The Royal Family

by William T. Vollmann

  He put on his tuxedo, and became at once some some high-shouldered tropical bird with a long and narrow tail.

  In the conference suite he found the immortals, the great ones who gazed down upon the rest—representatives of an entire Klavern: the Exalted Cyclops and all twelve Terrors. They sat at the table in their leisure suits, waiting to learn why he’d disturbed their repose. Too rich and high even to be generals in love’s great war, they’d sidelined themselves, devouring the smoke of deathless zeroes; that was their ambrosia, for only mortals may enjoy the incarnadine prize. (In Paris they owned the lapdogs; they were the necktied men beneath the awnings of the brasseries, gazing out at the ambulations of the public of which they were no longer a part.) He delved into their minds to see where their first inclinations lay, but, thunder-browed and flatulent, they sat in their splendor, equally prepared to accept or deny. He explained to them how some kisses suck spit, just as alcohol sucks ink from clogged pens. He spoke to them of what needed to be done, were he to bring his plan to glory. He strove to feed them his craving of sundown times when retarded girls would be ready like goats muzzled so that kids could play (he’d seen them at the fair, trying to rub their muzzles off against the bars of their cages; failing, they became very still and silent).

  Next he gave them a multimedia teaser. He flashed image after image of retarded girls drooling with their legs spread, the projector cycling in and out of brightness like a seal’s dark nostrils winking open and shut. One of the gods, incognito in blue sunglasses and a red tie, cleared his throat and worked a calculator, murmuring: Ten percent rooms for conventions, ten for the high rollers, forty percent for tourists on travel packages and forty for individual reservations . . . Actually if we take the kids—we’ll call ’em “Ringmasters” here—ages three to sixteen . . . actually a good idea . . . Then he snapped his fingers and the forensic team were invited in.

  The forensicists fed biscuits to a police puppy, watched the whole carousel twice more, and exclaimed to one another:

  And the head formation is quite uncharacteristic. It could be Mayan, late Mayan.

  Refer it to the Kloncilium . . .

  And then this famous—I don’t think it’s Olmec at all—Henry Manes makes a good point . . .

  Oh, come on, Fred; don’t get hung up on some jade knee-clutcher in Oaxaca . . .

  Knee-clutcher? Well, I grant you it’s jade, but a cache of jade, absolutely classic jade. A lot of the Costan Rican jades are classic Maya.

  And the chief forensicist sighed to himself: . . . Those multi-tiered altars! Altars, oh, my balls! Always studded with monstrous faces; usually too big to chip out; you gotta leave ’em—well, sometimes, it’s true, a guy might find jeweled eyeballs to prise out, or a figurine that could conceivably come loose with a crowbar’s help . . .

  The gods sat yawning, frowning and tittering among themselves. They knew what the clients would be giving up: that special happiness when a girl can sit looking at you nodding very very fast, looking you in the eye, smoothing her skirt over and over where it bridges her succulent thighs. The retarded girls would certainly not do that. But Brady pressed his case with color photographs. Directly addressing the Imperial Wizard (an action not undertaken lightly), he spoke of exotic cretins whose vaginas were as dark and sandy as crocodile-mummies. He mentioned his idea for a certain foil-covered room with small portholes. He didn’t hesitate to describe to them a girl he’d once met in Napoli, a girl with hair the hue of a haystack and greenish-blue eyes who sat staring out the train window with interlaced fingers resting on her purse, her long legs crossed, her green wool jacket buttoned up to her throat, and the hair seemed what most attached her head to her shoulders. He whispered with a wink: What if we cut her hair off?

  He knew very well what he was doing. He was like the black boys in low V-shaped boats who sit at water level in the Nile, paddling with their arms like doggish spiders, singing American songs to tourists, then asking for money. He’d sung his song. Now he invited them to sing theirs. They nudged one another and smiled.

  Alabama, where I’m from, is always short of jobs, a god said. We’ve been short of jobs forever. This would have been all women, because they’re more dextrous with their fingers. I had this crazy idea that the people in the plant should own the plant. Well, I was thirty years ahead of my time.

