The Lucky Star

by William T. Vollmann

  Go ahead, honey.

  How many other lovers do you have?

  And the lesbian smiled.

  I mean, if it makes you uncomfortable . . .

  Not so many. And I don’t love any of them the way I love you . . .

  . . . Which was to say (expressing the matter in purely physical terms) that whereas most of the other women were best fulfilled at the very beginning, by cunnilingus, Hunter needed extra time and gentle time, multiple acts of penetration, usually begun by her sitting astride the lesbian, riding the big dildo up and down, slowly moaning, bending down to kiss her, and then, forgetting everything but the motion, sitting straight up to feel the sensation most deeply, while the lesbian gripped her breasts and sucked her nipples or her throat just the way she liked it; her moans would enrich themselves and she would be smiling; then she would get tired and it would be the lesbian’s time to lay her down on her back and ride her missionary style, kissing and kissing her gaping mouth, while the first climax came. They would rest awhile, cuddling and whispering, and then the lesbian would do it again, on which occasion Hunter would get quickly to the point, crying out: oh, my God!

  And after many sessions, Hunter had overcome her shame so that she too could enjoy cunnilingus. More than nimble, she now embraced Neva with the seemingly boneless flexibility inherent to ballerinas.

  They arose that morning, just about the time that Judy was dressing up for her tryout at Himmel’s department store, and while Hunter was in the shower the lesbian was already stripping the bed; she had two more pairs of sheets, but the mattress needed to air out before her next lover came. She got everything in the laundry hamper just as the bathroom door opened. How soon she would again be giving and giving of herself was not for Hunter to know. The transwoman was titillated by knowing, while the retired policeman and I both collected facts of all kinds for a hobby; but for just the same reason that I preferred not to foresee my death, so Hunter would rather not face the details of her own non-uniqueness.

  Well? said Xenia.

  Oh, my God, said Hunter. It was so unbelievable. My clit is still vibrating . . .

  Didn’t I tell you? I’m always stressing the sexual emotion. That’s the key about being with women, and Neva—

  Are you saying I don’t know about being with women? The truth is—

  Why get pissy? said Xenia. You fucked her; so did I; now come over here and we’ll fuck each other.

  Hunter said: I don’t know which of you I’m more jealous of.

  Double-thickening her mascara, Xenia smiled and said: I think jealousy’s hot. And power and desire will always be hot—

  20

  We called Neva the bodhisattva—or, if you prefer, the saint who after dying and being rewarded with heaven could not endure to stay there, but, true to nature, set out straight for hell to be with the eternally afflicted and oppressed. But why? Maybe her childhood defined her, in which case she was merely masochistically twisted.

  Aquinas distinguishes between love as an appetite and love as a willed act. What the lesbian offered was the second.

  So far the retired policeman lacked a theory as to who or what she was. But for a fact, he disbelieved in bodhisattvas. Not one had ever submitted to a polygraph test.

  The first suspicion that his bitch might be changing on him descended on a hot Sunday afternoon in early September at the vegetarian Chinese restaurant on Kearny Street, where he, ordinarily carnivorous, sat drinking jasmine tea and picking over his cashew-decorated mock chicken, watching the doorway’s tiled tunnel across which a tall old grey-clad Chinese gentleman whose shoes appeared much too large for him slowly crept, with his cane outstretched before him at a rigid vertical.

  As the cars trolled by, the translucent glass horse on the windowsill temporarily darkened.

  The cashews in his chicken dish were nearly as rare as semiprecious stones in a sack of highway gravel.

  He felt irritated that Judy was late because now they would miss that midafternoon rerun of a certain forensics television show that he liked to watch lying in bed with his upper half raised by pillows to a forty-five-degree angle and Judy beside him, nestling her head in his armpit while he explained that the episode of the man who for cash had faked his wife’s suicide by stabbing her (afterward for the sake of orderliness shooting the supposed rapist whom he and she had invited over to play at bondage threesomes) could not have happened as presented, in proof of which he referred her to the bloodstain patterns, never mind that the supposed double murderer from the way he used words and his manner of very slowly blinking must be saddled with a low IQ.

  The instant he took his first swallow of tea, his belly began to ache. Although he chewed the brown rice, celery, carrots and vegetarian chicken very slowly, his ankles rapidly swelled, tingling icy-hot as they so frequently did now; something must be seriously wrong with him, so fuck it.

