a stroll on Stinson Beach, Irene had walked alone, looking squat and disheveled as she sand-trudged with her head down, her hair messed up, her legs braced apart, a bulky sweater further widening her; and John was chatting quite cheerfully with his mother while Tyler tried to be good but never quite succeeded in dragging himself into the breeze-snatched conversation (which had to be shouted, almost, against the sea-roar), so he gradually allowed air currents to guide him closer to the dark wet sand-edge and found Irene beside him. He stroked her hair. She neither smiled, nor spoke, nor moved away. For a good quarter-hour they walked side by side, he feeling dull and almost angry at Irene, who possibly felt the same; on the way back, uphill through the windy dunes, John had dropped behind to throw sticks into the ocean for the dog, and Mrs. Tyler gasped to Irene: I’m not so young anymore; you’re so strong; and she grasped her daughter-in-law’s shoulder. —Oh, come on, said Irene, shrugging her off, and marched ahead alone. Tyler hung his head, humiliated by Irene’s rudeness to his mother.)

  His hand lifted the receiver; he overruled his hand. At six that evening the tension within him locked him almost breathless, so he dialled Irene’s number and got a busy signal. He felt a sickening illicit thrill, as if he had heard her micturating behind a closed door. She was there at that moment. (No matter that it might have been John.) Irene was talking to someone. Could it be Jesus? Had she been just then guaranteed a ticket to Heaven? Slightly eased, he was able to resist phoning her for another two hours. At 8:01, he called and Irene answered. She said that she was busy. She was very nice to him. She chatted with him for nearly fifteen minutes, after the third or fourth of which he felt his desperation begin to ebb. For the remaining ten minutes he felt amazed and thankful to be his old self. Irene had saved him. He told her this, at which she laughed lightly and said: I never knew I was so powerful! —He babbled: Now I know how my heroin junkie friends feel when they fix. They call it getting well. You’re my drug, Irene. You’re my best, best drug. —That was how he spoke to her. She laughed and seemed to like it (although really she might have felt uncomfortable; she might have even hated him). She said it always calmed her to talk to him. That night he won a victory against himself: he insisted that he need not tell her anymore that he loved her. If he had, she would merely have woodenly replied thank you. He left the conversation gracefully, feeling not exactly happy, but immensely relieved. Five or ten minutes after he was alone again, with the darkness outside, the tension began to return. He almost panicked. It was a sickness. He remembered how when he’d been learning to swim, aged eight or nine, they’d told him to tread water and he was all right until suddenly the water didn’t hold him up anymore and he was going under, drowning, not knowing why. Now with Irene he was terrified by what was happening to him. Above all he
was terrified of his own evil.

  The next day he called her answering machine and said: Irene, last night I had a fever and a sore throat and I, uh, I dreamed that I was sucking your breasts, which were full of very hot, sweet, thick, whitish-yellow, sweet milk that glowed in the dark and tasted like vanilla. In my dream, your milk soothed my throat. I woke up and my sore throat was better.

  He hesitated, then went smoothly on: The other news is that I can either come in on Friday and take you out for lunch, or I can wait until Saturday and meet you at any time you wish. Please call me and let me know.

  Irene did not return that call.

  The next day he called her answering machine and said: Irene, please forgive me. I’m sorry. I’ll try to control my feelings better. I’ll try not to call you every day anymore. I won’t call you unless you call me. I’m just calling now because I didn’t hear from you about lunch. If you feel uncomfortable around me now, I won’t bother you anymore, I swear, Irene. Just let me know your plans. I’m sorry I’ve been so stupid. I haven’t felt like this since I was sixteen. I feel so idotic and angry at myself and so miserable. I don’t know why this had to happen. Don’t stop being my friend.

  Irene had not returned that call, either.

  | 501 |

  There was a Cambodian girl he knew who looked a little like Irene.

  He put his hand on her thigh. All day she let him hold her hand; she’d held his hand back; she’d snuggled up into his arms. He began to stroke her thigh. He stroked her hair.

  You like to touch my hair? she said.

  Your hair is so soft, he said.

  (She had to stay home to care for her parents. Her sister she didn’t trust so much.)

  Now his hand was right between her legs, and he was rubbing her mons veneris which he could feel through the polyester slacks which were getting damp there. Imperceptibly she opened her thighs a little more. He stroked, and they never looked at one another.