The Royal Family (72 page)

The next time she saw Sapphire, which was three nights later, under the Stockton tunnel, Beatrice, who after trying and trying to get business late on that streetlit evening, raising her T-shirt, flashing her big round breasts at the stunned drivers in their torpid little cars, had finally made twenty for blowing a fat black businessman, ran out and bought five dollars’ worth of powder, and after taking two snorts for herself (didn’t a girl deserve a commission? Wouldn’t Sapphire tell her go ahead if Sapphire could speak?) gave the rest to Sapphire, who swarmed mewlingly into her arms. Strawberry was back, and the tall man was already cursing and punching her face.

The Queen said to Beatrice: You’re carryin’ some bad blood in your heart. I can smell it.

Seeing that her dear lady with the old, old face was not judging her but merely worrying over and sorrowing over her, Beatrice, who was chewing Mexican candy, felt ashamed and tender all at once. At that moment she would have died for her Queen. How much easier life would be, if such moments endured! Running into the black woman’s arms, she sobbed, her brittle English cracking and breaking as it always did when she was agitated: And Santa Claus didn’t give me nothing for Christmas, but he give me my Mama. You always my Mama. I wanna love you. I wanna be with you. I wanna marry with you. If you ever come Mexicali, you doan never pay your hotel, come my house. I ask my other Mama already and she say okay. And I gonna come running, running to get you and take you home so you can stay with me forever. I’m gonna meet your bus and fuck you all night ’cause you’re my Mama.

Oh, please, said Domino. How can you ask your other Mama anything? She’s dead.

Hush up, Dom. Let the girl be. And
you
hush up, too, Beatrice. Try an’ enjoy life. When you gonna teach us all those Mexican dances you know? I never been to Mexico; I wanna learn ’em. We could have a party with some music and everything.

Why don’t you ever listen to music, Maj? Domino interrupted eagerly. You can borrow my headphone radio anytime.

Thank you, darlin’. You know that song “Gypsy Queen”? That’s my song.

Angry and jealous, the Mexican girl whispered rapidly in the Queen’s ear: I told my Mama I lose my money, I lose my twenty dollar from my new boyfriend I meet last night, and my Mama doan say nothing but Domino say
stupida
, you always
stupida
, Beatrice! and then I cry.

She thrust her half-eaten candy at the Queen. The Queen took a bite, but not a big enough one to please Beatrice, who shouted
no, no, no!
bit off a big piece, chewed it, then tongued it passionately into the Queen’s mouth.

The summer’s back broken, Tyler drove unsweatily past Q Street but did not turn off to Dan Smooth’s house even though the traffic light winked meaningfully. His mother was not well. Looking right and left, he glimpsed bunkered lights and light dripping out of dingy Victorians. Then he drove on, proceeding an entire block to the Zebra Club, and parked beneath a billboard which proclaimed him and all other creatures
LUCKY.

He tried to decide what he was going to say to his mother, who had scarcely addressed him since the last time he’d visited her, when he mentioned the false Irene. Should he tell her that he and that one were quits, and that he’d taken up instead with a crack-addicted ghetto prostitute who practiced black magic? The eyes narrowed in his grey, grey face, and he sat unmoving in his car.

A long train went dully by; he heard the sound. At the shopping malls when the trains passed on the levee, a fence kept you so far away that you couldn’t really hear them. They seemed to glide in silence. But when you lived close enough you could hear that long, slow, heavy sound.

He sat there for half an hour. (Meanwhile Dan Smooth was reading an anarchist quarterly called
The Raven
which contained an article called “Children Abusing Adults—Rule 43.”) Finally he started the engine again and drove to the supermarket, where he bought his mother groceries.

A shot of tequila? said Loreena.

Yeah.

That sounds good. Fuck it. Only half an hour before closing time. I’ll have one, too.

Cheers, said Tyler.

Cheers. I’ll need some money now, dear.

How much?

I
knew
you’d do that to me. Let’s see . . . I’m a little bit fuzzy . . . Two twenty-five.

Here.

Thank you. You’re always so generous, Henry. Man, that tastes good. I just love that tequilla. That’ll put hair on your chest. Or maybe take it off.

In my own case I can’t remember, so maybe I can see your chest and dope it out.

Now you’re pushing the bucket, mister, said Loreena, but then to his astonishment she lifted up her T-shirt and flashed rosy-nippled, round and perfect breasts.

Thank you, he said. That was good of you.

I learned that trick from Beatrice.

Surprise, surprise.

You know, it’s such a hot night, Loreena said. I figured after I got off work I’d head for Jonell’s and then maybe the Cinnabar, and after that I’d love to go skinnydipping out at Ocean Beach.

Tyler immediately became sad because he wanted to be with the Queen and now he would have to disappoint Loreena. —I’ll be back if I can, he said. I have to go make some money.

Loreena’s ancient face grimaced back down into its habitual mask of weary disgust, and she said: Well, drive carefully, Henry, okay?

And he wondered which would have been the more enlightened act—to go with Loreena and make her happy for an evening, loving her as the Queen loved everybody, or to go to the Queen and literally love her? —I don’t know where I’m going anymore, he muttered.

That was what he did now, night after night. Passing Strawberry up against the wall of the twenty-four-hour carwash with the hollows of her eyes filled with unreadable light and light drooling from her mouth like some customer’s sperm, passing Chocolate who was grinning and clenchfisted as she leaned up against the slimy wall-tiles of the Wonderbar late at night, trying not to shiver and making sure she stared down every car that came, Tyler wandered in through the back door to the red stools and red love seats, the kingdom of the Wonderbar where Domino, waiting to do business with someone whose identity would soon shock Tyler, said to him: Are you married?

