The Royal Family

| 168 |

Who’s that rose for? That rose for me?

It’s for the Queen, said Tyler.

For the Queen! Oh! You datin’ the Queen? said Kitty.

I’m just bringing her a rose.

Shit! Why didn’t you bring me one?

Evening, Strawberry, Tyler said. Have you been crying?

Justin and I broke up, the whore wept.

I’m sorry to hear that, he said. What was the last thing you said to him?

I told him he’d be well advised to use this time packing.

And what did he say?

Oh, he said something about me, involving fornicating female dogs. Oh, hell. Here he comes. Justin! Justin, I already told you! Keep away from me, I said! Justin!

The tall man glared scarlet-eyed and slugged her in the mouth. Her lip split and blood dribbled down her chin.

Come on home, she said to him steadily. Let’s forget this. When we get home I’ll go out and make money and get you another drink.

He needs another drink like I need an airplane, Kitty muttered.

The tall man punched Strawberry again. Kitty screamed.

All right, Justin, said Tyler. You made your point.

Strawberry turned on him, clawing and shrieking: Stay out of my business, you bastard! This is between Justin and me!

I get it, said Tyler. Where’s the Queen?

In there, said the tall man.

All right, he said, walking around them. He heard the tall man punch Strawberry again, and felt sickened.

Beatrice was playing with a blue tiger which she had made out of papier mâché when Tyler came down the steps into the tunnel, giving her game surcease. She likewise hated the tall man’s violence, even though she could understand very well that he might become exasperated because Strawberry was a born thief and even from her own sisters she would steal. Once Beatrice had caught her trying to sell Domino’s silver shoes. She begged her not to do that, but the other girl wouldn’t listen. But whenever the tall man beat her, ay! Poor Strawberry! How Beatrice pitied her!

Afternoon, Bea, he said drily.

Oh, Henry, why is Justin so fierce? I’m afraid now even to see his face! And Strawberry, she’s so patient, may the saints protect her… When he goes away I can give to her this tiger, and may she find joy in it.

I figure you and I should go out dancing sometime, he said to cheer her. — Maj tells me you used to dance professionally…

With a bitter grimace she replied: On the Day of the Dead they only know to dance their own way.

What’s that got to do with anything? You thinking of dying anytime soon?

From behind, they heard Strawberry’s shrill, sharp screams. But the darkness ahead where the Queen was was silent.

I dislike it, she said. Ay, how I dislike it.

Never mind, Bea. In your home town how do they dance?

They dance different. It’s like the same music, but nobody show them.

You still like to dance?

She trembled. — No, she said. No more. Now I doan like.

All right, he said.

He could not unhear Strawberry’s screams and Kitty’s screams.

The Queen was in the darkness muttering: I’m fixin’ to go buy some groceries.

Is Strawberry going to be okay? he said.

Justin slapping her around again, huh? said the Queen. I seen that almost every month.

Yeah.

Oh, he’s a wild one, said the Queen, resigned.

What if he kills her?

He won’t.

I don’t get it. Don’t you run things here? Are you trying to tell me she wants it?

Hush up, Henry. She done him wrong this time. She flushed all his china white down the toilet an’ then told him she done it. It’s always this way. She’ll be sick a couple of days…

It makes me anxious, he said. I hate to see her allowing that to happen.

Nobody sayin’ you don’t have a good heart. But maybe you don’t understand. It’s not always wrong when a man hits a woman. Most of the time, yes. But not all the time.

I don’t know.

You’d never do it. But maybe she needs it.

How could anyone need it?

Strawberry! called the Queen. Strawberry, c’mere!

The whore came in torn clothes, bleeding from the mouth, one eye swollen shut. Justin was stamping and roaring outside as his victim whispered: This is how the world is. Oh, Jesus! Someone’s gonna get compensated, but it’s still horrendous. I still hope someday we’ll all laugh about it, but oh well.

Strawberry! Strawberry!

What? she sobbed. Maj, he’s so violent. Can’t you —

Strawberry, this gentleman told me he’s worryin’ about you.

Tell Henry to keep the fuck out of my business.

All right, baby, you can go. Now, Henry, do you believe?

I believe in her pride, that’s all.

You want me to take your pain away? I could make you drink something so you’d forget Irene forever. You wouldn’t wake up cryin’ no more. You want me to do that?

No.

Why not?

I don’t know, he said wearily. Can we talk about something else?

In other words, keep the fuck out of my business.

No, Maj. I’d never say that.

Well?

Irene’s so precious to me.

You see? You’re like some wolf that keeps lickin’ the razor-blade; he drinks his own blood an’ bleeds to death, ’cause he likes the taste. You an’ Strawberry, oh me oh my…

The screams had begun again. He sighed and said: Here’s a rose for you.

The Queen accepted the flower, stood up on tiptoe and kissed his face.

| 169 |

Did she touch you? Smooth wanted to know when he had recounted this much.

Yep.

No, Henry, I suspect your ignorant and envious ears mistook my meaning. I meant, did she touch you? I meant, did she leave marks?

That’s between her and me.

No it isn’t, Smooth replied with logic as tight as the pussy of the skeletal whore whose face had been destroyed in an automobile accident. You couldn’t have met her without me, boyo. What’s more, you —

Talk about envious ears, my God!

Come on down to the basement, said Smooth. I just got me a Hi-Standard twenty-two I wanted to break in. They say it takes five hundred rounds to loosen her up. Salesman I bought it from has one of his own; that’s how he sold me on it, you see. He said it was fun. Now, he did warn me that during the break-in period it jammed once or twice with every magazine, which didn’t turn me on. He got so he wanted to throw it against the ever-lovin’ wall, he said. But he’s had it for twenty years since then, and never a problem. Now he’s addicted.

I’ve got to go.

No you don’t.

I don’t mind obeying her. But I kind of dislike it when you push me around…

Why so belligerent, Henry? Grin and bear it, now. Maybe you—

I get so bored and so tired sometimes—

Well, what’s your favorite subject? Irene? That’ll perk you right up. Henry, baby, you want to talk about Irene? I’m all attention.

Please cut it out, said Tyler, rubbing his chin.

No, that’s what I was going to say to you. I’m lonely, you see.

Well, I—

And maybe I can give you some advice about how to proceed with our Queen.

What do you mean, proceed?

Don’t you want to take it to the next level, Henry? Don’t you want to learn the secret of life? You can’t always predict what she’ll teach you, but whatever she imparts, well, zowie! Get that Mark of Cain working for you, son! Pull yourself up by your bootstraps and—

Cut the corny crap. I give up. So you’ve got a shooting range downstairs?

Well, you could call it that.

Smooth opened the basement door and clicked a switch connected to a wan bulb. They went down.

Not so many basements in Sacramento, Tyler said.

Flood plain. This house was built two big floods ago. There was no flood insurance requirement back then, and the state was having a drought, so nobody believed in floods. Just like you, Henry boy — you were getting discouraged about the Queen before you met me, hey? Well, that flood came, and the basement filled up, and the family that lived here moved out and sold it to me. Basement filled up again when the last flood came, and I guess it will do it when the next flood comes. I still don’t pay flood insurance. Why?

Why what?

Why did you ask?

I don’t care, to be honest. Just making conversation.

No. I won’t accept that. Meaningless conversation is not allowed in my house. What’s your point?

I’ve given up looking for points.

I’d given it up long before you were born, son. And you know what? We’re both liars. We both want all the answers. How old are you, anyway?

Forty-four, said Tyler.

Well, I was going to say that you were only twenty-four, but you’d lived a hard life. Another of my jokes, see.

Ha ha.

A train whistled, long and slow. The two men stood on a dark green carpet which smelled like disinfectant and cigarette smoke which drifted down, as limp as Domino on heroin at the Wonderbar with her head on the counter and her long hair trailing in her drink. A foam rubber mattress with three pillows on it lay in the corner beside an electrical outlet. On the walls were taped illustrations of Boy Scouts and other adventurous young males, scissored out of the pages of Boy’s Life and similar publications. In the face of Tyler’s silence, Smooth said: I may be jealous, son, but I’m still the ordained debriefer and father confessor. Do you trust me?

I do not, you pompous old shit.

I never asked if you liked me. I asked if you trusted me.

Why should I trust you? You just want to get under my skin. You sort of pry into my business and—

Oh, heavens. I’ve got more to do than that. Getting under your skin is just my little recreation. Think nothing of it. Now, do you trust me?

I can’t honestly say I do.

All right. Do you trust my devotion to the Queen?

Tyler hesitated. — Yes, he said.

All right. And what about yourself, buddy? Are you devoted, too?

I guess I’ve signed on.

So you trust our coincidence of interests?

What’s the difference, Smooth? I’m so tired of talking about this. Motives don’t count worth a damn anyway. Only actions are valid. I—

You’d like to pretend that was the case, wouldn’t you? But I’d bet a hundred dollars that whenever you fuck up, you excuse yourself for good intentions. In fact…

In fact you revel in the real or imaginary weaknesses of others, Tyler replied, raising his voice. You’re like a dog that loves to roll in shit! I admit that my shit stinks as much as yours, but I don’t go out of my way to smell it—

Interesting analogy! said Smooth brightly. Because to really serve the Queen, you know, you’ll need to develop an intimacy with many kinds of body products.

Dan, you used to disgust me, but now you just bore me.

Ah. Well, are you ready to shoot?

Right now I’m pissed off at you, so don’t put a gun in my hand.

Here you go. The famous Hi-Standard.

All right, asshole, Tyler said. My brother used to have one of those. What are we shooting at?

Hang your target on that clothesline there, over by the sandbags. You aren’t so incompetent you’ll miss the sandbags, are you?

Oh, I wouldn’t exactly say that.

Good. But aren’t you carrying today?

No, Dan. I don’t need a pistol to visit my mother.

But you’re visiting me.

They loaded up and shot for an hour or two, the sounds of the shots muffled and sad through their ear protectors like hammer-blows in some mineshaft far away. — You’re a pretty good shot, said Tyler with surprise and respect. — But the Hi-Standard jammed every five or six shots. Smooth said that the old manufacturing dies had nearly worn out, which was why a used Hi-Standard from the 1950s sold for as much as a new one from 1995. Tyler listened glumly, holding the gun with the muzzle safely sandbag-pointed. In truth, it was not so much Smooth who repulsed him, as his own life, whose fundamental meaninglessness he confessed in a series of skull-muffled shouts. How could he retain any faith in the Queen, when she squatted like a spider in the darkness while the tall man beat Strawberry? What was she even good for? Maybe he should humble himself, apologize to John and ask for another loan. He’d go to night school. He’d become a…

But he could not think what he desired to become.

As a matter of fact, I used to shoot competition, the pedophile was saying. Here lay his vanity, Tyler thought. And he did his best not to smile as Smooth babbled on: Gave that up about ten years ago now, when some fellows who’d heard about me started calling me names right there on the firing line. But I still get out to the range from time to time.

You’re a good shot, Tyler repeated weakly, longing for a drink.

Oh, not very. I could blow your head off at fifty yards. But if I could shoot through your left eyeball eight out of ten times at fifty yards, now, that would be good shooting.

I guess that’s a compliment. That’s what my eyeball guesses.

Oh, I don’t shoot my three fifty-seven much. I usually go out with my Ruger, which I load way under specs for target. But this Hi-Standard is… Well. I guess you’re driving back before long?

Yeah.

And Irene is still on your mind?

Yeah.

What time is it?

Going on three.

You fixing to see Maj tonight?

You need to report back to her?

Maybe.

On me?

Sure.

All right. What hoops do I have to jump through now?

All of ’em, Henry. I wouldn’t take less.

And what does she say about me?

She might be able to get some good use out of you before you crack.

I know she gets good use out of you.

Now, Henry, there’s your envy speaking again.

But what’s it all about? Tyler almost shouted.

Nothing, brother. Everything’s about nothing. You know that, but you prefer to pretend otherwise. We both do.

You know, Smooth, I kind of figure your job isn’t really to get information on me. I’d also say the Queen tends to make up her own mind no matter what you tell her…

Correct. Now, Henry, do you love her?

I beg your pardon?

Do you love our Queen?

How about you? Tyler said, swallowing nervously.

I’d die for her.

All right, fine. I love her. I don’t know whether I’d die for her or not.

But you’re not actually about love in this case, are you? You’re like one of those lepers in a medieval morality play crying out: Heal me! That’s what you want the Queen for. And you’re still holding a torch for Whatchamahoosis. Christine.

Irene.

Got your goat, didn’t I? You simple sonofabitch! You know, if you wear your heart on your sleeve, other people can see it and spit on it.

People such as you, Dan.

I expect so. Ha! Now you’re mad, aren’t you? You’re so cute when you’re mad.

I’ll see you around, Dan.

You know what? said Smooth.

What? said Tyler, gritting his teeth.

