The Royal Family

by William T. Vollmann

  Hey, remembah what I said. Maybe it’s true what they say.

  Maybe honky over there needs a piece of rock. A nice big piece of white girl.*

  What they say?

  They say when you talk vi’lent ’bout yoah ho, sometimes the Queen be listening . . .

  Fuck that bitch! I ain’t scared a no goddamn bitch! Brain’s in her cunt; my dick is twice her I.Q.!

  An’ my dick’s the othah twice of yours!

  Hey, check out that honky sittin’ there. I doan like that honky. He come out here, I fuck him up—

  Tyler, bored anyhow, but glad to learn that the Queen might represent justice, pulled out of the loading zone and drove to Eddy and Jones where a knowing pimp was explaining something grand to his knowing wife-employee; there walked Domino in the rain; he remembered the shape of her bullet-scar. Her nose looked longer than usual, as if she’d been telling more lies about the Queen. The red neon whisper HOTEL made rain-sweating bricks blush, as if on fire with the slumlord’s lust.

  He honked four times, and she came running. He said: Do you remember me?

  Sure, asshole. You’re the misogynist. Are you dating or not?

  I’m lonely, he said. I’ll pay you five bucks just to ride around the block with me.

  Ten’ll work.

  How about seven?

  Fucking cheapskate, she laughed, getting in. He counted out a five and two ones from his wallet, added another single for courtesy, and drove silently around the block.

  Here we are, he said.

  You mean that’s it?

  Uh huh.

  You know what? said Domino. You’re a fool. You’re making me really angry.

  Because you got something for nothing, but it wasn’t enough? Or did I hurt your feelings because I didn’t want to fuck you?

  Look, pal. You don’t know the first thing about my feelings. So don’t patronize me.

  I’m not trying to patronize you, he said. I was just lonely, that’s all. And I thank you for riding with me.

  She softened. —All right, she said. What’s your name?

  Henry.

  I’m Domino.

  I know.

  She kissed his cheek faster than any rattlesnake could ever strike, then leaped out of the car and loped away. Tyler smiled uneasily, scratching his chin.

  Uncovering no activity at the entrance to the parking garage (a fact of little probable value, which he recorded nonetheless on the surveillance report form soon to pad out Brady’s files), Tyler drove up to Union Street where an immense pear of light bloomed from an apartment’s stairway and stretched halfway across the pavement. A truck blinked its weary lights, and a foghorn warned of the least dangerous thing.

  His brother John came out, holding another woman’s hand.

  | 17 |

  Once Irene had asked him whether he had any reason to believe that his brother might be unfaithful, and he, professionally knowing that all men and all women were unfaithful to something, said: I don’t know. I wondered that at your wedding. I hoped that he’d be good to you. I wanted you to be happy . . .

  And tonight, of course, he’d been holding Irene’s hand.

  | 18 |

  John Alan Tyler was not yet sufficiently established in his career to own a house in San Francisco, much as that would have pleased his wife. This had less to do with money than with the allocation of money. (Doesn’t that apply to all of us? Couldn’t the crazy whore buy a mansion in Pacific Heights, if only a certain percentage of her gross receipts went into the piggybank for, say, seven thousand years?) Although John was still young, having only recently passed the third-of-a-century mark, he received a salary almost commensurate with his idea of his own importance. Much of it he had to spend on clothes, because in the office it was a matter of faith for all to appear in five different suits a week, with extra apparel for interviews, public appearances and business trips. John did not set this policy, and I cannot disparage him for abiding by it. Then there were his neckties, which his brother had mocked during that first meeting with Domino. You wouldn’t believe how expensive a necktie could be until you’d gone shopping with John, who remained convinced, perhaps rightly, that everybody who mattered knew how much those neckties cost, and treated the wearer accordingly. —His elder brother, to whom stripes were stripes and plaids were plaids (or, when he was drunk vice versa), did not matter. Still, John would say one thing for Hank: He was very good to Irene.