  California is the Whoredog State, another god replied. We could increase the carrying capacity by ten percent just by bringing in this business.

  There’s a Christian businessman down in Cash Flow, Arkansas, who has a very powerful Christian TV station, a god said. This fellow back there, he’s run I don’t know how many of our tapes.

  The Queen of the Whores lied to the American people, a god was muttering. The bankers love her.

  If the U.S. was not preserved, then Communism would conquer Planet Earth, a god said.

  The other gods discussed their own experiences. They called in their associates and Kleagles. Then they swore to their guest to grant him the victory he asked for (in exchange for certain future offerings mutually acceptable); they said it would be done.

  | 307 |

  The next one was a hydrocephalic girl who stared with little lizard eyes, her forehead bulging like a watermelon; Brady’s scientists caressed it gently to see if it was squishy. Her saliva was light, refreshing, foamy, very faintly nutty like a bottle of Ozujsko Pivo Special (Zagrebacska Pivova). After her, Brady collected two low-eared girls, then a bullet-headed microcephalic with lovely chestnut hair who clenched her teeth and sometimes bit. The slapper kept her in line. Then he acquired a blonde girl with a doll’s face: dull blue eyes and heavy mongoloid lids which must have been weighted like a doll’s, enhanced by the pale cheeks, the slack lips that sucked and drooled; on that same trip he snapped up a girl with Turner’s syndrome (webbed neck, sexual infantilism), and then a bald girl whose head was shaped like a light bulb—

  | 308 |

  Brady sat on the floors of echoing hardwood rooms that smelled of lemon-wax and laughed because they were his from chandelier to windowed door to lattice-work. Then his voice rang out in commands. The workmen assembled before him, good soldiers when money’s muster’s called. Receiving their orders, they ranged out in their smooth-geared trucks (Ah like to have a good caw undah mah ass, ya know what Ah mean?), scouring the lumberyards and wide-walled warehouses. When the lumberyards were looted, great mounds of bed-timber swelled at the curbside drops, higher than ever the Greeks raised for Patroclus’s pyre. Then they set about the work. At their lord’s command they laid down dark carpets to eat sounds and stains. With speedy rollers they painted the walls pink and yellow and blue—girl-child’s colors, cheerful, artless. Next they swung in the bed-gear on their shoulders, bolting double mattress-decks to sturdy keels, riveting everything down shipshape, studding the joists with rows of molybdenum hex-nuts in all order so that no plank would fail the rocking sailors, hammering down railings and see-through canopies, masting them with headboards, rigging them out with full waterproof sheets until those multistoried sailing ships were ready to be launched upon the seas of pleasure. In all the ceilings of that house they planted cameras to hang down watching wide-angled with a spider’s eyes. Now with powerful shaggy arms they screwed down marble toilets whose inner lids were blazoned with hearts; they heaved marble sinks and golden-glassed showers tight against the walls; cunningly they fitted the tiled nooks with silvered mirrors, slipping them flush like second skins. But all these things, necessary though they might be, would not gladden caged girls’ hearts. So now they hauled in the fabulous toy-chests, the doll-coffers replete with rubbery passive girls. They brought stuffed bears and tigers for the whores to hug, ten-foot fuzzy crocodiles for them to drool over in the rubber-sheeted beds, plastic panels with Buzzy-Scary games, building blocks, wind-up rutabagas, miniature houses with hinged roofs to peer through like gods, ruby-eyed flasher guns, rattattat pistols, modeling clay that was safe to eat, golden trucks and fishes to set their hearts in fl
ame!

  The doors locked only from the outside, because it would be ruinous to offer retarded girls the keeping of keys.

  Brady put the slapper on salary. It became one of his recreations to watch that tall, easygoing fellow standing in the corner in ducky and tails, smiling and squeezing a rubber ball, or ever so delicately touching the flats of his hands together.

  He informed the backers in L.A. that he’d even come in under budget, and they upwardly adjusted his benefit package in the most laudable possible way. They sent out feelers. They printed up stock certificates in Fraktur type. Everything was peachy. Maybe they’d go public in two years.

