The Royal Family

| 462 |

Who’s got a radio? said Harry. Okay, let’s have ’em on the desk. What number you got?

Fourteen.

Fifteen.

Twenty-one.

Nineteen.

Outside, a car alarm was honking and honking

Come on, boys. Radios, radios!

Three. We’re gonna double up with Exercise.

Twenty.

Okay, said Harry, tell the slapper it’s time.

What the fuck you talking like that to me for? said the slapper, his face empurpled. You think I don’t know what time it is? You think I’m working for Mr. Brady and I don’t know what time it is?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, said Harry, to humor him. And you can lead us to the whores, right?

Told ya I don’t hang out with them anymore, the slapper said. I just know ’em.

Harry yawned. — Big day. Queen’s day.

That cunt, said the slapper. Trying to start shit with Mr. Brady…

On Harry’s desk, an alarm clock began to buzz.

Let’s pull everybody inside, please, called the slapper. (Majestic as a New York cop, he wore sunglasses, storm-blue duds and a wide orange belt. Spread-legged, he towered like a statue.) Everybody inside. Mannie! Mannie! Everybody inside.

They came inside, and the slapper sang out: Hey! Lockdown! Can’t you show some respect? Mr. Brady’s about to speak!

Okay, said bowling-pin-shaped Brady with his hands in his pockets, strolling slowly, his suspenders tight. Let’s listen up. I’m only going through the breakdown once, so when you hear your group number, listen for your name. Here we go. Group Apple: Chu, Darrah, Davis, Glovinski, Goebel, Haji, Hall, Hameed, Hamidi…

The slapper kicked Harry’s desk and cried: Chuckles! Chuckles! Hey, you, fat boy! Dude, Brady’s talkin’! Gotta pay attention!

Out front, a bunch of Brady’s Boys in the media brigade were signing the cast of a Puerto Rican in a wheel chair.

You have Mannie’s group going out with the press, Brady was saying: Don’t show ’em anything they really don’t want to see. On Turk Street at five-minute intervals we have groups Apple, Bacon, Cabbage and Doughnut, with the usual squad leaders. Doughnut will record. Shazib, I want you to baby that microphone. Don’t swing it around, don’t whack some lowlife’s skull with it; you got other tools for that. Show ’em how you respect Allah, how the Queen of the Whores stinks in your nostrils. Got that? Halliday, you be ready with batteries and tapes and whatever the fuck Shazib needs. All right. Apple, Bacon and Cabbage, when history starts to go down, give Doughnut Group plenty of room. We have to document what we do. It protects us in court and it helps with our fundraising. All you apes understand that? Good. And no one had better lie to me. The slapper’s going to take charge of the new group and break ’em in. Slapper, keep ’em tight tonight; keep ’em alert. Now, on Ellis Street at five-minute intervals we have groups Exercise, Frantic, Gallop and Hunk. Hunk will be recording. Porterfield, you know your stuff now with the video camera? You gonna take the lens cap off this time? Good. And we have Group Ice on Market Street and Hyde, posted as reserves. Be ready to block their rabbit hole on Capp Street, too. Keep your engines running. Harry, I’m pulling you to run the command post tonight. Everybody got that? You call command, you don’t say C.P., you say Harry. Why make it easy on the enemy? And before you go out, make sure you let Harry know what radios you have on your patrols. Questions? No questions? All right. Chuckles, front and center. Situation report.

I don’t think they’ll try to fight back or burn us or rush our HQ, Chuckles said. They was all drunk or cranked up last time I looked.

And when was that, Chuckles?

’Bout half an hour ago, Mr. Brady.

Well, they’re tricky bitches and vicious sons of bitches. Be ready for anything, boys. And do what you have to do. Don’t start anything, but do what you’ve been sent out to do, and if they get in your faces, you get in their faces. Questions?

Uh, Mr. Brady…

What is it, Porterfield?

If they get serious with us, how bad can we hurt ’em?

Don’t worry about a thing. It’ll take a quarter of an hour for the police to come. Anyway, we’re just doing what the police don’t have the guts to do. We’re gonna shut the bitch down.

Shut ’er down!

Nuke the bitch!

Out, out, out! Let’s go, crazies!

| 463 |

Look at those Brady’s Boys! a woman called happily.

I haven’t seen them for a while, her husband said.

Like a green serpent, the column flanked the theater crowds. Young and fast, it offered to the public a constellation of solemn, wide-eyed expressions, reminiscent of Marines.

Brady’s Boys! a girl cried.

People came up and shook their hands.

An old black lady came up to the head of the column and said: I pray for Mr. Brady.

Thank you, dear.

Have a good night, ma’am, another vigilante said.

Oh, you Brady’s Boys are so polite.

I love it, man! the vig shouted.

Ten-shun! a man on the sidewalk sneered.

The Brady’s Boys looked him up and down, saying nothing.

Just before the tunnel, George, the black shoeshine man, basking on his throne, raised his palm in an Indian salute.

| 464 |

Gimme more bump, begged Strawberry. I swear I’m gonna pay you…

Oh, you don’t have to do that, said the trick with a patronizing smile.

That’s just the type I am, Strawberry replied, feeling very proud of her rectitude even though she and the trick both knew that she would never pay him. — Hey, where you goin’?

She stood cleaning the pipe and then slowly uplifted it like a monstrance and breathed blue flame while the TV’s blueness whirled with hubcabs, dogs and falling cereal.

I said where you goin’?

I don’t talk much, said the trick, already at the door. He flipped the switch, and the bare bulb on the hotel ceiling flickered on, sizzling and glaring uneasily.

Dim the light! the whore cried in a panic. She rushed to the window, peering around the curtain as if she were waiting for something.

What for?

I’m tweaking. I’m naked. Dim the light.

Hey, this is my room, lady. I paid for it. I don’t wanna be in the darkness.

Come on. Dim it.

Grimacing, he turned it down. He was a well-built and steelyhearted man in his fifties or very late forties. She thought that she’d seen him somewhere. But of course her memory illuminated all comers as evenly as the dun-colored light deep in pedestrian under-passes.

You’re making me nervous, he said to her. Are you setting me up?

I’m just tweaking, that’s all.

In the hall, when he opened the door, a black face, woeful and baleful, wanted and needed and promised something. On the TV, a four-wheel drive rushed to the edge of a cliff. He stared gloomily outward for awhile, then closed the door again and double-locked it, employing both the lock that functioned and the lock that didn’t.

What’s your name?

Strawberry.

Hey, Strawberry, you know what I want you to do?

Shhhh! she whispered in a panic. Don’t say my name.

Slow footsteps crept in the hall outside. Then they stopped outside the door.

Is it locked? she whispered in terror.

The door burst open, and two Brady’s Boys came in. — Good work, they said to the trick. The boss is waiting.

All right. See you, Strawberry.

Before the wide-eyed girl could even begin screaming, one of the men clapped a hand over her mouth and shoved her down onto the bed so that the other man, having locked the door again (which she saw only too clearly now that her supposed trick had only pretended to lock), could sit down on her stomach with his full weight so that she could scarcely breathe. They kept her there for a good five minutes while she desperately squirmed, unable to utter even the most muted sounds, and the stink of her fear-sweat was occluded by the smell of the cigarettes which the two men sat placidly smoking.

Cool, the man who was leaning on her mouth finally said. — Now, are you ready to listen? Nod your head if you’re ready.