I think you never cared all that much for your sister-in-law. I think you only cared about losing her. It’s loss you’re in love with. That’s why you hang onto it. I’ll bet that before that Irene came along you were whining about someone else. Oh, I remember now. You grew up without a father, didn’t you? That explains it. Ain’t I clever? And now you want the Queen because you don’t believe it’ll work out with her. And if it does, maybe you’ll wreck it yourself just so you can mourn her. Aren’t I right, Henry? Just swallow hard and tell me I’m right. Aren’t you one of the most pitifully self-destructive, selfish bipeds that ever walked the streets? Well, aren’t you?

I don’t need any deathbed regrets when I’m around you, said Tyler with a trembling laugh.

There you go with your regrets again. And Irene—

You want me to betray Irene’s memory, and I’ll never do that! It feels like betraying her just allowing you to spit her name out of your sneering lips… I’m leaving. You got what you wanted. You pissed me off. You can tell your Queen I failed the test.

Sleep on it, Henry, said Smooth with a lazy smile.

Tyler went out and drove all the way west until he was looking down from the freeway to the pavement and dead grass, plastic bags and long low barracks-like docks where San Francisco began, with Coit Tower ahead on its green and white hill, commanding the clouds. — I failed the test, he said aloud, with a jeering despairing smile. Soon it began to rain, and he came to the Tenderloin streets, passing glistening raincoats, loud laughs, fingers pointing at heaven and hell, with rain running down the camo-green crown of a rain-man’s head. He parked and locked, walking around a black man in a soaked wool sweater, a black woman in a black wool cap, swinging her arms, a couple huddled under a scaffold whose ribs were almost glorious with water, tourists with umbrellas like walking mushrooms, until at last he found the tall man.

How’s business, Justin? he said.

You might as well paint your car flaming pink. It makes me sick to see such a faggotty car.

I was wanting to see her if she’s around.

She ain’t, said the tall man.

When will she be around?

I’ll pass it on that you stopped by, the tall man said, darting a glance behind him at a brawny lap-dancer the length of whose blonde hair was somewhere between that of convict-fuzz and pooltable-felt. She was helping the manager put up brand new photos of semi-nude unionized girls on the outer wall. The tall man glared into her eyes, but she pretended not to see.

All right, said Tyler, defeated.

All right what?

Tell her Smooth pissed me off. Tell her, if I failed some kind of test I’m sorry.

Her pager’s only got seven digits, Henry. Better shorten that message.

Oh, fuck you, said Tyler, returning to the driver’s seat.

He drove homeward. His neighborhood exuded an air of unreality and sorrow doubtless unfelt by most of its other residents; surely it was less sorrowful than the Tenderloin. He had forgotten to ask what had become of Sunflower’s body. Perhaps there was no use in asking anything now; Smooth must have put in a bad word for him. How he hated Smooth! The man’s round, goading face floated up feverishly before him. He was like a disease that Tyler had contracted, a venereal disease, painful and shameful, which he must simply endure. But what if he gave it up? He had a quarter; he could telephone John this instant and beg for a ten thousand dollar loan. John would help him even now, for their mother’s sake. He could become something successful. If he relocated to Sacramento, he could take better care of his mother and also hook in with the Capitol politicians, hiring himself out to political action committees who wanted dirt on each other’s senators, or to “ethics” committees whose aim it was to prove some poor victim unethical. Or, better still, he could go to southeast Asia and return with a beautiful bride who resembled Irene. But then he’d have to support her. If only he knew what favor to ask the Queen! Smooth was right. He desired to be healed. What would heal him? Nothing in the Sunset district, that was for sure… Of course there was very little to do on Pacheco, where he lived, but after Pacheco the alphabetical pavements went Quintara, Riviera, Santiago and then Taraval, which was a busy street, at least for the Sunset; it was the mirror image of Clement Street or maybe Geary Street in the Richmond district across the park. Taraval Street sometimes soothed him. Before he knew it, he’d driven there. The habits of his profession made it easy to drive almost aimlessly, round and round as if he were stalking someone, when really he was but circling himself. Closing his eyes, he found himself remembering the old Parkside Theater where he’d once gone alone to watch “The Sorrow and the Pity.” Taraval was largely comprised of Asian establishments now. He’d always wanted to take Irene out to Dragon City Restaurant, but it wasn’t fancy enough for her, he’d feared, so he hadn’t gotten around to it. He’d kept thinking: Someday, when I’m more relaxed and comfortable around Irene… After Dragon City, Taraval rolled down to the foggy ocean, past a Walgreens sign so red in the night, down along fogslimed trolleycar tracks with their empty pedestrian islands; Marco Polo’s was on Twenty-Fourth, right by the coin laundry place that always glowed pale yellow; then pizzerias, and the Tropical Reef at Twenty-Eighth; a huge new Korean restaurant awaited him on Thirtieth that he’d not yet tried; their sign proclaimed that they catered. Well, if he could marry Irene… After the bird hospital he didn’t remember anything until Thirty-Third, where the Elegance Ballroom failed to persuade him. On Thirty-Fifth the Knights of Columbus chapter marked a lower, darker and greyer part; more pizza places, and already his memory had slid down to Forty-First where he almost never saw anyone; the only things which had any existence there were the burning houselights — well, he recollected one hardware store at Forty-Seventh…

Turning back, he pulled up in front of his dark apartment and wished that the Queen were with him holding his hand.

He went upstairs, unlocked the door, turned on the hall light and checked his messages. A Mr. McBean wanted him to trace somebody’s Dominican bank account, provided that Tyler would charge him less than five hundred dollars. He resolved to charge McBean four-fifty. His mother hadn’t called. From the refrigerator he awarded himself a cardboard takeout box imprinted with a red pagoda. He ate the Chinese food cold. It was soggy, salty, spicy and greasy. He couldn’t finish it. He felt nervous. He reclosed the boxflaps and threw the carton into the garbage. Then he wiped his mouth on his sleeve, rinsed off the fork, soaped it, rinsed it again, and set it tines up in the dish drainer. He sat down listlessly in the living room. He didn’t feel like reading. Sighing, he switched on his computer, and watched the hellish white globule of light in the center of the dark green monitor sizzle and replicate until the whole thing had come alive. Accessing MoneyScape, InterQuick, and a pirated version of Full Disclosure, he was able to read and print out the full story of the Dominican bank account. The three searches had cost him fifty-four dollars. He invoiced McBean a hundred and twenty for expenses and three hundred for his labor. Should he charge thirty dollars more for something else, and bring it up to four-fifty? Why bother? He sat there gazing at the screen with burning eyes, feeling weary and useless.

The phone rang.

He checked the clock. It was nearly eleven.

Yeah, he said.

She’ll see you now, said the tall man.

His heart soared. — It’ll take me forty minutes, he said.

That’s fine. Meet me in front of the New Century at midnight sharp.

Then came the click and the harsh, dependable buzz of the dial tone.

| 170 |

So that’s your car, huh? said the tall man. It really is your car. You must have asked me that a million times. Hop in.

Looks like a faggoty car, said the tall man. More I look at it, more I think you got to be some on the faggoty side to own a car like that.

Tell you what, Justin, said Tyler. Why don’t you just grease up your asshole and hop in the back seat and see what happens.

Man, you are pure bullshit, grinned the tall man.

Hey, Justin, do you call all the girls faggots? Don’t they all eat the Queen’s pussy, too?

Now that be different, said the tall man. Queen’s the Queen.

You got that right, Tyler said.

Sapphire always be playin’ with herself, but that bitch ain’t in her right mind. She just pathetic. Domino’s lez, but I got my dick wet inside her one two three times, so she ain’t all lez; she’s part woman, know what I’m sayn’? An’ the others, they’re just the others. Turn left.

What’s your favorite hotel?

Don’t have one. Left again.

What’s your least favorite?

All of ’em.

What’s the best thing that ever happened to you?

The Queen! But I don’t want her to know that. That old bitch’ll be gettin’ a swelled head… Hey, listen, Henry, my man, I can cut you a deal on some kickass indica weed…

Now where?

In here, said the tall man. So long. I gotta make a run.

Tyler was alone in another hotel room with an unmade bed, the wall covered with poems.

Then the Queen came in, and he was happy.

You said you love me, she said.

Yeah, said Tyler.

You don’t love me. Everybody loves me. Nobody loves me.

Let me admit something, Maj. I don’t know anything, not even who I am or what I want or whom I love. I, uh, I confess that up front.

Okay. C’mere. Look at me, Henry. I want you to look at me. What do you really want? You still want that happiness?

What do you mean?

You still don’t understand, huh? Henry, you stupid sometimes. You want that happiness or you want me?

I want both.

Ain’t you just sayin’ that? All rightie then, she said with a sigh. Go over there. You see that closet door? There’s a girl behind that door. Go an’ open that door and take the girl by the hand. Henry, you’re always gonna be my baby. Don’t think I ever wanted to pawn you off. Go an’ get her. That’s right. Bring her to me.

| 171 |

This girl’s gonna be your Irene now, said the Queen very gently, and a strange dark intoxication of sadness rose up from his bowels into his chest, expanding, funneling ever more widely, like smoke as it rises, bracing and almost revitalizing him with the immense, flavorful richness of that pain, loving pain, painful love which he had never felt before, that heart’s rush of anguish comparable only to the uplift from white cracksmoke whistling through the pipe to numb his lips and race his heart like a competition driver’s engine. — Are you all right? Irene sometimes used to say to him on the phone when his voice got sad and slow. You’re my honey, Irene had said. I love you, Irene had said. But then she called him “brother-in-law.”

| 172 |

When the Queen promised to give him another Irene, Tyler had for some reason imagined a beautiful young black girl with gold-dyed hair, but the false Irene was nothing like that.

You look pretty tired, he said. You want to have sex or you want to just sleep?

I want to make love, Irene muttered.

He did it to her and she uttered sleepy moans.

Then she was quiet.

What are you thinking about?

My Mom.

They lay down on the sofa and he reached and turned out the light. The smell of her was like rotten sardines. It got stronger and stronger all night. She laid her head on his shoulder and instantly fell alseep, breathing in rapid shallow little snorts like a child with asthma. Every few minutes she’d awake with a start and mutter: Oh!

Where am I? she said once. Where the hell is this?

You’re with me, he said.

She was already asleep.

He had begun to itch from contact with her body. Tiny insects, imaginary or not, crawled on him.

He dreamed that she was taking a shower but when she finished and began to dry herself off the towel was soaked with stinking blood. He brought her more towels and more, but they ended up in a stained and reeking heap.

All night it was her instinct to bend her knees and rest her stinking feet on his legs. She was so light and so unconscious that he let her do it. In the morning her abscessed thigh was so swollen that she could not arise without tears.

Well, he said, you have anything you want to say to me?

You got thirteen dollars?

Well, here’s five. I can skip breakfast.

You will? Oh, it hurts!

He had to let her lean on him all the way downstairs, and she wept with pain. When they got to the street he held her hand and she walked as she had last night, slowly, painfully, with her head hanging crookedly down and her hair in her eyes. Her gaze was fixed almost like a corpse’s, and thick whitish drool unspooled itself from the left corner of her mouth.

He said to her: We can’t walk in the street like this or you’ll get run over.

I don’t care if I get run over. Shit, it hurts. I don’t give a fuck.

At Seventeenth and Shotwell they intersected with a Mexican family whose members laughed and pointed, the fat teenaged girl especially, making witty comments in Spanish as the false Irene stumbled and wept. A block later, Tyler glanced around and saw that they were still pointing.

His belly itched. An insect was moving on it.

That night he was walking down Eighteenth Street toward Capp when he ran into the false Irene’s smell again, a sickening smell which permeated the sidewalk; then he realized that it was the smell of garbage.

