The Lucky Star

by William T. Vollmann

  7

  He told me: Then I realized, if I love Neva I have to love who Neva is.

  But then he thought about her opening her legs to Judy, Sandra, Shantelle, Xenia, Holly, Francine, Samantha, Al, Catalina, Erin, Selene, Victoria and me, and he felt sick! He felt hot, and began to breathe quickly and shallowly, clenching his fists. He was not angry, but could hardly endure the pain.

  8

  Whenever the lesbian pulled off her blouse, his nipples would harden. Her touch was like a cool wet sea-wind.

  9

  He went so crazy for her that he wanted her to drink a dozen plastic cups of water and then piss it out onto his face, but there were interruptions, and by the time her bladder was full the pills had worn off.

  10

  Once the lesbian got home, at a quarter past seven, in came Xenia. Once upon a time, not long after she had sodomized me for money (she’d advised me: with women I’m more of a bottom and with men I’m more toppy), I watched her looking through the diamonds of a grating in a Chinese grocery, watching all the pears, lemons and durians shine as gently as improved marzipan effigies of themselves, each one of which bore a crescent of light. She appeared unfulfilled. The retired policeman followed her up to the lesbian’s apartment. He informed me that when she came out she appeared sadder than before, but why wouldn’t he have said that, be it true or not? What I myself believe is that Neva charged her with ecstatic love and pleasure: In short, Xenia was moaning like a bumblebee.—Sweet Xenia! The earliest thing she could remember was climbing up in her crib and looking out at something so lovely that she had to reach it, so she clambered over the railing, fell down and hurt her eye. She told me this herself.—And if she did come downstairs looking sadder than before, maybe that was because she made herself be sad for the sake of humility and respect.

  11

  Francine would never let the lesbian go down on her because she didn’t consider herself good enough for our Neva, who gladly went down on anybody. As for me, I always kissed Neva’s feet, even when they were dirty. What if Xenia for the same reason denied herself some sort of after-completion? Worshipping Neva, we found it good manners to diminish ourselves. That was what the transwoman intended to convey when she texted the lesbian over and over.

  12

  Just as when one goes down Kearny toward Market Street, the most lusciously promising lights devolve into bank facades, chain pharmacies and luridly lit package stores, so our expectations of the lesbian necessarily imploded—likewise our self-expectations. But that was only what we pretended afterward. While it lasted, the more she gave us, the more we needed. And each of us received exactly the pleasure for which that person was fitted. For instance, over time she trained Victoria into a doublebarreled ecstasy by sliding her cunt-lubricated finger into the other woman’s anus just when and never before her moans had reached a certain volume of sincerity, so that when she came she screamed herself hoarse for pleasure; while in Xenia’s case the anal penetration extended rather than increased the delight, much as if a rapidly licking tongue slowed down near the end in order through frustrating the desperately slavering clitoris to build urgency and thereby amplify the final release; although Xenia would moan and tremble while the lesbian’s finger was inside her bottom, she could never finish until the lesbian wiggled her finger back out, at which point her response resembled a nuclear reactor’s when the control rods had fully withdrawn, so that fission could occur unhampered; at once Xenia began shaking and sobbing and corkscrewing her pelvis around the lesbian’s tongue, which flickered ever faster while the lesbian stroked her smooth and panting belly; then and only then did Xenia laughingly sob in a long sweet orgasm.—But the retired policeman, who had long since grown cold to individual cases, set out to compare conflicting perceptions of Neva, and ultimately to arrange them into something whose truth would be demonstrated by its likeness to many other examples of the same type. What was the lesbian, not who was she, was the quantity, or character, or crime he determined to uncover. But not one of us had yet uncovered the slightest questionable aspect of her behavior.

  13

  Determined to get his darling out from under the lesbian, even if only for one night, he dragged the transwoman way down South of Market to the Tiger Zone, where at midnight the green light and the yellow light began flashing, the cylindrical cage pulsing in colors, and the electronic-ish discoish music welled up like wonderful nausea while barechested boys circulated, selling shots of ultrasweet low-proof green drinks in test tubes each of which in turn were tucked into a boy’s waistband; the customer had to pull it out with his teeth.