  At last they brought them in from their cages, pretty girls, sweet girls, girls who filled the rooms with the scent of hot milk . . .

  | 309 |

  The golden-clad croupiers were patting the red tables in a dozen motions, each arm fanning out from an almost stationary body so that these employees resembled octopi. Their customers waited unsmiling for cards and chips to be presented to them, and I remember that Jack Williamson science fiction story called “With Folded Hands,” about an overly leisured future in which human beings are not allowed to do anything that might be dangerous or sad or bad for them; attended by robots all the way to the cemetery, they sit and await the next course in a banquet of sanitized irrelevancies, like the inmates of an old folks’ home. That nightmare story brooded with me for years, and here it was—worse, in a way, because in Williamson’s story the robots were well-meaning and gave people only the very best, whereas here they gave you the least they could get away with to hide the hollowness.

  | 310 |

  The slapper drowsed and drank ice water from tall thin glasses. Brady’s agents fanned out across the hot wide streets, putting up flyers for Feminine Circus in blistering parking lots and the ivied shade beneath freeway overpasses, making discreet calls at the pay phones between the wigwag roofs of fast food factories, wending cannily among the long low chiropractor’s office style architecture that bulged with air conditioners. When their friends asked them what they did for a living now, the agents replied: I’m in limbo; I’m with recruiters! I ask for a decent wage, and the guys want something for ten K or less! Well, it’s a soft market right now. You have to do a little of everything. I spent the last six or eight years of my life doing one thing. —The agents learned the ways of sunglare on dusty windshields and the windows of phone booths, so bright as to bring tears to their eyes. It was straight comission. A few among them, the good ones, grew into cool offices where only their sluggish fingers had to move like snails on hot lawns after a morning’s rain; they got results. Yes, Vagina, another dinner with the publicity people in purple Feminine Circus windbreakers . . . (There’s one fellow in this town who’s not a believer, an agent reported. He takes down my fliers. So I don’t acknowledge him. To me he doesn’t exist. The Bible says, if there’s a nonbeliever among you, put ‘em away. But I don’t go out of my way to be mean to him, either.)

  The media relations spokesman for the Feminine Circus supply office gave interviews and explicated everything most helpfully to the American people: A pimp commits an illegal act, he’s kicked out immediately. This is a professional procuring organization. And, remember, all we procure are ONES AND ZEROES. Those girls are not real. They’re a miracle of modern technology, is what they are—gigabytes and trilobites just to digitize their smiles! And since they’re not real, nobody’s getting exploited, and there’s no disease to worry about.

  Can you tell me why you want to repeal the federal income tax? asked the interviewer.

  That is the goal. A whole basis for the collection of income to the government would have to be arranged. One way would be to have virtual prostitutes raise the money.

  What’s your position on illegal prostitution?

  Illegal, immoral, unhealthy, unsafe! Don’t do it, America! Come to Feminine Circus and indulge your fantasies in a safe, healthy and tasteful manner.

  (Tasty is right! laughed vulgar Brady.)

  There were a few picketers, it’s true, but the Associate Vice President of Marketing, Mr. Marlowe W. Slapper, explained: I do know that the circles they move in are definitely of an anti-sexual nature.

  So you don’t believe that there’s any substance to these protesters’ claims?

  Protesters as a class will sit there and lie, said the Associate Vice President of Marketing. It’s hard to debate someone who lies. If you want to really look at this, you take some objective fact of theirs and check it. For instance, what about this red herring they raise regarding coercion, of retarded girls being forced to perform fellatio? Me, I never met a whore who didn’t enjoy giving head. And, like I says, they’re not real anyways.

  Mr. Slapper, don’t you feel that the name “Feminine Circus” is a bit unfair to women? asked a journalist. Shouldn’t the name encourage women to come and play also? I mean, right now, isn’t Feminine Circus mainly for men?