Frantically, she nodded.

Just think of all the time she’s stolen from your life, the man said. Know who I mean? You can move your head yes or no.

Strawberry shook her head.

I’m referring to your so-called Queen. I’m not saying you should be bitter, but this is your chance to get even. Now, Strawberry, what we need is a location. An up to date location. If you tell us, I think you’ll feel a great sense of relief.

Oh, cut to the chase, would you? the other vig said. This little tart probably can’t even sign her own name. Can you, bitch? Can you, bitch?

He slammed the heel of his hand into her left breast while the other man clamped his palm even more tightly down over her mouth so that her shriek could not come out.

Maybe you can tell we’re serious, the first vig said. We’re here to find out where the Queen is. Now, if I take my hand off your mouth for a minute, will you be a good girl and answer me or will we have to hurt you a little bit? Shake your head yes or no. Yes means you’ll be a good girl.

Strawberry nodded very very quickly.

| 465 |

One down, one down! laughed the Brady’s Boys.

The breast-slammer’s cell phone rang, and he answered, listened, and said: He says he’s issued by John Deere but he doesn’t know the policy number. Yeah, that’s right. The guy says don’t touch me, I says who ya talking to? No, we got one here. We chalked up another one. Don’t worry. We always get there before the cops.

| 466 |

That was the future; that was July. Right now it was June twenty-seventh, one year to the day since Irene’s death. Tyler sat in the Wonderbar all day, drunk and paralyzed. Then it was June twenty-eighth. Then it was June twenty-ninth.

Crack smoke didn’t taste bitter and clean to him anymore. It tasted bitter and dirty. Of course maybe he wasn’t getting the good stuff.

At the Cinnabar, the shouting and bullying of the television made him sick. It stank of cigarette smoke in there, and nausea unballed itself within his stomach, extending curious tendrils to probe him. — You gotta pick one, the television commanded. That’s how it works here.

He remembered how when Irene and his mother were putting on their coats to go meet John for a movie (he had needed to stay by the phone for an infidelity job) and when his mother was in the bathroom he asked what they were going to see and Irene told him and he said: Hey, haven’t you seen it before? and she said: Yes, but please don’t tell anybody because I want to make her happy.

He remembered seeing her in a corner of the kitchen table later that night, stroking the dog’s furry ears and trying to explain something to his mother, who gazed at her in a deeply searching and skeptical manner, and he wanted to shout: Leave her alone! Don’t you know how good she is?

He dwelled among the whitish mist and ice-plants at Ocean Beach, one of several silhouettes in beach fog. Fleeing south, a solitary jogger in a yellow sweatshirt vanished like a yellow sunset, and then Tyler was left alone to stare at the lovely white foam of greyish waves. Fog rode the foam and the waves. He gazed at the silhouettes of fishermen.

He sat drinking amidst the ruins of the Sutro Baths, which once must have been like an ocean greenhouse with a view of Seal Rock, and ranks of young women in black one-piece bathing suits, everything clean for the people’s aristocracy (so at least it appears in the old photographs). Now the baths are roofless. Rebar protrudes from their concrete honeycombs, which do not remain quite ornate enough to be stately or “pretty” like Roman ruins.

His apartment reeked. The false Irene kept pissing on the carpet, and two nights before the Queen had defecated in his mouth; he’d washed the sheets, but he couldn’t get rid of the smell, which was now also Irene’s smell. His Mark of Cain was becoming more literally evident night by night, and his home resembled a cast-off snakeskin. (On the television, Brady was laughing: Nine Hydras in every realm.) Irene sometimes tried to thank him and even to love him, for which he ought to have been grateful because she was his sister, but he did not much want to talk.

Have you ever had the feeling that something isn’t on the level? Smooth had said. Well, of course you do — every time you look in the mirror.

Knock it off, said Tyler.

But seriously.

Oh, probably when I come across something like a staged accident. All the sudden, nothing adds up, and so somebody must be bullshitting. You just get to know people. You go back to the attorney and say, hey look, this client’s lying to you.

Tyler looked in the mirror and said: I’m nothing. I’m a phony. I want to be something real like her. Help me, please. Help me, help me. I’ll give up everything.

It now seemed to him that Smooth was correct, and his love for Irene had never been genuine, that had she been alive, unmarried and interested in him, he would not even necessarily have been drawn to her, although at the same time he was capable of doubting that supposition, for his heart lunged toward her in odd surges like a compass needle in a magnetic storm — what if it had all been one of those impermanent distractions falsely dignified as “escapes”? The terrible thing was that here had been no escape then or now. Love meant nothing, solved nothing, being but a garment of hypocrisy or desperation thrown over naked solitude. He awoke anxious. Did life have no purpose? Or had he merely failed to discover that purpose? What if he never found it, or, worse yet, learned it too late, as he lay dying?

Hoping for work, he went out to the beach while Irene snored and drooled. An hour later he ascended the carpeted stairs and approached his answering machine, knowing that the round red eye would not wink at him, shocked to hear himself muttering aloud: Please, please, please. — No one had called. — He said to himself: It’s not gonna happen. It’s not gonna happen. — He said it like a mantra. He was trying to convince himself not to expect anything ever again. He wanted to die. He wanted to be dead. It’s not gonna happen. He fell down onto his bed without even taking his shoes off, and he wept. He dreamed that he was with Irene. When he awoke, his eyes were swollen, aching and wet. He masturbated, imagining that his tongue was inside Irene’s cunt and that he was giving her happiness.

Suddenly it occurred to him that he might not have gazed carefully enough at the red light on his answering machine. What if the battery were weak? He went and studied it again, but it was dark. He pushed the replay just in case, and heard silence, followed by a fatuous beep.

He drove to the Tenderloin, taking what John would have referred to as the scenic route on that hot day when Chinatown smelled like barbequed pork, urine and fresh oranges: He drove past the Sam Wong Hotel, then turned into the shade of Bow Bow Cocktails and the Hop Yick Meat Market. In a window, tongs moved barbequed duck legs. Then came a produce market, proudly showing off its cherries which resembled iridescent pink eyeballs. He turned down Powell Street in the direction of Pine, with the deep valley of the Tenderloin lying ahead. Celia bought faux jewelry somewhere around here. Then his way went down and down and down. Traversing the northern border of the Tenderloin, he followed Geary Street west, as if he were searching for the Queen as in the old days. Geary and Taylor was Walgreens and news, cafes and delis. Then it became harder at the Hob Nob bar, but Wing Fat Travel and Tomiko’s Beauty Saloon reminded him that the Tenderloin was much softer than it used to be even five years earlier, let alone fifteen. So it went, right to Polk Street, where Sophia Spa and Adult Video reminded him of the existence of nude celebrities. Down that cold grey slope of Polk Street was a motor lodge outside which the tall man stood bloody-eyed and smelly, trying to sell Street News to tourists. Tyler waved to him and then drove aimlessly for hours. He was killing time to avoid killing himself. — One of the moves we make at Eight-Fifty Bryant, another weary public defender had told him year ago, is what we call a convenience move. If you’re already serving life for one crime, why waste everyone’s time and money trying the guy on another charge? Shuffle some papers. If the other verdict is overturned, then you can always bring the guy up for trial. — But Tyler was shuffling his own papers now, driving uselessly round and round and round. As night fell he was rolling up Columbus where he saw a long restaurant with many people at many tables all sitting behind glass; he perceived a woman’s bluejeaned buttocks and blonde hair at a bank machine, then cars cold and fishy in the night, all framed by a string of lights. A red Chinese sign dwelled upon a white wall. Then he drove to the wharf, in downslop-ing smooth silence. The bright boiled-crab red neon sign of the Safeway directed him onward toward a multi-tier parking garage which was open and lit like those “pretty” Roman ruins. It was foggy in Cow Hollow, and foggy going down Gough Street. When he crossed Jackson, a yellow light winked at him like a friend, and so he let himself coast back into the Tenderloin again.