  When Judy became an hour late, he went home.

  The dread or anger he felt rose up inside his throat, in the form of hot acid. (But I do have a long slow fuse, he congratulated himself.) Without looking, he fiddled on the bedside table, groping for his stomach tablets. His hand was a fat greyhaired crab decorated with age-spots. Encountering the paper-wrapped tube it had sought, the crab squatted down, pinched out three pills and clawed them into his mouth. He chewed and chewed with commendable patience. Finally he swallowed. Now he could forget about his throat.

  Groaning, he bent over to tie his shoes. This operation made his waistband cut into his paunch, so that he had to hold his breath.

  He found his keys, turned out the light, double-locked the door behind him and limped downstairs. Actually his feet were scarcely puffy at all just yet; what a wonderful life. Conquering the limp, he strode into the Y Bar just as little Erin skittered out. Alicia, the junior barmaid, was on shift.

  Where’s Judy? he said.

  I don’t know you, sir, said Alicia. Are you a regular?

  Looking around, he saw Shantelle, who was dancing in the corner, with her earbuds in. He diagnosed methamphetamine. Hobbling toward her, he crooked a finger.—She lifted away one earbud; some kind of blues thumped tinnily out of it like the heartbeats of an insect robot. She knew what he wanted, and he knew she loved to tattle.

  Your old lady’s out and about with Neva, she informed him. And you know what, J. D.? I don’t trust either one of them motherfuckin’ bitches.

  Who would? he said.

  Sir, said Alicia, if you want to stay here you have to order something.

  I order you to suck my cock, he said, which gave Shantelle a fit of the giggles. Wavering over to him on skyscraper heels, she said: I’ll suck your cock for twenty dollars.

  But are you a virgin?

  Oh, baby, I am!

  Now what do you have against Neva?

  What call does she have to keep doing her business for nothing?

  Sir, said Alicia, you need to go now.

  Glad to, he said, because Shantelle had as usual concisely and constructively analyzed the situation. Now his mind had something to do.

  He plodded up the hill to Pho Truong and treated himself to a bowl of brisket soup with cilantro and sprouts. After two bites he remembered that he had just eaten vegetarian chicken and that his belly was no good. Then, as a reward for having done something healthy, he went to Jojo’s Liquors, where the Palestinian clerk slid over his fifth of Old Crow. Then he started creeping home.

  Hey! called Shantelle, clattering toward him like an untuned Model T.

  Hey, what? he said. You’re out of your zone. Won’t broad daylight kill a girl like you?

  Help me get that motherfuckin’ Neva off her. That would be good for you, I swear—

  Don’t pretend you care about me.

  C’mon, babe, you know I do.

  When you lie, you look even more like a goddamned vampire.

&nb
sp; She started whining.—I want Neva to myself! Judy keeps hogging my turn, and I want—

  Honey, I need to lie down, he said, and Shantelle, amazingly, read his grey face and comprehended that he did.

  He had almost reached the front grating of Empire Residences, which is to say home, when she came dancing back.—Please, J. D.! Pull your bitch off my bitch.

  How? he said.

  Talk to Judy. Tell her! Beat her flabby ass.

  What’s so great about Neva? Just curious.

  Just tell your Judy to lay off, ’cause I—

  Get back to your graveyard, he said. Oh, Jesus, my head hurts.

  Wisely he proceeded upstairs by elevator. Then he lay down on his back; the bed creaked. The headache kept savaging him. Fortunately, he had preserved half a Narcocaine (a purchased souvenir of Francine), so he chewed that up and waited. He kept waiting.

  Finally he dialled up Francine.

  John Daniel, she greeted him. That’s what it says on my caller I.D. So that’s what your initials stand for. I always wondered—

  I’ve called you before.

  You did? Well, I’m getting old.

  When do you come to work?

  Four-thirty.

  I need to buy something from you.

  I’m out.

  Well, who has any? My headache’s killing me.

  I’ll ask around.

  Thanks. Francine, why’s everyone so hot on this Neva?

  What do you mean?

  She must be a real good fuck. Right?

  Try her and see. Look, J. D.—

  Have you?

  Have I what?

  Tried her.

  Oh, you dirty old man! she chuckled. (She sounded happier and more tolerant than she used to.) Look. I’ll scout around, and maybe I’ll be able to help you out, but right now I’m scraping aluminum foil off a frozen pizza.