  John was well aware that his wife had reason to feel neglected. He loved her sincerely. When she had broken off their engagement, he hadn’t even reproached her, although sitting alone he’d slowly squeezed a wineglass in his hand until it shattered. John belonged to the Order of Backbone. When called upon, he could be generous and magnanimous, even good. Once Irene agreed to marry him after all, their future deliciously in the bag, he did not feel quite so called upon. Irene was an excellent woman who’d undoubtedly go to heaven when she died. But a necessary part of her excellence was an idealism which he admired but did not share. To speak more plainly, John had discovered that Irene was positively mushy with fantasies. She’d required a “fairytale wedding,” which he’d provided, although his mother had been against it and he was still paying off the bills. She also expected to live happily ever after. She seemed to believe that since they were married, he shouldn’t work anymore, just stay home day and night with her. She was spoiled. John had to put her straight. First of all, he explained, he did have his friends, who had known him long before he’d met her and whom he was not prepared to dismiss simply because he had married somebody. Then there was the fact that he did have to go to work amidst the tan-hued, grooved cliffs of the financial district, where below mailboxes and flags, chilled by the Transamerica Pyramid’s steeply tapering shadow, breadwinners hastened to new appointments, with their neckties blowing. Irene for her part had started as a dental receptionist, but then the dentist got audited and that was the end of that. She was reading the want ads now—so she said. John wished that she didn’t get so sad and bored, especially on those foggy rainy nights when he must stay late at the office. Precisely because he did not intend to work for Rapp and Singer more than another five years (unless they made him full partner on excellent conditions), he had to put in his time. He wanted a brilliant promotion, and then he wanted to transship, probably for Harville and Keane, although Dow, Emerson, Prescott and Liu occupied a comparable place in his aspirations. Once he had gotten in solid with Harville and Keane, which would take another three years of late office nights, he wouldn’t be much over forty and Irene would be just thirty-four, at which point they could start a family. John knew not to stop at one child, which would otherwise grow up lonely and spoiled like his wife. He himself had benefitted from the fraternal relation, as he was the first to acknowledge; certainly Hank felt the same way. Sometimes he wished that he and Hank had been closer in age. As John saw it, the second child ought to come quickly after the first—ideally, not more than a year later. Two nearly at once would be less work for Irene than two spaced several years apart. Besides, they could play together. Whether or not there would be a third child remained open to discussion. If Irene felt strongly one way or the other, he would not quarrel with her. When he closed his eyes, however, he could imagine two little boys and a little girl; he could almost see their half-Asian faces and dark eyes as they played games on the living room carpet, their voices lowered because he was working. The boys would be named Eric and Michael, and he thought that their sister would be called Suzanne. Irene could choose their Korean middle names, which she’d most likely do in consultation with her extended family. She had already agreed to stay home for a few years once the babies were born. In fact, a few months after their marriage John had spoken with his mother-in-law about this. Where was Irene then? She must have been out shopping with her cousins, or playing golf with her father. The conversation would have taken place at Christmas, when they always drove down to Los Angeles. Although Irene loved to complain about his ru
deness to her parents, he and they actually got along quite well. Irene’s mother said that Eric, Michael, and Suzanne all sounded like excellent names. In confidence, she told John that Irene lacked common sense. She hated to say this about her own daughter, she continued, smiling and ducking her head, but that was how it was. Irene always went about with her head in the clouds. Her mother thought her quite lucky to have met a man like John, who would take care of her and perhaps indulge her a little. John nodded while his mother-in-law refilled his soju glass. He knew that nothing he could do would make Irene’s parents happier than transforming them into grandparents. And Irene wanted children even more than he. In about seven years, then, life would be exactly as it should be. They would have a house in Marin, which would soothe his southern California girl of a wife, who remained unaccustomed to this crowded, expensive city where most people had to live in apartments.

