The Royal Family

by William T. Vollmann

  adopt kitten?

  cancel account

  The phone rang. Celia was sure that it wasn’t John.

  Hello, I’d like to speak with Miss Celia Caro, said the same uncertain telephone salesgirl, and this time Celia hung up on her.

  She lit another cigarette.

  The phone rang.

  Hello? she said wearily.

  Guess who? said John.

  Hey, babe! cried Celia, trying to be happy.

  You want me to come over?

  Where are you?

  I’ll be downstairs in ten minutes, he said, hanging up.

  In eight minutes the buzzer rang. She muted the television.

  He looked tired and harrassed. He took his coat off and she hung it up for him. She went to the kitchen and poured them each a glass of wine, then gave him his and sat down on the sofa. He came and sat beside her.

  Smoking again, he said, looking at the ashtray.

  Celia said nothing, but her lips tightened bitterly. Lonely or not, this was hardly what she took pleasure in, to wait half the evening for this half-stranger to come and nag her.

  So, she said. How’s work?

  Oh, Rapp’s being a sonofabitch, and Singer’s making retirement noises. I’m sick of both of them, he said, raising the glass to his lips. His hand trembled.

  How about with you? he said.

  I’ve got two projects that I’m working on, and Sunday I’ve got a corporate brunch, she said. Today I was really jammin’, like they say. On top of everything else I had to get some some last minut e-mail out to a client in Thailand, and then I went to see this woman whom I’m helping with data entry and when I got back home, just after I’d heated up a big plate of food, the data entry woman called and—

  She saw that as usual he was not listening.

  You want to go see that crime documentary tomorrow night? she said, clenching the glass.

  What do I want to see that movie for? laughed John. That movie’s all about reality. It’s depressing. I’m more interested in trying to get away from reality.

  Celia nodded miserably.

  It’s like reading The Diary of Anne Frank, he went on, rubbing it in. It’s a really good book, they say, a great book. That’s just why I don’t want to read it. Not even the unexpurgated edition where she’s talking about her period or something.

  Did your mother make you read it? asked Celia with sudden understanding.

  Leave my mother out of this.

  He gulped the rest of his wine.

  She picked up the remote control and was just about to turn on the television with the volume up loud when he said in an almost terrified voice: Celia . . .

  She looked at him. Her heart began to pound again.

  Celia, he said, I need you, Celia.

  With a sense of sad and cruel triumph, she understood that at this moment—and probably for this moment only—she had license to torment him as much as she pleased. Just as one can tell when men in neckties and shiny shoes stop in front of monuments and reach into shoulderbags that they will pull out cameras which operate with a quiet and elegant click, so Celia recognized John’s purpose, and the mechanisms of it, and the rules for operating those mechanisms. She was not a vindictive woman, but she had met more pleasant men than John in her life, and it infuriated her that through some chemical accident she loved him. She knew all too well that he did not love her and never would, that he could not love anyone (with the exception of his mother), that he had made Irene miserable—but, that being said, he was as well disposed toward her as he could be.

  Smiling, she un-muted the television.

  Celia, did you hear what I said?

  She increased the volume by two iterations.

  Celia, he said.

  This is grotesque, she replied happily.

  | 397 |

  He drummed his fingers and muttered: Klexter, klokan, kladd, kludd, kligrapp . . .

  What’s that? said Celia.

  Oh, I don’t know. Just a kind of jingle. A friend of mine—well, actually, one of my clients—is always saying it, and now it’s stuck in my head.

  | 398 |

  He had not lied. At that moment he’d truly needed Celia. Why? Because he’d come very close to being unfaithful to her with Joy. He was guilty, so he needed her to forgive him. Whenever he looked at Joy’s sad dog eyes after that, he thought about the Wonderbar.

