The Royal Family

| 384 |

In the winter night they reached OAK HILLS, whose letters were tricked out in spurious gold on the wall. Steel gates slid apart. John eased the car down the glistening black circle studded with streetlamps whose Christmas lights had been formed into alien coil-springs of luminosity. This “gated community,” no community at all, but rather a monument to the rich’s justified fear of the poor, was actually, like the subatomic spaces between electrons, empty and cold. A manhole cover was shining. John drove slowly between grey houses whose black roofs loomed. Occasionally a string of lights blinked idiotically in some window (pathetically, I should say, pathetic as the mobile swinging in the upper window of the police station’s Juvenile Divison at Sixteenth and Mission. Can you believe what the mobile said? I swear that it said LOVE!), but most of the time John and Celia could see no electrons at all because the householders, rich, lonely old empty-nesters, had flown to Phoenix, Lubbock or Salem to inflict themselves on their children and bribe their grandchildren with presents.

My cousin lived here for two years, and she stayed with us, Celia said vaguely.

All right, said John. Where do we park? The friggin’ driveway’s full.

John?

What?

Did you hear what I said?

Oh, so it’s going to be one of those nights. What’s your brother’s name again? I like to know a name when I see a face.

Donald. And my sister is Leslie, but she won’t be there. I’ve told you about Donald so many times…

Yeah, that’s right. Lock the back door on your side.

Do you even care about my cousin?

What’s her name?

Ashley.

Point her out when we go in.

John, weren’t you listening? I told you that Ashley wasn’t going to be here.

Well, then it isn’t relevant information, Ceel. You forgot the bottle of wine. It’s right there on the back seat.

They still own me for another three years, Celia’s father was saying. I’m expecting that they’ll kick me out right before they’d be obligated to honor my pension, but then at least they’ll have to give me some kind of retirement package because it’s an involuntary separation.

Oh, don’t worry, Dad, said Celia, longhaired, in white slacks. I’m sure you’re going to go the full distance.

How much vacation did you say you had? John asked Celia’s brother.

Six weeks.

Interesting.

Are you interested? the brother said challengingly.

Very interested, said John. I have four weeks, but I never get to take it.

I heard that Sis completely arranges her vacation time around you, and that’s why we hardly ever get to see her. Is that true?

Why don’t you ask her? was John’s curt reply.

John, this wine looks extremely expensive, Celia’s mother said. Are you sure we’re worth it?

Positive, said John.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen this brand. Where does it come from? Is it French?

Well, there’s the label. Do you see it? It’s in French, so—

John, don’t!

Don’t what, Ceel? Your mother asked me a question, and I not only answered her, I proved my case. What’s wrong with that? Are you going to tell me I was patronizing?

John, there’s something I’ve always wondered, interposed Celia’s mother. People talk about good wine and bad wine. But I’ve always wondered how you can tell the difference, if you don’t go by price alone.

Two things to look for, John explained. First of all, the wine needs to taste like fruit. It can taste dry or even bitter, but that fruit taste has to be there.

He’s kind of a know-it-all, Donald said into his father’s ear.

And secondly, it has to have a steady aftertaste that stays on your palate.

He kind of talks like a fruity television commercial.

Oh, I see, said Mrs. Keane. Well, I always wondered, and now I know.

Tell John about your new TV, Donald, said Celia.

What? Why should I?

Because he’s interested, silly.

Is he really?

Very interested, said John.

A little shyly, Donald said: Well, John, I have direct TV at my place.

How big is your screen? asked John.

Fifty-four inches, said Donald. The screen here is only forty-eight inches. But watch this.

He squeezed a button on his parents’ remote control, and an action movie appeared on the screen, with a winking blinking menu embedded in the protagonist’s head. A person was hurting another person until blood came.

If you scroll down, Donald explained, you can hear the special effects on the ceiling speakers—but no one is being quiet, he concluded with a sudden glare.

And what do you do with your six weeks of vacation? John asked.

What do you mean, what do I do with it? It’s my vacation. I don’t have to do anything. And by the way, about your and Celia’s vacation, I just wanted to know. I was actually just trying to make conversation, John. No need to get huffy.

John’s not huffy, Celia interposed. That’s just how he is.

Correct, said John, crossing his legs. That’s just my nature.

You think they’re going to terminate me? said Celia’s father anxiously.

Oh, Daddy, sighed Celia.

The back office prides itself on being a separate company. And they hold all the aces. If they terminated me, you think your legal eagle boyfriend could help me sue?

Sure, said John cheerfully. Pro bono.

How many people have you sued?

Thousands. They’re all dead now.

Celia’s mother, whose nervousness had already been aroused by the exchanges between John and Donald, tried to think of something to say and finally blurted: Are you still in your mourning period, John? I always thought it was good manners if the mourning period lasted a year.

Well, let’s see now, he said, raising his eyebrows. How long has it been since my wife killed herself? That’s what you’re asking me, right? I mean, why put too fine a point on it?

Please, John, whispered Celia, her eyes watering. Mama didn’t mean any harm.

Oh, well, forget it, John began, and if someone had rushed to dilute the silence he might have truly been able to let the topic pass, but since Donald was so evidently distempered by his bluntness, and since Celia’s parents, their countenances well sculpted but slightly timeworn, like the Elgin Marbles, hung on his words like vampires, he knew that if he did not speak he would choke with sadness, humiliation and rage, so he burst out, staring them all down: June twenty-seventh. Is that what you were all fishing for?

John, I’m so sorry. I—

She was a great gal, you know, terrific gal. But I’ll tell you something, Mrs. Keane (and here a horrid smile crossed his lips. Celia was tongue-tied with dread.). She couldn’t keep house as well as Celia here. Would you believe that?

John—

Your daughter sure knows how to clean. I’ll say that much for her. She knows what’s important to me. I’ll give you an example. She was the one who hit on that Blue Wave cleanser. That took the stains right off. Well, most of the stains. I still had to get the bathtub refinished. They say blood and protein’s the worst. And today is December twenty-first. So that makes a hundred and seventy-seven days, or six months, depending on how you count — how do you count a month, Mrs. Keane? Do you use the lunar month of twenty-eight days or the variable calendar month? Since June has thirty days and July has thirty-one days, was July twenty-seventh the one month anniversary of her death or not? Donald, my man, a penny for your friggin’ thoughts.

John, I’m so sorry, said Celia’s mother.

Now, what we need to determine, he went on, raising his voice, is whether Emily Post and the other mavens of etiquette actually permit me to be here whooping it up with you fine people on this — should we call it a fine evening? — or whether it would be more befitting for me to sit in a bar somewhere in the Tenderloin, the way my grungy brother would—

That’s a district of San Francisco, Celia explained brightly, clenching her fists.

The Tenderloin? said Celia’s father. Doesn’t he mean the bad area?

… Drinking myself into a stupor until next June twenty-seventh, or would June twenty-sixth be good enough? If there’s no leap year I guess then we could wrap it up. The mourning period, I mean, John shouted.

(Celia would not forget the sight in that bathtub, not ever. Nor would she forget the refinishing man who’d arrived two days later and lounged in the doorway saying to John: That bathtub’s gonna be as smooth as a baby’s ass, Mr. Tyler. Don’t you worry about that. I take pride in my work.

(All right, fine, said John. Just make sure you mask it off. I’m a clean freak.

(What happened in this bathtub, anyway? said the refinishing man. It don’t really look so bad.

(My wife died in it, said John. Just make sure you mask it off, all right?)

Donald said: For Christ’s sake, John, we get the picture.

Oh, you do? Good. Then let’s talk about something more pleasant. Mutual funds, for instance. Do you have a Keough IRA, Donald?

I don’t even know what I have. When I started working for the company last year they told me something about stock options, but…

Wrong answer, said John. I want you to tell me yes or no.

Celia laid a hand on his shoulder, but he shook her off. He went on and on. He talked about stocks and bonds. Only Celia’s father was interested, but Celia’s father was extremely interested.

| 385 |

Easy to put John in a bad light, to perceive in him a desire to torment! But, if we set aside his undeniable territorialism regarding his inner life, his mastiff’s instinct of self-defense even to growling and barking, we’re left with a sincere, almost ingenuous enthusiast of market forces, an almost convivial do-gooder, who enjoyed shepherding his fellow creatures towards security and riches. (Come tax time, Donald’s life is not going to be pretty, he said.) Mr. Keane’s anxiety about the future might have been tiresome to the family; to John, it was natural, prudent, appropriate. John would help him if he could. Passionate believer in self-help and mutual aid, unsurpassed justifier of insurance, accumulation and other end goals, he remained in his own peculiar way as kind to human beings as he was to his mother’s dog. It was natural that in due course he would advise Domino, who always wondered where the money was in her life. (He easily withstands comparison with his fraternal antipode, one Henry Tyler, whose twenty-thousand-dollar investigative access bond with the Department of Motor Vehicles John had paid half of, out of duty to that same Henry Tyler who when walking down Jones Street, enjoying in equal measure clouds over Ellis Street and fire escape shadows on that classy watering hole the Cinnabar, was approached by a man who said: Yo, brother, can I bum a quarter? I ain’t gonna lie to you. It’s for a beer. — You can smoke crack with it for all I care, said Tyler, fishing for a promise-keeper. Sure I’ll give you a quarter.) John wanted the best for everyone, even for the impudent Donald. Did his pity contain contempt? To be sure, John loved dignity. But his hardness was less a means of intimidation, or even of expression of any sort, than an inescapable constituent of his being.

I recall the afternoon at the office when Mr. Singer grinned, sneered and shrugged at the same time, back-tilting his massive bald head. — You’re certainly all business, John, he said. If it weren’t for the fact that the clients seem to like you so much, I’d have to consider you — well, almost abrasive—

If they like me, it must be because I’m all business, replied John. After all, we bill them for my time. They don’t want to pay me to talk baseball. I had a lawyer once who—

But, you know, sometimes talking a little baseball puts a person at ease. Sometimes you can get them to open up…

You mean, like a girl on the first date, said John.

Now, you see, said Mr. Singer with a tiresomely professorial air, you can say that to me, and it’s really quite funny. But if I were to say that to Joy, or, God forbid, to Ellen, why I could be sued for sexual harassment. Creating an unsuitable working environment, they’d call it. I’m sure you know what not to say to the client…

That’s why I keep it all business.

Maybe you’re right, John. Maybe you’re right. God knows, it’s easier to get castrated than you think.

And if John had failed to keep it all business that night at Celia’s house, it was because that very day an untoward discovery had caught him up. Celia’s allergies to mold had impelled him to have his carpet steam-cleaned. It was one of those half-rare Saturdays when he did not need to be reading briefs or visiting the tall, windowed huddle of downtown, so while Celia, who was an excellent cook, went home and made peach ice cream, meanwhile adding to her latest list the following items:

call Jeffrey

return video

draft exclusion to Merino policy

call John — dinner on Monday or not?

delete Sandy from system

create agenda document

database A-2

John began moving furniture up against the wall, rather enjoying the work. The bed was on casters. When John rolled it aside, he discovered among the inevitable accruement of dust, lint, a penny, and several of Irene and Celia’s hairs, black and brown together, mixed together in the dirt, a sheet of Irene’s blue notepaper, which he recognized as instantaneously as he did the handwriting of Irene’s which rippled so evenly across it. Longing then to rid himself of all such memory-capabilities fluttering like voracious moths amidst the already moth-eaten curtains of self which hung inside his airless skull, John sat down on the bed with a dully submissive look upon his face, weakened by the immensity of his anger and anguish. His first impulse was to tear up the letter without reading it, but he mastered this desire, believing (though he could not have said so) that communications from the dead are sacred, that they must be accepted with trembling awe. He was afraid. But he also hoped. His wife’s suicide would never, could never, be entirely explicable to him, but he understood it well enough to interpret it as a reproach. Had Irene been less desperate on her last day, or perhaps less vindictive, she could have left him with an explanation or a few lines of tactful self-blame, so that John could try more successfully to persuade himself of his own righteousness in the matter. After all, what had she to gain by torturing him after her death — unless, indeed, that motive was the wellspring of her act? This question haunted John. And there had been no message whatsoever. The two policemen who came to take his statement told him that in San Francisco only about one out of every four people who killed themselves left a note; he musn’t feel bad about that aspect of the case, they said. But of course he wondered whether he’d been too lenient with her, or not lenient enough, or simply negligent; and if his hostility later fastened upon his brother, one reason was that Irene had herself been negligent in allowing that hostility no proven act or assertion of hers to cling to. Work, time, Celia, self-discipline, and above all the logic of hopelessness had combined to dull the ache. Now it throbbed so fearfully that for a moment he could almost believe — he had to believe — that she who would never rise again now stood before him, calming him and helping him. She would speak to him. She would explain. Sitting there on the stripped bed, he brushed the dust off that blue page and began to read — only to cry out when he saw that it was not addresed to him:

Dear Henry,

I rarely write people, the occasional letter yes, I have written a few, but not enough really. I feel bad that I haven’t written more letters in my life. The idea of writing to people strikes me as very pleasant. I write them and think not to send them. Someday I will come across this and wonder why I didn’t send it.