The next morning, passing a car one of whose windows had been kicked out and methodically ground to powder on the sidewalk, he gazed at the grains, at the shockingly beautiful greenness within them which had been liberated by the vandals — there was the car; there were the other windows still intact, mere tinted transparencies giving his eye access to the car’s interior; the radio had been stolen, and larger shards lay dark and dull upon the upholstery-slashed seats — but it was only the pane which had been broken, its surface area increased many fold, which allowed him to see the stuff and essence of that glass, the wonderful greenness now so rich as to trap sight within the opacity of grain heaped on grain.

| 173 |

At that time he trusted entirely in his Queen. He had touched her; how could he doubt her? The false Irene surely comprised not only a medicine but also another test, a pair of royal eyes like some herald sent out to meet a desert caravan and report back to the Big Bitch of Nubia. He had better treat her with every diplomatic attention. Meanwhile no proposals of employment visited his answering machine, although he checked in as conscientiously as Celia ticking off her latest list, which went:

schedule session for approval with ICD

greet Iris

redraft proposed maternity policy exclusion

shop for new sofa (ask John for color ideas)

Tues. 4:15 gynecologist: can I get pregnant?

find new restaurant to take John

order blue update chart

so, feeling himself to be a conveniently idle passenger on the ship of time, he weighed anchor with the false Irene for North Beach, where waves of greyish-white houses overhung each other frozenly on the hills, and darker grey waves of pigeons flurried across the grass of parks in search of crumbs, sea-foamed here and there with paler scatterings of feathers; across this ocean, with his incurious Irene, Tyler sailed in his shuddering old car, rolling down his window as if in hopes that the laundries of Grant Street, whose hot fragrance of cleanliness curiously resembled the smell of freshly baked bread, might make Irene happy as it sometimes did Tyler himself, but she remained as isolated in her passenger seat as those old men in grey coats and grey hats who stood in the parks of North Beach with their hands behind their backs as the pigeon-waves roiled between their feet; because neither wholesomeness nor vitality attracted Irene. They made landfall at the Café Greco where he’d always wanted to bring the dead Irene but never had. Thus the false Irene sat across from him at one of those little round black tables topped with fake marble, positioned among newspaper readers, crossword puzzle conquerors, spoon-lickers, chin-rubbers and the layers-down of cards so happy and rule-less that black spade-schools and crimson diamond-flocks trembled as if about to take wing. Tyler and the false Irene drank new espresso which trembled with foam, dark espresso beside white gelato; while outside, traffic shot down the double yellow lines like those electromechanical toys which ride in slots. — This coffee tastes shitty, Irene mumbled. I really gotta get well. I gotta go in the ladies’ room and… — The other patrons were already holding their noses. Irene moaned like trains crawling over dry rivers; she begged to lie down; she fell down and her head cracked open against the floor.

| 174 |

The next time he went by the Queen’s, that crew had moved to a brickwork tunnel under a vacant lot in Chinatown, and it was dawn. — How much money did you gals make tonight? the Queen said. — If it’s money, you’ll see some of it, Domino said. — Henry Tyler again, said the tall man, but the Queen wouldn’t let Tyler in. She said to tell him that he had a mission right now and he should stick to it. Tyler bowed his head, humiliated.

The crazy whore felt sorry for him and scuttled out of the tunnel to explain: They have to greet everybody on the telephone so nobody will get left out. And they have to be sure no bullies will come in. And they have to be sure that every whore who’s got good pussy will get three meals a day. That’s why the Queen’s so busy. I dream of making sure that there’s nothing bothering the lions at the zoo. The Queen says that’s up to me, too. When I take a hit of crack, it makes me feel sure I can stay up forever if I need to, so nobody will get hurt. That’s how I help the Queen. That’s why I’m so busy.

I get it, said Tyler, rubbing his chin.

I get pity for someone like you when someone’s among us and lonely instead of having the right attitude, and they worry why won’t the Queen play with me?

Well, Mary, that’s my worry all right.

The tall man took him aside and said: Henry, lemme give you some advice.

I appreciate it.

That new Irene of yours is no goddamned good. She’s just a crackpipe waiting to be lit. She’s gonna smoke up all your money.

I’ll keep my eye on her.

You never know what’s gonna happen with bitches, the tall man said. Take that Strawberry over there. One day she came at me with a butcher knife when I was on the telephone. A big old knife, round about oh I’d say eight inches long.

And then what? said Tyler, already knowing what he would hear.

I beat that bitch flat on her ass, laughed the tall man. I says to her, Strawberry, you bitch, I’m gonna make you look at me with eyes of fear.

All right.

You’re not gonna do it, are you?

Do what?

Beat that ho flat on her ass.

Probably not.

I knew it. I can smell your goddamned kind. You think you’re better than me?

Nope.

I said, you think you’re better than me?

Oh, dry up. I have nothing against you, Justin. Thanks for trying to help. I figure that—

You’re just a john. You johns are all the same.

Listen, Tyler said. The Queen gave her to me to love and to take care of. Do you get that?

I know. And I said what I said.

| 175 |

Domino! said the Queen suddenly.

Yeah, Maj, what is it?

Do you trust that Tyler?

Hell, no, said Domino.

| 176 |

He went to meet the false Irene, who never appeared. She refused to tell him where she was sleeping. That night as he walked down Sixteenth he felt coming from the blackness of the streets what he could only call a bad energy. His friend Mikey whom he sometimes saw at the racetrack had been a Marine at Iwo Jima; Mikey said that the main thing to keep him alive had been that feeling. When it tingled in his fingertips and made the back of his neck coldly itch, then Mikey knew to duck down or hide until he could see whatever was trying to get him. Something was trying to get Tyler now, something or somebody evil who knew Tyler and was thinking about him and wanted to harm him, something that could see him right now. Maybe it was waiting in that alley up ahead, or maybe it was closing in from behind, intending suddenly to leap upon him and choke him. He leaned his back up against the wall by the bank machine where three or four years ago someone had gotten stabbed to death. Slowly he let his head turn back the way he had come. Past Pancho Villa’s restaurant the street remained very well-lit, swarming with coffee-houses and fancy new restaurants like the Spanish place and the creperie. Nobody was approaching. He allowed his gaze to turn the other way, down toward Mission Street. At the entrance to the subway station three tall and filthy men stared back at him. He was not intimidated. He knew that he could walk right through them and they wouldn’t do anything, because he might be police. Beyond them lay darkness.

It was peculiar how different every night was. Last night and the night before, the Mission had been filled with energetic crowds. Now there was not even a whore to be seen and the streets were almost empty except for the occasional police cruiser. He crossed Mission Street, having passed easily through the group of men, and descended to Capp Street, which stank and was dark; and between Capp and South Van Ness, one black man was helping another walk. The one who was being helped shouted with pain. He had no wound that Tyler could see. There were no whores on South Van Ness, but he passed a succession of doorways in which watchers sat, studying him without friendliness or pity. He didn’t much care. The creepy feeling came, departed, returned.

At Harrison Street he went to call the false Irene’s pager from a very dark pay phone booth beside a warehouse and the pay phone swallowed his quarter and then said he still owed it a quarter; he pressed the change release lever and his quarter slowly ever so slowly dribbled back into his hand. He didn’t like this place. He inserted the quarter again and redialled. The phone was silent like the night without even a dial tone and suddenly he became convinced that the evil person or the evil thing was right here beside him or near enough to be almost here, that it was creeping up on him in the darkness; and he forefingered the change release again, hung up, and walked very quickly out of there. He turned up Mariposa where it was more brightly lit near Project Artaud and the evil one was beside him. From a parked and curtained van there suddenly commenced as he drew level with it a slow, cautious, remorseless creaking as if something were stealthily trying to come out. He walked on quickly. Maybe I’m just getting old, he said to himself, and what I see and fear is my own death. Well, of course that would be the evil thing in any case. It would always be my death, whether it were some reified cancer or heart attack thirty years hence slowly swiming toward me, or a bad person coming to get me right now.

And then he said: The Queen gave her to me. The Queen loves me. She wants to help me. Even if somebody murders me, I have to follow my Queen. I have to accept my gift. I’ve tried everything else.

| 177 |

She was on Seventeenth and South Van Ness at six in the morning, considerably less beautiful than in the dark, exhausted, swollen-eyed, stinking of excrement.

Hey, I feel so bad that I didn’t show that time, she said quickly. You know what happened? I went to Sixteenth and Mission and I couldn’t cop.* I spent two and a half hours trying to cop, until I finally found some stuff that could halfway do it. The hotels all got raided at once. My friend Beatrice — you know her? she works with me sometimes; she’s people; she’s real cool; she’s got spunk — she got so freaked out I found her crying later ’cause the the police just busted into the room next door with rifles and whatever. I think she ran back to the Queen. She told me to come with her but I knew you’d be… Oh, I feel shitty. My leg hurts. And I was so stressed out I just completely forgot about you for four days. Then I remembered, like, hey, that nice guy was waiting on the street corner for me, but by then it was too late. But I knew I’d see you in the neighborhood sooner or later and then I could make it up to you.

Yeah, that’s all right, he muttered.

No, it’s true. Do you believe me? I can prove it. I can verify it.

He was sorry for her, but even more than that he pitied himself for being a mere servile appendage to this decaying body bent only on greedily destroying itself. Again and again, however, he spoke with himself, persuading himself to obey his Queen. He strove to remember and comprehend Sunflower, whom the Queen had pronounced perfect. Did he believe her? Was the Queen perfect? And how could the false Irene be perfect when she was such a slave to her own poisonous needs? In one of the essays, “Civil Disobedience” he thought but John would know for sure, Thoreau had defied his jailer with the statement that no matter where his body might be detained, his mind could wander in and out between the bars as it pleased, like a whore’s dark head flashing back and forth. The serenity, the comforting calmness of this conception had amazed Tyler when he first read it in high school. He’d reflected at that time, and still thought: Even if I end up with nothing, even if I’m starving or physically broken, I retain the freedom of my own self. — He hadn’t, of course. He’d fallen in love with John’s wife. Now he was in the Queen’s orbit. But the false Irene was even worse off, sick and crazed, selfish, isolated by her own addiction. Cut off a man’s airway, or deprive him of sleep long enough, and he will not enjoy Schubert. Most, perhaps all creatures are vulnerable to the despotism of suffering, but the false Irene was more vulnerable still. Her body might wander in and out of the Tenderloin alleys, but her consciousness remained in Thoreau’s cell. She was the jailer of herself, and she’d lost the key. The Queen’s fundamental principle was at fault.

But what if some sacred vapor infused her ecstasies and depths? What if her endless struggle for junk and more junk were a meditation of perpetual equilibrium as valid as Buddha’s stillness on a lotus leaf? What if a brainless sea-sponge which spent its entire life weakly straining food from the currents actually experienced perfect fulfilment because its sensations were unmediated by consciousness? Was this what the Queen meant?

He refused to believe in the goodness of sickness. He longed to worship the false Irene as he had been told, but could not.

| 178 |

Like Lily and the crazy whore and ever so many others, Irene never chose to belong to the Queen’s inner circle. She stayed in the Imperial Hotel on South Van Ness, in a second-storey room whose rent was paid by its other occupant, Sanchez, a seventy-three-year-old Indian originally from Oklahoma who had now been living at the Imperial for three months short of two decades. Throughout that time he had shared his lodging with prostitutes, doubtless for altruistic reasons. Each girl usually lasted two or three months, and then one day Sanchez would come back from the corner store to find her gone and his VCR gone, or her gone and his cassette deck gone; or her gone and his shoes and toilet paper gone. He had had pretty bad luck, Irene thought. Not being cursed with one of those personalities which worries about future calamities, she never wondered whether those girls always left of their own accord. She thought about the past as little as she did the future. Although she believed her mind to be as clear and fine as it had ever been, in fact she could not remember where she had stayed before Sanchez had tottered up to her on that first rainy night on Capp Street when she was cold, wet, hungry and junk-sick, and so Sanchez was God. She had now been with him for twenty-two months. Her superiority to her predecessors had thus been conclusively established, and yet it had taken eight months before she’d felt comfortable unpacking her suitcase, maybe because the room was so small, or perhaps because Sanchez continued silent and almost dark in his moods, unreadable to her, just as she herself was to Tyler. His penis was the most expressive part of him. So it had been on that very first night, which like so many other nights Irene could no longer remember. She spent much of her time on the toilet down the hall, trying to find a vein until somebody else began to pound on the door with both hands. Once when she shot speedball on his bed, Sanchez had struck her. And yet Irene was far from feeling unhappy with her new home. She had never had a sugar daddy before — not that she could recall, at least. Sanchez scarcely asked her anything, and because Irene felt that she had many things to hide, this silence of his gradually transformed its intimations from menace to acceptance. And so she began to indulge herself, leaving Sanchez himself out of her thoughts, considering his room and possessions to be hers. Sometimes if she’d had a good week she used to give him twenty or thirty dollars to help out with the rent, but she didn’t always have a good week and the precedent “put pressure on her,” as she put it, so she stopped. Sanchez didn’t seem to mind.

Now she started considering leaving him to move in with Tyler. The Queen had spoken with her. The Queen said that Tyler was good (which of course could not be unconditionally believed). The Queen said that Tyler needed somebody to take care of. Irene, flattered by her personal audience with the Big Bitch, was trying to figure out which way to jump.

Tyler presented certain disadvantages in comparison to Sanchez. First of all, he was younger — always an inconvenience to street prostitutes who prefer impotent octogenarians. Sanchez had never really been Irene’s old man. Indeed, he’d failed to get it up with her after the first month. All he wanted now was for her to lick his balls, which smelled like pigeons and urine. It was hardly a real sexual relationship. Irene needed to be fucked every so often or she started going crazy. But Tyler might ask too much. She was not well acquainted with him. What if in some fit of stubborn selfishness he insisted on penetrating her past boredom into pain, until he became a positive enemy like the man of rage she’d once serviced who would not let her go until she was almost dead? Worse still, he wanted to talk. Irene considered herself a very private person. Since she had to rent out the space between her legs to anyone and everyone, she reserved the space between her ears, as if it were one of those secret urban gardens which San Francisco offers, with their narrow, half-rotten wooden stairs, ripe plums overhead, everything mossy and full of flowers, a nice view of the Bay Bridge’s blue-grey silhouette. (John once went to look at real estate at one of these greeneries, in the steepest block of Filbert Street at Sansome, but the house was more than three million dollars. Maybe Mr. Rapp had that kind of money.)

