The Lucky Star

by William T. Vollmann

  30

  Then my turn came. I among a few faithful others mean to keep the lesbian’s secrets, so I will not tell you (at least not until I can’t help myself) what she did to me and I to her, and how with her help I, even I, came into heaven.

  Although I tried to remember everything about her, by the time I was going downstairs her perfect face had already become a timeworn two-dimensional image whose closed eyes gazed at something other.

  31

  All the same, at the Y Bar I must have been radiant. The transwoman, ordinarily so shy, smiled joyously to see me so; before I could react, she sweetly hugged and kissed me. She might have been the only one for whom there was no why.

  Francine smiled at me, saying nothing. It was then that I first began to consider her my friend.

  You, too, said Xenia.

  I nodded.

  Welcome to the fan club.

  Six dollars, said Francine.

  Well, said Xenia, don’t think you can appreciate her the way I can.

  How do you know what I appreciate?

  As a man you’re walking around with a boner and you’re looking for a place to put it. With women there’s this emotional heat that can only happen with another woman. And when we use our hands, and our toys . . . !

  That annoyed me, but Francine winked and poured me a free refill.

  For years her bluntness and apparent coldness had prejudiced me against her, she being one of many who rarely troubled herself to reply when I greeted her or asked how she was, so I fell out of that habit. Presently I began to perceive her silent kindnesses: She never poured out short measure, and sometimes did the opposite, gratis, even for those who were not regulars. She gave respect to sadness, and help to sickness, being always good for a few pills. Because I expected nothing of anyone except for the retired policeman (and now Neva), it felt almost painful to deepen my acquaintanceship with Francine, especially since at first I could not fathom what she wanted, and then I could not tell what she saw in me. I now suspect that the lesbian’s effects upon us were so strange and wonderful that Francine needed to exclaim. She needed to tell someone that whenever they were making love it seemed as if Neva were singing a song that Francine had always known. So I became the latter’s audience.

  From our intimacy I learned that Francine sincerely loved Judy. And in time I began to love them both likewise. It also caught my notice that although the retired policeman apparently scorned her, Francine never failed to refer to him with respect.

  32

  And you made plans to meet her again, he said.

  Yes I did.

  How much is she paying you?

  It’s not like that.

  I get it. True love.

  While she ran water in the bathroom, thinking about the lesbian, who was just then pulling up the long hairless lips of Holly’s slit, one forefinger on each, then spreading them open just before beginning to breathe ever so lightly on the rising clitoris, he lay on his back reading the National Enquirer and muttering about willful misconduct, fraud, misrepresentation and suppression of fact. The President was an extraterrestrial. Judy Garland had engaged in incest with her homosexual father. Oh, and just as the ancient Spartan poet Alcman knew the tunes of all the birds, so this motherfucking Neva knew every woman’s song. Judy had said as much; likewise Sandra and Francine. Meanwhile Jennifer Lopez was pregnant for real. Venus Williams had been seen holding hands with Martina Navratilova in the same ballroom where Elvis Presley had cross-dressed with Dwight Eisenhower. China was subverting the United Nations, after which it came time to rendezvous with his sweetheart in the shower. When he stood up, for once his ankles forgot to give him grief. First he pretended to call Melba, just to keep Judy in her place. She pretended to be devastated. Fishing under the pillow, he found the vinyl strap. Now he began to feel in the mood. Judy, grunting and groaning with excitement as he carefully beat her, finally wet herself, which was almost literally the climax for both of them; then he yawned and opened the faucet.

  What next?

  Longfellow used to say that the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts, so the retired policeman must have still been young.

  It was not as if he intended to injure the lesbian, although he certainly relished the process of law, which may be defined as follows: link by link, to chain the accused to her public guilt and doom. Such constructions being imperishable and ideal, who wouldn’t adore them? In his next life he’d become a forensic prosecutor, whose collected treasures would include the dark stairs of dreams, and the pallid sack under them, with twisted white feet sticking out. In the last drabs of this life he improved his mind, playfully exposing Judy’s clumsy inconsistencies, dissecting out stupidities and misstatements to bare the coldly shining darknesses of the lies within. Had she been true to him, he would have gotten far less fun out of her! And for all I can say, she wanted and needed to be caught. Both considered the advantages and disadvantages of admitting certain stories as evidence.

  He enjoyed the thought of puncturing whatever secret the lesbian possessed, then laughing at the shock on her face. But for now it was best to ignore the truth.

  He knew about Ed and he knew about Al. He thought he knew about me. Unscrewing a bottle of Blissodex, he shook out one tab for her and two for him. She pursed up her lips and air-kissed him. He said: Judy, if you give me a disease I’m gonna fucking kill you.