  All right, he said, frowning.

  So what was it about Neva? Was it something secret, or something just plain different? He unscrewed the cap of his Old Crow: volume reduction time. Then he waited some more. The headache barely moderated, so he gave up on that and began waiting for Judy.

  21

  She was having a bad day at Himmel’s department store, where a streamed, amplified and electronicized girl-voice kept singing break free and love me and it really really hurts while Judy, who longed to give the lesbian more than everything, pretended to concentrate on lining up the shoes so that they all pointed just so, and for extra fun stole peeks at couples going up and down the escalators; after five minutes her feet hurt and after ten it felt like an hour. A young man with long sandy hair came and flicked Judy’s line of shoes into disorder, one by one, nudging each shiny toe over the edge of the shelf. Judy smiled at him. He turned his back on her and went to work his magic on another shelf. Judy carefully, carefully readjusted each shoe.

  Looking furtively toward the wide counter beneath the big glowing screen where the high-power nosy girls lorded it over the others, she found that zone temporarily clear of the enemy, so she sat down, sighing.

  Judy, said the sudden, startling voice of Trina the middle manager right into her ear, you need to be on your feet. Get up right now. Sitting down between breaks is a firable offense.

  I’m sorry, Judy whispered.

  Is something wrong?

  No, I just, my feet hurt.

  If you continue on with us, said Trina, you should definitely invest in some rubber-soled shoes. And of course if you purchase from Himmel’s you’ll receive a twenty percent discount.

  Oh, said Judy.

  Now go over to Area Eight and get busy. You’re not to sit down until your lunch hour.

  Okay, said Judy, knowing that here too she would soon be terminated.

  22

  The retired policeman’s best friend, whom he hardly ever saw, was a black security guard who always wore sunglasses so that no one could see his emotions. Whenever he mentioned his beloved Mama who raised him in the fear of the Lord and used to knock him upside the head for disrespecting his Napoleonic little stepfather or for expressing a wish to join the Black Panthers, he would sooner or later refer to her death, then remove his sunglasses and excuse himself while the tears rivered out.—She was my best friend, he would say, at which the retired policeman would think: Well, I’m your best friend now.

  The security guard lived on the third floor of Donohue Towers. Four times a year, he and the retired policeman met for drinks at the Buddha Bar. The security guard said: Thank God my Mama raised me in the fear of the Lord. You know, there’s so much evil in the world.

  Amen, said the retired policeman very cynically.

  And you know, the security guard continued, nowadays, women who live on the first floor, they get raped all the time. I can hardly believe it. Sometimes they break the kitchen window, and sometimes they come in through the bathroom. Now the way my Mama raised me, if a woman’s lying in her own bed, I would never think of forcing myself on her.

  Amen, said the retired policeman, pouring himself a shot of Old Crow.

  The Lord gave us bigger bones and bigger muscles, said the security guard. That’s so we can protect women. I would never even intimidate a woman by calling her a bitch or a ho. Back when I was still in the world, if a woman would yell and scream at me, I’d never hit her; I’d never yell back. I’d just say to her, excuse my language, I’d say: Remember, you’ve got the pussy but I’ve got the dick. And then I would leave. Because I was raised in the fear of the Lord.

  Amen.

  And then I would call her, and I’d say, if you wanna be nice, you can call me. And then I’d hang up. And they knew better than to call me back. My friend Bobby, one time he said to me, don’t you ever hitch up with a woman, because she be angry, she set all your belongings outside and change the locks! And I listened. That stuck with me. So I never lived with a woman. I never married.

  Smart move, said the retired policeman, because it was time for another shot.

  And I’m proud that I never once hit a woman. How about you, brother? Did you ever hit a woman?

  What for? said the retired policeman.

  Amen! cried the security guard.

  Feeling sad, the retired policeman popped three blue pills. He wanted to go home and beat the transwoman. But she wouldn’t have been there. She was fucking the lesbian, screaming with joy.

  23

  Sometimes when he was feeling especially well, the retired policeman would come into the Y Bar, holding the transwoman’s hand, and her face would flush because she was proud, ashamed and titillated to enter the Y Bar so obviously belonging to someone, while he would yawn or belch and then wink at Francine, the only person on those premises whom he respected—not that he’d ever let her know it.