When Sanchez met a new prostitute named Angel, Irene became jealous, but talked herself out of feeling that way. She sat on the edge of the bed with her chin in her hands while Sanchez and Angel were fucking. Afterward, Angel approached her with the self-satisfied yet anxious expression of a dog which has just devoured its master’s dinner. — It’s all right, Irene mumbled. I don’t care. — Sanchez looked her up and down in his usual silence. That night Irene began sleeping on the floor. Angel said that Irene had heart. She showed respect, so Irene tried to do likewise. Angel and Sanchez fucked like wild beasts all night. They were so loud and vulgar that Irene was ashamed. She shot every last grain of heroin into her thigh just to put herself out of there, like Thoreau’s untamed soul flying loftily away. In the morning she was alive again, on the floor, with scabies, sick with the need to fix. She went out and peddled pussy on Capp Street for two hours with no luck, but then Tyler paged her and gave her ten dollars.

Angel was a tall good-looking darkskinned girl who had probably been truly pretty once before she got her habit. Irene began to feel shy in front of her. She waited to learn whether Sanchez would speak to her at last, commanding her to leave; in fact, she almost hoped for that, because then necessity would instruct her exactly what to do, whereas right now she did not completely trust Tyler even though she had become accustomed to Tyler’s money. But Sanchez never said a word. Unable to abandon this sanctuary, Irene determined to make Angel “feel welcome,” which is to say that she strove to play on the shadow of hostess-power she retained due to Sanchez’s taciturnity and her own seniority. She said to her: Sweetie, welcome to our house. (Sanchez smiled ironically.) — Treat it like a home, Irene babbled on. If you need something, just ask. We have a few rules, but only a few.

The first rule was never to open the window because their room lay only one storey up from and directly over an alley of garbage which in summer stank much worse than Irene and therefore disguised her so that she lived easily with the old man, who could scarcely perceive odors anyway because he chain-smoked. Sanchez had kept that cracked and dusty light-hole sealed for most of his twenty years of residence. Indeed, the paint had long since sweated, becoming glue so that had he ever longed for a breath of dumpster-air he would have first been forced to run the point of a putty-knife along the sash… Sometimes it got a little stuffy in there, as Irene delicately put it, and then he turned on the fan.

Thus ran the main rule, but Sanchez was equally particular about certain other matters. He disliked anyone to knock on his door. Also, he hid his treasures, and expected them not to disappear. Angel of course immediately began going through his wallet whenever she could, her grubby fingers twitching at high speed. Irene had sometimes done the same, but only to give back the money to show him how honest she was — minus five or ten dollars, of course, which she needed for expenses. Sanchez comprehended this and tolerated it; otherwise he would have hidden his wallet. Wasn’t it really an invitation to Irene to take whatever she required, if Sanchez left his wallet on top of the dresser at night instead of sliding it under his side of the mattress along with his special things? Irene, believing this in utter confidence, flourished therefrom like a modest righteous flower blooming from the edge of a heap of dung. Angel, however, instantaneously began abusing the wallet privilege.

The next thing she did was to ask to use the phone. Sanchez, needless to say, made no reply. — Sure you can use the phone, sweetie, said hostess Irene, and Sanchez grinned sarcastically.

Can I, um, give my mother this number? Angel wanted to know.

Sure, said Irene. Sanchez sighed and kept quiet.

Well, um, can I also, um give this number to my boyfriend?

Sure, answered indulgent Irene. But don’t give it out to everyone. Sanchez and I are trying to make you feel special. Not very many people have this number, sweetie, and we’re trying to keep it that way.

After that, all Angel’s business dates kept calling day and night. Sanchez’s sister had to go into the hospital for triple bypass surgery and Sanchez was waiting for the doctor to call him and tell him how the operation had gone, but Angel stayed on the telephone for two hours. Finally Irene had to tell her to get off. Angel freaked out. She called Irene a rotten cunt and disinvited her from living with her and Sanchez. So Irene spat in her face. Angel shouted out to Sanchez to defend her, but Sanchez merely picked his nose. — Why, you lazy old fucker! cried Angel. You — you — why do old men always get so greasy? — Her accusation was not entirely truthless, at least in the case of its target, because Sanchez always tried to make his clothes last as long as he could, to save money. Irene wasn’t that way. Like most of us, male and female, she considered herself to be clean in body and soul. Nobody, including Tyler, ever told her that she reeked. She sometimes went to thrift stores even if for reasons of addiction she should have been dating instead. That proved her desire to present herself nicely in society, a magnificent Christmas present for anyone who could pay. Sanchez, on the other hand, wore his clothes for a week or more at a time. It might well have been that he smelled; Irene was the wrong one to ask…

Angel promised never to bring any business home. Soon, tall lustful men were pounding on Sanchez’s door at all hours.

Sweetie, please don’t tell lies in my house, said Irene, believing in the present necessity of abrasive words.

What do you mean? said Angel with a false smile. I was in jail, I really was; I swear it—

Yeah? Then where’s your plastic bracelet? Where’s your papers?

You know what, cunt? It’s not your house. Not no more.

When Angel finally persuaded Sanchez to throw her out, Irene was crushed. Strangely enough, it was the old man whom she hated more than Angel, even though the latter was the precipitating agent of her destruction. On her last morning in the Imperial Hotel, convinced that Sanchez had been scheming to bring about her departure all along, she refused to say goodbye to him, but embraced Angel, sobbing like a child. — It won’t be so bad, honey, Angel said. You’ll find a new home, I know you will! And we’ll meet on the street. It’s gonna be just like old times… — Irene gripped Angel even more tightly, and here the Queen’s intuition about her proved entirely true, because at that moment, even if only for that moment, she was willingly and proudly embracing her own degradation, like a Christian on the cross. And perhaps what she intended for Tyler (although one can never be sure about anything concerning the Queen) was for him to take to himself the embodied shame of Irene’s self-distraction, loving somebody who would be bad for him. And yet how depressing, indeed repulsive these plans for another appear, when we spell them out like this! Tyler, of course, had humbly laid his life in the Queen’s hands; it was incumbent on her to do something with it. As for Irene, incapable almost of choice, haunted by the insult she received, fearful of that grimy and dangerous street life which had now reclaimed her, she went silently down the stairs until for the last time she passed through the lobby, and the desk clerk wrinkled his nose. Then she left the Imperial Hotel forever. Suddenly dreading above all the possibility that Angel and Sanchez might be watching out the window, she refused to look back, and for this pride I admire her, especially when she would have done anything to be allowed to return. What then? She hobbled to Capp Street, clutching all her belongings against her stomach in a trash bag, which with extreme tentativeness she concealed in a garbage can. With its bruises, varicosities, scars, scabs, burns, bites and abscesses, her flesh resembled one of those Hungarian sausages which offers the buyer all the splendid colors of autumn: astonishing oranges from paprika, scarlets as delicious as any dead maple leaf, yellow pebbles of fat. But who would buy her? What would she do? It was only ten in the morning, and she was already beginning to feel junk-sick. Terrified of what would happen if she didn’t cop some heroin very very soon, she set out on a hunt for sanctuary, not knowing exactly what she was looking for, praying she would recognize it when she found it. Unlike Beatrice, who conversed with the Virgin in her straits, Irene retained no one to pray to but herself. Her ancient, bloodshot eyes saw the black-and-white come rolling from around the corner, and she was already shambling on before the police could accuse her of peddling pussy at that infamous corner. Today no one would help her to continue existing, and for her to pursue salvation through the one trade she could practice was to become a criminal, a temporary betrothed. She considered going to live with the Queen as Beatrice had advised, but she had been given to understand by Domino, who wished to keep the club exclusive, that the Queen was a very difficult and dangerous old bitch who sometimes cut women’s eyes out, and that her kindness to Irene during their private interview had been a treacherous device. Irene trusted Domino more than Beatrice, because given two tales, the most frightening one was generally in her experience the truest. She had now put almost four blocks between her and the Imperial Hotel. Exhausted, she sat down on somebody’s front step and cried again. Although the heroin need grew nauseatingly inside her from moment to moment, more than anything she worried about the terrible pain in her leg which made it so difficult to walk. The hospital had told her that she had two blood clots. Irene wondered whether this had something to do with the fact that heroin had stopped her periods and somehow sent the bad blood from her womb into her legs. They’d given her some anticoagulant pills, but when her left leg started feeling better she quit out of a principle of general distrust, the bottle only half empty (and she was supposed to get three more refills); then her right leg began to hurt. She wanted to go to S.F. General and perhaps if she won extraordinary luck sleep that night in a high metal bed with clean sheets, but she had to earn ten dollars first, understanding all too well that even if she’d reported to the waiting room early in the morning (and it was no longer early), no doctor would see her until late afternoon, by which time she wouldn’t be able to handle the scanning and palpitating and poking unless she’d shot up in the ladies’ room. And how could she do that, without ten dollars? Ten dollars would save her or damn her! She tried to explain this to Tyler but he didn’t understand; it was as if he didn’t listen or something… (In fact, what she had said to him was: You see, I’m daydreaming. You see, I’m nodding. If I coulda had some coke instead of straight heroin I wouldn’t be nodding like this. I was a little more cool than my classmates. So I always hung around with people who… And I asked my mother… But she wouldn’t lemme… just make a joke about it… and then I told ’em — I told ’em…) Irene never felt so abandoned by God as she did that day. Ten dollars! She staggered all the way from Sixteenth up to Twenty-First in hopes of performing a ten-dollar blow job so that she could purchase white medicine from the tall man, who ran a side business outside the Queen’s circuit, but nobody would pick her up because she stank. Ten dollars! Closing her eyes, she could see her heroin spoon, not too thick, not too thin; she tapped the needle because even though she’d only used it once they were now cutting heroin with shoe polish, which gummed up the point. She could see it; she could taste it. Ten dollars! Forgetting all about her possessions in the trash can, she dragged herself far beyond the drunken swaggerers who were now too drunk to do anything but sit on their overturned shopping cart. Irene asked them: Hey, can you spare just five or ten cents? It would really make my day. That’s all I need. — They gave her nothing. A man in mechanic’s coveralls was coming, so Irene asked him: Can you spare just fifteen cents? and he walked by her. Ten dollars! Irene rounded the curve of a passed-out drunk’s buttock on the reddish sidewalk-tiles in front of Walgreens—Walgreens! she was going the wrong way! Turning around, she discovered an auto repair shop, then two more shopping carts side by side with a foam mattress folded over them both to marry them, clocks and towels and blankets stained with wine-flavored urine and stuffed animals tucked beneath them in what to Irene was utter senselessness. She passed Chocolate, who was prancing back and forth on Capp Street like a spirited warhorse, holding her white parka in her arms as she streetwalked because she didn’t want it stolen. Chocolate and Irene did not say hello to one another. She passed Justin, who leaned with his empty hand behind his back. At last she came to a weary black man’s blue stubble glowing like a patch of tiny alpine flowers as he slept under the subway lights. The palm of his hand was incredibly expressive. Ten dollars, ten dollars! She was as wide open as Mission Street with its palm trees rising above squarish brickwork and woodwork. She passed Strawberry, who was scratching her forehead as she pulled her hair back, leaning against brickwork, urgently watching each car. Irene had irrevocably lost count of Strawberry before she even saw her. A quarter-hour later, the Queen emerged from the Thor Hotel with a cigarette in her mouth and her hands in her pockets; Irene did not see her. It was sunset now, and the sharp stench of urine on the sidewalk focused her consciousness like smelling salts applied to a fainting woman. If she only had ten dollars… Irene stumbled through bright bristling palms and fish markets and supermarkets and murals, spied on by informers with pawnshop eyes. Then she walked some more, her teeth sunk deep in her lower lip so that she would not scream with pain. Was she free like Buddha? Finally she remembered Tyler.

| 179 |

Tyler was drunk. Tyler was in need like Domino marching down the streets in her silver miniskirt muttering to herself: I gotta get me some bump.* —He said: All I have now is my pain, Irene. That’s all that ties me to you. Without that cord, I’d fall into the abyss of senseless happiness.

The false Irene, who barely heard him and was sure that he had no conception of what pain was, said: Can I stay with you?

Let’s see how it goes, he said. He had faith, but not so much. He was afraid that her stench would infect his apartment forever. He feared that she would steal his computer and try to sell it. God knows what she would do…

You mean you don’t care about me? The Queen promised you’d take care of me… And I… You see, if I could just cop some china white…

What is it you want, baby?

He was so shallow. He knew what she needed, and he would not give it to her. Look at him! He had nice shoes! If he cared for her, he could sell his shoes. He must have money in his wallet. If he would only give her ten dollars, just ten dollars… That was what her happiness cost.

Well, my connection got busted, she began to explain, making a great effort to help him comprehend, and… and after the raid, I didn’t know anyone to cop from, so me and Domino, we had to go downtown to meet someone on Turk Street…

Oh, come on, said Tyler. Domino cops from the Queen.