  Her Name in Lights

  Let me fly like a hawk, let me cackle like a goose, let me slay always like the serpent-goddess Neheb-ka.

  THE EGYPTIAN BOOK OF THE DEAD

  If I’m such a legend, then why am I so lonely?

  JUDY GARLAND, 1967

  1

  Shantelle was what the Japanese would have called a natural born poison woman. Of course, like any poison woman, she did not see herself as such. She had bad luck, worse parents, you name it. Everyone was against her. Like all the rest of us, she’d been molested. In court she invariably pled innocent.

  We read that Natalie Wood’s mother impressed on that precocious starlet the importance of cataloging her career by keeping meticulous scrapbooks containing virtually every magazine article, advertisement and photograph featuring Natalie since she was five years old.

  As for Shantelle’s mother, she said: You don’t have no Beverly Hills brothers and sisters, and, Shantelle, that’s just a fact of life.

  Not my life, thought the girl.

  Later she remembered the time when her best friend Karissa began to go to Christian school, after which Karissa was forbidden to invite her over; and she remembered waiting in the street for Karissa to sobbingly confirm Shantelle’s exclusion from her twelfth birthday, at which Shantelle began hating on everybody, her sullenness as ready to release itself as any shock-sensitive explosive.

  She did what she did because she required success. (They owe me, said she. I’m gonna get what’s mine.) I can almost see her stepping on the gas, speeding down the on ramp by the Tropicana, past Thai Town and Sunset Boulevard, rushing curvily beneath the overpasses and past the Hollywood Bowl, a white cross glowing high in the night, flying down the freeway, smoking crack behind that tall metal fence on Maplewood, and then, after her first paid blow job, running into Celebrity Burger to wash out the taste with a big cup of soda from the machine. After a few more blow jobs, spitting was good enough for our Shantelle.

  A customer called her niggah trash, and Shantelle pretended to swallow down that insult, but when they were in his car she positioned herself just right, so that when he was inside her and sucking on her titty like an overgrown baby she popped out his shitty little stereo and hid it in her purse.

  For her first mug shot she slouched back in her striped fuck-me blouse, giving both deputies the evil eye, with her long black hair arranged just so on her shoulders, and whatever effect of cobwebbed eyesockets she gave off was only because she was s
leepless and high, not anxious in the slightest. Once again prosecution was waived, and after several stern intimidations they returned her to her mother, who was drunk when Shantelle came home, which made it all the easier to lift everything of interest, including a wallet and house keys, the lack of which might delay any chase. The girl now owned seventy-nine dollars in cash, a checkbook, three credit cards and her mother’s driver’s license, so she had made a pretty fair start. Deploying her hair into tall narrow two-paired antlers as if she were a Chu Era tomb guardian, she caught the bus to the south side of town.

  Her boyfriend DaShawn demanded to be informed where she was going now.

  Don’t get all juiced up about it, nigger, ’cause it ain’t nothin’ so good. But you know I love your ass.

  I said where you goin’?

  I really don’t know, and I really don’t give a shit. Point is, stop fuckin’ with me.

  He tried to stop her, so she stabbed him, not to kill but just to get away. She left him bleeding and cursing on the floor. He was a goddamned motherfucker.

  Shantelle caught the night Greyhound bus for Las Vegas.

  She colored her hair copper-red, crimsoned her lips, blushed up her cheeks, hooked on the longest jingly dangly earrings she could get, and practiced looking narrow-eyed while half-smiling over her smooth bare shoulder, but even then she failed to approximate the showgirl Noella Neighborly. But at four in the morning, with curtains drawn against the looming dawn and air conditioning first pretending to freshen the casino’s cigarette smoke, then moving it round and round the room, her client (since compliments were cheaper than tips) promised that she had what it took to be a showgirl. And she believed it! Just as when one comes from a blinding July afternoon in the Central Valley down into a foggy never-never dusk in Carmel or Monterey, whereupon another and maybe better form of being seems achievable, with the future as wide and soft as a powdery beach, so our Shantelle looked ahead and saw herself making it big. Sleep would have inconvenienced her plans, so at midmorning she set out. Nothing in her life had ever appeared as empty as the palm-shadowed stairs of the courthouse—until finally a pretty woman leaped out of a taxi and ran up them for some appearance for which she was apparently late. Shantelle stood there, high on goofballs. After awhile two bulletheaded U.S. marshals, one black and one white, descended the stairs and turned left toward Casino Center while a fat lady came, trusting in her cell phone, whose synthetic robot voice assured her: your destination is on the right, and so the fat lady went upstairs. Shantelle proceeded to the ladies’ room of the coffee shop on the corner of Lewis and Casino Center, did two lines of meth and then set off for the Strip. That afternoon she scammed her way into a show and watched how that chorus line kicked its legs!—. . . not to mention the front row audience girls screaming oh my GOD! when the acrobat in the bathtub blew water out of his mouth, or the almost naked male acrobat one-handedly lifting another male acrobat above his head: slow muscles and perfect balance in the light! Fans shot up their loving arms in tribute to each star as she entered the attention of the whole world—while the ringmaster insulted everyone. The front row girls screamed until everyone’s ears rang.