  Meanwhile he wished that he could make Irene happier. Sometimes, not often, he told her to take the credit cards and go shopping. Then he did his best not to wince at the bills. It pleased him to imagine her pleasing herself at Macy’s or the Emporium, and he attempted always to take her mother’s words to heart. Poor thing, she did need a little indulgence. But how much indulgence was enough? She might have gotten more out of him, had she not so frequently expressed the view that he kept her on a leash. She truly didn’t realize what she cost him. Regarding the payments on her wedding ring, Irene had quickly put him in his place: These were to be accomplished by him in much the same style as defecation—behind a closed door, with all evidence removed at the end, and no reference to them afterward. Well, his mother was almost the same way; he could understand that. But Irene, unlike his mother, almost justified the appellation of spendthrift. At the end of their very first tax year he had been sickened by the marriage penalty, which was hardly Irene’s fault, but he had still been deluded enough then to believe that a man need hide nothing from his wife. The result of that conversation had not quite been what John expected. Well, John had learned! He no longer criticized her to her face, and he never had the heart to speak ill of her to others, either. When the bills came in, he paid. Irene would buy what she wanted to buy—oh, shoes for Irene, exercise classes for Irene, Irene’s trips home to her parents, Irene’s ski lift tickets. Let’s not mention Irene’s habits in grocery shopping (she had to get the most expensive brands of everything, especially paper towels, which she truly wasted), or Irene’s allergies, which required them to buy a humidifier and an air purifier, both items which increased their utility bills. And the quarters for the washing machine dowstairs! He couldn’t believe how many quarters Irene needed all the time . . . Then there were the restaurants and then there were the clothes. Because such bargains proved his wife’s budgetary unreliability, John computed all the finances himself, and by the time he’d wrapped up that homework and maybe (more rarely than he realized) went bowling with his friends or watched a cop show on television, or sat through a romantic video with Irene, it was time for bed. He got very tired at night, even on the weekends; Irene had no idea how hard he worked! When he turned out the light, she sometimes rolled into his arms. At first he’d found that flattering, but it became an imposition. He wished that he could make a deal with Irene, but venturing onto that subject, like the matter of the wedding ring, would cost him no matter what. He felt guilty to disappoint her. And yet it had begun to seem that he disappointed her no matter what he did! If that was truly how it had to be, why open his mouth? He talked with his friends, who agreed that night after night a man couldn’t be expected to lie always at the ready, and if he wasn’t, then what right did the woman have to sulk? He wished that his friends could explain this to Irene; better just to say that he was tired. One night she’d forgotten to take her pill, as he’d discovered when he got up to drink some water. He shook her awake and made her swallow that pill then and there. Didn’t she know that they weren’t ready to have a baby? Irene said that she was sorry. A couple of nights later, he heard her vomiting in the bathroom. She said that the pills sometimes made her nauseated. Well, he didn’t want to compel her to take her pills if they made her sick, but he didn’t want a baby yet, either. As a matter of fact, carnally she had never appealed to him. One of the reasons that she had broken off their engagement that first time was his unceasing commandments to lose weight. Particularly with her clothes off, there was something grotesque about her shining belly and her big breasts. Her pubic hair in particular seemed obscene. It was so dark and rank, like weeds. Actually, her entire body sickened him. He tried not to contemplate the fact that he would be looking at it for the next half-century. John had chalked up several relationships before—not that he’d ever been promiscuous like Hank—and he admitted that the female form had ceased to surprise him. In his view, sex was the least important part of marriage. Barton Rapp at Rapp and Singer, a man of more than sixty, had told him that after age fifty or sixty, most married couples preferred to sleep apart. They got a better rest that way. —You know, John, Mr. Rapp had said, one morning you just wake up and realize that you’ve had enough. —John didn’t yet feel called upon to make that separate bed a habit, but there were certainly nights when he would have preferred his own mattress. Although Irene fortunately did not snore, she had a habit of smacking her lips in her sleep, as if she were hungry for something, endlessly, loudly, revoltingly, like his mother’s dog Mugsy lapping up water from a bowl. Sometimes her noises awoke him, especially on nights when office worries pressed down upon his brain. Or, startled by some inimical dream, she might jerk suddenly, coiling all the blankets around her. She had any number of ways of ruining John’s sleep. Usually he told her to get ready for bed while he was saving his files on the computer, and he waited until he heard her come out of the bathroom before he actually powered down. Then he drank a glass of skim milk, brushed and dental flossed his teeth, urinated, washed his hands, shut off the bathroom light, and stood in the bedroom doorway. Sometimes she was reading a romance and sometimes she was staring at the ceiling. The light switch was by the door, and it would have been pointless to get into bed and then right out again, so he turned it off as soon as he came in If she was reading, she put her book face down on the vanity; he always waited for that sound. Then, closing the door behind him, he undressed in the dark. He would already have taken his suit off when he’d first come home, so it was no worry to drape his casual clothes over the back of the chair. —Good night, he’d say, getting into bed. —Good night, said Irene. —Sometimes he laid his arm across her shoulders then. He didn’t have to set the alarm. It went off automatically each morning at seven-twenty unless he reprogrammed it. On Sundays they often slept in until eight-thirty or nine, unless his work was pressing or some anxiety awakened him. Anxiety might on second thought be the wrong word, for John enjoyed his life and his work. He was a capably practical person, and the impression of youth and foppishness which he unknowingly gave off to the senior partners only made them smile indulgently, for youth would pass, was passing already; as for the other, they knew that the promptings of such vices would drive him up the ladder, whose price at every rung they would extract.