  The next time he went to the Wonderbar, he went without Joy. That was when he met Domino.

  | 399 |

  The blonde, studying John with as much attention as she usually paid to her crack pipe, saw a suit, a perfect necktie, a haircut and well-shined shoes. Through the avarice of courtship shining more brightly than the lemon-yellow socks of the Korean barmaid at Jonell’s she began to sense something familiar, yet displaced, like the upside-down reflections of bottles on a Tenderloin bar’s mirrored ceiling, glowing transparent multicolored stalactites. She sensed his brother Henry.

  Don’t get me wrong, she said in a trembling voice. I have a legitimate job. I work nine to five downtown.

  John, who until then had never thought otherwise, gazed at her in a surprise which also reflected amazement at his own presence in this place. What was he doing? He had so many obligations at the office, and then Celia . . .

  You need lime in that, he said. Loreena! Bring Domino some lime.

  Why, you’re a real gentleman, said the blonde.

  My oh my, Loreena muttered. Aren’t we hoity-toity around here.

  Shut the fuck up! screamed Domino, and John looked on in astonishment.

  It made no sense, his being here. Since he was here, he might as well stay for another twenty minutes, but how was it all explicable? The blonde attracted him; he didn’t know why. Just as a lawyer’s briefcase is almost by definition too small for all his paperwork, so John’s narrow strip of active mentality could not contain more than a few of his longings. It would be better if after today he never returned to the Wonderbar. He sat grinning and relaxed, only his fingers unconsciously fooling with each other.

  Are you married? she whispered.

  My wife died.

  Are you in a relationship?

  Yes, John said.

  You’re a hetaerist, aren’t you? said Domino. That’s one word I’ll never forget. You don’t know what that means, do you, scum? It means one who thinks that women are common property.

  Are you trying to impress me? People who recite words don’t impress me. Anyone can do that.

  She slapped him hard on the cheek and, strangely, this stinging sensation felt delightful.

  This is so strange, he muttered, entirely disoriented.

  It was just some basic flatbacking as far as Domino was concerned. Within half an hour she’d lured him into a twelve-dollar trick pad on Ellis Street and had drawn him down on top of her crying: Come on, come on! —She was trying to figure out how to steal his wallet. He for his part was mesmerized by her scars and bruises like Coptic crosses, especially by the long white eye-shaped bullet scar. As he caressed the blonde’s long, stockinged body, he felt himself carried farther and farther away from everything familiar, like a little child lost at sundown. Instead of the smell of the Tenderloin, about him rose an incongruous movie theater smell of stale popcorn and breath; silhouettes, illuminated around the edges, ran into place during the previews, while a blood-red sun rose upon the big screen. It was all the blonde’s magic.

  When you pay, it’s a whole different thing, she explained. The man fantasizes because he’s paying the money. He’s paying for the feeling that he’s getting power.

  John gazed at her, fascinated. Perhaps there was an element of helplessness in his fascination, but it would not be too much to say that never before in his entire life had he felt so thrillingly engrossed and enmeshed, like a lost tourist, unable to speak Japanese, wandering through the swarming Shinjuku district of Tokyo. Of course work, hobbies and other licit and illicit love affairs had called forth his best harmonizing instinc
t; everything within a given contract, session, year or world which was supposed to match up, did, because John set out to make matters so, and the proceedings, calculations, and downright artistry which achieved that result filled him with pleasure, to be sure. But Domino was no model airplane whose thousand plastic parts he carefully and at times tediously sanded, glued and painted until she was all put together, accomplished; rather, she was something superior and exterior to himself, which seized hold of him and dragged him into a delicious blindness.

  So pay me, she said, sliding her warm hand up his leg. Then you can come play inside my cage.

  Domino seized him, her arms as remorseless as the huge white stripes horizontal and vertical of downtown skyscrapers in the rain when the pavement is as grey as rain. She closed her arms around him.

  So you see, all of you have different experiences in this cage, Domino whispered, gaping her long thighs apart.

  Oh, whatever, said John.

  Are you paying attention to what I said, asshole? Because if you’re not I might just have to slap you again.

  John shuddered with pleasure.

  You need somebody like me, he said to her.