All right, so I was lying to you, said Irene. I don’t know why I lied, I just… Hey, you got any money on you?

| 180 |

Remember you said that I didn’t have to have sex with you if I didn’t want to? said Irene. Well, I’m thinking that maybe I won’t have sex with you tonight, because I’m starting to like you and I want to see…

Okay, sweetheart.

Thanks for the ten dollars. I really appreciate it. You saved my life, Kenny.

Henry.

Oh, did you say your name was Henry? I thought you… Listen, I gotta go. I need more heroin. I’ll be back in forty-five minutes and then we can just cuddle, okay? I’ll whistle outside your window. Don’t worry. You’ll wake up. You ain’t never heard me whistle.

The darkness about them was close and cool and stone-flavored like a cathedral’s, and within it, like candles offered to the memories of souls, glowed the flames of many crack pipes. The happy sense of love, of trust, of grateful sharing between two people who have just smoked crack together temporarily allowed him to believe in her. (He had a sudden memory of Irene rushing about most soundlessly in stockinged feet on the carpet at John’s place, making dinner. He’d become agitated, as was usually the case whenever he had to see Irene. But he never showed it. He remembered Irene standing with her left hand on her hip, clicking the remote control, her lips parted as she gazed at the crawling colors in the TV. He could see her sitting on the carpet, dialling John’s portable phone, her dark lips parted, smiling politely at him but withdrawn; he knew that she was irritated at something. He remembered her high small breasts.) She kept giving him more hits of crack and he kept rubbing her neck.

She kissed him on the lips and said: I never kiss.

You got any more money? she said.

(Tyler stood in the locked bathroom, counting his money from the nylon under-the-pants moneybelt which smelled like his balls. The false Irene was moaning and snoring.)

Okay, she mumbled. I gotta go. I need my medicine. I’ll be right back.

She didn’t come back, of course.

| 181 |

He loved the false Irene with sincere desperation for more than three weeks.

In the fourth week he was walking past Sixteenth and Capp at around nine in the morning and saw Angel, although he did not know that she was Angel; then he spied Lily across the street, thin and false-blonde, with her hair, skin and clothes all grey and pitted like an old barn door or a hammer which had been left outside in an Arctic wind for years and years; she was standing on the corner, looking patiently at every passing car, and seeing him Lily smiled and waved until he waved; then she strutted halfway over to him with her miniskirt riding high up her hips and her hairy thighs all crusted with some yellow substance, so for politeness he approached her and she came closer and soon was at his side.

How about the morning special? said Lily.

What’s that? said Tyler, taken aback.

Ten dollars.

Ten dollars for a blow job, I guess, he thought.

Well, how about if I buy you coffee? he said, anticipating that good happy coffee feeling, the same feeling almost as of crack cocaine.

She was already starting to move back to her corner, just a step or two back so that she might still be able to return quickly to get something out of him, and looking coolly into his eyes she said: Well, you could just give me a dollar. That would work.

That’s Domino’s line, he laughed.

Oh, her. She’s full of one-liners, but I’m better. My hole’s better. You wanna see my hole?

One of these days, Lily.

Well, then, how about that dollar?

How about when I see you? he said, not wanting to give her anything if she wouldn’t even sit with him for a minute, not that he blamed her.

Fine.

Do you remember me? he hazarded.

I know I’ve seen you before. I just…

I’m Henry.

Henry? Oh, that’s right. You’re Maj’s…

How’s the Queen?

She said to ask about you, but I forget what she wanted me to ask. I bear so many messages at so many times, and sometimes the first message overshadows the last message, because I…

Tell her I’m trying really hard but I’m having problems. Can you remember that, Lily?

A dollar would sure help my memory…

| 182 |

Every morning Lily went out to Capp Street walking skinny and crusted, spookily laughing from her tired cunt unmuffled by any underwear; then Domino usually came and started yelling as she did every night: Bitch, bitch bitch, you stole ten dollars off me, bitch! and Lily just squatted there on the curb, ignoring her, so Domino kicked her onto her ass and triumphantly laughed: Bitch! while Lily laughed, gurgled and cycled like an old dishwasher in some not yet vandalized apartment, remembering her black nightgown in which she always used to do business because she thought that it made her more pretty; in fact it got so that she didn’t like to take it off even during a fuck because it made her look and feel so special. Some customers disagreed, but Lily knew that even if she wouldn’t fuck naked they were nonetheless happier in her company than alone, especially because in those days she had a nice thing that she did for the men (like Sunflower or the Queen, she wanted to give them all something). She would spread a rubber sheet on the mattress and grease it, and then tell the john to take off his pants and everything else and lie down on his back on the greased rubber sheet while she went to mix him a free drink, and afterward she’d give out her choice of one of three nude photos of her, which she’d then package in an Amaretto box; but so many times the men said: Hey, I’m married, I don’t want no photo of some hooker, so then she started saying: And if you’re not married you can have this if you want… but even then they sometimes worried that it might be incriminating, so Lily learned to say more tentatively: Well, if you’re not married and if you don’t think it would incriminate you, I can give you a picture of me, but half the time after the men had left and she went outside to get some milk and tomato soup for her mother she’d find the nude picture of her lying on the street, or jocularly stuck behind a stranger’s windshield wiper, or face-up or face-down in the trash.

Did that make you sad? Sunflower had asked her.

Sad! choked Lily, laughing and crying. Hell, no. But it made a lot of other people sad. Ugly me, and my ugly pussy, saddening people all through the neighborhood…

She continued to wear her black nightie because she knew it made her into the most beautiful girl. Somehow that nightie was magic. Okay, so on request she’d lift it above her weary breasts but it never came off when she was doing men, never, ever, especially after she started to get older (well, almost never; sometimes she might relent if a man tipped her), until after a while it began to look and smell a million years old and the men started making comments, so she went to the five and dime and found another just like it, being a creature of habit in more than one way. That find made her very happy. She took the old black rag, threw it into her favorite dumpster, and wore the new black rag. When it ripped, she trimmed it into a miniskirt like Beatrice’s; Bea had shown her how…

Meanwhile Domino stood halfway down the block, showing tit and whistling. Humiliating Lily always put her in a fine mood. That bitch was so out of it, so perpetually robbed and broken, that she’d never tell Maj. Truth to tell, Lily really had borrowed ten from Domino and shot it into her veins, so we cannot accuse the blonde, who needed money as much as anyone, of being evil — Domino wasn’t that, merely mean.

| 183 |

So what’s new? said Domino, each of whose eyes resembled in hue the blue star which said S.F.P.D. on the white door of the black police car with its shiny twin upturned mirrors like mandibles and its blocky multicolored roof-light.

Oh, you remember that cat I had? the false Irene said.

That little shit? chuckled Domino. How could I forget?

Hey, that’s my cat you’re talking about.

That’s your diseased pussy I’m talking about, the blonde muttered to herself.

Oh, fuck you, said the other whore.

All right, fine. What about your darling cat? Wasn’t that like a year ago you had that cat?

I think I told you that it was one of two that they had at this clubhouse. And the other, this Samoan gangster stomped it to death. So when they got the next litter, I took all three. I figured I could sell them to some friends. And I got money for two, but I had to take them back, because the two girls I sold them to weren’t taking decent care of them. And one had a litter, so now I have eight cats. That’s my news.

Pretty stupid, said the blonde. How much do you spend on catfood?

Oh, shit, Domino! Catfood’s not good enough for them. I feed ’em fresh milk and chicken breast, said that wrinkled old whore who never ate decent food herself.

You have eight cats, huh? I just bet.

Come on to my house. I’ll bake you a cake.

A greedy light came into the blonde’s eyes at the thought of free food, and she thought to herself: This bitch makes fifty-sixty dollars a day because she represents herself. No Queen’s cut. She’s got her own place; she’s got her red light. I cannot deal with this. I gotta… — Where are you staying, honey? she purred.

I… I… Oh, this john named Henry… See where he… Hey, Dom, I feel faint. I need to cop. I need to take a leak…

So all that stuff about cats was just bullshit, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it? You’re just another stinking homeless tramp. You’d better run, honey. You’d better run fast and far. You know why? Because if the Queen sees you, she’s going to cut out your eyes…

Screaming, the false Irene fled as fast as she could, step by shaking step, all the way to Magic Burgers & Donuts on Twentieth and Mission (OPEN 25 HOURS, said the sign), and then from inside her greasy bra she fished out four quarters with her blackened hands so that she could buy a doughnut and sit inside for an hour to hide and lurk and weep, while Domino laughed, her hands on her hips, and swaggered up and down Capp Street like the queen of the entire world.

| 184 |

You over thirty-five? said the old man at Muddy Waters coffeeshop, where Tyler had ultimately gone without Lily, and without giving Lily a dollar, either, being akin to Domino who in the course of business games which called into play all her calibrations of volition and capability could rapidly compute the prudence of any given expense. Tyler had computed that the dollar would be wasted. So he sat at a table drinking espresso as rich and reddish-brown as Chocolate’s flesh, wondering what to do. Perhaps this old man could see this, and was the latest incarnation of Christ come to help him, for as long as Tyler was willing to entertain such ideas about the Queen of the Whores, why not believe similar nonsense about any stranger?

Yeah, he said, waiting for the pitch.

Then marry for money, not for love, the old man advised. Love you can always pick up someplace else. It won’t last, so marry for money.

Good thinking, said Tyler, draining his espresso.

Some girl wants to marry me, but I says to her, I’m choosy. I like to pick my own wife, and that don’t mean you! the old man concluded gleefully.

Mm hm, said Tyler.

Having proven that he was the boss in this world, that not just any woman could have him, the old man went cheerfully back to his vocation, which was panhandling. On the way out, Tyler handed him a quarter.

| 185 |

He was so lost now like Dante’s pilgrim at the very beginning of the Inferno that this new love of his, which perhaps we should simply call an engagement, had already split his life into many additional doublings and halflings through which he wandered as if through a maze of dripping ice-caverns, the terrible directionlessness of his journeying growing and growing before him like concretions of solid hydroxic acid which his touch could melt only a little and so he felt wearily frozen, unable to visualize either his future or his past. Everything was good and bad together. Everything was mixed together like Domino’s grey strands of hair amidst the blonde. In other words, his way had become as open to the lamplight of all possibilities as the Mission, where you can leave the drug dealers literally waiting at the door when you go into some bluegrass-riddled bookstore or other to admire the acquerelles of Moreau or the engravings of Dan Smooth. Only a native California psychic can see all the way to the freeway sign which says LAST SF EXIT. Only a fast-talking Tenderloin girl can see half a block ahead to the car that might be slowing down, and so she’ll run out into traffic, beckoning, muttering: Come on, come on, come on… — Did Tyler stand on the threshold of infinity or of a narrow grave? How could he advance a step, not knowing? He remembered the time that Irene had gotten lost in traffic when she was supposed to meet his mother and John for the weekend in Sacramento, and when she arrived two hours late she stood outside the door for another fifteen minutes, too afraid to go in. Inside, the three of them had just finished their cold dinner. It was Tyler who found her, when he went out in the dark to empty the trash.

Please, you go in first, Irene whispered. Her eyes were as clear as light bulbs reflected in a drop of spilled tequila on the bar.

Oh, come on, he said. Nobody’s mad at you.

Laying his palm between her shoulderblades, he nudged her in. John refused to speak to her.

| 186 |

Shot of tequila, he said.

Shot of to kill ya? laughed the barmaid. Okay.

How was your day, Loreena?

Well, for starting out slow, I can’t complain. Made almost two hundred bucks for greedy old Heavyset.

An hour ago, Strawberry’s face had been tilted, her mouth hanging open, her eyes swollen as she wept over the baby she’d lost in crib death eleven years ago, and gravity pulled down the side of her face. Now her head lay on her clenched fists on the bar, her long, greying hair blanketing her naked shoulders. The barmaid gently shook her, calling her sweetheart, but she didn’t wake up. Tyler drank on in silence. The barmaid sighed and went to the cash register. — She’s been here a helluva long time, she finally said to the Queen, who replied: She’s dreamin’ about her pain, Loreena. — The barmaid laughed as if that were a joke, and yelled into Strawberry’s ear: Fire, FIRE, FIRE! but Strawberry didn’t move. The barmaid sighed again. Tyler ordered another drink. The Queen smiled at him, gliding out into the Tenderloin night. The serious old john gazed patiently down at Strawberry, and his chin wobbled as Strawberry ground her nose into the bar and slept harder.

Give her about another half hour, the barmaid said to the world. When thirty minutes exactly had passed, she said: Strawberry, honeybunny! and made a kissing sound, but Strawberry didn’t move. — I have to start serving now, she said to the john. Would you kind of keep an eye on her until Laura comes on at six? ’Cause Laura will give her a hard time. You gotta get her up before then.

Strawberry woke up suddenly, sweating and nauseous, and weakly patted her john.

I was a little worried about you, he said.

The tall man came in and said: Somebody buy me a drink or I’m gonna shoot this whole fuckin’ goddamn place up!

Oh, take a chill pill, said Loreena.