  Shantelle strolled to the nearest bar and picked up a retired dancer who said: Now thin and tan is hot shit. I quit because I thought I was old . . .

  Shantelle was thin and tan. Indeed, her new friend was fucking old.

  At the top of the cast is a principal, the retired dancer explained. A lead. In my time there were four principal girl dancers, and a couple of principal boy dancers. It’s kind of weird how it all works. You should see this girl with her makeup on. I mean, she’s a pretty girl. But onstage, she’s just captivating. But certain people, they just have something else.

  Well, what the fuck is it? Shantelle demanded.

  What is what?

  That something else.

  I think it’s confidence.

  I’ve sure got that, said Shantelle in her purring, snarling voice.

  I love to be looked at but I hate to be looked at, the other woman went on, not understanding that only Shantelle mattered. Who gave a fuck about this dogeared bitch?

  The other woman said: I think that anybody that’s onstage is like me in that way. They may have some physical attributes that makes them . . .

  What about me?

  Slow down, honey.

  Shantelle’s audition might have gone better if she hadn’t kept swaying.

  2

  With the lesbian, as you have read, she put on a better performance, taking pleasure over and over. She was the sun and Neva the moon.

  Sensing from her lowered yet determined eyes that Shantelle had now begun considering more strange and ambitious possibilities of intercourse, if not necessarily of love itself, the lesbian said: Next time, you’re invited to my place.

  That was how Shantelle first ascended the carpeted stairs that the rest of us were coming to know. The lesbian closed and locked the door. There were clean sheets on the bed. Smiling at Shantelle, she stood waiting to be kissed or raped.

  When Shantelle realized that her heart had gone out to the lesbian she felt angry and wanted to attack her, all the while shouting why are you doin’ this to me? but instead clutched her tight, then wept.

  Cradling her head, the lesbian began to kiss her face. For a long time Shantelle sobbed loudly. But Neva slipped two fingers inside her tights. Drawn together by what pretended to be the same intention, she and Shantelle presently, propelled by the super-terrestrial gravity of their approaching orgasms, plummeted into each other, exploding in each other’s hearts and cunts, then trapped together by tenderness.

  The lesbian, exhausted, fell asleep. Shantelle lay watching her, feeling so alone and so rejected.

  3

  You see, she was a competitor, just like the Olympic figure skater Tonya Harding. As soon as Tonya snatched the gold medal from Kristi Yamaguchi and Nancy Kerrigan at the Minneapolis Nationals, her situation brightened, but the Olympics remained nearly impossible. Then at Munich she vanquished both rivals again. Now that the correlation of forces had altered to her advantage, certain risks grew more justifiable. Kristi turned pro, which removed her from the competition. That left Nancy, who had been training hard; the rumor was that she might have improved her game. Hence it definitely paid to smash her in the leg, ensuring that Tonya would win the figure skating championship in Detroit. No one ever proved that she planned the assault. After she pled guilty to interfering with the prosecution, they banned her from the Olympics for life.

  Deerlike Judy intuited nothing. The retired policeman said: Wake up, bitch. You’re my little Nancy Kerrigan. And Shantelle’s your Tonya Harding, so watch out.

  Judy nearly asked which skater Neva was, but fortunately swallowed her tongue.

  And so Shantelle called the lesbian and left the following message: Hey, baby, I don’t know if it’s okay to love you and sometimes it’s so hard. I don’t know where you are or who you’re with right now, but I believe in what you promised me so I know we’ll talk soon, and I just wanted to call and tell you I’m thinkin’ about you.

  I Guess I Just Like Nice People

  It does you no harm when you esteem all others better than yourself; but it does you great harm when you esteem yourself above others.

  THOMAS À KEMPIS, 1413

  Don’t yield your leadership. Don’t hand us the reins.

  JUDY GARLAND, 1955

  1

  Remembering the white party dress that Judy Garland put on for the Academy dinner when they gave her an Oscar Award, the transwoman dressed in white, because she had decided to find someone to take care of her, much as the previous generation sometimes married for safety. Never mind Sandra and Erin; who could that someone be but the lesbian? She went to ring the buzzer for number 543 at the Reddy Hotel, but nobody answered. Neva must be fucking someone.

  Give
it up, honey, said Francine. You’ll never be as pretty as she is.

  The transwoman’s eyes began shining with tears.