Only to my brother’s dead wife, he replied. How’s the Queen today?

You know, said Domino, I don’t exactly have
contempt
for you; I don’t exactly think you’re a
coward . . .

Well, I’m glad to hear that, said Tyler sarcastically.

Are you laughing at me?

No, sweetheart. I would never laugh at you.

Well, then why do you—oh, fuck it.

Like all the brilliant women he knew who kept crying out that people made no sense and whose dream it was to flee everything and work at a Dairy Queen somewhere in Mississippi, Domino had visions which life would never live up to. Her brightest vision was that everyone would love her. Her life asserted that everyone hated her.

So how’s the Queen? he said.

You have a thing for her, huh? That’s rich. That’s fuckin’ rich. To think that ole Maj herself is finally getting a piece of dick! That sleazy old lowlife Maj—ha, ha! Hey, Henry, how does it feel to be dating a nigger?

Feels okay to me.

And your sister-in-law was a gook, wasn’t she? Smooth told me . . .

Oh, so you’re dicking Smooth? he said, trying to get off the subject of Irene and the Queen.

No, he’s a honky. I don’t do honkies, since I’m one myself.

My, my, said Tyler. Just who enjoys the honor of being done by you?

You wanna do me, Henry?

You’re a mighty beautiful woman, Domino.

Well, then I guess you have quite an
opportunity,
now, don’t you, she said with her trademark venomous bitterness. (When she was a little girl there was something wrong with the car. They went to the mechanic’s. He was greasy and smoking. There was a naked picture on the wall. It made her ashamed. She couldn’t have been more than three. Her mother was changing her brother’s diapers.)

Of course I’d love to sleep with you, Domino, Tyler said. Buy you a drink?

Rum and Coke, she purred instantly.

Rum and Coke for Domino, please, he said to the barmaid.

Okay, dear.

Now, tell me this, said Domino. What are your intentions regarding the Queen? Because it affects all of us. Don’t think we haven’t all seen you sneaking around.

What are my intentions? he muttered. I don’t know.

Smooth said you’re a detective. He said you’re a lousy stinking cop.

I bet he didn’t put it quite that way.

Well, are you a cop?

Nope.

Are you a detective?

Yes I am.

Why, you
sonofabitch.
You even admit it. You’re spying on us all. You want to bring us all down. And you
enjoy
it, don’t you? You’re
good
at it.

Oh, once you get used to the databases, you just kind of whip in and out, he muttered.

And you’re not ashamed?

I’m not out to hurt you, he said. I promise.

What are you about?

Just chilling out with your Queen, he said.

You want to get her? You want to destroy her?

No.

But you like her?

Sure.

You love her? That stinking old Maj!

I don’t know her that well, he said.

And how do you feel about the rest of us?

I think you’re all great. But you’re the best, of course, Domino.

Oh, don’t fucking patronize me. You men are all the same. All you want is to use us. You don’t give a damn, really, do you? You don’t give a fucking damn.

Here’s your rum and Coke, dear, said Loreena.

Domino uplifted it without thanks and thrust her long grey tongue between the ice cubes.

And for you, Henry? said the barmaid like the dreamy Queen speaking through closed eyes, lips parted as if to kiss some ghost which he could not see. Your usual?

Yeah, why not, he said.

Look, said Domino. I’m reminding you of my interest in all this. I’m reminding you to cut me in. You never would have met the Queen without me.

Honk four times, he said agreeably.

Listen, she said.
Listen.
I’m trying to tell you that I . . .

I
am
listening, Domino.

Oh, go to hell.

I go there regularly.

You think you got the Queen pinned down now, don’t you, fucker? You think she’s yours? Well, you’re never going to own her. I can see you’re one of those types who just thinks he can own a woman. Well, women have got it in for men like that.

I don’t need to own her, Domino. Why buy when you can rent?

Yeah, how many other thousand guys you think she’s already
fucked?
the blonde snarled.

Dan Smooth, who’d just now strutted in, raised his forefinger, and Tyler thought: Okay, kiddies, here we go. Blessed art the peacemakers.

You remember the proverb of the Sadducees, Domino?

Fuck, no, pervert, and I don’t care, either.

Well, Smooth explained, not a bit perturbed by this less than eager pupil, the Sadducees asked Jesus about a man who’d married his dead brother’s wife according to the Law of Moses—you know, he had to take care of his brother’s gal—well, then
he
died, and his brother married her, and
he
died, and so on and so on, until all seven brothers had had her one by one, and then they all died, and so did she. Her cunt must have been tired by then. I wonder what it smelled like . . . But the Sadducees were trying to trip Jesus up, see. That’s why they raised the issue in the first place. It was a sting, you see; it was
entrapment.
We’ve all been there before. They said to Him: Whose wife is she going to be in Heaven? (Because they didn’t believe in the Resurrection at all.) But Jesus got them, Domino. Because you know what He said? He said:
You are wrong, knowing neither the Scriptures nor the Authority of God. For in the Resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in Heaven.
How do you like that?

So in Heaven she fucks them all or not? said Domino, intrigued in spite of herself.

What do you think?

Sure, said Tyler after a moment. Sure she does. She’s got to.

What do you mean, she’s
got to?
You misogynist!

Tyler rubbed his chin and said: No, no, I didn’t mean it that way. I meant, that would
be the right thing to do. She would want to. They all took care of her and let’s assume they loved her, so let’s assume she was at least grateful—doesn’t it flatter you if a john loves you?