  You’re pretty fuckin’ opinionated, said the blonde.

  John Tyler is a unique animal, said John complacently. John Tyler likes to speak his mind.

  Tyler? Are you Henry Tyler’s brother?

  Oh, this is all I need, said John, losing his erection. Has Hank been porking you, too?

  Hell, no. He porks Maj.

  Who’s that?

  Just some skanky little nigger bitch. All right, John, now let’s cut to the chase, because I don’t have all night. You wanna fuck me or not?

  Fine, said John. But first I want to know whether Hank—

  He’s the kind who goes through the garbage, gets a handwritten scrap of paper with someone’s phone number on it, calls up and say I’m a friend of so-and-so. He’s a real sleaze. We’ve already wasted enough brain cells on him. So. You gotta pay me a hundred dollars up front, she said, watching him with a menacingly greedy smile.

  Silently, John removed a crisp hundred dollar bill from his wallet and gave it to her. Unable to believe in her luck, the blonde kept thinking: I’ve got to get into the sonofabitch’s pocket. I’ve got to. I’ve just go to.

  Okay, John, you can get undressed, but you have to hurry up. You got a condom on you? Otherwise I’m gonna have to charge you five more dollars.

  Grinning, John pulled a condom out of his wallet and slapped it down in the bed. Then he began to unbuckle his trousers.

  You have to know this, Domino said steadily. If I hurt you, don’t ever hit me back.

  John bit his lip and nodded.

  Domino smirked for a moment. Then she slapped his face until his ears rang.

  I’m the Queen, she said. Say it.

  You’re the Queen.

  That’s right, you dumb fuck. Say it again.

  You’re the Queen.

  Again.

  You’re the Queen.

  That’ll work. Am I the Queen?

  Yeah . . .

  That’s right. And you know something? If I don’t fuck you better than anyone else, how can I be your Queen? said Domino very reasonably. Now put me to the test.

  Pulling her urine-stinking panties down around her left ankle, she rolled the condom onto John’s penis most expertly, opened her legs, and lay there looking at her watch.

  Hurry up, she said. I told you I don’t have all night.

  Eagerly John entered her. She kept slapping his face as he thrust. He climaxed almost instantly.

  All right, lover boy, she said, resigned to not snagging his wallet this time. You came, so get out.

  John studied his mirror image carefully to make sure that Domino had left no marks. All the very long narrow dark doorways now seemed to him to take on the shapes of slinking women.

  | 400 |

  About a week after these events, Celia presented him with a gift, although it was not his birthday or any holiday. —I just wanted to, she said with an unreadable smile. John was silent. But when he opened the box and saw within it the octagonal silvery pen with its knurling just above the tapering cone from which the point grew, and the counterpoint knurling on the other side of the pen just above the clip; when he saw how the light shone on its uppermost facet so that the metal became a warm white mirror; when, above all, he closed his hand about the instrument and lifted it out of its long black box, enjoying the feel and weight of solid stainless steel, he felt a sensation of pleasure so powerful as almost to convert the expression of his face into dreaminess. He kept turning the pen round and round in his fingers, watching the band of mirror-brightness altering against the darker smoothness of the pen’s seven other faces; and his joy in the ownership, that is, of the lifelong, unlimited control, of this beautiful thing, compelled him to draw a long slow spiral on the sheet of paper, with the ink-track unrolling beneath his hand, miraculously even and dark. This was his own power which he’d brought forth from the box. Rotating the pen between his fingers once again, he perceived that where the cap was fitted against the body, the corner of each facet-edge had been cut away in V-shaped notches which lined up just so between the two pieces to form diamond shapes.