No, I will send this one, if only to write you — when you thought I wouldn’t. What did you think?

Did you think I would?

Will you write back…?

I was feeling pretty unhappy that day at the Korean restaurant. It made me feel better being with you. Thank you for holding my hand.

I feel so strange writing to you. But first letters are usually difficult. No matter what, they sound forced.

It’s good that I wrote it, though. I wanted to write you. And I have.

I’ll say goodbye now. And goodnight.

IRENE

He was still sitting there half an hour later when the phone rang. He sat listening as on the answering machine Celia’s voice asked over and over where he was; they were supposed to leave for OAK HILLS in forty-five minutes…

| 386 |

Did something happen to upset you today? Celia asked.

Oh, Brady wants some stupid clause about protecting himself from market saturation. I thought we’d be done months ago. That’s like me wanting a clause in a friggin’ marriage contract to protect myself from unhappiness…

| 387 |

Tell me what I should do, said Irene, playing one of John’s computer games.

The Queen or the King? asked John, and he stroked her face.

| 388 |

The plan is to expand internationally, was what Brady had actually said in a rambling, tedious message on John’s voicemail. (Wherever John went, he had to call his private line at the office for voicemail, check his answering machine at home, read his electronic mail, then return telephone calls in a breezy voice, after which he hung up, and swore, then with an addict’s eagerness called new numbers in order to leave contingency messages or, more likely, to get caught up in conversations he didn’t care about so that he fidgeted, tapped his foot and silently implored his watchdial until he could hang up once more.) Brady went on: We gotta capitalize on our opportunities, son We gotta launch Feminine Circus outlets in Amsterdam and Tokyo. The American market may get saturated faster than we think, or there may be local legal repercussions, and in fact, John, I want, no, I demand, some quick-release option allowing me to pull out at or just before we reach that point…

John hadn’t moved the bed yet. Irene remained temporarily deniable. He sat down on the leather couch and called Brady. Lighting a cigar, he said: You seem to think I’m a stockbroker or something. I’m just your contract lawyer.

All right, son, Brady said vaguely; John could tell that he was “with someone,” as they say, that his message had not been about anything anyhow except making sure that his hired help remained on the ball. John knew Brady’s type very very well.

Now, did we talk about executive compensation, John?

Yes we did. Several times.

Good. I want you to structure executive compensation to make it performance-based, because that way we can say screw you to the revenue code. Get the hint? And I presume you know how to get us a full tax deduction for non-qualified stock options…

That means that nobody actually gets the use of the income when the option is first granted, John said, stubbing out his cigar, which he had not once placed in his mouth.

That’s right, Brady was saying.

Then you’ll get your deduction for ordinary income above the market value…

Yeah, yeah. — Brady cleared his throat. — We’ve added two new members to the senior management team, John. So they’ll be needing to sign off on all this paperwork.

Fine with me, said John. If it takes up more of my time, that’s just more of your money. Was there anything else?

Yeah. You heard how to titillate an oscelot?

Oh, brother, said John.

Oscillate her tit a lot. This little girl here in the room just told me…

All right, Mr. Brady. You have a good weekend, said John, hanging up.

Sometimes I think that guy’s a clod, he said to Celia.

| 389 |

A week before her suicide, John had attempted for the last time to make love to Irene.

As he laid his hand on her naked shoulder, she began murmuring sadly in her sleep. He reached up under her nightgown. Usually she wore clean white cotton underpants to bed, but tonight she was wearing nothing. Stroking her thick, hot pubic hair, John felt the vibrations of desire. His fingers began probing and searching.

Ouch, said Irene, wide-eyed. You’re hurting me.

John believed that he had actually been very gentle, but he removed his hand and placed it on her breast instead.

My nipples are sore, Irene told him. Can’t you see how big and swollen my breasts are? This pregnancy really hurts me. I feel awful all the time. I don’t like to be touched.

All right, said John, slipping an arm around her so that they could simply go back to sleep.

You’re hurting my neck, Irene said. Please take your arm away.

He lay on his back all night, desiring his wife and wondering why that was so — probably because he couldn’t have her, he decided. At dawn, not long before the alarm was due to go off, he found himself touching Irene again. She opened her eyes wearily when he pulled her legs apart.

You’re so selfish, she said. You only think of yourself.

John, attempting to suppress his pain and rage, rolled onto his wife, pulling her thighs wider apart and entering her. The lips of her womb were wet and loose, not the other way which they so often had been, and he had almost convinced himself that she might actually be feeling pleasure when she grimacingly closed her eyes, but after his second or third thrust she said: Would you please hurry up? I really hate this.

John lost his erection. Staring into his wife’s face, he knew that he could do nothing. It seemed to him that he had been forlornly wandering across the desert of her loathing for an immeasurably long time. After the shock of the repulsion, and then the sadness and anger of being rejected, he began to feel himself to be falling or departing, in much the same way as when, walking east on California Street your feeling is mainly one of awayness until, reaching Gough Street, you find yourself looking down into a deep bowl of building-rows whose far side begins the pale, windowed towers of the financial district, on the horizon of which a flag bares itself to the ruminant clouds. And so John rolled silently off Irene, so bitterly sad that his knees were weak. He could barely walk away. He didn’t hate her, nor was he angry anymore; but now that he knew that she would never want to be alone with him, that she had nothing to say to him when she had so much to say to someone else, the remainder of his life became a long dark trap filled with stale darkness, like some ghoul’s tunnel from one coffin to another. He was not the ghoul, but the thing in the grave for the ghoul to eat. She was not the ghoul, either. She was no monster. It was only their marriage that was monstrous.

I suppose I should get up and take a shower, he thought.

Well, go ahead, Irene said coarsely. What’s wrong now? If you want to fuck me, then fuck me.

Oh, forget it, said John. By the way, I may be back late tonight.

You mean after all that you’re just going to leave me like this? Irene said. You mean you don’t want to make love?

Well, you obviously don’t want to, so forget it, John said.

He got up and turned on the shower.

That’s not fair, Irene said. I deserve to use the shower first. I have to wash myself off now that you…

No, said John, shaking with fury. I’m using the shower first.

He entered the shower and closed the frosted window-door behind him.

You’re so selfish, Irene repeated, sitting down naked on the toilet. Then John lowered his head into the stream of hot water, and became blessedly deaf.

| 390 |

Hurry up, Domino was saying. I don’t have all morning. I’m tired. You already used up your fifty dollars’ worth.

Grunting anxiously, the old man rode her up and down, his flaccid penis hardly even touching her.

All right, Domino said. That’s it. I have to go now.

The old man burst into tears.

You’re disgusting, Domino said. You have no consideration. You think I enjoy getting sucked and fucked by every stranger? You men are all the same. Now get off me.

The old man obeyed, blubbering.

You know what? said Domino, pulling up her panties. You’re really manipulative. Crying like that is what a little kid does. You’re a grownup, mister. You had your chance. I did what I was supposed to do. It’s not my fault that you’re too old and worthless to get it up, so don’t come crying to me. That won’t cut any ice.

She took her bra off the chair and hooked it back on.

Or do you enjoy getting humiliated? she asked the old man sternly. Is that what this is all about?

The old man hung his head.

Why, you stupid shit! laughed Domino. That’s what it is! You’re just a pussy slave! Say it! Say, I’m a pussy slave.

I’m a pussy slave, the old man muttered, his head down.

I suppose you want me to piss in your mouth, but you know what? I don’t feel like it, laughed the blonde. You don’t even deserve to be my toilet. Get down on your hands and knees.

Eagerly, the old man obeyed.

All right. Now say it. Say I’m a dog.

I’m…I’m…

Hurry up, asshole. I don’t have all day.

The old man groaned and whispered, then suddenly screamed with an eagle’s triumph as his semen shot out upon the dusty floor.

Domino slapped his shoulder, not unkindly. — Congratulations, sport. Now do I get a tip?

| 391 |

Celia with her toes together leaned enthusiastically over the kitchen counter, saying: Oh, this is divine, Mrs. Singer.

Call me Iris, please, urged her hostess.

Iris, you’re such a good cook, Celia said.

There’s something about adding nutmeg, said Mrs. Singer.

And what a charming china set you have, said Roland’s wife, Amanda, who’d seen the china set many times before.

I don’t know, disagreed Mrs. Rapp. There’s something about adding dishes. After a certain point, you don’t really need any more.

The dishes I use the most are my red, white and blue dishes, Celia said hastily.

I suppose I should put the guacamole in the refrigerator, said Amanda. It’s been sitting out so long. Iris, if you leave the seeds in, will that really keep it from turning brown?

That’s what I’m told.

Iris, you know the most interesting things.

Well, I figure if I can clean the floor, I can organize the food.

I use my dollar-ninety-nine dishes because they’re so light, said Mrs. Rapp, who was well known for her stinginess, which she preferred to consider frugality.

Observing how the corners of Mrs. Singer’s mouth had begun to tremble at this renewed attack, Celia said: Let me cut the cake, Iris.

This dessert is an example to all of us, said Amanda, who had a reputation for venial flattery. It’s just so damn tempting.

Oh, my God, Iris. That looks wonderful, said Mrs. Rapp, suddenly worrying that the other ladies might have considered her rude. You added a touch of chocolate?

Just cocoa. Cocoa powder, you now, not the other kind—

Should we bring the silverware over here? said Celia.

In this household, Irene had once tried to carry everyone’s scraped, licked plates out to the kitchen, but she had forgotten one, which Mrs. Singer, who loved to punish youthfulness, had added to her armload with a brightly malicious smile like sunlight coming in through glass bricks in a Tenderloin bar. Celia experienced no such difficulties. Was she less youthful? Perhaps (she was certainly too jaded already to be impressed by Berkeley’s espresso cafes, whose little round tables were blond wood or black Italian laminate), but the other thing was that Mrs. Singer considered Celia to be exactly suited to John. The episode of Irene of course had been a terrible tragedy. Mrs. Singer would have liked to ask John how he was coping, but did not dare. Gazing into his face at dinner, she’d searched with intense curiosity (like a Tenderloin motorist studying the effect of streetlights upon dark miniskirts) for any traces of grief, but could find nothing exceptional. But then, John was famously unreadable. (Yeah, but it’s not even a question of making a decision when something global happens, he was saying. Then all anyone can do is react. — Mr. Rapp nodded bored and uncomprehending agreement.) As for Irene, beneath her pliancy (she gave with every push, just like the green doors of Jonell’s Bar swinging back and forth) a certain resistance to the whole universe had become all too obvious. Celia, whom Mrs. Singer was sure that John had carefully chosen, seemed more appropriate: Stick a pin into her, and you’d see her bleed. Only the two Tyler brothers had ever seen Irene’s bloody tears. No matter how cruelly Mrs. Singer had slighted the little Korean girl — which she invariably did out of John’s sight — she failed to accomplish any effect except a trembling rigidity which she mistakenly believed to be anger rather than humiliated pain. (You don’t cook John a decent dinner, do you? said Irene’s sister Pammy. — What do you mean? — You always serve him frozen food. If I were John, I’d dump you. — Irene kept quiet. That was Irene, silent, outwardly submissive. She never forgot a grudge.) That was why Mrs. Singer preferred Celia, who was unable to pretend that she had not been hurt. Expressiveness in others enriched Mrs. Singer’s confidence in her own interpretations, possibly because a certain fear that she had not accomplished anything in life left her all the more desirous of discovering easy clues to less consequential questions.

Should I put the chocolate sauce in the microwave? said Amanda.

Yes, please, said Mrs. Singer. A minute and forty-five seconds should be about right. Celia, would you tell my husband that he may now open the champagne? And see if John needs anything. I’m very fond of John.

Celia blushed.

How’s John’s mother? I understand she’s very ill now.

Yes, she is. The doctor said to be prepared for the worst.

Oh, I’m so sorry. I’ll have to be sure to say something to John.

You know what, Iris? said Celia. I think it might upset John to talk about it. He’s very close to his mother.

Everybody knows that, honey, Mrs. Rapp butted in. I don’t know anything, and even I know that.

