The Royal Family (29 page)

What should I draw? said the Queen aloud. Something like a shark or a stingray. Nothing cute. My girls don’t like nothing too cute. What’s gonna make Domino happy? What’s gonna make Strawberry come? What’s gonna make Kitty some fresh money? —Magic marker in hand, she upstretched against the concrete wall behind the grating, straining upward in her high heels so that her fringed skirt danced, smiling a little as she drew. She did the charcoal-colored eyes as far above her head as she could reach. The fringes quivered against her buttocks. Her little feet silently slid upon the light-pocked concrete.

A woman with two shadows raised and lowered her arm with a strangely mechanical air. Her ankle-length white dress was as porcelain. She froze, turned, seeming to stand on a rotating platform rather than move herself. Her hand-edges chopped air like knives. She bent, bowing to one of her shadows, while the shadow behind bowed to her. Now she joined with her shadow, becoming a vast writhing mound.

What is it, Sapphire? asked the Queen.

The porcelain woman covered her face and giggled. Then she began to stammer: S-s-s-some-b-b-b-body . . .

Oh, somebody’s here, huh? What a good girl. Always looking out for your Queen. C’mere, baby. Queen’s gonna kiss your pussy . . .

L-l-l-uh . . .

Love you, too, Sapphire. Lemme kiss you. Quickly now. Can’t keep guests waiting.

The girl approached, shyly scuttling sideways, timidly entered the Queen’s arms. Sweat formed like milk on her porcelain face, and her pale legs began to writhe in the darkness.

Uh-uh-uh. Oh. Oh.
Oh,
oh, oh.

That’s a good girl. That’s my girl. You’ll always be Queen’s little girl. Now go let the man in.

An old, old face, he thought when he saw her; a face without any whites in the eyes anymore, a palish head upon a dark dress. Old, but maybe not so old—but a middle-aged black woman, just as Smooth had said. Older than in the photo—old, old!

What’s your name, please, ma’am? he said.

Africa, replied the woman with a faint smile. I’m the Queen.

She had a codeine girl’s sleepy froggy voice, her perfume and soft crackly sweater further manifestations of the same, a narcotic blood that dizzied with a sweet scent that was half a stench—well, maybe she actually smelled like smoked leather.

Take my cigarette, she said to Sapphire. And go make them be quiet.

The porcelain girl fled, her shining mouth pulsating with strings of mucus. Distant whispers ceased, and the silence crawled in his ears like sweat.

So there’s this guy who wants to do business, Tyler said. Mr. Brady’s his name. One of those losers with money. I don’t like him and I guess he doesn’t like me, because he fired me, but he’s been looking for you.

Are you the one who wrote me those letters? said the Queen.

Yes, ma’am.

And you beat up one of my girls, she said.

No, that was him. That wasn’t me.

But you set her up to get beaten up.

I have some responsibility for that, he admitted. I thought he was too dumb to know the difference. I didn’t know you were for real, and I thought she could fake it and he’d pay her and then she’d give me a kickback. I’m sorry. I looked for her after that, but I never saw her. If you can tell me where she is, I’d like to make amends. Financial amends.

You’ll make amends to me, the Queen said.

Here’s two hundred bucks, he said, pulling out ten twenties. I wish it could be more. But I didn’t beat her up and this is my money which I’ll never get paid back and work hasn’t been going very well lately.

What kind of work?

I’m a P.I.

Take his money, Justin, said the Queen.

He saw the tall man’s hand. He began to count money into it, and a flashlight shone upon the bills by magic.

The flashlight wandered. Hunched and kneeling, with her hands over her face, the porcelain girl was a whitish thing, a strange staring thing, her dress like a sail catching in a breeze. It widened as she leaned back and spread her legs. Imperceptibly it stretched, like a sail catching air. Her eyes almost closed, her wrists gripped one another in turn. Then she began to masturbate. In the stillness, Tyler could hear the creaking of her shoes. She began to club her temples with her bent wrists, like a wrought-up windup doll.

You’re carryin’ a piece, the Queen said.

Yes, ma’am.

Justin, take his piece.

Tyler hesitated for a moment. Then, deciding to see matters through, he drew the gun out, careful to keep it downpointed.

Mind if I make it safe? he asked.

Go ahead.

He dropped the magazine out, brought the slide back to unchamber the sixteenth round, put magazine and cartridge into his coat pocket, handed the tall man his gun.

And you’re Tyler? said the Queen.

Yes, ma’am.

And the fellow lookin’ for me?

Jonas Brady from Missouri. That’s his name, ma’am. You know him?

Sure I know him, she said with a grin.
Klexter, klokan, kladd, kludd, kligrapp . . .

He heard a sharp click, and tensed, believing for a moment that somebody had loaded his gun, but then the omniscient flashlight showed him a drop of water trembling on the concrete ceiling; when it fell to the floor its echo harshly slammed. He nodded then. The Queen’s eyes glittered ironically.

And why are you here? she said then.

I—I want to know you, he replied, to his own surprise. (That was what he kept expecting Dan Smooth to say.)

Ah, said the Queen.

He waited.

Down on your belly, said the Queen. Hands behind your head.

He obeyed. He was in for anything now. The floor was damp.

Okay. C’mere. Stay on your belly. Crawl over here like a worm. Closer. Now slide your hands down back of your neck. Raise your head and look at me. Can you see me? Now I’m going to spit in your mouth. I want you to raise your head and open your mouth wide for me like a little baby bird.