  Go ahead, bitch, suck it out of him, wheezed the retired policeman, patting her shoulder like an indulgent father; but the transwoman flushed and shook her head.

  What? What’s your goddamned problem?

  The boy stood waiting.

  She needs to get drunk first, the retired policeman explained, but the boy only grimaced. He hated stingy customers.

  The truth was that Judy was afraid of doing something wrong, such as breaking her test tube before it left the boy’s briefs.

  A slender ultra-tall tranny began gliding round and round through the blackness, greeting fans. A stocky T-girl announced: We also have Cherry the Vagina behind the bar. We’ve got Davy, Sean and Peaches walking around semi-hard. Making short work of his quadruple shot of Old Crow, the retired policeman glanced into the adjacent booth, where a familiar redhead (he must have seen her at the Pink Apple or the Cinnabar) drew up her naked leg and sipped beer, yawning. The transwoman was already texting the lesbian.

  He began to feel sadder than he supposed he had ever been before, but if he could have seen his whole life he would have admitted that this wasn’t bad. Judy had plain forgotten him, but only for now. He thought of her leaving high and dry in favor of Cherry the Vagina, who hopefully didn’t have one, but he wasn’t going to do that, no more than a good father would abandon his little girl for acting out at nursery school. He was God’s gift, he was. Back when he still cared about her, Melba once got cross at him because when she showed up two hours late and he bought her dinner and gave her a hundred dollars, then said he had to go (which, strange to say, was true), she thought he was trying to get rid of her. He didn’t even punch her. What a pushover he was! And what did poor Judy know? So many mistakes for her to make, and before she knew it, he’d be dead! Delighted to envision how much she’d miss him then, he held out his glass, which Peaches, somewhat less than semi-hard, filled to the top with Old Crow. He took a happy swig, and his esophagus burned. Now his heartburn started acting up. Fortunately he’d charged his shirt pocket with a roll of magnesium carbonate tablets. Moronic Judy was still texting; he ought to punch her in the mouth. He willed himself back into the good old days, when that “all units” call sped him to the scene of the Sanchez murder—sirens and lights! There was no topping the thrill of being the first one to walk into the bedroom whose door had accrued seventeen bullet holes, never mind find old Sanchez lying face down, shot four times through the back and bludgeoned, with the naked wife leaning rigidly inside the shower, shot between the eyes, and then, best of all, down in the cellar, that pretty baby girl . . . ! He still got excited thinking about that. And finally he took Judy home.

  14

  I should have booked you for possession, Frank. You know how I got you off?

  But I didn’t—

  Don’t interrupt me. I told the sergeant you were mentally disabled. Then he said to me, he said: Oh, let that he-she bitch walk.

  Oh, J. D. . . . !

  Sure had fun patting you down.

  Thank you, honey.

  Do me a favor and rub some of that red tiger balm on my ankles; they’re fuckin’ killing me. Sometimes I crave a bullet, Frank.

  My name is Judy.

  All right. Do a good job and I’ll call you Judy. What the hell do I care? How long has it been? />
  Nine years now, she said, just then comprehending that this apartment had become part of her simply because she had wept and climaxed here, been beaten by him willingly and unwillingly on these premises, cleaned his toilet (not well), vacuumed his floor no worse than he, crushed the cockroaches that annoyed him, until the place became as old to her as her own grey hair which she clumsily dyed and pretended to forget; all this was or had become her pride.

  Vallejo, he was saying. I never forget an arrest. And you were so . . . Hey, whatever happened to those scumbags you were with? Don’t tell me. Prison time! That Reggie Peters was a crappy little . . . And didn’t Rivas kick the bucket?

  You knew that anyway.

  I did but I forgot, so it doesn’t count. Overdosed in fuckin’ jail! Hey, I got this Nazi video; let’s watch it; pour me a drink . . .

  15

  She said that she’s seen too many people suffer in love, so she . . .

  Wants to fix it.

  How did you know?

  Mommy will make it all better, right, bitch?

  But that’s how Neva thinks!