Celia went into the dining room, only to find that Mr. Singer had already opened the champagne.

I never break a promise, Brady was saying to John. Why, thirty-one years ago today I was dead drunk and I promised the barkeep I’d go file for a small business license. Well, the next day when I told him I’d done it, he couldn’t believe it. But I always keep a promise, see. And by the same token, if you ever lie to me, even once, then it’s all over except the crying.

(That man is so colorful, Mrs. Rapp said.)

John? said Celia.

Her companion looked up irritably.

Do you want a big piece of cake or a small piece?

Oh, forget it, said John. I’m trying to keep my weight down.

Iris made it, Celia said in a gently monitory tone. You should really have a little bit.

Oh, balls to that, laughed Mr. Singer. If you don’t want it, don’t eat it.

I’ll take a big piece then, said John.

And what about Feminine Circus stock? Mr. Singer was saying like some blank old slot machine player.

Not a high-yield investment, said John. It really doesn’t suit my temperament.

I love you, kid! laughed Brady, descending into John’s face like a dog waddling with its nose down, sniffing for rotten meat. — You’ll stand up to anybody! You’ll even bite the hand that feeds you. I just got a few more small investors who—

The trouble with small investors is that they’re finicky, John said coolly. They’ll just say screw you and pull out in an instant.

Isn’t that a mixed metaphor, John? said Mr. Singer. Do you pull out when you’re making love with Celia over there, or do you finish the job?

You’re talking about an oxymoron, not a mixed metaphor, said John in his glory.

Celia made a face and went back to the kitchen.

Everything’s fine, she reported. The champagne’s already opened.

Oh, who cares about them? said Mrs. Rapp. Those men just sit there and talk. If it wasn’t for us, they’d starve to death.

| 392 |

But what precisely is it all about? said Mrs. Rapp.

Entertainment, ma’am, said Brady.

And do you — I mean, do they…?

It’s the wild west in there, ma’am. It’s every man for himself. And you know what? They seem to like it.

Believing that the conversation was in no danger of becoming genuine, that Mrs. Rapp did not really desire to know, nor Brady to tell, what his establishment actually did, John had convulsed his numb face into an expression of almost malignant boredom, when Mrs. Rapp leaned forward and remarked: They say it’s a wicked thing you’re doing.

Linda! cried her husband in dismay.

The look of amiability upon Brady’s face coarsened, and he said: Ma’am, business is business. I’m not here to justify myself. In fact, ma’am, if I may be so crass, I bought you this fine supper which you and Iris prepared. I’m a client; I’m keeping you in pocket change, and I don’t ask what legal tricks young John here pulled or whether you yank your cleaning lady’s hair whenever she misses a cobweb. Ma’am, I run a whorehouse franchise, which according to others’ views may or may not be wicked, but at least I’m no hypocrite. At least I—

That’s enough, Mr. Rapp interrupted, slamming his fork down on his plate. — Linda, you were indiscreet, and, Jonas, you’re getting rude. Isn’t it too bad that we—

Too bad? laughed Brady. What do I care about too bad now the ink is dry? I’ll tell you something. Out of all you people, you know the only one I respect? The only one of you I care a rat’s ass about is your boy John here. He’s the only one of you who’s got the guts to come out and say that everyone’s shit stinks.

John burst out laughing. And Celia in the kitchen doorway, simultaneously horrified and amused, began to flush almost pleasurably. As much as she loathed Brady, she could not but be proud that he had singled out John above all others.

| 393 |

Were this a Japanese novel, our plot would be enriched by all kinds of family complications: How can lovelorn Younger Sister persuade Eldest Brother-in-Law to endorse her marriage? What to do about Middle Sister, who should have married first? And if this were an eastern European novel from the Cold War era, the searchlight of political tyranny would unfailingly cast each character into superhuman relief, so that Vyshpensky-Buda’s fling with Olga might be elevated into the noblest of struggles. Set in Antarctica, this novel might conceivably scrape by without any human characters whatsoever, and I could pad out chapter after chapter with descriptions of the most delicious icebergs. But here in California we must make do with human beings, who comprise as strange a breed as the mumbling cab drivers of Philadelphia. Moreover, those human beings form, deform and dissolve their attachments more or less unmediated by those family and political difficulties which make any success all the more fulfilling: eating pome-grantes might not be half so pleasant, if it weren’t so much trouble to pick out the seeds. For just this reason, there were times when Celia could not refrain from wishing that some unknown force, not necessarily God, would intervene to join her to John, or to completely sunder them. She was now thirty-two years old; she had been John’s girlfriend, first illicitly, then licitly, ever since she was twenty-nine, and she thought it hardly too much to expect that the uncertainty be concluded by now. Was John simply not serious about her, or did he hold her in active contempt, or did Celia herself fail to muster a certain enthusiasm? She felt as if she were going through mummified forms, helplessly, obtusely. She tried to blame her weariness on the bladder infection which had been annoying her for ten days now. Like a sick, bored child at home with a box of crayons, lying in bed making colorfully wasteful scrawls, Celia composed her latest list:

order coffee set from Damask

birthday present for Donald

create job description notebook

make John commit on birth control

give John ultimatum: weekend getaway or not?

draft memo to Grace

thank you to Iris

process fax from Heidi

change return address for Heidi in database

She had chosen John originally because she believed she could get nobody else. An affair with a married man, resentful and apprehensive though that left her, at least had the virtue of aiming low enough to avoid certain sorts of disappointment. How could a man who was never there, who planned to have children with another woman, and who most likely would get old with that other woman, then die in her arms, shatter Celia’s life? How could she trust him in the first place? He could always break off the affair, to be sure, and indeed there was so high a probability of this happening that Celia refused to let herself stand more than an inch or two in his shadow. He could lie to her, and get or even keep a second mistress. He could be cruel, and had been. Oh, there were so many nasty things that John could do! But he was nothing to her except a generic male medicine for female loneliness. He’d given Irene a diamond, and he gave Celia the glass bauble of temporary companionship. At least she need not feel that she owed him very much.

And then Irene had taken her own life. Celia’s arrangement became quite different. In so many situations which we pretend merely to endure, the lightning-flash of sudden change will often reveal to us our own desperate involvement and investment. Celia loved John, or had come to love him, she knew not how or when. She had wandered entirely into his shadow. She trusted him no more than before, but the hope which Irene’s permanent absence now gave her proved that John possessed the power to disappoint her after all, that she’d fallen into his keeping.

John could hardly be called gentle, but he did own what gentle natures often lack: namely, the power of steadiness. When he made a promise to Celia, he generally kept it. What if she could render him trustworthy after all? Could she persuade him to promise to be hers less precariously? She was anxious; she wanted children; her previous boyfriends had never been particularly kind, perhaps on account of some particular quality of hers; and so the fact that John was not kind, either, became less of a liability than it might have been for another woman. And in fact he was capable of kindness in his offhand, self-protective way. Call Celia loyal or call her lazy, the truth is that she couldn’t bear to look for anyone else.

| 394 |

Your father would like this mug, John said.

Excuse me, said Celia, but how do you know what mug my father would like? He’s a specific person. He likes specific things. He’s actually very difficult to shop for.

Whatever, said John, handing the mug to the salesgirl. We’ll take this, please.

The infuriating thing was that John was right. Celia’s father loved the mug. John often had the talent of knowing others’ tastes. He thought that he always had it. Actually, it operated most reliably with people he barely knew. Celia, Irene and Henry had all found his gifts to them to be disappointingly impersonal.

| 395 |

Let’s get him this dictionary set, Celia said enthusiastically.

No, said John. I don’t want any nephew of mine to turn into an egghead.

| 396 |

John came out of the elevator with a new black-and-gold necktie and his hand in his pocket. The white shirt he wore made the marble columns of the elevator bank look yellow. Rapp and Singer would not arrive for another hour. John had no desire for that emptiest of titles, The Earliest, and anyhow he wasn’t that; he simply had too much to do to waste his time sleeping. Moreover, it had become apparent from certain haggard words which Celia had let drop the previous night that the power struggle between them was about to resume. John had never gone so far as to assert that thanks to Irene’s suicide he was entitled to a vacation from what Californians loved to call “a serious relationship”; there was something so hopeless and helpless about Celia, and yet at the same time he could not bring himself to reject her, and he simply fucked her and went out to dinner with her, determined not to indulge anymore than he was compelled to in that sad vice called thinking. This could last only so long, as he was the first to admit. Once her anxiety had risen beyond a certain threshold, Celia would put a stop to their affair, which had outlived Irene only to exchange sordidness for dreariness.

Good morning, Joy, he said.

The secretary waved. Sitting by the phone, impatient, laughing, so amused by her interlocutor’s stupidity, she continued: No, no, no, no. I don’t want to do that. Wait. Wait. Wow. — Joy leaned forward very abruptly, stabbing with her finger. She loved to interrupt people to make them look at something. — But if I say it’s six-thirty, will I have to drive around the city with people? No, no. It always happens that I’ve been lucky and have been the last person to be picked up. But you already know. Oh, you don’t know. All right, all right, all right.

Smiling, she put the phone down and tapped John on his knee.

Let me guess, said John. Vacation.

How did you know?

Because if that were a work-related phone call, you’d get fired.

Joy wrinkled her nose and said: John, why are you always so mean?

Look, said John. You were talking like a client, not like an employee. That’s not mean; it’s obvious. You were talking the way Brady talks to me.

He does? He doesn’t respect you?

I’m actually quite busy now, Joy. What was it that you wanted?

Oh, forget it, said the girl sadly. I–I only…

John sighed and looked at his watch. — You know, Joy, your slip is showing. And another thing. Red is not your color. People would treat you better if you stopped wearing red. Now what was it?

Just go away, John, would you?

Although his manner remained the same, John had begun to feel uneasy. His psychic machinery busily transformed impatience into guilt. He neither believed that he had done anything wrong; nor did he recognize his own proclivity for reducing himself to vulnerability. Like most human beings, he categorized others as elect, worthless or menacing. Joy by virtue of her subordinate relation and what he perceived as her mediocrity could never be one of the elect. When he thought of her at all, it was as a marginally useful cipher. But a sense that he might have gone too far now urged him to reassign Joy, however temporarily, to the menacing category. He felt obliged to placate her. And so he said: Let me buy you a drink this evening, Joy. How about five-thirty? But I only have half an hour.

Just then Roland came by, very agitated, and said: They’ll see what they can do to us, mark my words.

Who’s being fired? said John, forgetting all about Joy.

Did you hear? Over at Synergetics, everybody who hired Ellen’s being fired. They fired Rich, and then they fired Mark, and then they fired Jackie Grazier… And so, let me get this straight. They never called you?

No, said John. But I got a call on my voicemail this morning.

Did you mean it? said Joy.

What? John said. Oh, sure. What did I say, five-fifteen? No, it’s going to have to be five-thirty. I can’t make it a second before then. Roland, tell me about it later. Grazier deserved whatever he got. Okay, now I need to put the Ibarra file to bed…

He had promised to call Celia at six. But as the drinks flowed, Joy was grabbing his knee again so happily and John, who ordinarily was square, smooth, clean and quiet like the lobby of one of those bank towers on California Street, found himself enjoying not Joy herself but his powers of attraction over her.

They were in the Tenderloin, fifteen minutes from the office by cab, at a downscale place Joy had heard about called the Wonderbar. Joy said that it was hip or cool or one of those words that she used, but all John cared to note about it was that two barstools down from them, a man was talking to himself. — Goddamnit, the man said. I can’t wash off that Mark of Cain. Fuck me fuck me God.

Sir, said Loreena the barmaid, would you please keep your voice down?

Fuck me fuck me God.

Sir, said Loreena, you’re having a schizophrenic episode. Tell those little green men in your head to take the night off.

John grimaced.

So do you think that the Polk Street look’s starting to invade the Tenderloin? said Joy quickly.

What do you mean?

I don’t know, I just… Look at that woman. Don’t you think she’s beautiful?

She’s not my type, said John.

That’s Chocolate, laughed Loreena, leaning over the bar, hungry for tips. She’s a prostitute, honey. Disposable babies is what she makes. She gives them all away. In four years she’s had four. Or is it eight? Can you believe it? I think somebody ought to take a shotgun to her.

So where was your vacation again? said John.

Cancun, said Joy. But my boyfriend just dropped me. Now I have nobody to go with. And I paid for the tickets and everything. So I was just thinking I’d meet somebody and, you know, try to have some fun.

Can I get you another round? said Loreena.

Okay, Joy said quickly. John frowned and looked at his watch.