  I cannot say that there was much talk about John in the office, Roland Garrow with his slicked-back hair being the funny one, the one whom everyone in the office laughed about. Roland had been known to come running in five minutes late, with his tie askew; he patronized most of the same stores that John did, but John did not tell him about Donatello’s, a small shop in San Mateo, of all places, which sold hand-painted silk ties direct from Italy. Once John saw the mark of sooty lips on Roland’s tie and smiled all day; he realized that Roland had caught his tie in the elevator door.

  Roland was actually quite clever. Mr. Singer, who prided himself on his ability to distinguish mere immaturity from inability, had let it be known that he was charmed by Roland, while Mr. Rapp likewise indulged him, admiring the young man’s energy (he could certainly shoot out a quick if unpolished brief), and being entertained by
Roland’s anecdotes of nights misspent on the town. Both partners liked to consider themselves bon vivants who had sowed several football fields’ worth of wild oats, although in their day they had actually resembled John far more than Roland. They enjoyed good wine; Mr. Rapp was, as he put it, passionate about opera, had a box seat, and in the mornings was often to be heard whistling some aria from “Tosca” or even “Lucia di Lammermoor.” He went to Seattle every two or three years to witness the Ring. It was said that the San Francisco Opera would come into quite a bit of money at his death. Mr. Singer exemplified a more down-to-earth type; baseball fan and egalitarian, he was the one to whom the clients came when they needed a deferment on their bills. I repeat: Both of them were delighted by Roland, particularly Mr. Singer with his thin, cackling laugh. Roland had quickly become their rosy one, their prodigal if not quite their son. John, on the other hand, lacked a sense of humor. He was not what you’d call Mr. Personality, Mr. Singer once said. Naturally, personalities finish last. There were no plans to make Roland full partner.

  They knew very well that John was thinking about leaving. For one thing, all junior partners thought that way. Industry policy as much as personal cunning had taught Mr. Rapp and Mr. Singer to make the young ones work as hard as possible. That way, they themselves didn’t need to work as much; they deserved to coast a little now, after all! (Mr. Rapp had already begun to talk about retirement.) And if John, Roland, Ellen or even Yancy left, then the bosses would have already gotten their money’s worth. The other half of this pincer movement was to pay high bonuses, and to imply that promotion was within sight. This invariably resulted in more work for more years. I cannot accurately claim that John understood this, for to him the minds of others were not simply those proverbially closed books, but closed books which he had no interest in reading. And had it been explained to him, it would not have affected him in any way, unlike Roland, who would have slammed his fist in his palm and shouted: Those bastards!, then taken a long lunch on the company and hurried defiantly back to work. Most likely Roland in all his defective elegance had already done precisely that. Call him Abel. His only mistake, which of course Mr. Rapp and Mr. Singer tacitly encouraged, was to flatter himself that he truly belonged to the circle. Ellen was a cipher, and Yancy a drudge. I’ll give them no space in this book. As for John, he studied his own interests well, but the motives of others offered him small relevance. (One result of this thinking was that he grew surprised, even infuriated, by actions of others which he had not foreseen and which, therefore, might appear to him as betrayals.) At any rate, if he performed his share, and more than his share, then the cup of success must inevitably fill, no matter how he judged others, or others him. In Irene, of course, he’d won a true companion, who’d drink of that cup with him as it brimmed, and who accordingly must grow happier and happier. Meanwhile he worked, and went out with his friends, most of whom, like Roland, had not yet married; it was to be expected that they sometimes flirted, and when they did, he would, too, which was why Hank now chanced upon him holding a woman’s hand.