The Royal Family

by William T. Vollmann

  I collect books on photography, admitted Tyler with a certain shyness. Brady, who prided himself on knowing people, could tell right away that here lay his hireling’s monomania, on which, given any encouragement, he’d discourse with arid learnedness, like other people on hockey, stamp collecting, their pets or children. —I collect photographs, too, Tyler was saying. It sort of goes with my profession. On Sundays I sometimes like to play around, you know, do nudes, double triple quadruple exposures . . . There’s one. You want to pull in toward the curb, boss?

  A black whore was rubbing legs at the light, crunching potato chips. She wore a silver paper skirt. Tyler mouthed the word “Queen” at her and she shrugged and waved. Brady shook his head.

  Pasty-faced white girls at the corner of an alley grinned as if at a party. Tyler jumped out and asked them if they’d seen the Queen.

  She never comes before ten o’clock, a girl said. Why, you got something for her? You can give it to me. Honey, you can give it to me.

  Lights hurt the mirror of a parked truck.

  Between two dead grey towers, a girl in a sweater swung her tits like a waitress in a truck stop slamming down a plate of fried eggs. She whipped her hands at them, glaring fiercely.

  That’s quite a luxuriant nigger girl, his boss said.

  You from the South, Mr. Brady?

  Why, do I have an accent?

  No, I just wondered.

  Well, stop wondering and ask her the question. That’s what I’m paying you for.

  Tyler crooked his finger, but the girl only spat loudly on the sidewalk.

  The Queen wouldn’t like that sort of behavior, you know, he said to her.

  What the fuck do you know about what the Queen likes? the whore shouted. You think you’re good enough to jump the Queen?

  Why? said Tyler. Are you trying to tell me you’re a big enough bitch to eat the Queen’s pussy? Does she let you do it on alternate Tuesdays?

  I oughta cut you, the whore said. She wore silver stockings that came all the way up to her buttocks. Peering sulkily, she bent and picked something up from the sidewalk.

  Find out what she grabbed, whispered Brady.

  What did your friend say? cried the whore suspiciously. She came over to the car. Seeing Brady’s dark suit and necktie, she smiled, softly offering her goosepimpled thighs. — You datin’? she said. I’d much rather go wiv you than him.

  Yeah, he’s dating, said Tyler. He wants to do you and the Queen at the same time.

  What do you keep talkin’ ’bout the the Queen for? It’s bad to talk about the Queen.

  Another girl walked past, her garters glittering like frosting and mica against the scaly diamonds of gratings. Shivering, she shot a bitter look at Tyler and shouted: Am I your only secret slave? Am I the only one you’re getting paid to practice slavery on?

  Get lost, said Brady.

  Look, said Tyler to the suspicious whore. A hundred bucks if you take me to the Queen.

  The whore whirled and clip-clopped away in the direction that the other girl had come.

  You scared her, said Brady reproachfully.

  Let’s follow along, boss. We might learn something.

  That’s a spurious and specious linkage, said Brady.

  What?

  Your assumption that because I say the word nigger I must be from the South. You’re trying to stereotype me.

  We’d better follow the girl, boss.

  You tag her?

  Yeah, with that dime store earring she grabbed. Soaked in locator fluid. I dropped it out the window when she was yelling at me.

  I don’t trust that locator fluid. If it’s so good how come the FBI doesn’t use it?

  I don’t know, boss. I never worked for them.

  Because you’re a loser?

  Uh huh.

  Are you evading me?

  What would I want to evade you for, boss?

  Because you’re spending my money and wasting my time.

  I could try and pull some old court records, Tyler muttered, ducking his head.

  Well, maintain visual. An earring, huh? That was a good one. —Brady smiled, recollecting multitudes of other girls seduced by tented alleyways sheltering cases of earrings; they slowly bent their heads in submission to that glitter. He was rich. —Come on, come on, come on.

  Sure, said Tyler. We’ll just keep rolling and rolling along.

  They tracked the suspicious whore through a dozen neon spiderwebs to some kind of overcast garageworks behind a grating, red car-skulls watching from beyond. Tyler sat listening to the heavy clop of that glossy-shoed girl so sour-sweet with the sweat-drops glistening from her meaty shoulders as she ran through the cold night. She’d gotten inside the grating somehow (a fat van had blocked the view), and now she vanished among the red cars.