  That’s the sickest thing I ever—

  But she can. We all go away happy.

  Get out, he said in wrathful pain.

  16

  When he first heard about the lesbian, whom he categorized as a sophisticated deviant, his alert possessiveness had instantly reared up into the bitter uneasiness which used to be his working state, but Judy had never appeared stabler (which is to say duller, plainer and more beaten down); and it had now been more than a year since with her originally intimidated and soon delighted connivance he had promulgated their game: she brought back from the Y Bar whichever real names she could score, together with their ages, addresses and dependents; then he deduced their social security numbers, after which he amused himself and her by discovering who they actually were, which meant unpacking their smelly lies and betrayals. Francine, for instance, was actually Cora Justice from Kentucky. (Judy cried: oh, my God! He laughed and tickled her.) She had served four years for possession of a controlled substance with intent to sell. To impress Judy he logged on to the website PoliceTracker, locating a bench warrant against Francine in Stockton, where she always claimed to be from. He had to give her credit, the way she’d rubbed away her Appalachian accent.

  To him they were all the same, from the transwoman pretending to be Judy Garland to the murderess from San Leandro whom he had once brought to justice and who sat bright-eyed at her death penalty hearing, smiling and waving to anyone who might be a reporter.—And he flattered himself that all his jealousies were likewise the same.

  In his first month on the force they had taught him the acronym JDLR: Just don’t look right. That was why one stopped a car, prowling around for probable cause. That was why one hunted for bugs in the lesbian’s goddamn woodwork.

  A so-called women’s mark, an impossible birthdate of 1964, no visible means of support, a sealskin billfold that never ran out of hundred-dollar bills, intercourse with any and every soul of us, for nothing; eternal patience with Judy, whom not even he could stand: JDLR, wouldn’t you say?

  For the other two members of that triangle, life grew inconvenient although not actually alarming; as when the lesbian, preferring not to be up all night and believing that Judy would only, as promised, keep on the phone with the retired policeman for five minutes, persuaded her that each of them should take her fourth blue dolphin right now, so that it would build on the declining high of the earlier three, as indeed it should have since the huge-eyed transwoman, now giggling, capering and weaving, intended immediately after lying to her loving law enforcer to drink the lesbian’s pee, while the lesbian to please her had agreed to drink at least a few drops of the transwoman’s—a perfectly practical plan which came unstuck because the retired policeman happened to be in such a suspicious and bullying mood that the terrified transwoman could not hang up for more than an hour, by which time the lesbian, less divine than human, had long since let out her hoarded-up bladderfull drop by discreet drop in order to preserve the retired policeman, suspect what he might, from knowing that Neva was with his darling; by now the transwoman was losing control of herself and rocking back and forth on the lesbian’s lap while holding the phone out with a silly grin; and the lesbian, who pitied the retired policeman as much as she did the rest of us, rose up and paced barefoot, silently but ever faster, from one wall to the other of the carpeted room, and just for pleasure began to stroke the cold grimy wall, suddenly kissing it, which the transwoman later confessed swelled her full of extreme jealousy; and as the telephone interrogation dragged on, both women grew more nervous, for the energy within the blue dolphins had to go somewhere, and since it could not express itself in the lovely lovely joy for which it had been manufactured, it bubbled out in vain sad jitteriness. To be sure, the lesbian, concentrating on what the old woman on the island had taught her, managed to love the policeman, Judy and the wall. Silently she sang: E-beth, Reba, Belle and Lucia, Judy and Shantelle, Francine and Richard and Victoria and Sandra . . . She never sang her mother’s name. As for the old lady on the island, that one had laid down her name, so the lesbian never knew it. She thought about Hunter and faintly wished to hurt herself. Then she sang: Holly and Hunter, Samantha, Xenia and Selene . . . Judy had a worse time of it. But just like the cuckolded TV star who tried neurofeedback in hopes of getting over the humiliation, she did her homework, buying from Francine extra-strength downers which when washed down with vodka pressed her lovingly down in her bed like big hot furry tabby cats purring against her breastbone, after which she slid slowly backward into the dark waters of dreams, becoming like Sandra a mermaid at last. When she awoke, dehydrated and nauseous, with half the day gone and memories of Neva already alienated from her like the scenes on a Greek water jug painted ever so long ago, she recited to the mirror what Judy Garland had told Silver Screen in 1948: I don’t enjoy my troubles that much to dwell on them. Often, alas, she still felt blue—just like Judy Garland. Then she uttered her idol’s declamation to Motion Picture from 1950: I’m unscathed, unscarred, unembittered . . .—following which she ate half a dozen darling white doughnuts.