Having already gone shopping where Mason Street was shinily striped with cable car tracks, Celia now lay on the sofa, waiting for John’s promised telephone call, in each unrequited minute seeing further evidence that his regard for her was dying, but nonetheless or perhaps consequently needing him so acutely that her hand crawled to the back of the lefthand kitchen drawer where she had stashed a half-pack of cigarettes on the third and last occasion that she had quit, just in case there might be some emergency which justified nicotine. She freely admitted that she was what they called “an addictive personality.” But that didn’t shame or worry her, because she had observed, or perhaps merely convinced herself, that every person she had ever gotten to know was possessed by at least one need whose divine purpose it was to counter virtue. Celia was often bored or angry when she was with John, and sometimes jealous, but, with occasional bitter exceptions, these feelings comforted her rather than otherwise. Her grandfather, before they took his license away, used to drive with his seat belt off, because the shrill concern for him expressed by the car alarm “kept him company,” as he put it. Celia for her part needed something to shout out the silence of herself, of the apprehensiveness of her lonesome incompletion, of the life she sometimes thought worse than death (because she had no familiarity with death). It often seemed to her that she was as sievelike, punched through, as the skyscrapers of the financial district with its thousands of dark square windows honeycombing them so that they bled from these wounds, or sweated from these pores, perpetually losing their essence. They towered, wearisomely existing, hollowed out, living like a coral reef inhabited by pale office organisms. — Where were her cigarettes? There, behind the worn-out can opener, the packing tape, the book of now underpowered twenty-cent stamps, the instruction manual for her food processor. The cigarettes weren’t even crushed. (She thought she heard the click of the answering machine, but it was nothing.) Now for her lighter — oh, she’d been a good girl; she’d thrown it out. Matches for the stove. Close cover before proceeding any further. The cigarette smoke became happiness as soon as she breathed. She lay down on the sofa, with an ashtray in easy reach on the floor, clicked the remote control, and waited for the television to speak to her.

It kept me out of jail, kept me out of trouble, said a cute kid in a red uniform, peering sincerely into Celia’s face. He was a television manifestation. — No one’s encouraging me to accept chastity, he said. No one’s pressuring me. I’m just doing it because it’s the right thing to do. I just want to thank everybody.

A long cylinder of ash trembled at the end of Celia’s cigarette.

The phone rang.

Hello, I’d like to speak with Miss Celia Caro, said an uncertain girl, obviously a telephone solicitor just starting out. I’d like to tell you a little about our new—

I’m waiting for a really important phone call, Celia said. And I’m really tired of people trying to sell me things over the phone.

Is this Miss Celia Caro?

Yes, it is, said Celia, gritting her teeth.

Dope-sucking, home-poisoning, home-wrecking sex machines are being manufactured even as we speak, the television said.

Well, Miss Caro, if I could, I’d like to just briefly tell you—

I said I’m really not interested, and I have a really important phone call that I’m waiting for.

Could I call back at another time?

Please don’t, Celia said. I mean, I hate to be rude, but I’m just really really tired of—

The solicitor hung up on her.

We have to increase visible security in the streets, the TV was saying. We need a security guard at every corner. And above all we need to teach those young girls the street smart techniques to avoid being targeted. We got the fire marshal on our side.

Well, thank you, Mr. Lovinson, replied the TV. We’ve just been speaking with Mr. Manuel Lovinson of the controversial new Network Against Public Vice, known to most of us as “Brady’s Boys.” And tonight we have Mr. Brady himself to answer a few questions.

The TV went on talking to itself. Celia grunted, got up, went to the kitchen, brought matches and the rest of the pack, just as she had known she would do. Then she reached for her little yellow pad and wrote:

mask face

complete taxes

med. shelf for kitchen $69

all things in boxes

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 instinct; 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?

Sure, boss, said the tall man with a white grin. Us plantation darkies like nothin’ better than ’pologizin’. Hey, bitch, sorry I called you a bitch.

Oh, fuck off, said Loreena. Why do I even bother.

I’m sorry, the tall man whined with sarcastic obsequiousness. I really need a drink. If I be good, will y’all let me be a house slave?

Shut up, John said.

If I shut up will you buy me a drink?

I’ll call the police, said Loreena. Both men saw she didn’t mean it.

The tall man moved two stools down and said: Loreena, I’ll have me a tequila sunrise.

Fine, said John.

Thank you, said the tall man while Loreena mixed and poured. Now lemme tell you something.

I thought the deal was that you wouldn’t tell me anything, said John. Just for once, can’t you shut your fat mouth? I don’t give a damn about you. Period. Okay?

You lookin’ for pussy, mister?

Oh, please, said Loreena, amused in spite of herself.

The tall man leaned back in his stool with a lordly air and said: Me, I’d rather jerk off than scratch the open sore between some bitch’s legs. If I can’t bring her somewhere, go out with her, show her off, it’s not worth it. Say, why don’t you take me out to lunch?

I’ve got some private business with a friend, said John as curtly as he could.

That’ll be four-fifty, sweetie, said Loreena. John gave her a five.

What kind of business? said the tall man.

Private business.

Say, white boy—

Hey! shrilled Loreena. You say one word to my customers and you’re out of here! They’re good people.

Right on! Right on, right on! an old drunk shouted.

Say, I’d sure like to know what your private business is. You gonna deliver him a couple of keys?*

Something like that. Now shut up or I’ll throw this drink in your face.

The tall man rose, opened his mouth wide, and uttered a cawing, sneering laugh which showed his epiglottis and all his teeth. Then he advanced on John, who leaped to his feet.

Gentlemen, gentlemen! cried Loreena, rushing between them with the baseball bat upraised. The tall man stalked back to his seat.

You know what? said John. This man is threatening me. Either you get him out of here or I’m going out. This is no way to run a business.

Loreena picked up the phone. — This time I mean it, Justin. Get out.

Cursing, the tall man swilled his drink. He spat one ice cube on the floor and went out crunching another between his teeth.

The sights you see when you don’t have a gun! laughed Loreena. John refused to look at her.

He sat there waiting for Domino for ten more minutes. Then he left also.

| 403 |

Back again, said Loreena.

Yeah, said John, clearing his throat.

She just went out on a date. She’ll be back in fifteen minutes, I’d say, or an hour at the absolute latest.

Fine.

I hope you mean to take good care of her. She’s a keeper.

John said nothing.

Oh, we love her, Loreena went on. We take care of her. We leave her alone. She’s still beautiful.

Hey, Domino loves me! shouted the drunk two barstools away.

What the fuck, another man sneered. Domino kicks your ass.

Another round, Bentley? Loreena asked the sneerer. That whitehaired gentleman nodded and leaned back with a happy smile on his face because now that Louis Armstrong was singing on the jukebox and Loreena would serve him, he was momentarily King.

A black woman whom John did not know was Bernadette vomited on the floor. — Sorry, Loreena, she said. ’Cause I drank that Tom Collins on top of my pills I’m almost ready to pass out…

John drank two beers. Then through the swinging double doors came Domino.

| 404 |

Domino raised the candle (dark crimson because dark wax burns hotter) and told the john to be quiet. Looking him up and down, she smiled, then abruptly tilted the candle so that a molten ball of wax fell glowingly out. The john screamed.

Oh, do shut up, said Domino. It’s not that bad.

The man shut up.

Roll over on your stomach, said Domino. Head to the right. Close your eyes.

The box opened. Then she lovingly stroked the john’s back and bottom. She placed her palm on his buttock, then patted it, then spanked it. Then suddenly he felt a stinging blow. — What was it? A hairbrush, a paddle, a cord? — Another thud — harder, then harder. Another. One on his back which made him grunt. He knew that Domino was happy then, although he couldn’t see her (he wasn’t allowed to).

She said: How are you feeling?

Okay.

Do you want more?

Up to you.

Ask me for more.

Please give me more.

Thud, thud, slap in the flesh.

Do you want more?

Up to you, John repeated. The more tightly he closed his eyes, the more vividly he saw Celia’s face.

Ask me for more.

Please give me more, he groaned out.

Thud, thud, slap in the flesh. The pain pooled all over him like the merging streams of hot wax on his belly, like a trail of crimson blood. The john looked into her happy exalted face as the wax came down, and he looked again later when she peeled the congealed wax off his pubic hair. After a while he began to feel the sting all over. Timidly, he squeezed her naked thigh to share the pain with her. She told him to leave her alone.

When they were finished, he tipped her. Domino grinned and slapped him on the back. — You’re a real sport, honey, she said.

Where are you staying?

Oh, with this old black man, Domino lied heartily. Every night he gets drunk and violent. Every day he has prostitutes coming over, which offends me. He’s no damn good.

You want me to break his legs? said John, thrilled with his own boldness.

| 405 |

Oh, he’s not that bad. Okay, I gotta go. Anytime you need me, just whistle four times. What did John want, but success? His vocation, although to most of us it seems as stale and tortuous as some medieval allegory, offered slow, strenuous accomplishments. Other souls preferred what gets disparagingly called “instant gratification”—that is, happiness sufficiently present to count on, like the joy crouching inside a perfect crystal of crack cocaine lying in the palm of a whore’s hand, ready to be combusted into pleasure all for her. It is related of Saint Ignatius that when his Jesuits spoke of tomorrow or next year, he’d cry in astonishment: What? You can be certain that God will allow you to live so long? — This too is the crack whore’s philosophy, and the strategem of the vultures who sent Tyler the form letter which advised: The CASH you NEED is in your CAR. Tap into your autmobile equity TODAY. BORROW and REPAY! Introductory rate: 6.25 %. Tyler wanted cash; of course he did. And Irene — ah, what did Irene want? Maybe I’ll start swimming, Mom, she’d said to Mrs. Tyler, who shook her head as she replied: Irene, honey, you shouldn’t take up swimming unless you have the kind of hair that you can do up yourself. — But Irene wanted freedom. She wanted not to be told what to do. — As for Dan Smooth, he envisoned Paradise as a hot Italian beach with long jetties and a breakwater, a hotel room with metal blinds halfway up a hill of olive trees, vineyard-terraces twisting on and on. Smooth needed this for his stage set, but center stage was the place where cobalt blue ocean expressed itself in a frothy white line, then became an olive-brown kingdom of wet sand. There the young children squatted and built their sandcastles. Hexagonal beach umbellas, striped like candy, cooled candied, taffyed flesh which lived and quivered on the sand. Here his eye could freely hunt among the dimpled thighs of old age; youth had a certain color — how could he describe it? He’d never stop revering it. Pubescent breasts and prepubescent breasts and the slender ribcages of children, these comprised his spiritual food. A little pinkish-brown girl, too young for breast-buds, too young not to be naked-chested, licked an ice cream cone. Now she was playing with the bottom of her bathing trunks. Smooth, nostrils flaring, withstood the craving to lean forward in his beach chair. He waited. Suddenly the child pulled her bathing trunks midway down her thighs — right there amidst the beach-umbrellaed crowd! — displaying her creamy bikini zone, and as she turned toward him, evidently perceiving his gaze, he glimpsed her long narrow mound, as white as new photographic paper, and the slit-lips in the middle, so soft and white like slices of mushrooms in a perfect salad. Meanwhile a matchstick-legged boy fiddled with the back pockets of his swimsuit.

And Domino, what did she want? She resembled a purring cat in heat rubbing up against a human being, circling, mewing, hoping for the impossible.

| 406 |

Check it out! cried Chocolate with a wink.

Check what out? said John wearily.

Check it out, check it out, check it out! You blowjobbin’ it or what?

Not with you. I’m looking for Domino.

Oh, that bitch! She’ll give you venereal warts. I guarantee it. But I’m clean. I’m Chocolate clean. I’m the Queen. I can suck a baseball bat through thirty-five feet of garden hose.

Where is she?

Where you from?

None of your business. Where is she?

Well, la-di-da. If you won’t tell me that, at least tell me where you were born. I’m into astrology.

Sacramento.

Sac’s real different. San Francisco and Oakland, they’re real party towns, huh? In Sacramento, when they do party, they get violent. I don’t like violence so much. Leave that to the younger generation. I always say—

Where is she?

In there. Asshole.

Domino sat listlessly at the Wonderbar reading a science fiction novel. Her hair was greying and she had bruises on her thighs.

What’s up? said John.

Oh, just killing time.

It’s already dead.

Excuse me? Are you making fun of me?

Oh, for God’s sake, said John in disgust.

In the doorway old Tenderloin George was crying out: Shoeshine? Wanna shine?

Don’t give him anything, said Domino angrily. He always comes when I’m trying to pick up dates and he sits on the fire hydrant and plays with himself. He’s a pervert.