  One time when Judy, wishing she could always feel as she now did, was running her hand through Xenia’s hair, he proposed a threesome, mainly to make Judy jealous (for a fact, she looked surprised), but Xenia said: The thing is, J. D.—well, how can I put this in a way that won’t lacerate your little ego? Men, I have found them to be disappointing in terms of they’re emotionally limited, and they’re bad communicators. They also tend to be duplicitous. The sidewalk kind of ends and then I’m looking off the edge of a cliff.

  Honey, he said, that’s just short of where I want you. Judy, get the fuck over here.

  And after he ordered his drink he would stand by the ladies’ room door, watching people and saying nothing, until the transwoman would come beside and slightly behind him, reaching out her sticky sweaty hand for him to swat away.

  The security guard was saying: In my time, we were raised to be nice to women. But these knuckleheads nowadays, they call ’em bitch and ho. That reduces their self-respect, so they’ll be intimidated.

  Amen, said the retired policeman. Pumping fists with his f
riend, he set out for the Y Bar, but the transwoman remained absent. (Victoria had described her as one of those chicks who, you know, whatever you tell her to do, she’ll do it.) He dialled her cell phone, but the call went to voicemail, while Francine, as unhappy as an actress, stood patiently answering a foreign tourist: I come, well, not from San Francisco exactly, but from a little place maybe a hundred miles from here. You haven’t heard of it, probably.

  What it is called?

  Stockton.

  Stockton, yes, I have heard. Is origin of stock market.

  Amazing, gushed Francine. You are so educated! Fourteen dollars. J. D., you want your usual?

  No, said the retired policeman, who gratefully went home, took off his shoes and had another drink.

  24

  We now find him ingesting a watered-down shot of Old Crow straight up at the Buddha Bar, sitting as far back as he could get, guarding with his back the humming refrigerator case of beers most of which still lived in their cardboard sixpacks and pretending to study his almost obsolete cell phone while he in fact cased that narrow establishment all the way from his end of the smoothworn wooded bar beneath the cheap red paper lanterns to the doorway in the middle of which glowed a pedestrian sign’s prohibitory orange hand: No criminals; only suckers. What the fuck did he care about the lesbian? On the other hand, who or what should he have cared about? A young couple sat closest to him, snuggling in together on their barstools. He inferred that they would play it safe; they’d never need an autopsy. Then there was a delicate, beautifully dark young African American fellow who was as wiry as a jockey and sat rubbing his breast shirt pocket, picking at something inside or behind it, maybe some hidden wire. With luck he was already in trouble. The Chinese barmaid had charged nearly ten dollars for the retired policeman’s drink, but liked the dollar tip sufficiently to leave him alone. On the far side of the jockey, an elegant woman who looked like Julie Andrews was telling an interested gentleman: I did, you know, like a couple of shows. I didn’t really want to do topless. That wasn’t for me, so that ruled me out straight away. I just didn’t want to get my boobs in. They had a gymnastic line; they were covered. I’m five-six, and they asked, who will go topless, and that’s what they were looking for, for the line. But I don’t think when I was cast for something or rejected I was ever told why.—Considering murdering the lesbian, the retired policeman listened to the cash register printing with the sound of a winning slot machine, and the barmaid’s wrists flickered over change and glasses while country music expressed itself with orchestral foreplay and choral orgasms. Why not one more Old Crow, maybe a triple? He swallowed it desperately. For a second it felt nearly as good as the slow sweet sinking into a warm bed after the third codeine tablet kicks in. Now it was getting on six p.m. that Saturday night, with a dozen drinkers in there already, a healthier-looking crowd than at the Y Bar; maybe they could even take booze or leave it. The barmaid wore a sequin-brimmed baseball cap; as she bent to make drinks or trundled back and forth behind the bar it sparkled like the flank of an immense carp while Julie Andrews explained: For the Cat Show, you know what they’re going for. They want long legs, and long hair; it’s all about the dancing. The whole hair thing, for me, I grew my hair; I got extensions. There was a certain stereotype for so many things. When they had American superstars in London, all the teenaged English girls would have the same makeup.—A young man in spectacles, looking like a techie or broker in his glasses and pin-striped shirt, sat down three stools from the retired policeman and very sincerely leaned into sight of his little phone, then tapped something, sipped his beer, read the label, and never noticed the retired policeman watching him. Maybe he was texting some hot fourteen-year-old decoy; it would be satisfying to send him to Vacaville, Mount Pleasant or maybe even San Quentin.