  Okay, boss. We can’t go in there now; it’s too obvious. It’s the same place that Blondie went to last night. We’ll check it out tomorrow.

  Was her name really Blondie?

  She called herself Domino.

  Then call her Domino. Are you a misogynist? sneered his boss with a grunting laugh.

  A tall black girl crossed the street with mincing clicking steps, drinking from something in a paper bag. There were frothy things on her breasts like silver spit. Other women were already smiling over her shoulder.

  | 5 |

  Lest it be believed that only Tyler indulged in monomania, I may as well mention that Mr. Brady was a devotee of the cottonwood tree. —A cottonwood plank in a horse stable will outlast an oak plank two to one, he said.

  Is that a fact, said Tyler, counting receipts.

  I personally laminated cottonwood four-by-fours to show what they could do for high-grade railroad crossings, said Brady, who reminded him of a camel-necked tan goat without ears he’d once seen, gnawing sadly on the railing of its cage. —I talked to the engineers and they just loved that idea. But I couldn’t get anywhere with the purchasing department. Mr. Brady, they said to me, I’m just gonna have to be real blunt with you. Unless you’re willing to pay these purchasing agents something under the table, it’ll never happen.

  Is that right, said Tyler. There was a whore he knew that he thought he could go halves with. She could spout nonsense about the Queen on Brady’s money and give him a kickback. He didn’t want this job to end yet. Brady must be rich rich rich. He belonged in the kind of hotel lobbies where patrons whisper instead of shout.

  We ran an experiment where we were grinding those cottonwoods for cowfeed, said Brady, while Tyler was thinking: I really ought to check my answering machine. —How about that, he said.

  And we had to fight every pharmaceutical company in the country. They wanted to pollute our meat with that teramyacin, that auromyacin. Those idiots at the college up there are the equivalent of the prostitute press. They went right along with the pharmaceutical companies. We couldn’t get it off the ground because of the money pressure out there.

  Well, I’ll be, said Tyler. Are you sure they weren’t evading you? —Later he went to look for the whore he could have gone halves with, but she’d been arrested.

  | 6 |

  Is he your boyfriend or is he your boss? said the crazy whore, her eyes gleaming like the wristwatches of hopeful young lawyers.

  My boss, said Tyler.

  (The room smelled like mold.)

  He reminds me of the guy who got shot ’cause he kept lookin’ at the robber’s face. I said to him, you just don’t know how to get robbed.

  I can take a hint, said Brady, not getting up to go.

  He reminds me of those big she-males in the street, the whore said.

  Better be careful, said Tyler, guiding the conversation into interesting channels. Maybe the Queen’s listening.

  I don’t care what she hears because very little of what she hears is real.

  I can take a hint, Brady repeated, getting more comfortable. He obviously loved all this. Tyler didn’t. He might have, if he’d been working alone. But this was a was
te of time.

  I’m just a beginner compared to Sapphire, the woman said. I haven’t gone as deep as she did before she was even born.

  Who’s Sapphire? said Tyler.

  Don’t you even know that? She’s the Queen’s special darling. She can’t talk.

  Well, you can sure talk up a storm, said Brady. Find me an ashtray, would you?

  I don’t want you to talk, the whore went on. Maybe that one patheticism, what’s it going to accomplish? This place is very high-class, and you know what happened? I told myself, and I told myself, but the mirror fell off and broke. ’Cause I paid my rent check. I don’t need to pay it till tomorrow. Or is it not your day to be near me? Or am I whispering too much?

  Oh, no, ma’am, not at all, said Brady. He winked at Tyler. —Transient psychotic symptoms. Good money there.

  What the fuck are you talking about, boss? said Tyler.

  The crazy whore frowned at Tyler and pointed at Brady. —His jollies would be bigger if he sat in the closet. Then he couldn’t see me but would just feel me being nude. I’m not saying you can’t get something out of me.

  Want to try it, boss?

  Sure. Is there a chair in that closet?