On Geary and Jones, the Nazareth Hotel, he was happy to learn, was NOW RENTING. Chocolate was strutting up Eddy Street in a jet black raincoat, swishing a riding crop made of a broken-off car antenna.

See that bitch? she said, strung out on an unknown drug, pointing at nothing. I did twelve months on account of that bitch ’cause some white lady said I looked like her. Can’t she see? I dunno. She drinks too many sodas.

Is that right, said Tyler.

You think I’m out to lunch, don’t you? You think I’m crazy like Mary. You know, you have your females and you have your deep thought females. I’m just different. I wanna climb trees and help build the treehouse.

I get it.

Henry, can you lend me five dollars? I need to fix so bad I’m gonna puke. Just five, Henry. Just this once.

What did the Queen say?

I’m afraid to ask her.

Why’s that?

’Cause I done asked her too many times awready.

Where is she now?

You wanna date her?

Sure.

Why not me, Henry? I got a pussy, too. Maj’ll never find out. You can pay me twenty an’ I’ll give you a nice flatback. I give real good head. I bet I can give better head than Maj. Please.

You love her, Chocolate?

More than anybody in the world, definitely including you. But love is love an’ business is business.

At least you’re honest, he laughed, giving her four ones, which was all the cash he had left.

You don’t love her as much as you used to, the whore accused. All the time your lips be mumblin’ Irene, Irene.

Cut it out.

Hey. I’m getting fifty bucks a shot from that guy over there. If you gimme thirty I’ll give you better than I give him.

All right, Chocolate, he said, not really listening. I’ve got to find Maj now.

She’s sleepin’, Henry. Half a black down, inside that junked car.

Nudging him, she pulled down her shorts to show him her blackish, raw-scratched crotch.

Thanks, he said, walking on. She slowly and disconsolately followed. Tonight or tomorrow would be the end, he believed. Why has the LORD pronounced all this great evil against us? What is our iniquity?… Because your fathers have forsaken me, says the LORD, and have gone after other gods. His face was as dark grey as the Tenderloin streets at night with the pale, slotted cliffs shimmering above them, the darkness lit up with whores’ brassieres which shone like globs of glowworms. He tasted tears in his mouth.

Justin, what’s happening? he said.

Just kickin’ back with our Queen, the tall man said, leaning wearily with his hands in the pockets of his bright new bluejeans. Just stealin’ some nightshade.

Ah, said Tyler wisely, picking his teeth. Does your leg hurt?

It goddamn hurts. You packin’?

Not tonight.

That’s what she said.

Why, you old misogynist!

No, I do not know where Domino is at. Why ain’t you packin’?

I sold my gun, Tyler explained. Needed to pay some expenses.

Then you be a worthless mother. Some gangstas popped a cap at me, but they missed. I wanna track ’em down, ex ’em out…

That’s life in our set, muttered Chocolate sarcastically.

You talkin’ smack to me, girl? I said, you givin’ me static?

Oh, brother, said Tyler. Where’s Maj?

Why? Wanna turn her out? Wanna pimp her out?

Something like that, he sighed.

She’s takin’ Sapphire to the emergency room, Chocolate said. Comin’ back pretty soon, maybe about one two three hours…

What’s wrong?

Just one of her fits. She bit her tongue pretty bad, that’s all… And I been feelin’ poorly, too. I had a fever of a hundred an’ four degrees an’ they wanted to call the emergency room but I said what the hell ’cause if I kick the bucket so fuckin’ what. Know what I mean? An’ now I feel so dizzy an’ I got no place to stay. I gotta make ten dollars soIcan…

Around the corner Domino was saying: And if we continue to let her, we’ll never make an honest buck.

That’s right, that’s right, said Bernadette.

Making a buck out of us is her program, said Domino, strolling into sight.

Christ, Domino, where would you be without her? Tyler cried out, utterly dejected in his soul. At that moment the whole crew of them seemed to him to be as beasts, ferocious and incapable of love or gratitude.

Without whom? returned Domino pertly.

You know your relative pronouns at least. I like that… he muttered.

Oh, leave her alone, said Bernadette. She just got georgia’d by two black men. She’s in pain. She’s agitated.

And what’s their blackness got to do with it is what I want to know, Chocolate said. What’s the difference what color their cocks were if they made her do the G? You’re all the same. Deep down, you all think black folks is just niggers.

Did you get hurt bad, Domino? he said, sorry for the blonde but still almost insufferably weary.

What’s it to you? You’re not here to see me anyway. You’re here to eat out Maj’s pussy. Why would you care?

My car’s parked by the Wonderbar, he said. You want a ride to the hospital?

Thank you, the blonde said. I know you mean well. It’s too late. Everything’s too late.

Tyler narrowed his eyes and asked: Are you bleeding?

Oh, fuck off.

Your whole face is swollen. But wait a second, Dom. Those are old bruises.

She stepped beneath a streetlight so that he could see her better, muttering: No, uh, I—

Look at you! he cried, shocked. You’ve got a black eye and a split lip. And your tooth… Those aren’t from today, either. What happened to you?

Stuff, said the blonde wearily.

You okay? he asked again and again.

Who do you think you are, the Queen? You’re not my mother. You’re just a prick like everybody else.

Irritated and hurt, Tyler walked away, peering into the obsidian darknesses of parked cars. The tall man smirked.

Chocolate was pouring out a line of detergent at the back door of the Wonderbar when he got back. Literacy is a disease, she mumbled

You want a ride? Tyler said.

She never answered. She was getting cracked up and paranoid.

Finally he had to leave. — Thanks for the ride, she said bitterly.

| 467 |

What had happened was this. Have you ever seen one of those antique jigsaw puzzles whose pieces are held together by a springloaded frame? Depress a lever, and everything flies apart. The royal family was a family no longer, and its members associated merely out of vestigial habit. They had every practical reason to continue honoring their kinship; but such sensible behavior as that would hardly be human.

The first outright cleavage had been precipitated (one could almost say perpetrated) by insects. Just as when, peering beneath the twin freeway bridges at Mission and Duboce into the grimy shade, you can spy Mission Street palmy and picturesque beyond, so when the tall man steel-shuttered his eyelids and went to sleep his perceptions carried him past his grief into strangely happy dreams. But when he awoke he was already scratching. His ankles wore chains of whitish bites which his fingernails quickly turned red. He went about his business that day and tried not to think about it, but at night he couldn’t sleep, and in the morning the desperately itching welts were on his buttocks and elbows and behind his knees. Again he went about his business, scratching. His sisters were clamoring for their medicine, but all he did was cop a dime bag for Strawberry. Surely the Queen took note of his discomfort, but she said nothing. In the old days one pass of her magic hands across his body would have relieved his misery entirely. The next day the welts reached his wrists, which he scratched until they bled, and then they began to blossom on his belly below the navel. He entered the Rolley’s supermarket on Geary Street and approached the pharmacist’s counter. Beside him stood one other customer, an old Chinese, who was being unenthusiastically waited on by a bored white girl. Behind the glass Justin could see two other pharmacy employees drinking coffee. Finally a Filipino-looking lady came out and asked him what he wanted.