Give me a smile, baby, John said.

My face is crooked, Domino replied in a low voice. I always smile crooked, because two years ago some fourteen-year-old kids jumped me and hit me in the mouth with a two-by-four and broke my teeth and I didn’t get any of them reset right because I… oh, fuck it. Hey, mister, why don’t you buy me a car?

I’m not mister. I’m John.

I want a Land Rover. Forty-five grand’s the invoice price.

Invoice prices are not exactly what they pay for the car, John said learnedly.

Oh, fuck off.

Look, Domino. I know dealers. I can get you a much better price than that.

How much better?

Maybe thirty-two. I’m looking for a new car myself. The E class you can’t buy any more cheaply, because it’s really hot.

So. You’re going to give me thirty-two grand for a Land Rover or not? I don’t have time to fuck around.

That’s a piece of shit car anyway. You’ll have to change everything.

Are you married?

You already asked me that.

So sue me. Are you?

Not anymore.

Oh, so she left you, huh? Serves you right, you tightass prick. You wanna get married again? You wanna marry me, John?

Marrying you would be like buying a cheap Mercedes, John said. You’re buying a name, so why buy at all when you’re just buying some generic heap of shit right off the assembly line?

You’re too fuckin’ much, the blonde laughed. I like you. You’re honest. You’re hard-boiled. Know who you remind me of?

Clark Gable.

Shit. You remind me of Henry.

What?

You gonna buy me a car?

What about me reminds you of Hank?

It’s gotta happen for me, John, Domino whispered. It’s just got to. I need a car to get away and to — oh, fuck, I feel sick. I gotta puke…

| 407 |

You’re sure friendly with that guy, said the tall man sarcastically.

Are you accusing me of being a hypocrite?

Dom, I don’t give a goddamn what you are. But he insulted me. Someday I’m gonna break his whitebread ass.

Being nice with the customers like that is just good business, the blonde said defensively. It’s not false. It’s just exhausting.

And yet, strange to say, Domino kept seeing John, and not merely for money. She said there was a difference between being used and using (although all her other customers would have been amazed that there was any such distinction between themselves and John).

Sometimes he paged her, and she called him back. His voice sounded quite tender on the phone. She wondered if he were holding his dick in his hand.

Let’s say that Domino actually did care for John in a way. (She thought him realistic.) That didn’t matter. He could neither predict nor control her. His predicament sickened him even though he knew that he didn’t love her in the least; the fascination she cast on him might well have been the result less of her own person or soul than of her actions. No one had ever before slapped John in that vicious yet teasing way which he found to be so desperately erotic. The blonde’s regular customers did not return to her solely to be gaffled and humiliated; she had about her at times a playful quality which allowed them to feel, however briefly, that they were her playmates, carefree like rich vacationers, because they could laugh when she laughed as she pissed on their faces. Tyler saw only the sadness and frailty in her; John saw the dominatrix. Being dominated by her, he could not hope to understand her more than a worshiper understands his God. She was fitful, terrible, dangerous. John was afraid of her. His work would soon begin to suffer if he weren’t careful. Celia would suspect something. — Actually, Celia did not, because his guilt drove him to be kinder and tenderer than ever before, so that she smiled upon him with an innocent joy which increased his guilt almost to the point of agony. But John could compartmentalize, as they say of organization men; he went on with everything just as before, and it certainly never struck him that the blonde might be approaching her own sea-change.

She wanted to be loved — how she wanted that! And she could never believe it when someone loved her. The Queen had loved her genuinely, but her affection hurt almost as much as cruelty, because since no possible attestation could ever suffice, Domino suspected and sometimes rejected the Queen’s caresses, which must someday turn out to be mocking, expedient, sadistic. Her heart ached with anxiety that the Queen might be speaking against her. One night at this time she dreamed that she and Henry Tyler stood facing each other across an open grave, and she was drunk and cried out: I know now she loved me. I can believe that, ’cause she’s gone. And I—

She wanted love. And she believed that she wanted status, but would she have really been any happier had she metamorphosed into one of those high-class women who while away afternoons and evenings in vast hotel lobbies whose recessed ceiling-bulbs make up dully regular constellations far outdazzled by the brass handles of the sliding doors through which money just might come walking, with its hands in the pockets of its silk suit?

She trusted Dan Smooth because he was her ruthless friend whose interests coincided with hers, and because his patronizing ways allowed her to convince herself that she’d “seen through him” to the mockery, which was not so very bad and thus did not alienate her. She herself, however, never reasoned any of this out.

I have a secret, she said to him.

No secrets from your old Uncle Dan! laughed the pedophile, wagging his fingers as if she’d been naughty. You have designs, you see. You have buried treasures, and I don’t just mean your hot little—

Oh, cut it out, said Domino. My secret is that I’m topping* Henry Tyler’s brother, and he’s a stinking rich lawyer connected to that Brady man who runs the vigs…

Ah, very good! And what’s your plan? You can cause Brady some headaches, or you can betray our Queen, or both, or neither. Or maybe you can find out from John if Henry really screwed Irene, and somehow use that to make Maj drop him. If this were a novel, I’d scream here comes the suspense! But somehow it doesn’t feel too suspenseful. I suppose I know you too well…

Look. I’m not a bad person. I’m not ungrateful. I just need a chance to better myself, and if you can’t understand that, then go fuck yourself.

Smooth grinned. He loved the blonde. He’d seen her cry silently at romantic movies, her lower lip trembling as she wiped her eyes with her forefinger; then she sat straight up with her jaw clenched, obviously hoping that no one had seen. At disaster movies she wrung her hands, her mouth wide open while the movie heroine wept over her dead lover.

| 408 |

May I tell him who’s calling, please? said the receptionist.

Oh, he knows me, said Tyler, with a wink at the Queen. She gazed back sadly.

Sir, you’ll have to give me your name and the place you’re calling from, said the receptionist. Otherwise I can’t put you through.

Tell him it’s his brother, Tyler said wearily.

And where are you calling from?

Could you please tell him that his brother is on the line?

And your name, sir?

Henry, said Tyler, defeated.

Just a moment.

He leaned against the wall, waiting. The Queen stroked his cheek.

Sir, he says to tell you that he’s busy right now. Is there any message?

He was silent for a moment, smelling the humiliation which soiled him like vomit. — Tell him I’ll call again later, he said.

He hung up slowly.

No go, huh? said the Queen.

No go.

Don’t be sad, baby. It’s gonna take some time. That’s all.

He said: It’s the same as when I visit Irene at the cemetery. I know that I can never ever reach her, not ever again.

Gun up now. C’mere. C’mere. He’ll phone you tonight. I know it.

| 409 |

You want me to talk to him? said Smooth. The Queen told me—

Oh, forget it. After all, he’s my own brother.

They stood and waited.

You see, Henry, we both believe her. We both take her on faith.

Yeah.

She said tonight, so—

But I still don’t get quite what you’re doing here.

Maj wants you to try harder with me, Henry. Maj wants us to be bosom buddies.

Yeah, well, go be bosom buddies with Domino. Sometimes you’re just so much work…

You mean when you’re depressed.

Yeah.

You mean when you’re horny for Coreen.

Irene.

Got your goat, didn’t I? Ha, ha! Works every time! You know there’s no malice in me, don’t you, Henry? You know I’m not all evil and envious like you.

Oh, leave me alone.

Nice million-dollar white man place you got here.

Don’t you ever do anything but play with people?

But this isn’t about playing, Henry. This is really quite serious, you see. This is about saving our Queen. Because if your brother can convince Brady to lay off, for Domino’s sake—

I told you it won’t work.

How do you know that?

Because I know John and I know Brady, all right?

Then let me try. Put me on the line when it rings. I mean, what the heck. You don’t care what John thinks, now, do you, Henry?

Tyler clenched his fists.

I’ve got you coming and going, don’t I? Just the same way Domino’s got your brother. I’ve got you by the balls. And you know what, Henry? I’m one of those perverts who sometimes likes to squeeze…

Even Maj said it wouldn’t work.

No she did not. She said we could try if we liked. I think it makes her happy, that we’re trying to save her…

Good, said Tyler abruptly.

You mind if I get personal? Smooth whispered. You mind if I tell you about my niece?

You already told me.

I’ll tell you how it was.

You already told me how it was.

Since we have time to kill, I’ll tell you how it was, said Smooth. You know how those Asians love giving really nice fruit for presents? Go over to your Chinese friend’s house for dinner, and for dessert there’ll be lots of perfect pears — you know, high quality, the succulent kind.

Yeah, I know.

Well, of course you know, Henry. You were with an Asian girl. Your brother’s girl.

Oh, go to hell.

And sometimes they have these little tangerines. You peel the skin off, and then there are juicy little wedges — well, segments I suppose you’d call them. And this girl, when I pulled her little underpants down…

The phone rang.

| 410 |

So you’re dirtying this part of my life, too, said John. Tell me something. Have you fucked her? Have you fucked her?

Who? sneered Tyler. Domino — or Irene?

Sitting near him on the kitchen floor, Dan Smooth contorted himself in a thousand silent grimaces of laughter, wriggling and twitching, shivering and twitching, rolling his eyes and bulging out his cheeks, so that Tyler, repulsed and terrified, was reminded once again that he was Dan Smooth with his illictness and his defiance. He was treating John the way that Smooth always treated him, the way he loathed to be treated.

I’m sorry, John, he said into the telephone. No, I never slept with Domino. And I won’t. I’m her friend, John, that’s all. And, you know, she’s to be pitied because—

How dare you say that to me? shouted John.

I think she wants to be a part of your world. She wishes that she could be your kind of person, and dress like you, eat like you, live like you. I mean, I don’t know what your relationship is, but—

What do you want?

Has Domino ever told you about our little family down here?

Oh, so you finally found a family for yourself, did you? Old Hank got religion. As for your own—

Brady’s Boys are putting Domino at risk, John. And they’re threatening a very good woman who’s helped Domino a lot and who—

A whore, you mean, said John. A filthy whore.

That’s right.

Oh, I see it now. And you’re plugging this whore and you know better than to ask me for any favors, so you—

She’s been good to Domino, John.

She’s good to her. Does she fuck her? Is this some—

Do you really want to know?

Fine. So you want me to call up Brady and say exactly what?

(This is all so dreary! whispered Dan Smooth in delight. Tyler felt unspeakably nauseated.)

I don’t know what you should say. Brady’s pretty hard to appeal to, as I recall. But if you…

I could set Domino up. I’d be happy to give her a start. Anytime she wants to get out of that sleazy world of yours I can—

John, she can’t. She won’t. That’s what she is. That’s—

Don’t you dare tell me who she is.

She—

I said don’t you dare tell me who she is. Anyhow, continued John with his usual shrewdness, you don’t care about helping Domino, do you? You want to take the heat off that filthy whore you’re plugging.

Let me ask you something. How do you feel about a man who on the one hand hires you to write contracts for his whorehouse and on the other—

So you’re saying he’s a hypocrite. Well, what about you? You know what I mean, Hank. Jonas Brady is an amazing man. Jonas Brady is maybe even a great man, and I will not have you—

Seeing Smooth making frantic backpedalling signals there on the kitchen floor, Tyler swallowed his bile and said: Can I ask you to think about it? Talk to Domino—

Don’t tell us what to talk about.

Well, will you please at least think about it?

John hung up.

| 411 |

That was when Tyler called himself aside and explained to himself what his self admitted — namely, that Irene and John’s marriage had never been as hellish as he for his own convenience had pretended. He remembered one Fourth of July in San Francisco when housetops flickered in and out of fog as if on lightning-fire, and then the occasional green and blue flower of fireworks blossomed over the city, then cast down seeds and embers into the white darkness while Irene lay under a blanket on the sofa next to her husband, watching romantic thriller-videos which accompanied themselves with soft piano music, and she slowly got paler and sleepier until her eyes closed and her long pale fingers gripped the cushion while John frowned at the video, half-bored but unwilling to turn it off before he’d learned how the story turned out — and maybe, just maybe, he’d wished to avoid disturbing his dreaming wife. Fireworks pounded like Tyler’s heart.

| 412 |

Mr. Rapp, smiling piratically gold-toothed, licked his upper lip with an almost indescribably delicate motion of his tapering tongue.

Gibbon’s always good for one-liners, said Mr. Rapp. I read him every night before I go to sleep. Gibbon’s been on my night-table for thirty years. I love that man. I’ve never finished his book, and I never will. John, how often do you read Gibbon?

Corruption is the most infallible symptom of constitutional liberty, John quoted sourly. He added: I hate Gibbon.