  There’s a very tiny looking kid living upstairs, the crazy whore said. He’s a spy for the Queen. ’Cause maybe I’ll identify him to the point where I’ll be able to cup my buttocks properly. And then I’ll just make the bed. So what if he spies. So what if the Big Bitch is listening. You know what I’ve been waiting for? You know what I want to say to her? I want to tell her, I want you to do it to yourself, Big Bitch. I think that’ll just bring back the Golden Age. Byzantine. I remember how to hold off and how to gaffle. See how my fingers are naked? Poor me! Your friend has to understand, you know. The little kid can see right through the ceiling, ’cause he’s got good eyes. He doesn’t know if you guys are alive or dead, so I said dead.

  Well, thanks, said Tyler agreeably. (Brady was snoring in the closet, with an unlit cigar in his hand.)

  The crazy whore scratched and scratched. Possibly she had scabies.

  So does the Big Bitch have a name?

  A name is just something you use once for your job. Then you throw it in the trash, so vigs and pigs can’t get you. See what I mean? My name is just Pussy. But after I’m done, then my name is Tongue.

  What you said just made me sad.

  You see what I’m saying?

  Yeah, I get it. But does she have a name?

  Maj or midge, they’re all mosquitoes, just sucking blood and sperm for money. Maj is like majestic but she’s not Maj. She’s just the Big Bitch. And most of them are young girls. You might be shocked.

  Oh, try me.

  Naked, hard-nippled, with red lines across her belly, the crazy whore glided sleeves and panties across her hair. —My dollars’ worth of cunt is fifty dollars, she hissed. And my dollars’ worth of crack is fifty dollars. Then I’m too hypersexually active to care. I have the Mark. You don’t have the Mark yet, but you will. You know what the Mark is?

  Nope.

  It’s in the Enemy’s Book. First chapter. That’s not too much to read, but you’re just a little too much to be humble. Your normal visit’s just a normal visit, right?

  That’s right, honey. Just a normal visit. Maybe my boss will jerk off in your face or something.

  The crazy whore twisted and leaned against the moldy wall, and her rear stuck out.

  Tyler pulled his best confiding face and whispered: I like it when you talk about the Queen.

  And I like you to say what you said, she replied. ’Cause my pussy’s a nervous thing, like some kind of fungicide. And now we have to stick something up my pussy like a baby powder. Your body is prisonering me, Mister, like a car crashing into several people, like six at one time. But the Queen is the goddess of my vision. She’s full of compassion and envy. She’ll notice when you have something she doesn’t remember. ’Cause everything comes from her. She won’t leave anybody here. Little spy, you around me yet? I’m not concerned with that as much as with agreeing with beautiful colors. Or haven’t you noticed? I hate Sapphire. You know why? Her colors are more beautiful than mine. Sapphire’s perfect. She’s the Queen’s little pet. I want to kill Sapphire because I’m jealous, but I won’t. I want to kill you and take your money but I’m afraid. Now, all I have to do is kill a bug that’s this big. My spiders would incubate areas inside my artificial nerve. They lay their eggs in it, ’cause it’s plastic. Plastic is dead to hold my eyes into my head. But the Queen has living rotting eyes. Something about me will not let me see you. But this is going to be real. Really real, she wept, beginning to masturbate. —I’ve got good luck but you can’t come in. ’Cause I’m with my ex-husband. I think you can tell from your voice that I want to be with you again.

  She pounced on Tyler and slammed her tongue into his mouth. He sighed and patted her naked ass, massaging in locator fluid with a half-life of three nights. She pulled away almost at once. She was licking her lips in the light of the crack pipe flame as she bounced on the bed, rubbing her clitoris. —Well, that pipe works pretty good, she said.

  Tyler took one hit out of politeness, felt the good feeling, sighed, got up, and knocked on the closet door. —Huh? said Brady, awakening.

  Let’s go, boss. I think we’re wasting time with this one. I gave her ten dollars.

  The crazy whore wasn’t paying attention to them anymore. She was picking little wads of tissue out of her cunt.

  After they left, though, she proceeded to the parking garage at a desperate run.