I got scabies, the tall man said. See them red bumps on my hands? I have ’em all over my body now. They be gettin’ worse and they itch like hell. I want you to sell me some Mites-Off cream.

Have you tried anything else? the woman said.

Slabbered that calamine lotion on ’em, which didn’t do no good.

You’ll have to see a doctor, the woman said. Calamine is the strongest thing we can sell you over the counter. Maybe you have a virus.

Look, lady, I’m aware what scabies is, said Justin. Know who you’re talkin’ to? You’re talkin’ to the scabies expert.

I’m sorry, the woman said. Mites-Off is by prescription only. You’ll have to go to the doctor first.

I go to some doctor they gonna make me wait a couple of days and pay ’em sixty dollars, said the tall man, trying to keep his temper. I know you can find some way round that.

There’s a free clinic on Eddy Street, the woman said, looking him up and down. Why don’t you go there? The wait’s only half an hour.

You see that snail slime down there? said Justin. You want to really fuck with somebody, you take ’em and make ’em lick it.

The woman turned her back on him and returned behind the glass to her colleagues. The tall man could see the Mites-Off bottle behind the counter and he almost could have reached it, but then the Chinese would have opened his mouth in amazement, and the other pharmacist would have called Security and he would have been caught before he could run very far. The tall man departed, scratching.

He had been to the free clinic several times before. It was always closed. He stalked over there and it was closed again.

He scored three dime bags for the girls, scratching. Without him what would those sad bitches do?

Down under O’Farrell and Leavenworth’s walls which were so white and sunny under the cloudless sky he met by prearrangement his sisters who came heel-clacking by: Chocolate, Strawberry and Domino. (The false Irene was sitting in a doorway sniffling. He wasn’t about to support that bitch.) First he saw them silhouetted like the shoulders of beer bottles in a bar cooler whose windowpane was white with condensation. They stopped. They smiled at him, and he scratched himself in a rage.

You lookin’ like a fierce O.G. full of stories, Chocolate tried to compliment him. Strawberry fired off a jealous glare at her, and he grinned a little, scratching.

What you got for me? he said shortly, scanning the cars for vigs. You get me some fresh money, bitch?

Why you talkin’ that way to me, Justin? I be your trueblue homegirl.

Quit playin’ them games, Choc. You know who his homegirl is. Leave my man alone.

Only Domino still hadn’t said anything. She stared into the tall man’s eyes, licking her lips with that chemical craving which he knew so well and which stupid-ass johns so often mistook for sexual desire. At Strawberry’s interjection she grimaced, then began looking up and down the street out of habit as she combed her hair.

Strawberry, you be lookin’ a mess. What the fuck’s wrong with you?

Oh, I, uh, I need to make some money. Hey, you seen Maj? I wanted to ask her—

No, I ain’t seen her. Just get on with it.

He sat down regally upon the topmost step of a dark doorway, and his love and fellatrice rushed up to him, kissing his knees as he slipped the balloon into her hand. — Now go do your thing, he said, scratching. Show some willpower. Go maintain yourself. Next.

Chocolate flew upstairs for her own private audience, whispering: Justin, you lookin’ so good to me… and the way she said good made the tall man’s penis harder than superclass rock cocaine, but he replied: Don’t you feel even a little bit ashamed, to be cock-stealin’ from your own sister? Ain’t you a snaky skanky bitch! Now, gimme gimme. I paid out good money for that dime bag.

Please, Justin, jus’ carry me one more time. I feel so sick. I don’t feel right. I swear I’m gonna make it up to you. Swear I’ll do anything.

Don’t make no difference. If you tell you do anything you gonna do anything regardless. ’Cause I be your connection, bitch. You so scandalous. Now break bread.

Maj said—

Don’t make no difference.

Last came Domino, who, knowing the score, crawled up to him with a ten dollar bill in her hand. He always gave her quality stuff, and she for her part, although he’d offended and threatened her many times, never tried to deceive him anymore. The tall man liked Domino at that moment. She paid her way. She never disrespected him. If she weren’t such a royally vicious pain-in-the-ass bitch, he might have taken her on. Strawberry for her part had become a pretty spiritless bitch. Sooner or later he’d have to fight somebody over her, and he didn’t know that she was worth it. Why should he always have to keep her protected? Domino might be a psychotic old broad, but at least she kept herself together whenever trouble came. Still, he pitied Strawberry, who for all her faults was loyal. Wishing to avoid further trouble between her and Domino, and flattering himself that he could have Strawberry, Domino, and Chocolate, too, in any combination and at any time of the day or night, he smiled patronizingly into the blonde’s face, making certain that she understood what a favor he was doing her, and then he said: You got sense. More sense than a whole lot of niggers I know.

Domino flushed with pleasure. — Hey, Justin, thanks.

He slipped the balloon into her bra. — No charge, he said.

Justin, daddy, I really really appreciate this.

You owe me. Once I get my solid gold Cadillac you better wash my windshield with you pussy. Now let’s fade out of here.

Then it was sunset in the Mission district, with the Altamont Hotel, newly painted yellow, contributing as best it could to the luminescence of the evening whose grey sky glowed like a puddle of irridescent steel — gorgeous light, summer light. Chocolate was still on Eddy Street trying to peddle her tail. The false Irene lay in an alley off Sixth Street, retching in withdrawal sickness, praying for Tyler to come. The Queen sat in what used to be Lily’s room at the Lola Hotel on Leavenworth Street, teaching Sapphire how to tie her shoelaces, listening to the crazy whore’s stories, singing hymns with Beatrice, whose optimistically twinkling vaginal work had paid for the room and whose breasts now dangled, and last but not least passing out pinches of pure angel dust from a cardboard box which many many whores had grafitti’d for her. The crazy whore turned off the light, asking Beatrice: Is that your most favorite? and all the women knelt around their Queen who rose and stood naked, shining for them like a lamp. As for the tall man, he was feeling good because Strawberry had copped a prescription for his Mites-Off and then earned the Mites-Off, too, with a quick ass fuck in the back seat of a stretch limousine full of drunken Japanese businessmen on their way to the airport. Her sodomist’s colleagues had photographed the act many many times with their whizzing little Japanese cameras; Strawberry got a hundred dollars, which could have bought her a full gram and a quarter of pure China white. They let her off way down by Daly City where it was chilly and foggy; Strawberry stood hugging herself behind a eucalyptus tree, wondering how she would get back home as meanwhile blood and sperm trickled slowly out of her anus. Although Tyler lived not far away and had once offered to give her a ride whenever she needed it, she had no change to telephone him, saw no phone booth, and had forgotten his number. So she flagged down a taxi which was coming back from the airport. The driver refused to turn the meter on. He said to her: I believe in the Bible. Your time’s going to come. — At Sixteenth and Mission he charged her fifty-two dollars for what should have been a twenty-five-dollar ride. Strawberry didn’t care. She was so happy to be able to help her man that she flew into the Walgreens not even caring about the reddish-brown stain on the back of her dress, oh, that dress, that once-white emblem of a bride — Cain’s bride. They awarded her that Brady-shaped bottle of salvation, and without a prescription, either! The tall man stripped down inside his sleeping bag, which Strawberry had stolen for him weeks earlier from a German tourist, scratched, uncapped his joy, scratched again, rubbed himself from neck to ankles with the bitter white salvation which Strawberry had purchased, then proceeded to the laundromat and washed all his clothes except his coat, under which he was naked. For good measure he dressed himself in brand-new hand-me-downs which obedient Chocolate had obtained for him at San Francisco General Hospital, and now he was sitting tremendously at his ease in a room at the Crown Hotel, a hot dark stuffy room with television, a safe room which Strawberry had rented with the remainder of her sodomy fee.