Too good! shrieked Mr. Rapp in high glee. John can quote Gibbon. Do it again, John, please!

Does this have anything to do with my job, Mr. Rapp? If it doesn’t, I’d rather not quote Gibbon. The guy was an egghead. My mother force-fed him to me.

John, I’d like to ask you something, said Mr. Rapp, and this does have something to do with your job. John, are you listening?

I’m right here, Mr. Rapp.

John, the question I want to ask you is this: Are you an egghead?

You asked me that once before.

And what did you say?

That I was your performing animal.

Oh yes. That was really quite naughty of you, John — almost cruel. Well, I’ll ask it in a different way. Are you yourself, in spite of all your boorish precautions, actually, deep down, a soulful fellow? Do you actually know things? Are you hiding your light under a bushel-basket, John?

Having a soul is not what you pay me for, Mr. Rapp. Excuse me, but I need to get back to that immigration brief.

Do you have a soul or not, John?

Mr. Rapp, you yourself know that this kind of talk is not appropriate in the workplace, even if it’s your workplace. Sure I have a soul. Sure I’m an egghead. Now may I please get back to work?

Singer! cried Mr. Rapp, ringing the other senior partner’s buzzer. John’s finally admitted that he’s an egghead!

Then lower his salary, said Mr. Singer’s bored voice. Or else raise it.

Mr. Rapp was looking at John with an expression which somehow reminded him of something which Irene had once been saying in a low, earnest plaintive voice, in it already the knowledge that she would not be able to convince John of whatever it was, her hand flittering sadly through the air. He couldn’t remember the details. Irene was looking at him. He gritted his teeth.

| 413 |

The bay was very calm and almost indigo that weekend, with the occasional steep white triangle of a sail between Coit Tower and the islands. John and Domino could see the Marin headlands more distinctly than usual; the water became milky near those far shores, ringing them with the haze of adulation.

You told me you know Hank, said John.

You mean Henry? That sonofabitch! chuckled Domino. So you and Henry really truly came out of the same hole? I mean, you have such class, and that scumbag—

John laughed delightedly, then was ashamed. He hated Hank, but still, Hank was his brother. It was fitting and good that Domino had derogated Hank — this time. But she shouldn’t do it too often. That privilege must be reserved for John.

He said: He tells me that the heat’s really on you down there.

Down where? drawled the blonde, widening her eyes with pretended innocence as she pulled John’s hand between her legs.

Look, he said. If there’s some friend you care about who’s being—

You mean Maj? Stinking old Maj? That’s Henry’s new hole. So that’s why he’s come crying to you. I’m saying it’s a dog eat dog world. (Oh, sorry, I forgot your wife was Korean. They eat dogs, don’t they?) Let Maj cut her own goddamned cake, you hear what I’m saying?

Fine. So you don’t care. Well, that makes it easy.

Domino was bitterly sad and ashamed of the words she had just uttered. But it felt so unnatural, so positively dangerous, for her to admit that she cared about any other human being! And she could not forget how Maj had georgia’d her right before the entire family, using that subhuman little dildo of hers, Sapphire — although she also had to admit that that had been the best orgasm she’d ever had. She didn’t hold a grudge, but… but Maj had humiliated her! Moreover, as soon as John had finished with her, she would be transformed back again into just another pale woman checking her makeup in the side mirror of somebody’s parked car, shivering, desperate to follow any stranger into excrement-smeared alleys. She scowled, and a tear rolled down her cheek.

What’s the problem now? said John, who hated crying women.

Nothing. Forget it, said the blonde, knowing that there was still time to step back across the moral divide, knowing likewise that she was incapable of so doing.

She knew that her omission was no crime against Maj. John had offered not to save everyone in the royal family, but only to protect Domino herself and perhaps Maj. She knew Maj well enough to be sure that she would never leave the others, for after all she had nowhere to be sent to; she already was and always would be saved. Maj was her mother, her only love, her dear — rotten old nigger Maj!

Let’s talk about you and me, baby, she said.

| 414 |

Have we the right to accuse Domino of failing her Queen? Peter denied Christ three times before cockcrow, and still got to be gatekeeper of Heaven. Canaanites, who must live incomparably harsher lives — for His self-sacrifice lasted only a few thirsty bloody hours, while theirs runs forever — surely ought to be exempt from moral crucifixion for similar acts. Moreover, she did not betray her Queen through any positive act, and she was no weaker in her heart than the tall man, say, or Chocolate, or Strawberry…

| 415 |

Smooth tried to talk with the blonde about the matter, but she swore up and down that she’d made John speak to Brady himself. — John’s just a prick, she said. I can twist any man’s prick around my little finger; I don’t care how hard it is. But what Bady’s going to do about it, I have no fuckin’ idea. That’s not my department, okay?

Smooth didn’t believe her. He knew her too well.

Daytimes I work at Costco now, she said wearily to John. That pays my expenses. But in the night times I have to do this, to pay Maj’s expenses. She’s no good. I don’t even want to talk about it or I’m going to cry.

That night the Queen gazed into Domino’s heart, which was as filled with colors as the reflections of many strip clubs’ neon signs in a single fresh puddle on new black asphalt, and the Queen said: I love you, Dom.

I love you, too! shrieked Domino, sticking her tongue in the Queen’s ear.

| 416 |

Maj?

What?

I learned something about Henry.

From who?

His brother.

And?

It’s something bad.

Dom, forget it. Don’t be a snitch. You know I love Henry.

| 417 |

At an office party, John heard a woman say: I want to divest. I want somebody to buy us. Then we can relax. Our stock hasn’t gone public yet, but soon it will.

John thought: You sound like one of the Capp Street girls.

| 418 |

There is nothing quite like putting on a clean, well-starched dress shirt to make a man feel good. John stood frowning pleasantly at his reflection in the patchily steamed bathroom mirror, wondering whether or not to shave again, while Celia adjusted his tie for him. — Let her do it, he thought to himself. I can do it better, but it makes her happy. (Besides, he liked her tender hands against his throat.)

They were going to the opera. John had never entirely made up his mind whether dress circle were the best value, all things being weighed in proportion, but this year he’d chosen the very same tier. Irene had never liked opera. She’d gone uncomplainingly throughout their short marriage — in part, he supposed, to be dutiful, in part to show off her clothes. Celia, on the other hand, loved opera — or else she loved John, which practically speaking was the same thing. They sat side by side high up in the steep rows of brass-number-plated red velvet seats, gazing down on the golden curtain in the gilded arch. Leonine reliefs yawned upon the wall. The other operagoers filed in, spectacles in hand or on their noses, covering their mouths, crying: Nice to see you! — which meant: Nice for you to see me! — People kept boiling up from the hidden corridors. Bemusedly, Celia gazed down on their bald heads and grey heads, with the occasional lush young crown of hair to set the others off. Here came Mr. Rapp in a very dark navy blazer; he raised his nose and craned about until he spotted John, whose responsive wave half-resembled the Roman salute. (Why did I feel like going to sleep? Mr. Rapp would afterward query himself. I think it must be the dinner. And I didn’t like the way… — You didn’t like what? his wife said. — Well, I’m not sure it affected me.) Beaming ushers read tickets and pointed. Celia herself looked as stunning as any of the Asian girls who in lowcut black dresses were accompanied by alert, cleancut husbands with binoculars. John had his lightweight Zeisses, which he hardly ever used, his eyesight being as good as any test pilot’s, but it gave him pleasure to let Celia look through them. She would actually have preferred the less practical but more ornate opera glasses which accompanied the skinny old ladies in pearl necklaces; they raised them high to peer at the redecorated ceiling, whose illuminated rosettes crawled reflected in the lenses like upside-down images of daisy-heads in a pond.

When do you think they’ll ease your workload? Celia was saying.

When Singer has a stroke, said John impatiently. Can we talk about something else?

The gong struck for the first, then the second time. It became dark. Celia gazed down into the orchestra pit’s lights and shining horns. At least she always knew where she stood with John. She gripped John’s hand, her head on his shoulder.

| 419 |

Between them there lay many a conversation from Irene’s epoch, a time in which Celia had simultaneously suffered greater misery (or allowed herself a greater consciousness of the same old misery) and also been able to command more respect from John, because he and she both knew that as a married man he was wronging two women, and therefore had better restrain his curtness. That long ago night when Tyler after taking Irene out for dinner at Kabuki Cho had chanced upon his brother holding Celia’s hand, John had been saying: Are you tired?

No, Celia sighed. Just depressed. I feel so awful.

Do you want to sleep? John said, bringing his face aggressively close to hers, as if she might run away.

I want to sleep with you, Celia said dully. And you want to sleep with me. Or maybe you don’t want to sleep with me.

I want to sleep with you, John said wearily. But we can’t tonight.

We can’t ever. Never ever.

That’s not true, he said, his mouth tightening.

It feels like never ever.

I understand, John said, wondering: Is this worth it? How much of this crap will I have to put up with?

I don’t think you do know how I feel, said Celia. I do believe you think you know.

Well, that’s a start, said John.

Would it make any difference if I threw a tantrum? she rasped, revelling in her pain and his anger. And would Irene—

Let’s leave Irene out of this, John exploded.

Celia lowered her face, and her long hair occluded it, clinging to her tear-sodden cheeks. John took her hand.

It was at that moment that Tyler had driven by.

Now that Irene had removed herself from a position which had necessarily obstructed Celia’s aspirations, Celia found herself proportionally closer to John, but only in the sense that she had fallen into his orbit, becoming Irene’s successor planetoid. Casting his harsh radiance upon her, he remained on his own cosmic trajectory while she whirled helplessly round him. (As for Tyler, he was a lonely comet who scorched himself as he rushed far away from John and Celia’s solar system. Emerging from the Chinatown evening with the gold pores of skyscrapers oozing moist light on the edge of the financial district, he drove past Tokai Bank on Sacramento Street, crossing the decorative grillwork in the dull orange door-light of another house of Mammon, and plumbed the tired old bricks and clean desolation of commercial night until he’d reached Bush Street. No John. No Brady. The bright and open demarcation of Market Street lay ahead. He crossed it, and returned to the Mission district where he felt more like himself.) Meanwhile, Celia’s question hung in space, written in letters of stardust: What was the right thing? The only way to know was for her to envision John’s behavior should she draw still closer to him, or should she leave him. And because she did not have a great deal of faith in herself, both of these hypothetical images buzzed and wavered blurrily before her.

| 420 |

And even now she’s costing me, John had said to her that morning. There’s a greens fee, just like at the golf course. They have to keep mowing the grass over her bones, I guess, and there’s no friggin’ deductible for dead people on my insurance…

Did you love her so very much? said Celia. Please tell me what you’re feeling for once.

Oh, I don’t know, he sighed. Sometimes I get so angry. Irene had her points…

Celia, who would have trusted John much less had he always sung the dead woman’s praises, nevertheless felt a truth-seeking impulse powerful enough to overcome her fear of becoming dislikeable. She said: Who do you love more right now — Irene or me?

You, he said without any hesitation.

Well, that’s the right answer, anyway. What made you marry her?

She was a very good wife in so many ways, he said. She was loving, or tried to be; she did things my way; she was pretty…

| 421 |

During the overture John’s attention drifted, as it always did. For no particular reason he found himself remembering a hot outdoor Vietnamese wedding in San Jose, the vows stuttered and inaudible. Two Vietnamese violinists in gangster sunglasses uncertainly played, while the soloist wiped sweat from her wide brown forehead and sang “Ave Maria” so sweetly that it brought a lump to his throat. The bride, faintly reading a poem about love, wept. Yellowjackets settled on people’s sweating shoulders, and hot dry grass stood all around. Whose wedding had that been? For a long time he couldn’t recall. Had Irene been there? Yes, and she was out of sorts. Why, that had been Irene’s best friend’s wedding! He remembered it now… Irene had been a bridesmaid. She’d looked so beautiful that John had been very proud of her.

Celia squeezed his hand. And then suddenly, with a nauseating feeling of dread, he found himself thinking of Domino.

| 422 |

At the intermission, those spectators who didn’t need to relieve themselves sat stretching or reading their programs or gazing at each other through their spectacles.

Well, what did you think? said Celia, stretching her ankles (her mirror-black shoes melting light like butter).

It’s fine, said John. At least they gave us decent seats. I hate being too close to the aisle. Once when I brought Mom here they tried to pull that one on me. I made quite a scene, I’ll tell you.

Do you think it’s good? Celia said hesitantly.

What do you mean, do I think it’s good? It’s Puccini, that’s all.

John.

What?

John, she said, taking a deep breath, um, John, you would never lie to me about anything important, would you?