She leaned forward, her eyes hurting and confusing him, and her face descended, her eyes shining almost malignantly, and then her full lips began to open and somebody shone the flashlight on them and her lower lip began to glisten with spittle, and then a long slender thread of it crawled down from her lip, with much the same speed as a spider descending its strand, and he was shocked to find how much he wanted that spittle inside his mouth. He didn’t even know why he wanted it. Warm and thick, it began to coil round and round upon his tongue. He felt it before he tasted it. She leaned closer, her face above him like a falling planet so that she was almost kissing him. Then a foaming frothing tide of saliva spilled into his mouth as she breathed on his face. Her breath smelled like cunt. Her spit tasted like cunt.

Later, when she let him go out, he saw the spider-girl advancing on her chin, on her knees and on her palms.

He drove home, dropped two credit card bills into the trash, opened an official-looking letter which crowed:
IMPORTANT NOTICE! You may already qualify for our unique Debt Consolidation Loan up to $500,000 NATIONWIDE!
(he filed that
likewise in the garbage), and then, gazing out the kitchen window at the creeping silver ocean-fog, he tapped his ballpoint against his teeth and added to the details description sheet:

TEETH   White
EARS   Oval, L ear only pierced
FINGERNAILS   Long, unpainted, dirt under nails

He went back to the beginning of the form, thought for awhile, and wrote:

AGE Approx. 45.

Then he changed it back to:

AGE Approx. 40.

He made other corrections:

CLOTHING   Castoffs? Sweatshirt, jeans, tennis shoes.
JEWELRY   Large hoop earring in L ear, bangles on left wrist
PECULIARITIES   Round scar on right calf (bullet wound?), abscess marks on arms, tattoo of skull on left wrist, mole on left cheek, strong smell of perfume.

He stared at the form, which now seemed as vain to him as the scribbles on the walls of a hard-luck hotel. He felt tired and woolly-headed. The angry, anxious sadness that he felt in his chest like a hard chestnut whenever Irene occurred to him now ruled him, and, massaging his breastbone, he had to admit the evidence: There was, as Smooth had said, absolutely no reason for him to be seeking out the Queen. But the seeking was over now, and maybe something would come next to rouse either further sadness or further alarm. It was his characteristic to admit what he could not change—which is to say, he confessed it to himself if not to others. Once Irene had said to him on the telephone: I could never be angry with you, and he’d been so happy that he’d cried. Whenever she had spoken to him he had always felt eased, except that last time in the restaurant on Geary Street when her decision had already entombed her; she used to make him feel the same way that his friend Mikey did when he came back from Alcoholics Anonymous meetings; Mikey had been sober for forty-two years, but twice a week he went to A.A. and talked and listened to his own kin, then got relief; sometimes he got sick and couldn’t go, and then he turned desperate and mean. Tyler didn’t turn mean, but he knew the other feeling all too well, the feeling of no rent money, and John’s anger, and his mother’s reproach, and loneliness, loneliness above all—how he loved Irene! She was his sickness, his dear little disease. God and Irene, are you one and the same? Because I can’t find either of you. Not that I ever believed in You, God. But, Irene, I believe in you just as much even though I can’t touch you; Irene, I’ve got to get you back. Your death is an impossibility. My need proclaims that. I’m going to find you somehow, or else I’ll pretend.

On the details description form he added to
PECULIARITIES:
Lesbian or bisexual.

Now, the court thing, I have absolutely no control there, Dan Smooth was saying on the phone. And I don’t have the time to get involved.

He hung up. —FBI turds, he muttered.

Lacing his fingers together, he then surveyed Tyler and said: How did it go?

I saw her, said Tyler. I don’t know what to make of it.

I like you more and more, Henry. You don’t bullshit. Sit back, relax, pour yourself some Black Velvet. Working man’s drunk. I want to finish watching this. I was right in the middle of the good part when that administrative bitch called. Speaking of bitches, how’s Mugsy?

How do you know the name of my mother’s dog?

It’s in your file, fella. Right under the note about Black Velvet.

You’ve been spying on me?

For the Queen, agreed Smooth. He turned the knob of the dusty old television set, which was not quite at arm’s length from his eyes, and indented the blue button of the videocassette recorder. The movie resumed.

The girl shook her hair out of her eyes as the man put his penis into her butt. There was not any sound.

Imagine videoing this, said Smooth. Imagine the
happiness.

Tyler sighed and poured himself a drink. —Yeah, just imagine, he said.

Let me find this, muttered Smooth. Just one second. Now, see, what I’d really like to find here . . .

A young boy’s milk-white buttocks were wiggling

There was one other kind of really really bizarre scenario, said Smooth. It involved lots and lots of toilet paper. No, you really have to see this.

Here were glowing aliens, shimmering green watercolor-light; the aliens kept bowing toward each others’ middles.

To me this is really erotic, said Smooth. Really really erotic. Almost always, part of it is the fantasy aspect. Now, in this one, I’m the father and he’s the bad boy. I’m saying right here: Are you ready for a B.M. fantasy? and he says yes. I say, lean back in the chair. He says: Danny, I’ve had this fantasy, too.

You think he meant it or he was saying it to get more money out of you?

I think he meant it, Henry. I wasn’t paying him anything.

Tyler refilled his glass.

He’s already fourteen, Smooth went on. I still love him. These things happen. Also, as I was telling you earlier, the whole thing happened in my mind.

You mean he’s just virtual?

Well, it’s a confessional time for me, said Smooth almost shyly. I also really don’t want to like fuck up and do something evil. This scenario is . . .

His voice became silent for a moment. Then he said: I’ve never hurt anybody, Henry.

I believe you, Tyler said. I guess I’m a Canaanite, just like you said.

The Queen saw that right off, Henry. Don’t think she didn’t. You’re in now, boy.

Smooth swallowed, drummed his fingers, and gazed into Tyler’s face very very earnestly. Finally he whispered: See, there is this other thing. The Queen is so gorgeous sometimes. And always so special to me.