I think you ought to stop scratching, Strawberry said. You might get an infection.

Listen, bitch. My business is my business.

Domino said: Strawberry, you’re still bleeding. You need to change that toilet paper.

It’s okay, you know, just a little bit sore. That always happens down there when I, uh—

How much did he give you?

Fifty dollars, Strawberry lied, knowing that Domino and Justin would both despise her if they knew that she had allowed the taxi driver to gaffle her like that.

Shit, the tall man said.

Shit what?

Why we all doin’ this? We could move on. We could be gettin’ what’s ours.

I know this guy who runs a meth lab, Strawberry said brightly, and he, uh, he really likes me. So maybe we could, uh—

We can’t let some goddamned trick be our boss, know what I’m sayin’? ’Cause that go against our pride.

The two women nodded, downcast, afraid of a rage from nowhere.

Tell you a story, the tall man said, as Strawberry lit her crack pipe. You wanna hear a story?

Always, Strawberry said, laying her hand gently on his.

The tall man was feeling majestic and wise. He believed that within his head and heart and soul was gathered a hoard of hard, gleaming jewels which it would cost him nothing to pass around. His eyes scuttled rapidly across their faces. He longed for admiration.

He said: All right, so once upon a time there was this homeless guy walkin’ down the streets with a bike, walkin’, walkin’…

Suddenly he realized that he was not at all certain what would happen in this story. He could not remember where the homeless man and the bicycle had come from. Had the homeless man been himself? He had hustled and lied for so long that he scarcely knew anymore what was true about himself. — Gimme a hit off that, bitch, he said to buy himself time to think. He took a long, sweet toot, feeling alert and happy as the two women gazed at him with puzzled attention.

Listen up, he said. I ain’t talkin’ just for the hell of it. You know what makes me feel so sad? I… Well, you got to understand this was a nice old Schwinn Varsity bike from maybe 1960 or 1970 that was maybe somethin’ rusty but it ran good. I’m telling you it ran like a dream. Took that guy everywhere. And as long as it stayed rusty and crappy it was safe and he was OK but he loved it so much that one day he painted it and then it got stolen, brother. It got ripped off. You hear what I’m telling you?

Yeah, so you lost your bike, sneered Domino, scratching her ear. Hey Strawberry, give me a hit off that.

Don’t make no difference if it was me or if it was not me, the tall man said. The thing is that it happened.

So what’s the point? Let’s move things along. Hey, Strawberry, I said I could use a hit.

Domino, I got everything I own in this plastic bag, and this plastic bag’s almost empty, and I’m tired.

So you’re not going to give me a hit. Is that what you’re saying?

Fuck your whinin’ ways, Dom. Don’t talk shit. I’m tryin’ to tell you somethin’…

I’m all ears, said the blonde, her self-protective words and thoughts resembling concertina wire rolled loosely around barbed wire above high concrete walls. — You’re telling me we’re supposed to hide what we’ve got and dress like junkyard dogs, right?

I’m tellin’ you, beware of golden aspirations. You already got the easy life, bitch, so—

So you’re afraid to aim higher than crappy old Maj. Well, fine. Why should I give a shit about you? But—

’Scuse me, said Strawberry to Domino, and the tall man actually permitted her to interrupt him because he still for the life of him could not remember the punchline of his own story, and he was ashamed.

What? You finally going to let me have one teeny-weeny hit from your precious pipe? Just tell me what hoops I have to jump through.

Strawberry shook her head until her hair whirled. — You actually owe me a rock, hon.

I goddamned well do not!

From before you was in the joint. Remember? You shorted me that time with the fat trick, you know, that old white guy with the bad breath…

Do not insult me with your bullshit anymore, you fungus-encrusted old cunt!

At this, the tall man, smiling grimly, clapped his palms echoingly together so that the whole world almost collapsed like a beer can ground under someone’s heel, and he said to the blonde: Yeah, bitch, don’t get smart with my bitch. You heard what she said.

Well, lordy lordy day, as Maj would say. Ain’t he in a grand mood? Did your bitch let you cornhole her today, or is that just for fifty-dollar Japanese johns? Is that why she’s so uppity? They call her Strawberry because of her big red ugly nose…

The tall man punched her straight in the face. To Domino it was as if she were sitting on a stool in the Wonderbar and then suddenly came the earsplitting slam of dice on the counter as a cheater shouted: I’m clean, I’m clean! I just paid you! Only the shock of it assaulted her at first. There was no pain yet. But she went down and stayed down for a long time. Then the pain arrived — she knew that part so well because pain was and always would be her offering to the Canaanite idols — and then the shame, rage and sick sadness of the assault began to settle weirdly down upon her shoulders like a crowd of fruit bats coming home, and she felt more alone than she had ever felt since she’d joined her Queen. That night at the Lola Hotel when the Queen had georgia’d her — that was what it had been; rape is rape no matter how many orgasms the rapist chokes down your throat — had commenced the withering of her affection for the Queen; and yet she still loved Maj more than anyone else and had trusted her by trusting the tall man and her other sisters, even Chocolate, from whom she had expected the first backstab to originate. And now with this one punch the tall man had forced her to don once again the scarlet mantle of the outcast. Now she must make her own way over the hard flat plain of grief, across which irrelevant caravans pass into winter. She felt appalled.

Slowly, warily, she rose to her feet, breathing heavily, with blood trickling from her mouth. She spat a bloody tooth into her hand.

I s’pose you’ll go to Maj with this, the tall man sneered. Go ahead, bitch. Do your worst. I know I broke the rules.

Domino laughed in his face. — There are no rules now.

Don’t bet on that. There’s rules about snitches, know what I’m sayin’? Strawberry, step back from this dangerous bitch. We gonna make her fade now. This be our room.

Domino stood fixedly. Her face of course was expressionless, but they could both see the throat working. Domino had always been very pale anyhow. In those last months of the Queen’s reign she seemed worse. Strawberry suddenly found herself imagining that the blonde had kept her aborted baby and was suckling it. For some reason she wanted to gaze upon Domino’s snowy chest. The blonde’s pallid face had gone paler still with hatred, then paler yet again in contrast with her greying hair, and her eyes gleamed so that she seemed almost like a vampire. Her pale face became paler still against her hair. Strawberry’s heart pounded with fear.

The blonde walked downstairs, passed through the heavy grating that stood between her and the night, and posted herself at Eighteenth and Capp, wiggling her hips at the slow-eyed cars, grinning crookedly into the glare of headlights, her face covered with blood. All night her teeth rattled like glass ampoules rolled together in a drug pusher’s palm.

| 468 |

I’m sorry for my part in our misunderstanding, Strawberry said when Domino was emerging from a strange man’s bedroom. — I hope that you are for yours… — for of course it had all been Domino’s fault.