  She managed, putting her best face on and feeling really, really wonderful about herself even when she got outclassed halfway up the block by the nylon glitter of a lavender raincoat drinking in every car’s headlights which swayed across her triumphant rival’s bust like heliotropic sunflowers—the transwoman had never seen her before; she must be a G-girl streetwalker, and the waxy shining of her naked knees, which were even more young and perfect than marzipan pears, awed our Judy; her tall shiny black boots whose zippers had begun to fail made Judy long to lick them, even if only for an instant! . . .—but once she hastened up to make her acquaintance, the G-girl said: Hey, tranny, get out of my light.—So that was a trifle excruciating, but Judy hurried to the Y Bar, where Shantelle blew her an unexpected kiss; then she was back in the groove, so to speak, because Tuesday was her date night with the lesbian!

  17

  But then Francine’s mother died. She cancelled her shift; grumbling Bubbles (AKA Alicia) had to fill in for her, not that she couldn’t use the extra tips. And Francine dialled up the lesbian, saying: Neva, I know you’re watching over me. For twelve years I haven’t talked to her, and now it’s too late. What am I going to do? God, I don’t know; I . . . Help me, Neva!

  So the lesbian cancelled her dates with all of us for that day. I was sad, but after all, I never pretended that I deserved her. Victoria sulked; Shantelle went on the war path. And now Neva was all alone with Francine, with their cell phones off and the shades down, and Francine was smiling at her, so happy to love and be loved; but the lesbian felt sick with lonely guilt at the thought of the transwoman waiting for her so sadly and patiently.

  Let’s each take a shower, said the lesbian brightly, and she took the first one, emerging from the bathroom pink and dam
p, naked but for the towel around her hips, which she smilingly wriggled so that Francine gasped with excitement.—I’ll be waiting for you in bed, cooed the lesbian, to which Francine inquired: With your legs wide open?—Hurry and come to me, darling; then you’ll see.

  As soon as she heard the shower going, the lesbian, making sure that the bathroom door was shut, rushed into the kitchen, which was in all the apartment farthest away, turned on her cell phone and dialled up the transwoman, who answered right away: Neva! Neva, I need you so bad! Can I come over now?

  I’m sorry, Judy, but I have something to do tonight. I’ll call you tomorrow—

  Who is it? What’s wrong? Is something wrong?

  The lesbian, staring at the wall with shadowed eyes, turned up her mouth in a weary half-smile to say: Judy, I have to go—

  The shower stopped. Then it started again. Francine must have been shampooing her hair.

  You promised me!

  No, I didn’t. I said I’d try.

  Say you love me.

  I love you.

  How much do you love me?

  Enough to hold you very very tightly . . .

  Say something else.

  Where are you, Neva? called Francine.

  I love you, but I have to go now, and the lesbian turned off her phone, knowing that the transwoman would be in tears.

  For a fact, Judy considered herself betrayed; it would have been even worse had she known (she soon found out) that Francine had stolen her turn. Almost at once she began to feel physically sick from the rejection.

  In her underwear drawer she kept from her young male days a magazine tear sheet of a tall T-girl in a fluffy wig, a corset, panties and garters, straddling a passive man who lay on his side; and just as in most hunting magazines one will find a portrait of some successful fellow sitting on his just-killed lion, moose or buffalo, twisting the dead head upright to face the camera, so the T-girl had taken her prey’s neck in one hand and his head in the other, bending it up into the light of this world. Judy used to find comfort in masturbating to this image. Now she pulled it out and tried to desire it, in order to reject Neva, but since it now did nothing for her, she tore it up in a rage.