Awright, I’m gonna start shootin’ then. Henry, what’s goin’ on, my man?

Not much, said Tyler.

Still drivin’ that faggotmobile?

Naw, I stuck my dick up the exhaust pipe just like you taught me and the damn car went and exploded on me.

You too fuckin’ much — heh, heh! Anybody else talk to me that way, they be takin’ a trip to the emergency room.

Strawberry opened one eye, her purse strap clenched into her fingers as she muttered into her arms. Loreena leaned back against the register, stuck out her paunch, coughed, and laughed ha-ha-ha from her fat flushed face.

How ya doin’, kid? the tall man asked her.

Fucked up.

Well, what else is new?

Justin…

What?

Justin, will you follow me anywhere I go?

Well, not anywhere, laughed the tall man, kissing her.

You know what? said weary-eyelidded Strawberry. I’m sorry I’m drunk. I’m fucked up. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

Don’t worry about it, the tall man said.

I’m sorry.

Tyler started chuckling sadly in the corner.

Why are you laughing? asked Strawberry painfully.

Oh, something weird happened to me, Tyler said.

Pathetic, said the tall man, walking out.

Tell me. Why are you laughing?

Just a funny thing, he said.

Tell me, said the whore, struggling upright while her john watched over her as anxiously as a father overseeing his baby’s first steps.

Well, I fell in love with somebody I shouldn’t have fallen in love with.

And what happened? Strawberry patiently asked.

I won’t be seeing her anymore.

(Even I know about Henry and his Oriental girl, said Loreena complacently.)

Are you hurting? Strawberry asked him.

Huh?

I said are you hurting?

Yeah. Yeah. I guess so.

She stared at him with her heavy-lidded eyes. She was sorry for him.

Oh, hell, he muttered.

She nuzzled up to the complacent old john, who’d just bought her a hamburger. The john put his arm around her, and she flinched.

| 187 |

Irene had once given him a spare key, but it would have been just like his brother to change the lock. Tyler didn’t even know where that key was anymore. He drove over and rang the bell twice just to make sure that no one was there. Then he sprayed oil into the lock and worked a half-diamond pick against the pin stacks until they’d all dropped, one at a time. Fifteen seconds. He was belly-up against the glass front door so that from behind no one could see what he was doing. He counted the clicks of the falling pins: a six-pin lock, which come to think of it he had already known. Now for the tension wrench. That was the part he always enjoyed. Twenty-five seconds. He eased the hook pick all the way to the back of the cylinder, as gently as if he were penetrating a virgin; slow and careful, metal sliding lovingly deeper into metal, until he reached the uterine wall, so to speak. Now, slowly, slowly, raise the bottom pin above the shearline. Thirty-five seconds. That pin was picked; five more to go. In slightly under two minutes he had the job done. He slipped his wrench and picks back into his pocket and opened the door. Three carpeted steps, then a left turn hallway to the elevator. John lived on the sixth floor. The apartment was double-locked, so it took him more than five minutes to get in.

There would have been no point in going to the clothes hamper anymore, of course; all he would have gained was his brother’s smell. The bedroom door was open, the bed unmade (Irene had always made it every morning). He went to the bottom drawer of the dresser which had once been a treasurehouse of her bras and panties scented with rose petal sachets and cedar wood. Empty. He should have known it. (In old Korean custom the brother-in-law must never enter the sister-in-law’s chamber.) John had not been slothful there. Then desperately he went into the living room, thinking that at least he might steal a photograph from their wedding album; he could always cut John out. Over the fireplace the eight-by-ten of John and Irene still commanded him by means of what he had always been convinced was a false double smile, but beside that now stood in a silver frame a photo of Celia — an old photo, evidently, which she must have given John, for she looked much, much younger; a breasty young girl in a loose blouse, her head tossed back, her arms at her sides but just beginning to reach out at the world: a self-conscious picture of a girl who really wanted to let herself go and didn’t know how to do it, a would-be narcissistic picture, and ultimately a very sad one.

Those last few months when Irene spoke to him on the phone in a sad and anxious whisper, he could have done something. Now there was nothing to do, nothing, nothing.

On the shelf beneath the television, he saw Irene’s Korean — English New Testament, which her mother had given her shortly before her marriage. Tyler lifted it, vaguely hoping that one of Irene’s long black hairs might have gotten caught in it. The place marker-ribbon was at Ephesians 5.14:

Therefore it is said:

Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead,

and Christ will give you light.

He felt a lump in his throat.

| 188 |

Everyone that doeth evil hateth the light, Smooth whispered.

Yeah, yeah, said Tyler. Lest his deeds be punished. That’s in John 3 somewhere, isn’t it? John’s in the Bible. All johns are in the Bible. You think private eyes don’t know that one?

All right, said Smooth with the utmost lordliness. Now I want you to tell me. What did her piss smell like?

Tyler cleared his throat. — Like fresh vitamin tablets, he said in a trembling voice.

Okay, that’s a start. You want me to find you some fresh female piss like that? I’ve got sources.

Dan, I know you mean well, but I don’t think—

And there you were on some kind of goddamned panty raid, as if you were a college frat boy! Smooth roared. You’re a panty-sniffer and you’re saying that fresh piss won’t help! Just how do you explain that contradiction?

I don’t feel like explaining it.

In his mind he now heard Irene’s voice. After quitting a temporary job at a travel agency, she’d said to him: They’re such cruel people! Sometimes I think I gotta be trying harder, but I don’t know what they want… — At that time he had felt sorry for her, and hated the people who had been cruel to her. But now he was surprised to experience within himself a sharp anger at Irene. It seemed to him now that she had always complained, that she had shopped for her victim’s attire as she would have shopped for anything else. And who had forced her to? He hated Irene! Was that why he now longed to part from the false Irene?

You know I have an in with the coroner’s office, Smooth was saying. I got some autopsy photos of her for you. They’re under the floormat on the driver’s side of your car…

Thanks, Dan, he said wearily. I know you have a good heart. How does she look?

She’s got a real peaceful expression on her face, Smooth said. You know, like she’s glad to be out of it. And her breasts, well, you know I’m not ordinarily a tit man, but I think you’ll like those photos. But the ones after they started to cut her open, well, I only gave you the crotch shots. I didn’t want to make you feel bad.

| 189 |

That afternoon Tyler was walking down Seventeeth past the Uptown Bar on Capp, and saw across the street a police car with flashing lights and then the cop’s back and shoulders and helmet; the cop was doing something to someone — yes, of course, to a scared young girl in a miniskirt. He was twisting the girl’s hands painfully behind her back, looping and knotting the strap of her purse around her wrists before he put the cuffs on. Tyler crossed the street and slowly passed the two actors. Gazing backward as he went, he could now see the girl’s scarred and pimpled face shining with tears. Something about her quivering lip made his heart ache through and through. It was Strawberry.

Hold still, the cop commanded. Hold still.

I am, the girl sobbed.

Tyler turned away and walked on, shocked to realize that he hated the cop, hated him not as a man but as a function. He thought he could understand now how terrorists could justify killing people. The cop was probably not a bad man. But what he was doing was wrong. He was hurting this girl who had hurt no one. Tyler didn’t look back. He was too sickened.

Of course she’s no angel either, said Smooth, who now telephoned him every day and who always stuck up for cops. That officer might have been having a bad day, see. And maybe he’s seen her rob people, or maybe someone like her gave him some shit…

I guess she does have an attitude sometimes, he dully agreed.

How’s married life?

It’s not going so well.

Hang in there, Henry. Show some responsibility. Irene’s yours. She depends on you. And you have to obey the Queen…

| 190 |

Every night the false Irene was always in the bathroom for a very long time, not unlike the dead Irene who used to spend a good half hour on makeup every morning, and with entirely consistent motives sat with the television on, reading in one of her women’s magazines about how to tell if a man was lying (this article having been written by a traitor to his sex who sought to ingratiate himself), or why electrolysis must be considered the best choice for removing hairs from a woman’s upper lip, although shaving remained preferable for legs and armpits, while depilatory creams were comme il faut for the bikini line. To Tyler, free from the necessity to master such processes, these directives partook of comedy — still more so thanks to their very solemnity. (Irene for her part had always been amused by Tyler’s subservience to cameras, and his craving to browse the incoming books at City Lights — friends and oracles to him, to her alien trash.) We all like to know the latest things. And even if there were no latest things and the magazine articles all repeated each other, still, Irene was so interested in the subject of beautification (which, after all, stands next to beatification in importance) that she could not stop reading about it, just as a man who knows pretty well what sex is cannot stop driving down to Capp Street every Saturday — doubtless for verification purposes only. Yes, the real Irene spent her life in the bathroom — and so did the false Irene, but only to shoot up. For this reason, bathrooms not infrequently reminded Tyler of the dead Irene. About two months before her end he had driven over at John and Irene’s on a Sunday morning, more anxious than pleased to have been invited. Yes, he’d see Irene, but they’d be constrained — and what if John sat between them? Irene was pretending to be wholesomely contented. Tyler pretended that his financial affairs were prospering. They would go out for brunch as soon as John got off the phone. On the coffee table, one of Irene’s magazines lay open to an article which explained how a woman could tell if her best friend were really not her best friend. — I can’t guarantee that, John was saying. — Tyler went to use the bathroom, from which Irene had just emerged, and in which she would soon kill herself. Longing so bitterly for her that he almost departed his body, he closed the door, raised the toilet lid while the television warned and whined down the hall, turned on the fan, like a whore in a Tenderloin hotel trying to drown out the sounds of her commerce — and then, his fly already unbuttoned, saw beneath the sink the wicker hamper of dirty clothes. (Remembering all this later, he understood Dan Smooth all too well.) Irene, Irene, Irene! Tyler made sure that the bathroom door was locked. He lifted the cover and most happily found on top of the pile a pair of Irene’s panties fresh from last night. He knew from Irene that she and John didn’t make love anymore, so he was not afraid of encountering his brother’s spoor. Along that slender white strip of polyester which had been between Irene’s legs he found what Dan Smooth would have gloried in: a tiny blot of gold. But raising the panties to his face and inhaling deeply, even there he could not smell Irene, only a faint odor of perfume that masked whatever human scent there might have been. Almost in a rage, he smelled the panties again and again. But there was nothing.

| 191 |

Beloved and miscast Tyler paid Irene out of next month’s rent money, then headed for a Mexican restaurant on Seventeenth and Mission which he hadn’t tried. Passing one skinny shrieking black Mr. AIDS, he entered a world of carne asada smells and trumpet music powerful enough to lift him into heaven, with Spanish or Mexican girls on the walls showing their breasts and flashing their rears. At the tables, men slowly crammed burritos into their jaws. Domino came in with her bag of laundry, clopp-clopping, flashing her long, scarred legs; there was the eye-shaped bullet scar, there the motorcycle scar in he’d once rubbed the locator fluid. He waved, and she grinned at him, which was how he learned that she was now missing a tooth.

What news? he said.

Getting dinner to go, the whore replied with a yawn.

The meat cleaver chattered on the blood-hued cutting board.

Just getting started today, Domino?

Uh huh.

She pulled her dress away from her collarbone, and peered down into her bra, her lips moving. He realized that she was counting her money. When she had concluded this operation, she scanned the counter with a scowl, and, seeing that her burrito remained unfinished, which meant that the next two or three minutes would be wasted anyhow, poutingly came and sat beside him.

Just like old times, darling, he said. Just like you and me alone in that hotel with those wine coolers…

Do you hate me?

Hate you? God, no. But I’m afraid of you sometimes. You’re a pretty tough lady.

I know, she said with a happy little smile.

Her lips were moving again. Maybe she was still totaling up her money, or maybe she was praying.

Someday I’m gonna do this thing to you guys, she purred. To all of you guys.

And we’ll all be down on our knees?

That’s right, Henry. And you’ll all be missing something. You’ll all be bleeding.

It’s nothing personal, is it?

No. Not exactly. Where’s my fucking burrito? I’m hungry.

Hey, it’s been five minutes and you still haven’t asked me if I’m a misogynist.

Do you think any of us were prepared for this? Do you think I was born to debase myself in front of men I don’t even know?

I don’t think it’s necessarily debasing.

How the fuck would you know?

How come the Queen doesn’t talk about being debased?

Don’t mention that name, said the girl automatically, snaking her face from side to side.

Well, let me ask you this, he said. If you’re debasing yourself, who’s making you do it?

It’s a job getting a job in this town, she shruggingly said.

Yeah, yeah.

I oughta cut you, she whispered.

You wouldn’t be the first, he chuckled. (As Irene used to say: He’s American, so he really likes to express his feelings. I’m not used to that.)

Look, Mr. Tyler or whatever your name is. Let’s get the ball rolling. I’m free and you’re free. Do you want a piece of ass? Frankly, I’d prefer to be making money instead of wasting time just chatting. I’ve got a little rock…

If I were to pay you, would you like me any better?

Naturally, baby. I might even love you.

For five whole minutes? he said with a wink. — There. You smiled. I actually got you to smile. You’re so pretty when you smile.