And John turned red, shamed almost to the point of vomiting, seeing before his eyes his crooked, grungy brother Hank, who lied through his teeth and who at this very moment was probably lurching down some Tenderloin alleyway muttering: Irene, irridium, lady, palladium, ladium…

Oh, you’re mad, whispered Celia, entirely misconstruing his complexion. John, I made you mad. Oh, John, I’m so, so sorry.

John, unable for the moment to speak, scarcely able to breathe, longed to get the thing done, but what thing it was he couldn’t have said — make a confession to Celia, break off with her, break off with Domino… He was afraid of both women as he had never been afraid of Irene.

John, Celia was saying. Please forget what I said, John.

The lights dimmed until the red carpet and the dark suits of the orchestra members were lost. The conductor came striding out, as the audience applauded and Celia gazed apprehensively at the side of John’s rigid face. And John, almost panic-stricken, longed to rush down to the Wonderbar to see Domino. He knew that it would be absurd to see her without a reason. He must want to break it off, he must… Surely that was what his heart-thud meant.

| 423 |

Now all the well-dressed people had gone inside, and only newspapers twitched on the long steps. A gentle old man in a suit stood at the summit of the red carpet, while a partridge-plump photographer, also in a suit, took his portrait. The opera had long since begun, and at first Tyler thought that he could faintly hear it — a soprano, no overture — but then he saw a shopping bag man, a fat man, a sad dirty man, a homeless man who was sitting there with his suitcase opened, and within the suitcase an old gramaphone was playing for his sadness. Was it battery powered? Now Tyler could hear the sob-like scratches in the woman’s song. She died, and then the homeless one began to play another record. This time a man’s voice was singing: Beautiful woman, my desire.

They don’t know how to train ’em anymore, the homeless man said. Beverly Sills, now, she was the last one who was really trained to sing.

Now Tyler saw that the phonograph was crank-operated. — It’s kind of fun, the man said.

Then it was midnight, and John and Celia were driving home. (Bowing his head and grimacing, his tie flying ahead of his chest, Mr. Rapp descended the steps.) John made a quip, and Celia pretended to be amused, although beneath her bright smile lurked an almost terrifying hostility. A black boy was getting handcuffed in a doorway, the back of his submissive neck shaved and sad. He stared into the wall, so that no one would see the shame upon his face.

| 424 |

Night. The clock had just disgorged that extra hour which it had swallowed in the spring. So now it got dark much earlier. Roland came running out of the office tower, his black shoes gleaming with goldness from all the riches of window-light that fell upon them, and followed the crosswalk between white lines, then ran into his wife’s car. On John’s floor the lights were very bright. Tyler was cold. A number 15 bus went by, displaying its cargo of standees as if it were a mobile aquarium. A man swung a square briefcase, leather-padded, which emitted palely poisonous gleams from its brass fittings. The man stepped into the street, and the gleams vanished.

Hello, Domino, said Tyler.

Look, said the blonde. I’ve got to go make money. Let’s move things along.

Same to you, darling. Where’s the Queen?

Downstairs. She’s interrogating again. Does that make you scared? You wanna get interrogated?

By you? With which mouth?

Laughing, she threw a mock punch at him and shouted: I love you, you old misogynist!

A misogynist is somebody who’s really good at eating pussy, right?

Oh, get lost. Always talking about pussy. You know what you and your brother have in common? You’re pussy-whipped pussy addicts.

So how is John these days?

Still hates you — ha-ha-ha! Hey, did you hear the one about the hooker with a glass eye? This one’s really rich. I forget who told it to me. Okay, so, there’s this hooker with a glass eye, see, and the john comes up to her and says he doesn’t have enough money to stick her, so she says: Never mind, honey, I’ll keep an eye out for you any time! Ha, ha, ha! Ain’t that rich? I heard that one in jail, from some girl named — oh, what the fuck’s her name?

Yeah, that’s a good one, all right.

And guess what else John said? I think John is really well connected.

Well, sure he is. He’s connected to you.

You pervert! He says, the whole entire Tenderloin’s gonna be sterilized. And then they’re gonna do Capp Street. And then it’ll all be over.

How does that make you feel?

Scared, she said frankly.

And what can he do about it?

With a choking, coughing laugh she said: I’m still bargaining for that. I… Anyhow, Maj keeps insisting it’s the end, so why even—

Well, at least we don’t have to repent of our sins, because we’re Canaanites. And John has his good side. I’m sure he’ll take care of you. And, you know, you and John have a lot in common, too. You’re both in business; you both like to get straight to the point…

| 425 |

But to what extent would John really take care of her? Having never slept with any Canaanites before, he had expected his affair with Domino to be easy and pleasant. (Henry Tyler had begun beclouded by a similar illusion regarding the false Irene.) The seduction of Celia had proceeded smoothly, just as soft round lights go on like excited robot breasts over those elevators in banks; and likewise the courtship of the true Irene — or so it all seemed in his recollection. But finding out how bitter and anxious Domino was made him anxious. Sour tyrant, rapacious thief, unwashed liar, she ruled him so rigorously that whenever he was away from her, as when he drove beneath blue clouds up the rainy hill to Washington Street, the degree of his submission amazed him, troubling his steadfastness toward all that he had previously believed.

She insisted, for instance, that John make love to her three or four times every night they were together. When he didn’t or couldn’t, she’d fly into a rage. And the sex also had to occur in a very particular and laborious way involving manual, oral and penile stimulation. But then she could assert the frequency of their intercourse as proof that she withheld nothing from him, that he was using her solely for his own pleasure.

That’ll work, she always said when he paid her, but somehow it never did.

From time to time, either wearied of her own imprecations or else (what was more likely) caught up in bitter brooding, she’d fall silent, so that for a moment or two his eyes could close. But just as he was about to be swallowed by sleep’s narrow gorge, terror would strike a shocking blow upon his breastbone: —sometimes it was her actual touch, grasping and pinching and slapping to prevent his escape into unconsciousness; sometimes it was strange words; often it was simply a presence which suddenly invaded him; his eyes would fly open; he’d emit a strangled groan, and see her still sitting at the foot of the bed, gazing at the wall, her long, greying hair flowing down her back. He waited for her to turn around and commence upon him again.

| 426 |

Now you’ve pissed away an opportunity, Domino, and I don’t like that, Smooth was saying. An opportunity, you see, to save our Queen.

God save the Queen.

I’ll talk with him myself.

Whatever.

Does he turn you on?

Excuse me?

Does he make your pussy wet? Does his presence kind of loosen up your insides?

I’ll give you fifteen minutes in there and that’s it. My business is my business.

Oh, so you’re worried I might steal him away?

Smooth, John’s not going to give you the time of day.

Hmm, the pedophile said. If I tell him what color your insides are, maybe I’ll get his interest.

Fuck you.

You don’t like me, do you? Smooth whined. I’ve done you so many favors, I’ve put in good words for you, and now it comes out that you have a heart of brass.

I don’t have time, the blonde contemptuously replied, and she went her ass-wiggling, heel-clacking way down Jones Street.

Smooth entered the Wonderbar, where John was sitting, anxiously and morosely staring at his watch. — Hi there, he said. I’m a friend of a friend. May I buy you a beer?

A friend of which friend? said John.

Let’s spell it backward, John, because that’s more fun. Spelled backward, her name is Onimod. I’ll bet that’s in the Bible somewhere, don’t you think? If not, maybe it’s one of those monsters in the Book of Mormon, which is one of my favorite books because some Mormons are polygamous.

What do you want?

I’m here to help you out. Well, actually I’m here to help Domino out, but isn’t that sort of the same thing? I mean, you’re in love, so I understand.

I’ve met insects like you before, said John. What’s your name, fellow? I like to know the name of the fellow who’s bothering me.

Strangely enough, Smooth, ordinarily more invincible in his defiance than Henry Tyler himself, felt daunted by John’s abrasive confidence. Perhaps he should have stuck to his subject, although I myself, as a believer in the Queen and her prophecies, remain sure that his actions would have come to nothing in any event. Instead, Smooth made the mistake of trying in the face of this strong current of hostile contempt to swim at an angle, as it were, but because he was a little drunk and because he was limited and damaged like anybody else, the only topic of small talk he could conceive of just then was children, a category which his obsessions had long polished into the same fascinating legitimacy as Celia’s mind had done with stoneware dishes. Sincerely seeking to entertain John, in order to ingratiate himself and then buy the favor of the Queen’s safety, Smooth began to relate a tale he’d heard not long since when he and Tyler were at the Inn Justice bar on Bryant Street, drinking with a quasi-colleague from the public defender’s office. The public defender said: So this one cop goes into a massage parlor in the Tenderloin, and he fancies a prostitute, I forget whether the chick was Laotian or Thai or Vietnamese; anyhow, he snatched her right out of there. This is kidnapping, right? This is no five- or ten-year case. This is a life case. All right. So he drags her out, actually starts doing her in front of some tourists, then thinks better of it and drags her somewhere else, then makes her orally copulate him. Now here comes the interesting part. The evidence, well — you’ll like this, Smooth — there was semen all over the place, because I guess she didn’t want to swallow, so she, well, anyhow, they found the guy’s semen on her. Did a DNA match. It was definitely his. Now here comes the cha-cha-cha. Guy said for his defense: No way in the world I’m gonna make anybody in the world orally copulate me, because my father used to force me to watch my sister orally copulate him when I was a kid! And the sister, who’s also a cop, takes her place on the witness stand and confirms it. This is like, well, it’s talk show justice! The cop did get convicted, but he only got six years. If it had been one of our clients… Kind of a unique defense, don’t you think? — Smooth chortled and chortled, thinking about the cop’s defense made absurd by the semen itself but rendered somehow amazingly believable by the sister’s tears; and he was trying to explain this to John, who cut him short, saying: You sure know how to be a sleazy asshole. I’ll say that much for you. I don’t care whether you’re a friend of Domino’s or not. Get out of here. — And he balled up his fists, which even the tall man had never done to Smooth, and Smooth left the Wonderbar in apprehensive haste, he couldn’t have said exactly why…

| 427 |

It was Saturday evening. The worst of the traffic had already drained from the financial district, rendering John’s driving pleasurable as he descended the hill at Bush and Grant with Celia in the passenger seat, her shoulder belt and lap belt both safely in-clicked, and John felt richer and more luxurious than silk because they were about to try Camponegro’s Grill, whose pesto-lobster gnocchi came highly recommended by both Rapps and both Singers; and to John the expectation of excellent food in a refined atmosphere, no matter to what degree reality might compromise that expectation, always spellbound him into celebratory thoughts and sensations. The next two hours would probably be the pinnacle of his weekend (he couldn’t speak for Celia, of course). Upon them both beamed the yellow sun-star on the blue of the Triton Hotel sign.

Then his heart slammed so nauseatingly that it almost burst. On the corner, in a silver miniskirt, stood Domino, grinning at all the passing cars.

Don’t let her see me, he prayed.

But she saw, and her gaze was like light coming through many upturned silvery shot-glasses.

Hey! she yelled. Hey, John!

The light would not change.

The blonde came striding menacingly toward the car as if she were about to pound on the windshield with her nightmare claws, and Celia sat there gaping. She was almost upon them now, smiling crazy and evil like a monster who would never forgive him for being her prey. Suddenly John realized that he had always known that it would end like this, with his being exposed and humiliated in front of Celia as he sat paralyzed just as in one of his nightmares of Irene’s avenging specter.

The light changed.

John, you fucker! screamed Domino, thumping on the side of the car with her fist as he pulled away.

She knows you, Celia said quietly.

For God’s sake. Just let me—

You’re all pale and sweaty, John. Tell me what this is about.

I — oh, balls.

John. Who is she, John?

She’s…

Is she a hooker, John? She looks like a hooker.

Yes she is.

How did she know your name? Have you been sleeping with hookers?

John gripped the steering wheel very tightly, his face red.

What’s her name, John?

I don’t know her real name. Her street name’s Domino.

Domino. I see. And you’ve been having sex with her.

I did sleep with her, Ceel. But that was before I met you.

How many times?

Knowing that if he pretended he’d had intercourse with Domino only once, the fact that Domino knew his name would strike Celia as very peculiar, to say the least, John thought very rapidly and said: A number of times. Several times. I don’t remember how many.

And you say you did this before you were with me?

Yes, that’s what I said.

When was the last time? Were you already cheating on Irene with this Domino before you started having an affair with me? You never told me anything about Domino before.

I never wanted to think about it.

So when was the last time?

Three years ago, he muttered.

And you started seeing me two and a half years ago, but you never told me about Domino until now. Is there anybody else you’re not telling me about?