  What Celia did not know was that the affair with Domino was likewise something to be removed from a box of secret ownership to be admired, treasured.

  | 401 |

  She walked by herself through the glowing green jewel of Union Square. Then she let herself be drawn to the long glowing rows of jewel-pews at the Shreve Company, whose marble-pillared interior enhanced the ambiance of a church. She closed her eyes, pretending that John had bought her an emerald ring. She wanted a Hawaiian honeymoon. How were the beaches there? she’d asked her friend Heidi, who went often with her rich lesbian lover. Heidi said that the big island was much, much nicer than Maui. Heidi said that the eastern coast of the island was almost unbelievable. Celia already had three brochures hidden away—no need to show them to John just yet. In fact, when she imagined her ring and her honeymoon, it did not seem to matter very much whether John were even there. That was how she protected herself against any foreseeable disappointment. She did not feel restless anymore. When she thought of Irene, it was with utter indifference; that woman couldn’t hurt her anymore. And John with his difficulties and failures seemed so safely immune from any harm that Celia or Irene could do, like one of those immense stone figures in front of the Pacific Stock Exchange, that she almost felt that she could treat him any way she liked.

  On Geary and Mason, a businessman in radiantly blue sunglasses wheeled two suitcases behind him; maybe he’d just come from the airport. Celia wandered on. Her lunch hour had almost ended.

  Gracie’s American Brasserie was serving roasted lavender chicken with garlic mashed potatoes. The grilled portabella mushroom au poivre was adequate, John had said. Last time he’d taken her there, she’d tried it, but couldn’t remember how it tasted. He had ordered the ginger-glazed baby back ribs with the two-cabbage cole slaw.

  | 402 |

  The tall man was standing outside the Wonderbar when John approached, because Sapphire had not yet been insulted and so the debacle with Heavyset had not yet occurred. —Got any questions? he said.

  Nope, said John, a little intimidated, a little soft from office life as he fully admitted, but determined not to show it.

  Nice shoes you got, said the tall man.

  Thanks, said John, pushing past him.

  ’Scuse me, said the tall man, but you lookin’ for someone or just lookin’?

  Some people don’t have time to just look, John told him scornfully. Some people don’t have time to answer a lot of nosy questions.

  Then you lookin’ for somebody, huh?

  Shrugging, John entered the bar. Domino wasn’t there yet. He sat on a scarred old barstool and ordered a gin and tonic.

  I know who you’re looking for, Loreena said archly.

  Congratulations,
John said.

  Last night she and I got a little drunk. In this business it happens.

  John had not yet formulated a reply when the tall man came in and sat beside him. Loreena said: Heavyset won’t like your being in here. He’s due any minute. You’d better get out.

  Fuck Heavyset, said the tall man. He’s the only guy I know got eighty-sixed from his own bar.

  You know what? said Loreena.

  What, bitch?

  You got eighty-sixed from this bar, too, Justin, and you just called me a bitch, and if you care to feast your eyes you’ll see I’m holding this baseball bat and I’m going to bring it down on your head if you don’t git.

  Gimme a drink, the tall man whined. John looked away.

  I’m going to call the police, said Loreena.

  Someday somebody gonna take you down, bitch, said the tall man. —He turned to John. —You gonna buy me a drink?

  Don’t feel obligated, honey, Loreena said. He’s not dangerous. I’ve got him under control. Justin, get out and stop bothering my customers.

  Had Loreena not implied that the tall man might be making John nervous, John would have let him be eighty-sixed. But he was very sensitive to issues of courage. Indeed, his willingness to face up to and sometimes to escalate unpleasant situations had contributed to his effectiveness as a lawyer. Whenever he and Celia went to the Mission for lunch on those sunny weekends, they worried a little that the meter maid might punish John’s daringly illegal parking jobs on Lexington or another such alley, in front of some slate-blue or white old Victorian house, John parallel parking perfectly on the first try, then opening the door for Celia, ready to protect her from the Chicano gangsters with crossed-dagger or teardrop tattoos who lounged on the sidewalk; and for much the same reasons the tall man hawked drugs in hotel hallways instead of on the street; yet both of them took their chances if they thought that would get them somewhere fast. And so adventurous John said to the tall man: If I buy you a beer, will you apologize to Loreena and go sit over there so I can think?