Not really, said Domino with a dry laugh.

Well, I like you and respect you and want to get on with you, but if it’s not going to work out then maybe I should steer clear, no hard feelings…

Well, I’m a muller. I’ll have to mull it over, said Domino, walking away.

| 469 |

That bitch is scandalous, said Strawberry. I hate that bitch.

Why, what she done to you now?

What hasn’t she done?

You make it sound like it goes way back, Chocolate replied cautiously. Like a citizen of a totalitarian country, she knew better than to launch any criticisms, however supposedly secret, of those who had the power to hurt her — which in no way implied that she might not under certain very controlled circumstances acquiesce in the complaints of others. Unable to forget that she had wronged the blonde, she feared her accordingly — even more now after her lapse on Mission Street not so many months before when she’d screamed at Domino and threatened her — and Domino had forbearingly not cut her with that naked razorblade.

We was in the joint together, an’ she snitched on me when I drank my homegirl’s methadone. You ever tried that shit?

I don’t like them downers, said Chocolate.

Fuckin’ A, girl, it’s better than heroin. Lasts longer, too. Makes me feel so good and dreamy, I can hardly tell you. And my homegirl loved me. Her name was Denise. Shit, she was one good bitch. She let me drink her methadone ’cause she loved me. And that bitch Domino snitched on me. And now she snitched again to the Queen, when Justin took up some business with her, just protecting me from her bad vibes.

Now, that I can believe!

She was threatening me, Choc! And then she snitched me off…

(Of course none of this was true, although Strawberry believed it — or rather, she believed in its future likelihood, and so rounded a half-probability up into a certainty. It was Strawberry herself who would snitch to the Brady’s Boys only two nights later.)

With all respect, that’s a strange one for me to get my head around, girl. Domino, now, she’s hard and mean, but I ain’t never seen her snitch.

Well, I’m tellin’ you, Choc, that’s what she did.

You sure?

Yeah.

And you tole the Queen?

Shit, what the fuck’s the point of dragging in Maj for? She’d only take Domino’s side anyways. Domino’s her little blonde pet. Besides, she snitched to Maj, which puts me in the wrong…

You swear she snitched on you?

I swear it, said Strawberry with a trembling voice.

Chocolate cleared her throat, then insinuated: Why don’t you give her the snitch mark? Where I come from, that’s what we do. I promise not to tell…

Mm hm, said Strawberry noncommitally, unwilling to admit that she didn’t know what a snitch mark was, but Chocolate, perceiving her blankness, rushed proudly to fill the breach in her knowledge, thus: What you do, see, is take a straight razor, and you cut her real slow and deep from her mouth to her ear, so everytime for the rest of her worthless life she gotta look in the mirror, or in some stranger’s eyes lookin’ at her, she gotta see the connection between snoopin’ and snitchin’, an’ hopefully she’ll learn to shut the fuck up about another girl’s business.

I see, Strawberry said palely, afraid to take this wrongful and irrevocable step.

Then the Brady’s Boys had caught her.

| 470 |

Bitch! Bitch! Bitch! Come on out here and fight, bitch! You stole my trick, you lowdown stinking bitch! I’d commit suicide before I passed up my revenge on you, bitch! Bitch! Bitch! Bitch! You fuckin’ bitch! You put every nigger dick in the Tenderloin in your mouth, bitch!

Then Domino, drunk, coked up and methed up, finally came staggering furiously out of the Overflo bar to rebut these words of Strawberry’s, and she was pounding the sidewalk with somebody’s padded crutch. — You stole my wedding ring, fucker! she screamed. You ruined my life! And the Queen’s gonna… Queen’s gonna…

But then Strawberry lunged, snatched the crutch, and smashed it down onto Domino’s head. Domino started screeching like a vampire into whose heart a stake is being pounded, and Strawberry dragged her down to the sidewalk, beating her and choking her. The pimps came from across the street and stood around watching the fight. Strawberry raised the crutch and walloped Domino’s forehead again. Finally the tall man strode out of the bar and wrenched the crutch out of his sweetheart’s hands. — Knock it off, bitches, he said. Queen’s not gonna like this.

In her rage, Strawberry tried to lay hands on him, but he threw her off, kicked her away from Domino, and said: Don’t you ever hand me like that, you stinkin’ ho.

Actually he was delighted. Strawberry had shown heart. She was his mean, ruthless street bitch.

Domino leaped up from the sidewalk, weeping with rage and humiliation. Her head was bleeding, but it didn’t look serious. She ran at Strawberry, but the tall man interposed himself with an almost kindly impersonality, walling her off from further self-mischief. — Leave her be, Domino, he said. Domino! Domino!

The girl struggled in his crushing arms.

Listen to me, Domino, said the tall man, his eyelids sinking down like twilight warehouse gratings. — Quit your foolishness. You been beat and you know it. Just let it go an’ I’ll keep her off you. Queen’s rules.

Then they all saw the Queen standing there with her hands on her hips, shaking her head and weeping as she had wept over them so many times before, but this time it meant nothing to them; she was only an old woman crying.

| 471 |

And those two niggers that georgia’d Domino, I know where they both is at, said Chocolate.

The sun glanced blindingly off a white-painted driveway gate on Folsom Street as Tyler walked past, and struck his cheek. He wondered what species the pretty trees garlanded with fernleaves at heads and hips might be.

I only told ’em about South Van Ness, I swear, Strawberry said. She was crying. — Justin? Justin? I was so so scared.

We be holdin’ it down for our Queen, said Chocolate out of habit. And Justin got him a shark killer. You know what I mean? Shoot one shotgun shell from a tube…

I wanna get high, whined Strawberry. I want some liquid juice.

You better stop causin’ us static, said the tall man. Henry, you packin’?

Sure.

You told me you sold your gun.

That’s right. And just now I told you what you wanted to hear.

Reality will get you, the old acidhead Californians liked to say; reality will obtrude itself. If you’re in a cattle car bound for Auschwitz, you can’t wish your destiny away. — I grant that fully, said Tyler to himself, but isn’t it also true that after reality has done its worst I cease to exist, which means that reality ceases to exist? So if I want to wish upon a star or a Queen, all I need do is steel myself against the worst possible pain. — This had been his attitude until the Queen had spoken of Sunflower’s pain, and then he’d begun to wonder whether steeling himself might be wrong and even unworthy; shouldn’t he let the pain in, feel it, be destroyed by it, and thereby get his blessed ending? Like a woman’s dress on a hanger under a whirling fan, sleeves patiently gesticulating in the breeze, endlessly touching and stroking the limp form they came from, so his thoughts moved, but not really to any purpose, like a naked woman’s fidgeting legs, the flesh so perfectly and unconsciously obeying impulses which the mind probably wasn’t even aware that it had; if the woman lived to get old, her legs would ache and fight her even if she stirred them in a necessary and deliberate cause; reality would have gotten them then.

Okay now, the Queen whispered. This is it. Now I gotta visit with everybody in private, give everyone a chance to remember an’ to cry.

(You think I’m crying? sneered Domino.)

The Queen said: Strawberry, you remember when the black-and-white almost picked us up an’ we pretended to be fighting?

An’ you slapped me in the face, Maj, an’ I called you a bitch! Remember that? You’re the one I love so much an’ I called you a bitch!