Look, can we just—

Is there?

No.

So. You’re now telling me that you had sex several times with this Domino, but it happened three years ago and then you never saw her again. And yet she remembers you by sight. How can you explain that?

I paid her a lot of money, said John, thinking fast.

Now, that’s possible, said Celia in the same cool tone, but he could tell that he had finally said something plausible and that she wished to believe him. — John, did you always use a condom with her?

Always, said John truthfully.

And you’re not seeing her now?

No.

You swear to me?

I swear.

Celia sighed and stroked his hand on the steering wheel. — I believe you. I’m sorry.

John bit his lip. This hurt the worst of all — that he had just betrayed Celia again with his lies, and been believed.

| 428 |

God, her eyes! he muttered.

| 429 |

John?

What?

I want to ask you something.

What?

About Domino.

What about her? he said in an exasperated voice. He foresaw many, many questions, like a line of tweedy smokers’ elbows upon some long walnut bar.

Was she…

Was she what?

Did she do anything I don’t do?

I’ll tell you something, Ceel. My brother Hank doesn’t have very progressive views about women, you know. And one time he said to me: They’re all pink on the inside.

That’s disgusting.

Yeah.

No, I mean it. That’s really disgusting. That offends me.

Well, to be honest with you, I had a feeling as soon as you raised the subject of Domino that you were angling to get offended.

You’re so uncaring sometimes.

I admit it. But be honest, Ceel. Isn’t it convenient sometimes to be with somebody who doesn’t care?

As he said this, of course, he was thinking about Irene. Like most of us, he loved to generalize. He’d been married to a Korean woman, so he believed he understood the Korean character: the utter unthinking self-sacrifice for the family, the stoic attitude which drove them to immense lengths; combined with a secret resentment, even hostility, toward the object of that self-sacrifice; and an indifference bordering on arrogance toward anyone outside the bloodline. Had someone told him that not all Koreans were exactly this way, John would have shrugged. Ultimately, he didn’t care that much if he reified and oversimplified on his own time. The idea of analyzing Irene herself would have caused him such pain as to be out of the question.

Does your brother care? Celia was inquiring in an angry voice. About anything? I mean, to say something like that, it — well, I’d think he must be a very angry person, or…

He’s angry at me, I guess.

Why?

Because I got Irene and he didn’t. Of course, now that I think about it, if I had to say who got her, I mean really got her—

Okay, but is it only about Irene?

I thought we were talking about Domino.

That’s one of your tricks.

What do you mean, my tricks?

I think that you kind of push people away and kind of keep yourself safe through the way you—

Oh, so we’re not talking about Domino or Hank. We’re really talking about me. I’m just going to shut up until I know what we’re really talking about here. Maybe you’ll change the subject on me again…

Does he have something against your life?

Do you?

John!

Oh, fine. Whatever. He thinks I’ve sold out and turned corporate and plastic or something like that. He inherited the artistic temperament from Mom, except he’s not refined like her. He thinks it’s artistic just to sit around spending money you don’t have and pissing your life away.

Is it really selling out if you really start thinking about the world instead of only thinking about yourself? I mean, you’re out there in the business world. You’re providing a service—

Who are you trying to defend me from, little Ceel? he said with an ironic smile. We’re on the same side, for Christ’s friggin’ sake.

John, you know my deepest fear is being abandoned.

Now what the hell does that have to do with anything? Hank’s not here and if I can have my way he’ll never be. Anyway, could we talk about something else?

I think that either he’s afraid or he doesn’t want to hurt your feelings or he knows you want closure or… He’s so wounded, I don’t know.

Thank you for the consultation, Dr. Freud. You never even met the sonofabitch—

What on earth do you mean? I’ve met him twice — once at that party at Lowensohn’s, and then that night when—

Yeah, when he was stalking us. You remember? We were kissing, and then suddenly he was shining his headlights on us…

I don’t know what he’s about. He seems so… Maybe he just — maybe he’s looking for the real thing.

What real thing? There is no real thing.

I just want the real thing. I just want somebody who loves me and talks to me and wants to be with me.

Well, you have that, and how real does it feel? Jesus Christ.

Well, if you don’t want to talk about that can we talk about Domino for a minute?

I am so sick of this conversation! John screamed.

You know what? I don’t care.

I can see that. I’m going home.

John.

What?

If you walk out of here right now, don’t ever come back.

The television said: Of course fertility difficulties are so common these days. Consult your fertility specialist. Next: Rose from Pleasanton.

Oh, so it’s going to be one of those nights, said John.

I just — I just wanted to know… about Domino—

Yes?

I wish I could meet her. I want to ask her — I want to know, I… I feel it every time I’m confronted with pornography and prostitution. Because she’s a woman, too, and yet I’m so far away from what she is. I can’t understand that part in a woman that is able to happily give her body and sell her body. There’s something about her that I don’t understand, like how she could so happily without any issues just get into brokering sex for men.

You’re repeating yourself.

Would you feel more attracted to me if you could just buy sex with me and then not have to talk with me?

That has nothing to do with anything!

But, you know, John, I don’t want to be a prostitute like Domino. Or this insect Queen the television keeps talking about. I don’t want to do what she does.

Good career move. Are you almost finished?

I guess the reason why I don’t want to do it is because I don’t want to give men what they want. Because men already seem to get what they want—

So now I’m the enemy because I’m male, huh? That’s just another version of they’re all pink on the inside. Should I be offended now? But you know what? I’m not. What you’re saying is so godamned stupid, so far beneath me, that I refuse to get friggin’ offended!

I guess if I saw Domino, continued Celia in a dreamy voice, you know what I’d tell her? I’d say, I can’t relate. I just can’t.

| 430 |

After slowly sinking her teeth into his tongue, she said: This is me you’re feeling. Me doing it to you. Me hurting you to show that you’re mine. You’re so pretty when you’re in pain.

John thought to himself: I will never forget these words.

When she finally spat into his mouth, he drank it eagerly, sobbing and trembling. He awaited her pleasure, in exactly the same way that the Chinese prostitute Yellow Bird bowed her naked legs out while clicking her white high heels together, anxiously gripping her own throat with both hands while gazing into each man’s face with the expression of a beaten child. John paid to be beaten and Yellow Bird did not. What did that make each of them?

Domino’s mons was furry, broad and generous like the refreshing green mound of park on Gough and Sacramento with its wall of bushes, its palm trees, stairs and clouds, the rollercoaster drop of streets below, the financial district far away.

| 431 |

You bastard, said Domino.

Look, said John. I’m busy. I feel — I don’t know how I feel about you, but I feel something. I’ve got to do my job right now.

That won’t work, said Domino. You can’t do that to me. Part of you belongs to me now.

No it doesn’t.

Part of every man belongs to me, and I’m going to get my due. Do you understand?

John shuddered, momentarily unable even to speak.

She was weeping so hard that the bed shook, and then she was struggling so that he had to hold her down with all his weight, which afforded him an almost sexual feeling of riding her like a horse; all night, she kept sobbing: I’m no good. Finally she’d run down her batteries and lay there heavy and dead. Then he too collapsed. He slept. The sound of little bells woke him, and his heart vomited up dread. She was in the other bed squirming, and her anklets were tinkling. The hot dawn was already upon them like a nuclear bomb. He could not call out. After an hour she came and lay beside him, and he seized her hand and tucked it under her to imprison her to him, but quietly she slipped away. She was packing her little backpack. She came back a third time and kissed him, then got up and walked out the door.

Now I want to do the bad thing, she said. I can do anything, John. I can heal suffering. I can cause suffering. I can fuck Jesus. I can cook; I can make money. I can do this, too. Whatever I promise, I do. I promise I’m going to go away and never see you again.

John was silent. He could not forget how when Domino was sitting on him and then she began to smile and her eyes cruelly narrowed, he almost couldn’t bear the joyous excitement.

She glared into his eyes until, hypnotized and paralyzed, he fell back into strangling dreams. When he awoke she was sitting in a chair snoring. He got up and put his hand on her shoulder.

Can’t you see I’m just waking up? she muttered. Stupid dick-sucking sonofabitch.

| 432 |

And a sliver of garlic, concluded the waiter with a genial smile.

There’s no egg in it? asked Celia anxiously.

Exactly, ma’am.

I love these olives, John, don’t you?

Not bad, said John.

This appetizer doesn’t taste like crab, does it? It tastes like really garlicky calimari.

There goes the Wine Train, said John, pointing out the window. I wonder if Mom would enjoy that. I don’t think she would.

You’re so good to your mother, John.

Well, somebody has to be, he said, regarding her through the tall green carafe of sodium-free sparkling water. The lemon half on ice at the bottom of his bloody mary glass resembled a triumphantly unbroken egg yolk.

I’m sorry, Celia said.

Sorry for what?

I don’t know. Sorry I’m not better to your mother, I guess.

She likes you fine, Ceel.

But you’re disappointed in me, aren’t you?

What’s all this about?

I’m sorry. I said I’m sorry. I’m sorry I keep bringing my thoughts back to you. The way you are. The way your brother is. The way I am. How can I spend another damned minute here?

So you’re in another of your moods.

I can feel that darkness inside me coming on. Maybe it has something to do with Domino. And you don’t care.

What do you mean, I don’t care? Aren’t I paying out good money right now to do exactly what you wanted to do, eating your lunch in the restaurant you picked, being driven up here in my goddamned car? Doesn’t that count for anything?

So you bought me for the weekend. You—

Cut to the chase. What do you want?

I don’t know. This is what I always come back to. That’s all I seem to do in life, she went on in her breathless whining tone, just one thing after another, because life just won’t let me have someone to love instead.

Oh, horseshit, said John.

Someone to look at every day, she mumbled, sloshing wine out of her glass as she tremblingly raised it to her lips. Someone to muss my hair…

Well, he said wearily, here I am. You want me to muss your hair or will you complain about your permanent?

They never stay. You won’t stay. Your brother buys sex and I masturbate. At least your brother’s not alone when he—

Oh, so it’s “they” now. Who are the they I’m a part of? Men? Jerks? Jesus Christ.

And the peach-crayfish fettucine for the lady, the waiter said. How were your appetizers?

Adequate, said John. The spring rolls were a little stale. Well, maybe they were just dried out. The lady would like more lemon.

I’m so often afraid, she whispered. I need a new thought, or a new interest, or something… With all the information out there, you’d think I’d be able to give the world one new thought—

So read the encyclopedia, Celia. Develop your goddamned mind.

I know you don’t know the answer. If you knew, I would have known it, too, and I would have already done something about it. If you knew, everyone else would know, too, because you’re not so smart, she muttered, her lower lip trembling spitefully.

Fine, said John. So I’m not the answer. Well, I’ve had enough of this for the afternoon.

I want to be in love so bad, Celia whispered to herself. I want to be loved so bad.

You sit there and get snookered. I’m going to read the paper.

John? John!

What is it now, Ceel?

John, I want a baby.

Listen to you. With your mood swings, what kind of mother would you be?

Didn’t you ever feel excited when you…

When I what?

Didn’t you put your hand on Irene’s tummy, just to feel…?

The baby never moved inside her, John said. Irene never reached that stage.

| 433 |

John’s erection reminded Celia of the cigarette upslanted between Domino’s fingers. She wanted to shout at him, but instead she started crying as he sat there, and at length she said through her tears: I know I have a pattern. I’m aware of it, thank you very much.

Well? said John.

Celia wanted to say: You’re just making me feel worse. Will you please shut up? — Instead, she cried harder.

John softened. He could be very kind with weak and broken creatures.

I feel bad that I feel this way, she whispered. I feel defeated and insecure as a result of all this. I’m back at the beginning again. At least when I’m at the office I’m something. They actually look up to me, John—

Exactly, John said. I totally understand you there.

Well, here I am. I’m in your hotel room that you paid for and so I’m not anything. I’m just Celia.

You are that, he said.

I wonder where all these fears come from. I remember when I was in high school, I was such a good swimmer, but I was afraid to be a lifeguard. I don’t know why.

She dreamed that she went out of the hotel, and from the window where a man in a suit who had just made love with her remained there protruded a big green gun. She began to run. She was getting away with it. She ran and ran. Then she began to wonder how she would get home, and how she would know when she was home, because she was very lost now. She remembered something about the North Star and hoped that she would be able to figure it all out. She came to the top of the hill, and saw an army of the enemy, all men, playing a ball game involving half-remembered toys from her childhood. She ran on, hoping they wouldn’t see her. She was going downhill now. She was at the edge of a cliff.

But her dream was (by conventional logic, at least) in error, because John never slept with Domino again.