  When Tyler, tuning in to channel seven, became apprised of this news, he raised his eyebrows and smiled at his boss. He didn’t even think any longer about the whore he could have gone halves with. He was getting interested in this project for his own sake. Truth to tell, in his sphere he was hopeful, confident, creative. The fact that Brady might be capable of dealing severely with people who disappointed him might have contributed to the alacrity of a different subaltern, but Tyler, for all his other failings—disorganization, mental inertia, withdrawal, and above all moral uncleanliness—was no coward. Brady therefore scarcely impressed him in a more than diffusive way. And the episode of Domino, who in and of herself exercised upon him retrospective fascination, had begun to raise within him certain almost magical expectations which he’d otherwise abandoned in life (with one incestuous exception which we’ll get to later). What if the Tenderloin (for instance) comprised a worthwhile puzzle whose solution might enlighten him? (I’ll make a few phone calls on the local level, he murmured to himself.) What if destiny actually had gifts in store for one whose habits had long since confirmed him in giftlessness?

  So you didn’t get a name, Brady said.

  She mentioned somebody named Sapphire, but I don’t think that’s the Queen. And Big Bitch, Maj, all that stuff, I don’t really believe . . .

  I always thought this Queen was a little like Gotti in New York, Brady laughed. I always thought you really burden yourself once you go out and make a big name for yourself.

  Yeah, maybe that’s her thinking, said Tyler, not really listening.

  The crazy whore stayed inside the garage for only about ten minutes, which implied that it might be some kind of message drop. (Brady yawned and did not cover his mouth.) Then her glowing trail unraveled itself almost as quickly as it had formed and snailed, shrinking all the way back to Ellis and Jones, where she stopped for five minutes, probably to make a crack buy, and then back to her hotel room. Tyler smiled again.

  I’m tired, Brady said.

  Tyler left his boss sitting in the car outside, tiptoed up the stairs, and put his ear to the crazy whore’s door. He heard her singing in a sad voice:

  They called me Flower-of Gold,

  and they called me Flower-of-Silk,

  but when I became Queen of the Fold

  they bathed me never in milk.

  | 7 |

  His boss had to go to Vegas for business. Tyler drove him to the airport.
Then he drove home and took a cab to North Beach on Brady’s nickel, just to see what the cab drivers knew. The first driver didn’t know anything. Tyler was feeling pretty good. He went out for Italian food, pretending that the woman he wasn’t supposed to love was sitting across from him. If he sat at home he’d get depressed. He didn’t like to read anymore, and he hated television. Darkroom chemicals were expensive. There wasn’t a lot to do.

  The cab driver back to the Sunset was a Russian who was listening to a scratchy cassette of sad Russian songs sung by a woman whose voice was more rich and expressive than the crazy whore’s, but her sadness was the same. The driver obviously loved it. Every time the dispatcher tried to call him on the radio, he’d sigh: Idiot.

  Were you a soldier? said Tyler.

  The Russian nodded glumly, whistling.

  Afghanistan?

  Afghanistan.

  What was your job?

  Meteorologist, said the Russsian, and Tyler didn’t believe him.

  You must have seen some bad things, Tyler said.

  The Russian nodded.

  I saw two people get killed today, said Tyler, just to see if he was listening.

  Tough, growled the Russian sympathetically, shrugging his pale wide shoulders.

  Do you know the Queen? said Tyler.

  Not in my organization. Another one. Before, was in mine. Now finished.

  Tough, said Tyler, shrugging his shoulders.

  Your country finished, said the Russian. You have a problem, a black problem.

  | 8 |

  The ruby light winked on his answering machine, like one of Carol Doda’s nipples back in the old days on the neon sign for the Condor. Carol Doda had a lingerie shop on Union Street now. Once Tyler had gone inside to pick out something for his sister-in-law Irene, but he hadn’t bought anything, and he never knew whether or not the woman at the cash register was Carol Doda. Now he sat sipping at his Black Velvet, halfheartedly checking boxes on his surveillance report for Brady while he gazed across the street at one of those prismatic Victorian windows aflame with something which tigerishly shone beneath curtains. When he finished the whiskey, the answering machine was still blinking.