I am?

Why do you think you’re so sad? Speaking for myself, I—

Look, the blonde said. I’ve got my dates to take care of. I don’t need your shit. You and — and her, and Lily and Consuelo and Beatrice and Chocolate and Strawberry and Justin can all talk about me behind my back if you want. I don’t give a fuck.

Domino—

Look. You want to fuck me or not?

The Queen said—

Maj can pee up a rope.

Have you seen my Irene?

She started to rise, and he said: Domino, I’ll be your friend if you let me.

If you pay me, the whore said. That would work.

Honk four times, he said. Looks like your burrito’s ready.

| 192 |

Would you excuse me, please? said the false Irene. I don’t like anyone to see when I do this.

All night she kept him awake with her moaning in the bathroom. There’d be a long pause, then a deep, heartfelt animal noise that could have been either pain or sexual ecstasy; of course it was pain. Then from time to time came the emphatic sucking pop as she pulled the plunger out of the needle, trying to clear it. But she couldn’t. That shoe polish in the heroin — to hell with what it did to a girl’s veins; the important thing was that it gummed up her needle, and needles were not easy to come by… He heard her begin to weep.

| 193 |

Sacramento was chokingly hot that day — the Sierras were crawling with wildfires, said the radio, and coming down from the Pacific Coast Range into the Central Valley he had seen on the horizon a cloud of bluish-grey too pale to be smog; after Vacaville his throat began to get sore; that week, too, heat wave records shattered, or almost broke, or retained their majesty; record temperatures were exceeded every summer, it seemed, and yet it remained simply hot — a hundred and ten downtown today, the newspaper said, and a hundred and twelve five miles from there — vain precision! — but Sacramento most admirably continued with its business, its shopping, auto repair, driving, with its backyard weddings cool but not chilly beneath those evenings of rose bushes and midges as it got later and later, the businessmen yawning, waiting for the toast while their wives smiled vaguely and their children fidgeted, thinking about big slices of wedding cake, and strangers became friends at least until midnight, and sometimes longer; neighbors enjoyed seeing each other there because it meant that the world had not changed yet and therefore never would; neighbors would always be there; hence no one would die; and then it came time to cut the cake and throw rice, time then to go home, dreaming with raw throats, wake up hungover the next hot bright morning; Tyler had done this. His mother’s best friends, Mr. and Mrs. King down the street, were proud at last to announce the marriage of their daughter Lisa to a grim proud boy from out of town. Tyler liked the Kings very much. He would have attended the wedding, but he was afraid that if he stayed that long, the false Irene might disappear.

Per arrangement he went by Dan Smooth’s house to feed the cat and empty the litterbox. Dan Smooth was in Amsterdam in a hotel with young boys.

Yes, Sacramento was hot but San Francisco was cold and foggy that day with clouds crawling through the fog.

You don’t look well, his mother said weakly. Do you have any good news to tell me?

Well, Mom, I have a girlfriend.

You do? Oh, Henry, I’m so glad! Tell me all about her. Tell me where you met her. How long have you been seeing her? What’s her name?

He gazed at his mother with his eyes like welder’s goggled over his soul, dark and blank and almost opaque to protect him from what they might see, and he swallowed once and said: Irene.

| 194 |

See, for twenty they usually give you more. But there was only a couple guys out. Can’t trust all of ’em…

Okay, Irene, he said, sit down. You don’t look too steady on your feet. Where’d you cop?

Over by the Hotel Tony on Turk Street.

I thought you used the Mohawk.

It burned down, she said. Domino and I were even staying there at the time. We moved to the Royal Hotel. But now she… you know, with the Queen. So I… And the Royal Hotel, well, I can’t…

Oh, how’s that place? he asked, trying to be interested. She exhausted him.

Worse than the Mohawk, she said sourly.

That’s pretty bad.

Hey, I was wondering if you could lend me—

Irene?

What?

This morning I woke up feeling—

Here… she muttered to herself. The balloon… let me get that up…

Tyler sat down heavily.

Sagging, stinking, musing, sinking, swaying, trying so hard to put the needle back in her little purse but forgetting even as she’d begun the action what she was doing, she muttered: Earlier I bought one from this guy but it musta pooped out or something because I didn’t feel… Yeah, I’m just trying to put this stick away but I can’t find the little…

She kept leaning and swaying on the toilet seat. She tried to draw the plunger out but her fingers kept getting in each others’ way. Now the plunger was upraised like a masturbator’s face. Her body offered him a bitter smell, not sweet like a fat girl’s. Her spastic shoulders sent telegraph signals of need to someone other than him — maybe to the Queen, or maybe just to the ether. Her long hair hung down. Her belt buckle kept flapping and rattling because she’d first tried to shoot herself in the behind. She sat there on the toilet seat, and her scarred, stinking hand sought a fatty bloody friendly place within her private waterfall world of hair to insert the last millimeter of gladness; and she slumped and slumped. He stroked her neck and she kissed him and said: You’re so nice.

Her shirt had a stinking brown stain. — Oh, see, that’s where I muscle. But I didn’t have no tissue. So it bled from the needle. Lemme take a leak…

Slowly, slowly, with the needlehead she stirred what was in the bottlecap.

He went out and lay down. From the bathroom came the sound of moaning.

I try to be a nice person, she told him later. My Daddy always said I was his favorite daughter. After my mother died of cancer he got it in his prostate gland and he told nobody but me. I promised not to tell anybody, and I didn’t. So he died. Then my sister, aged thirty-four, got cancer of the stomach. She bled to death. That’s a hell of a way to die.

And now who do you have?

Nobody.

Not me? he asked, hating himself.

Oh, that’s different. You’ll always be my special customer — I mean my special friend…

No girlfriends?

Oh, it used to be different. Six years ago, we’d look out for each other. Now the world has changed.

What about the Queen?

She may be my Queen, but how much can she do? I’m still an addict, aren’t I? My shit still stinks, and money doesn’t grow on trees. I’m not sayin’ she… Queen’s so nice to me, actually. She feeds me an’… I’m tryin’ to remember if I ever… Oh, where’s the goddamned vein? Goddammit, goddammit, goddamn my goddamned body, oh, Henry, it hurts—it hurts! Ow! Oh, that’s better. And Domino ripped me off, but I forgive her, ’cause she had a need. You know what I’m saying? One night she was real sick, so I loaned her eighteen to get well. Now she ignores me. I saw her today, out making money in a polka-dot dress…

She had fallen asleep on the toilet seat now, with piss running down her thighs.

| 195 |

Oops, said Irene. See what I did? I messed up the point, so I’ll have to break it off. I won’t do it here.

Her head sagged until her hair touched the floor

Okay, where’s my top? she said, sitting on the toilet, stinking, scarred, and naked.

You got any tissue? she said. Lemme put this here for a few minutes.

You got any more money? she said.

You tryin’ to jack me up? she said.

No, he said, almost stifling in sadness and boredom.

You’re a detective, so that means you’re cop, she suddenly pronounced, sitting up wide-eyed and stinking on the toilet seat.

Glad you have it figured out, he said listlessly.

Well, ain’t I right?

Not really. Cops and everybody pretty much turn a blind eye to what we do. Anyhow, I—

Would you please please please be quiet for a minute? she said. I need to think. I think maybe I dropped a little chunk of rock somewhere in this bathroom, but maybe it wasn’t here…

He remembered being alone with the true Irene once when she had started yawning, getting distant: Yes, I’m tired, she admitted. — But when others came out, Irene, smiling and gracious, said to everyone: No, I’m not tired.

| 196 |

Just after dark on the first Friday night in July he sat in his car with the window rolled down and a pad on his knee, watching the neon lights squirming uneasily in and out of brightness along the borders of the sign for the Jade Galore Jewelry Co.; a bank sign glowed cold steadfast, and red ideograms gripped the windowpanes of the Tong Kee Restaurant like athletic crabs. Irene was out dating. Between the Tong Kee and the Dick Troi Hair Salon, a tall alley, full of sky, lured his attention by means of a succession of awnings. Between him and the alley, the flank of a car or van frequently occluded itself, or the heads of tourists, or Chinese mothers carrying their babies; but these flickers passed as quickly as they came, leaving the alley for Tyler. An Asian cop labored up the sidewalk, chewing gum, his pistol and baton dragging down his Sam Browne belt. The cop looked at his watch and entered the Tong Kee Restaurant. Small white lights shone uselessly in the alley. A Chinese woman passed quickly smiling, arms folded across her tiny breasts. The fishes swiggled their tails and flippers most languidly behind the window of the Tong Kee. A stooped old lady, clutching many plastic bags, stopped in front of the alley for a long time. Tyler sighed, doodled on his pad.

After an hour he went home. It was still early.

He picked up the phone, dialled, and said: This is Henry Tyler. I waited all night and Mr. Chong never came out.

That’s right, he said, narrowing his eyes. You heard what I said. I figure he’s clean. I figure we don’t need to bother him.

Well, that’s too bad, he said. I don’t want this case. I’m busy.

Fine, he said. I’ll send you an invoice.

| 197 |

Tyler, waiting for hospital visiting hours so that he could go see Irene, whose abscesses had finally won her admission, inspected his reflection on the plasticized marble wall behind the firehouse red beer tap of what used to be Blackie’s Club and was now the Wonderbar although the Blackie’s Club sign was still up above the back door. Oldies on the jukebox brought teary smiles to his alcoholic neighbor. The door of happiness opened on TV. Loreena the barmaid, hand on her hip, served the gesticulating or placidly nodding drinkers.

Well, what do you have to tell me? said Dan Smooth, easing his plump buttock onto the stool to Tyler’s right.

There’s a bull market for twelve-year-olds’ earwax is my news, said Tyler. What else can I tell you? Oh, I know. A stitch in time saves nine. How was Amsterdam?

Don’t talk to me about sewing, said Smooth, with his habitual angry leer. It reminds me of the little girls in pink tutus who—

OK, mum’s the word then, said Tyler carelessly. Buy you a shot?

In a moment, said Smooth. You see, I still have a special secret taste on my palate.

Tyler sipped his tequila silently.

And how are your business worries progressing? said Smooth.

Oh, they’re progressing, all right. I’m barely making my rent and car payments as it is.

You’ll be happier when you let it all go and become homeless, Smooth replied quickly. And, you know, I was just talking with the Queen about you, and she says that’s destined to happen.

After the other Canaanites get put to the sword?

Exactly. And I go to the lions. Not that I’m a Christian or anything… Shit. There goes the taste. What a pretty taste. It’s fading now; it’s gone… what a shame. Buy me a drink, Henry. The hell with your rent money.

Tyler raised a finger. — Loreena! Could I get a beer for this gentleman?

Sure, sweetie, said Loreena.

How’s everything for you, dear? said Smooth.

The same, said Loreena. I’m thinking of filing a restraining order. Excuse me. That guy down there got eighty-sixed last week. I need to go kick him out. Hey, Domino just told me a good one. What do you get when you cross a nymphomaniac with a kleptomaniac?

A rapist, said Tyler.

Oh, cut it out. A fuckin’ thief. Isn’t that rich? Ha, ha, ha!

The bar was getting more crowded now. Tired men, old men, hopeless men, and a pair of whores gradually entered through the swinging door, fluttering about as prettily as the international flags strung over Grant Street. Two drunks were arguing across the pool table.

Dan, said Tyler suddenly, do you think you could hook me up with the FBI? Get me a big job that would last a while?

Hee, hee, said Smooth wiggling his finger in the mouth of his beer bottle. God love you, Henry, are you asking for another favor?

Yeah, said Tyler.

You know I used my influence for you. With the Queen, Henry, with the Queen. You know that, or you don’t know?

I know, muttered Tyler, tapping his foot.

And have you profited by your introduction to her?

What the hell’s that supposed to mean?

Word on the street’s you’re giving up on that new Irene she got you. You said all you wanted was to have Irene back and she did that for you and you’re still not satisfied. You’re just a—

I’m going to the hospital to see her.

I rest my case. You’re keeping her in the hospital, not at your place, so what kind of goddamned caring is that, son?

It’s all true. And so I don’t know if I’m not trying hard enough — if I don’t have enough faith in the Queen to really love Irene and believe in her — or if I’m actually being faithful to the Irene who’s lying in the ground. And I–I don’t know what to do.

Well, at least you’re sincere, Smooth said. The Queen loves sincere people.

Yeah, Tyler said despondently.

And you believe in justice?

What do you mean?

You believe that if you were working for the FBI you’d be helping good people and punishing bad people?

I, uh—

Tell me a story about our great justice system, Henry.

Know how the police broke this one guy? said Tyler with a sneering chuckle. What they did was they hooked him up to a photocopy machine. And on the glass over the electric eye, underneath the cover, they put a piece of paper that said “FALSE.” So every time they’d ask the suspect a question, they’d hit the “START” button. And then a piece of paper that said “FALSE” would come out. So they’d show that to the suspect and say: See? You’re lying. And they broke that guy. He confessed.