’Course I do, sweetie, laughed the Queen, butterfly-tapping her so lightly on the shoulder.

If the vigs come in here then we gotta run back out again. Maj, I’m so sorry…

You didn’t tell ’em nothin’. Don’t worry you head, child. Vigs wanna find me, they gonna find me. An’ they forced you. An’ I have so many places to go, let ’em scour South Van Ness high an’ low…

This, uh, Maj, is this goodbye? I don’t see any vigs.

’Course not, Strawberry. This ain’t no goodbye. I’ll always be here.

Next came the blonde, so hate-strong and hate-strung like a careful sinister violin and so hate-cheerful, sounding elegant chords of hatred, and she said: You promised me, Maj. You said nobody would ever rape me again. And these two niggers…

Domino. Domino.

What? wept the blonde.

You’re lying. I’ll never tattle on you, honey, but Queen knows when you’re tellin’ the truth or not. Nobody georgiaed you this time.

Domino whispered: I don’t trust anyone but you. But I never snitched…

The Queen said: You didn’t wanna be marked. Let go now, Domino. Let go.

Am I marked now, Maj?

Yes, baby, you bear my Mark. So don’t worry. You were my good little girl. I love you so much. Run along now.

Domino dug her fingernails tightly into her lower lip. She sat down in a dark doorway and whispered: I’m all in. I’m cashing in on these motherfuckers.

As for Beatrice, she merely hung her head and remembered faded sky-blue houses. Her Mama had not died yet. Her Mama went next door and asked: Are the Marias at home? The little girls reached up and clung to the railing kicking and smiling. They were the Marias. Beatrice had always wanted to be a Maria likewise, because then she would have owned the Virgin’s name.

I think I’ll take a little walk now, said the Queen, but Beatrice cried: Don’t go out there, Maj — please!

You know, I was fixing to go out for a minute, said the Queen. I was calling to see if Sapphire needed some help.

What the fuck you talkin’ about, Maj? said the tall man. Sapphire she standin’ right there…

And now Sapphire began to dance before her Queen, kneeling with the scraps of her torn dress flaring out on either side of her like petals of a flower. She bowed her pallid face almost to the floor and rotated a greasy piece of streetstained cardboard so gracefully like a fan.

Look! said Kitty. Here comes Mr. Smooth!

It was indeed old pedophile Dan in his green Prowler, circling the block and waving. Finally he parked in an alley. — Get out of here! he cried. The vigs are coming!

Danny, said the Queen, would you kindly take Sapphire for a little ride? I’ll be speakin’ with you.

Biting his lip, Smooth nodded. He took Sapphire by the hand. The retarded girl didn’t cry.

Okay, guys, cried Rodrigo to the other Brady’s Boys. Watch me, guys.

Chill out, everybody, whispered the Queen. Better do a ghost. Come on. Move. Get out of here.

And where was Henry Tyler? Why, he wasn’t there! He was — where was he? He missed the end. Was he drunk, sad or just scared? It’s said that he was on Harrison Street kissing the false Irene.

| 472 |

On Powell Street, the big guy leaned against the phone booth talking, his cigarette smoking into space. That was Brady. The hot stale machine wind of the subway came up from the grating and kissed him. — If it goes up above what we can handle, we call the cops, he was saying. But you can’t get contractors to do anything these days. So I think we’d better try to handle it. The whole Kloncilium backs me on that.

After this, we’re going back, right? said a fat Brady’s Boy. I can’t take this no more. I got asthma, you know.

Here’s the cops, said Rodrigo. Afternoon, officer.

Howdy, said a policeman. Where are you folks headed?

We’ve tracked the Queen to the Royal Motel right now, officer. We’re going to see if we can make a citizens’ arrest.

Well, well, the Royal Motel, mused the cop. We’ve had killings there over trick pads and dope. We call it the Homicide Hilton. Ninety percent of that is black stuff. Don’t quote me on that. So you’re gonna try to sweep her in, huh?

Well, we plan for a full Brady Search whenever Mr. Brady gives the go-ahead, explained the slapper, who was always considerate of Brady’s words and breath. — The night before, we decide where we want to go. In the morning, well, we get up, go outside, and see what’s there. Personally, I’m in the Empowerment Group. Our job is to go out and take the street girls away from the pimps, to empower ’em, you see.

Oh, dial down your bullshit extruder, the cop said.

Excuse me, officer? Excuse me! This is Mr. Brady’s righthand man you’re talking to! Officer, I’m a professional.

Yeah, yeah. Well, good luck, boys. Hope you bring her in. She’s got a couple outstanding warrants.

On Mission and Seventeenth by the graffiti SAD KING HEROIN a Mexican kid was puking something as translucent as Asian rice noodles while his mother tranquilly held his hand. The Brady’s Boys filed past.

Hey, put me through to a Hydra, would you? Brady was shouting on his cell phone. Or gimme a Kleagle if you want; I just need somebody to bounce ideas off of.

Two sad, pimpled, miniskirted women showed thigh in a doorway. One said: That Domino, some days she’ll act as smooth as a bumblebee. But other days she’s just an asshole. I’m takin’ it to the Queen. I tole the Queen…

Look, baby, you ain’t tellin’ the Queen nothin’, said the other. You think the Queen got any trust left in you? Like that time you was rippin’ us all off, holdin’ out…

Oh, shit, said the first woman. Oh, shit. Here come them fuckin’ vigs. Go tell the Queen!

You tell the Queen. You’re the one that keeps goin’ on about takin’ it to the Queen. I need to get well. I need to make money. I tole you already, I sez…

You think Maj is in trouble?

Ain’t no trouble she can’t get out of, yawned the other woman. Man, I feel sleepy. An’ I’m sick. An’ my crabs be itchin’.

| 473 |

The vigs grabbed the crazy whore, who cried out: ’Cause I’m completely innocent. I just like to get my rock really fast and get away from you. Everybody says it’s only because of my confidence that the police don’t see me move oh so fast.

Slapper, should we let her go?

Yeah, bust her loose.

Get out and never come back! Keep going! Keep going!

See, this one’s a crackhead, a vig said to the starry-eyed reporter. You can tell from the reaction you get when you watch ’em. Now we’ll get up and move, an’ she’ll—

You want me down on the sidewalk or you want me up here? said the crazy whore. I know how to spread my legs. My pussy is worth a million electrical dollars.

| 474 |

I hear you call the shots around here, said the slapper.

Not me, said Justin. Queen does that.

Aw, don’t give me your shit. You’re a shot-caller, right?

That’s right.

And I’m the slapper. Now what happens when a slapper meets a shot-caller?

The Queen appeared with the noise of a cat leaping down from the wall, a soft rapid double-bounce.

| 475 |

It ain’t hot today, but it sure does feel hot, said the Queen.

She stood with somebody’s unbuttoned flowerprint dress thrown around her nakedness like a robe, with her arms crossed over her breasts and the edges of the fabric falling away from each other just below so that her slightly protruding belly showed with light glowing from her navel as from a stained glass window and her crotch-moss clamped up tightly underneath and then the softness of her varicose thighs peculiarly soft and vulnerable as she stood so unmoving with her head thrown a little back and her frizzed hair slicked down across her skull and her eyes so huge and bitter far beyond suspicion and so sad.

Okay, you guys, said Rodrigo. We’re gonna catch this Queen of the Scumbags now. That’s her over there. I have a positive ID from Mr. Brady. Post me, boys. Let’s go, you guys!