  We’re in the final phases of a pilot program to introduce a special division for female customers, Mr. Slapper explained. For health and safety reasons we’ve decided to keep areas separate, as indeed we’re required to do under federal law. You wouldn’t want coed bathrooms, now, would you? No coed orgasms, either, because that would be prostitution. The way we have it planned, the men will go and do their thing among the bits and bytes, and the women will do a similar thing in their own area. Of course free daycare and a shuttle service will be provided.

  (Leaning back in his chair, Mr. Rapp narrowed his eyes and grimaced, studying John as if he were the most important entity in the world. He nudged John and said: You remember what Engels used to say? Do quote Engels, son. It sounds so good when you say it.

  (John smiled and said: For savagery—group marriage; for barbarism—pairing marriage; for civilization—monogamy, supplemented by adultery and prostitution.)

  The Senior Vice President of Sales raised his wineglass and quipped: I have one of the easier jobs on the property. My job is to fill seven thousand beds a day. Double beds.

  Every week there was a glowing article about Feminine Circus in the entertainment section.

  | 311 |

  Now the famous men rose to the occasion, gathering in the foyers to meet the ladies belly-to-belly, nose-to-anus, tongue-to-armpit—whatever their own honor cried for. The senator was there, jovially uptilting an Alsatian beer. The junked-out salesman was there. Last night he’d wanted a hooker, and he’d gotten a hooker. She took him into the hotel room and the pimp said: you’re fucking my wife! —The salesman pulled a knife. The pimp pulled a knife, too, and held it to his throat for about five hours. Now the salesman wanted a nice slow fat retard girl to slap around a little, before he stuck it into her mouth. That would put him right with the world again. After all, she wasn’t real anyhow. He was a good man; he always paid cash. —The successful dentist was there, laughing and shouting: If she finds out . . . ! while the mortician stood waiting sweet-eyed beneath the lighted paper cylinders, which is to say the red and white corrugated glow-in-the-dark leeches; when his turn came, the customer support specialist drew him down beneath the rows of translucent stalactites and fluorescent macaroni which continually winked and blinked; she took his hand as gently as an easy death and pulled him down the velvet passageway to the second sinus where the halfway-approved clients sat at kidney-shaped marble tables, six men each, either ignoring each other as if on the bus, or smiling at each other, freeze-dried instant friends. (To the press the bellman would only say that everything was great, that they had a commitment to their employees.)

  Everything I don’t even wear I send to the dry cleaner’s! the dentist was shouting.

  Ah, replied the mortician, sipping his beer. You can do that, pal—indeed you can—but once the shirt’s starch is gone it never comes back again . . .

  You’re going to get me pissed off, said the dentist in a low voice. You won’t like it when I’m pissed off.

  That’s your privilege. That’s the privilege
of your urine. But when you’re lying on my marble slab, colder than a frozen clam, how much urine will you work up then?

  Hey, asshole, why are you even here? Why are you talking that way? You’re here to do a root canal on those girls, just like me. What do you keep going on about dying for?

  Dying? said the mortician. Oh, dying. That was a great movie. It came out of nowhere. I remember when I saw it in Westwood, on the way to the dry cleaner’s.

  | 312 |

  The mortician’s number was called just after the senator’s. The hostess took him down the spiral velvet corridor, deeper and deeper into good repose. In a circular room that smelled like cherry cough drops, they sat him down at a video screen to watch the play of the overhead cameras in the girls’ rooms (the busy rooms being blacked-out like air raid Saturdays); so he watched the prey, rubbing his hands, watched a girl banging her head against the wall, twisting in her urine-soaked bed; another, hyper-sexed, squatted masturbating with a toy snake’s head like a good washerwoman twisting and massaging the wet garment against itself; a third rushed blindly blundering from wall to wall like a trapped bottle-fly; a fourth lay catatonic with her stuffed giraffe; a fifth crouched over the toilet, splashing her hands in and laughing; a sixth was trying to dance to the nursery rhyme muzak that the establishment piped in like the will of God; and the mortician said: Number six looks lively enough. That’s very good. You see, I love life.