My cousins and aunts and them, they used to call us you guys, said the Queen. My sister and I, we’d always say: We’re not guys!

Shut up, bitch!

I just blended in, said the Queen in a dreamy voice, but they told me that I sounded a little proper.

| 476 |

We read in the Book of Nirgal how in the epoch after Moses, when the Chosen People swept into Canaan, slaughtering all whose foreheads bore the mark of Cain, they presently reached an unknown vermillion land of purple shrubs and broad low W-shaped gullies. And they prayed that they would succeed in throwing down all the idols and enslaving the idol-worshippers, and their prayer was heard by the great God. Then a dark man sixty cubits high came toward them, striding across the dirt as red as Mars, and whenever he put down his heel the ground shook. And the man called out: My Queen bids me ask who you are, and of which tribe you come, and for what reason you enter her domains. — But the Chosen People were not afraid, and without replying to him, their great captains gave the signal, so that multitudes of archers shot him full of arrows, and he died. Then the Chosen People came on across the yellow grass, watching for lurkers beneath the dark grey-green shrubs. But there was no one. Now presently they breached a wall hewn of great blocks of marble chiseled with inscriptions in an unknown language, and saw the old pale yellow arches of the Queen’s city, incised with roses and sheaves in abundance, but the city was ruined and silent. Their great captains were greatly troubled, for they could feel the breath of the enemy on their necks. They descended sunken stairs and discovered only cool dry cisterns. (Later, anthropologists would find red shards with scribbly black decorations like pubic hair, and a plump-teated mother-goddess figure fashioned out of clay.) The sand was overgrown with flowers, and beneath it wormed many dark tunnels and galleries, but never did they find inhabitants or treasure. And they knew not what to do. So again they prayed to their God. And God said: I have commanded you to be great, and therefore to usher in the jackals to howl in this place. But the heart is not yet dead. You must ravish the heart. — Then God went away. So the great captains conferred, and one among them who was wise besought them to search for the temple of the idols. Then in the center of the silent city they saw a high place with a brass door, and they broke the door down. Listening, they heard no sound. The darkness was as rich and moist as the inside of a winebarrel. Their great captains called for torches. Then searching in a dark-roofed labyrinth of timegraven arches and columns upon which the Canaanites had carved flowers and snakes, grapes and thistles, they found a wet stone passage which they called the Throat. Descending this, and shielding their torches as best they could from the cold dripping water, they found swallow-caves in the rock, as if carved out with spoons, and the swallows flew affrightedly about their heads. The swallows had no eyes, and the eggs in their nests were written on in the same unknown language. And the Chosen People were afraid, but their great captains called upon them to remain pure in their wrath, and hearken to their God. So they went on, and beneath their feet the rock burst open, and there ran a skinny brown stream. On the walls of the Throat their enemies had painted reddish faces then figures in blue-ocher outlines, and finally a blue female silhouette outlined in red ocher with a penis added. And the great captains cried out that this man-woman was unpleasing to God, and so they scratched it away. The roof was blackened with charcoal handprints, which they considered to be a mockery of their God, but they could not obliterate them, so they left them. So they descended the Throat, and as they went down, so fell a new fear upon them, because they saw marks of high water on the greyish-plated reddish walls. But their great captains exhorted them on, until at last they reached a cavern surmounted by a stone dais upon which had been painted many insect-legged figures within yellowish-white concentric circles, and upon this dais there stood an altar, and upon this altar there sat an Ethiopian woman weeping. And when they asked her why she wept, she would not answer. (Domino later swore to Bernadette, who was the only person she ever talked to about that night, and even Bernadette only heard her open her lips on the subject one time, one sad and early time before that fierce woman had entirely imprisoned herself within her new plaster mask of queenly dignity, that upon being taken away the Queen had swept the air with a raking, despairing gesture, then turned to her captors and said: I trusted these people. I had nobody else. And I still don’t. — But Bernadette had been there, too, and all she heard was the Brady’s Boys asking her yes or no questions; the Queen answered very quietly yes or no.) Then the great captains bade the archers nock their arrows, and they came forward with their trumpets, but one captain who pitied the woman held up his hand, and he strode to her and asked who she was. And still she did not answer. Then he asked her: Are you the Queen of this city? And the Ethiopian woman replied: I am. Then the captain said: Who is your God? And the Ethiopian woman said: Love. And the captain said: Who is your father? And she said: Cain. Then the captain turned away from her, and told the other captains what she had said, laying an accusation against her. And they judged and determined that she was a Canaanite harlot, fit only for death. And according to their customs, and according to the wisdom of the God who had led them to Canaan, to this city in Canaan, and down the very Throat of Canaan, they blared their trumpets and then the archers shot a hundred arrows into her breast. And as she died she cried out: I am Love. When she no longer spoke or moved, then they cut her into many pieces with their swords, as her iniquity deserved, and left her lying in her own blood for the vermin to eat. Then they returned the way they had come, and when they came back into the temple with the brass door they pulled it all down out of loyalty to their God, so that none could ever find the entrance to the Throat again. And the number of that multitude which came into that city was seven hundred thousand. And they took possession of that place, and lifted their faces most gladly to Heaven.

| 477 |

Actually, there was a woman I ran into last night, Mr. Cortez was saying on the phone when the tall man walked in. Mr. Cortez would soon go home to his wife and six children, with San Francisco shining white below him on the J Church streetcar line, and palms and clouds accompanying him all the way to dinner. The tall man folded his arms. Mr. Cortez winked and raised the peace sign, continuing: Her husband employed a guy and the guy didn’t work out, so they got into a little scuffle and both got taken to jail and she was really distraught and tearing her hair out. — Well, buddy. I have to go. There’s a client.

He replaced the headpiece’s hard strange double breasts in the cradle, stood up smiling, and cried: Justin, my man! How’s life?

Passing, said the tall man. Did Lily ever pay you off?

Yes, she settled her account if that’s what you mean. Case closed. How’s she doing?

Dead.

Dead? Well, uh, I — so who’s in the clutches of 850 Bryant today? Domino? No. Let me guess. Strawberry?

Beatrice.

Beatrice D. Lorenzo, as I recollect, said the bail bondsman, delighted with himself. Let me call Room 201. Just Beatrice, huh?

And the Queen.

The Queen! cried Mr. Cortez in amazement. She’s never gotten touched!

Tell me about it, said the tall man.

A cop carrying an envelope, his pistol loose against his hip, wandered slowly up to his doubleparked black-and-white, waving to the meter maid who would long since have ticketed anyone of another occupation. Then he looked over at the tall man and the bondsman, cheerily calling: Hey, Mr. Cortez, what’s up?

Peace, brother, said Mr. Cortez.

Look, guy, said the tall man. We got a serious situation here.

What’s her real name?

Africa.

Africa what?

Just Africa. Maybe Africa Johnston. Just Africa, I s’pose.

Mr. Cortez made a telephone call, shaking his head. — They have Beatrice, he said. But the Queen, well, they don’t know anything about her.

| 478 |

And all that night the ripples of desperation widened with the Queen’s girls scattering in the rain, long naked legs in high heels rushing or slowly gliding into the rain; and Tyler sat in the driver’s seat hopelessly trying to figure out what to do next as rain descended his windshield so that the parking garage sign slowly vanished under the white ovals.