All right. Fine. You’re on our side. You’re a Canaanite. And how much influence do you think I have with Louis Freeh?

Let me guess. You’re about to tell me you don’t have any.

Splendid! cried Smooth, loudly enough for one of the drinkers to turn his head frowningly.

Oh, forget it, said Tyler.

We can’t forget it now, no matter how much we both may want to, rejoined the odious man. You’re anxious, I take it, about your actual survival. You’re pissing blood these days. Am I correct, Henry?

Tyler shrugged his shoulders despairingly.

Don’t think I don’t want to help you. We’re blood brothers, after all. Tell me we’re blood brothers, Henry.

We’re blood brothers, said Tyler dully, remembering the autobiography of a serial killer which he’d thumbed through some months ago: the murderer, since electrocuted in Florida, had always made his victims parrot at knifepoint some puerile affirmation of sexual or emotional need before he raped and eviscerated them. What a world! I don’t want to be in this world any longer, he thought to himself.

Henry, I can see you’re desperate. All the fight’s gone out of you.

Tyler smiled bitterly.

All the same, Smooth continued, you’re a lucky whore-hound. The Queen likes you; I know she does…

What’s on your agenda for the Queen and me? said Tyler, unable to keep the anxiety from his voice.

Number one: You came to me, not I to you. Number two: You begged me and bribed me to set you up with the Queen. True or false?

I’ve got to go to the hospital, said Tyler.

To visit Irene, I know. Let me come along, Henry.

Are you a sadist? asked Tyler in slow quiet wonder.

Anyhow, it’s not your job you’re worried about, said Smooth, gazing smilingly into his eyes. If I truly believed you cared about that, I would never have picked you up. It’s your sister-in-law’s rotten, stinking twat…

Nothing about Irene was rotten or ever could be, said Tyler steadily.

That’s what I like about you. Caught in an obsession — a delusion, really — and a very harmful, antisocial one, and the man will not give up! Hey, Loreena! This man fucked his own sister-in-law to death and now he—

Tyler leaped off his stool and was already cocking his arm for the punch when Smooth kicked him in the stomach. Tyler doubled over retching.

I’m a black belt, you know, Smooth whispered, his breath tickling Tyler’s ear. You had to be humbled. Now here. I’m putting three hundred dollars in your pocket. Don’t thank me. It’s not from me; it’s from the Queen…

| 198 |

He knew by then that it would never work out with the false Irene, but he knew also that he didn’t even have to tell her, that unless he physically assaulted her she would never regard him with all the bright-eyed watchful head-turns of a sick pigeon on the sidewalk, still strong and fearful at the very beginning of its death-struggle, because except physically the false Irene could not really be hurt anymore, so all he had to do was not see her and maybe not even tell the Queen that it hadn’t worked out because the Queen had tried to be good to him — he continued in awe of her, fearing to reject her gifts. Last time he’d seen her she’d stood naked against a concrete wall, supporting her little breasts with her hands while the other girls started drawing snakes on the wall, and he didn’t know what to make of it — were they playing or was it a ceremony or what? Dan Smooth would undoubtedly have told him the answer, but listening to Smooth left him almost exhausted.

A siren went by. Irene wiggled a loose black tooth and finally pulled it out. Her breath reeked of decay.

(But he recollected the time he came by dead Irene’s early one morning and knocked at the door for a long time until Irene woke up. John was away on business. When Tyler embraced her, her body likewise gave off a sour smell which shocked him.)

This black guy, this dope dealer put a gun in my mouth, the false Irene explained. Said that was the only way he could come. I started cussing him out and I got out of there, but not before he whacked me in the teeth with his gun, and this tooth here was funny ever since. I think it died a long time time ago, maybe right after he did that.

Here’s a tissue, he said. Why don’t you pack it in the hole until it stops bleeding — yeah, that’s good.

You’re a nice guy, Henry, she said dully. I wish I could be nicer. I don’t know why I can’t, but I just can’t.

He stroked her hair.

I used to wish I was dead, she said brightly, but one day I woke up and realized I was already dead, you know, where it counts, so why not relax and not make a big stink?

I know another dead Irene who—

But dead people do stink no matter what they ever meant to do… And now it’s easier… Hey, can you gimme five dollars? Just five. I’m not greedy. I’m not well; I need some medicine, you know what kind…

Sure, he said. Here you go.

Where do you get your money from anyway?

From business.

Oh, I’m sorry, baby. I didn’t mean to butt in. I didn’t know you had anything to hide. I mean, the Queen told me you’re in love with a dead girl and I’m supposed to be her, so I just kind of figured you’d…

Tyler said nothing. A fly landed on Irene’s filthy neck and she wearily brushed it away.

Can I tell you my real name? she said. My real name’s Consuelo.

He felt gratefulness and pain. She wanted to share something with him after all; she was freeing him from her; now she could not be Irene anymore; he had to admit that Irene would never be his or even be with him, and alone he would live on and on.

My husband took the fall for my brother, Consuelo said. My brother’s no good. He got caught by that three strikes law. Suspicion of robbery, they said. It was only suspicion. He’s doing three months. An’ some whore named Chokecherry, kind of a frightening name, well, she and he… So I started… doing… this…

She was crying.

Oh, God, she sobbed. I started doing this, but I was doing this before, and I was lying to you to make you feel sorry for me but you don’t care and I don’t want you to care, I don’t even… I’m just a piece of shit. What do I have to lie to you for? You’ve always been decent to me; you don’t judge me, but I—

So when does your husband get out, Consuelo?

Oh, it doesn’t feel right when you call me by my name; I should never have told you…

| 199 |

Driving down Nineteeth toward the Golden Gate, he reached the gas station at Pacheco and turned right, coming home amidst the whitish houses whose dormer windows bulged blindly like the eyes of dead frogs. The neighbor’s blue flashing light was on. The trees were snipped and sculpted alike from lawn to lawn — Italian cypresses and then bonsai’d trees. He had been with the false Irene too long now. He could scarcely fathom this place. He honestly could not understand why God had put him here in this cool clean zone while the false Irene and the Queen and all that crew had to live in filth. Or was it their choice? Or was it heredity, destiny, class conflict, inevitability? He was angry with everyone, even with the Queen.

| 200 |

He awoke with the taste of the real Irene’s cunt in his mouth.

| 201 |

After a week of mendacious coolness the heat had returned. Tyler’s car was at the local shop, Sacramento labor being a relative bargain, so he walked down to J Street where across from the palm-tree’d square once called Freedom Park by the Wobblies, then Plaza Park by the corporations which had transformed Sacramento from a hot slow farming town into a desperately ugly conglomeration of malls and industrial parks, then Wino Park by those who had eyes, then Cesar Chavez Park by those who, like Tyler, deify the dead, he found the pawn shop of his recollections, where he inspected gold chains, then strolled past the cigar shop to the next pawn shop whose gold chains were supposedly new, and in this abode of discounted joy the woman drew herself up behind the counter and said: Well, what is it?

I’d like to spend about a hundred bucks on one of these, he said.

Links style or rope style?

Well, should she hang herself or just be locked up? he said. It’s up to you.

The woman pulled out the first gold chain that came to hand and said: This is probably a little more than a hundred dollars.

And how about that one?

It’s all by weight.

Well, ma’am, then would you mind weighing it for me and telling me how much it is?

The woman sighed heavily, slammed his choice down on the scale, and said: Eighty-three twenty-four.

I hope to see you again before then.

I beg your pardon?

It’s perfect.

The other one’s a hundred twelve.

Oh, I’m a cheapskate. I guess I’ll take the one that caught my eye.

Eighty-nine twenty.

Guess I’d better pay before the price goes up again.

That’s the tax, sir.

It certainly is.

What is your name? I need it for our receipt.

I prefer privacy, thanks, said Tyler.

Sir, you’ll have to give me a name.

Adolf Hitler, said Tyler.

The woman snatched up the gold chain and stalked off to the manager. The manager looked up from the telephone and shot Tyler a sly glance. Tyler gazed back at him serenely.

Returning, the woman wrote C A S H on the receipt.

Why, how did you know my name? said Tyler. I’m Johnny Cash’s third cousin once removed.

I’ll get you a box, said the woman.

She spread the gold chain out on the cotton and tried to stab it down with golden colored pins, which didn’t take. Tyler watched with friendly interest.

What are the pins made of? he inquired.

You can take it from me they’re not real gold, said the woman, giving up her attempt to skewer the chain. She would have been a poor lepidopterist.

Tyler slid his finger under the chain, enjoying the smoothness and cool weight of it, and then he thanked the woman, took the box, and went out.

| 202 |

He awoke with the taste of Irene’s cunt in his mouth.

| 203 |

And now it was Saturday evening near the Tenderloin, and the red lights chirred green and he rolled past the Opera House, accompanied by sparse lights. The greenish dome of City Hall reminded him of Dan Smooth’s head. Straight up through the timed lights on Gough Street was the way to salvation, toward the Bay and the Marin headlands, but he meant to go the other way, down to the grimy darkness where the Queen was. His heart exuded self-praise. Who was he tricking? He didn’t love her; he loved Irene. But he wanted to pay his respects. He wanted to be thanked. He wanted the Queen to know that he continually thought of her. For once, the eyes were not narrowed in his grey face. His confidence, his hope, needed only a couple of finishing touches. It never dawned on him that hanging about the Queen’s court might be as improper a thing for a man to do as joining Apache women at their card games. He’d sent word by way of the parking garage that he was coming, and Beatrice, who was wide, sunny and busy like Mission Street itself with all its palm trees and families, said that the tall man would be meeting him on Larkin and Golden Gate at nine-thirty sharp. He had the gold chain in his coat pocket. It was that which gave him his confidence. Like Celia, who at that very moment sat in an Afghan carpet shop on Polk Street purchasing a magnificent bundle of threads which she could not realistically afford, he believed that offerings of money, being more easily made, were more craftily practical than the other kind. It is written that when the Greeks made sacrifices to Zeus, they threw only entrails into the sacred fire, keeping the meat for themselves. Little wonder that Zeus did not always reciprocate with ready-wrapped treasures.

At the corner, a pert black girl with a hairdo like a giant paintbrush started stretching her arms and shoulders. — You call me, you come to me, she said.

I wish I could, said Tyler. But I have a date with the Queen.

The Queen! she cried in amazement. It won’t work. The conspiracy—

But just then the light changed. He waved and drove on, feeling very loyal. He hadn’t checked his answering machine all day.

| 204 |

The tall man was late. Tyler stood waiting in front of the Mitchell Brothers as if for the strip show, taking his time, until the man behind the window said: Do you want to go in or don’t you? and Tyler said: Well, give me a minute to make up my mind and he leaned there for another ten minutes until the man said: You can’t just stay here. You’ll have to go elsewhere to make your decision… and Tyler said: Now, you say that if I go in now it costs fifteen dollars but half an hour from now it’ll cost twenty-five? and the man said that’s right and Tyler leaned there for another ten minutes and then said: I’m trying to make up my mind whether I’d rather pay fifteen dollars or twenty-five dollars. Can I just wait here for half an hour? — It’s the same show, the man said. — Yes, said Tyler, but somehow I have the feeling that for twenty-five dollars I’ll get more.

So he wasted the man’s time until he saw Justin coming from the direction of the parking garage.

He raised his hat.

Hello, Henry, said the tall man.

Good evening, Justin, said Tyler. How are you and how’s the Queen?

Oh, shitty as always, said the tall man. More goddamned cops and vigs nosing around. Let’s get out of here.

You can’t just stay here, said the man behind the ticket window.

Okay, sir, said Tyler. We’ll be back for the hundred-dollar show.

The tall man led him down Leavenworth Street past a late-night soup restaurant through whose window Tyler glimpsed a slender Vietnamese girl with a rainbow ribbon in her hair; with a rag and window cleaner the girl was wiping each plexiglass-covered table to mirror-ness.

Hey, Justin.

What?

Where are you from, anyway?

I’m concrete. I’m a sidewalk. I come from all over.

When I’m with a woman I come all over, so that makes two of us.

You know what, Henry? You try to be funny, but you ain’t funny. You’re just a sad-assed honky sonofabitch.

Guess my ass would be pretty happy if you stuck your finger up it in the back seat of my faggoty car.

You’re too fuckin’ much. We turn left.

| 205 |

The voice in the first cell — a tremulous old male voice — was saying: When you want to touch her hair you put her hand on your head so she knows you’re not insulting her sacred place, and she smiles, oh, Jesus, that’s how you do it; and then when you eat her out she is, well, she is caressing your hair so, so softly.

Does he have an Oriental gal interrogating him? said the Queen. He’s talking about Oriental gals. He sounds like a nice guy.

Yeah, I think that one no problem, said a smiling Thai girl, sticking her head out from between the red curtains. He just like the girl too much! Very funny, very nice man! Him so good!

All right, let him out, said the Queen.

She kisses you of her own accord but with closed lips, the dreamy old voice went on.

Wait a minute, the Queen said. I don’t like the sound of that. You interrogate him some more.

Her wet, tight, thoroughly delicious cunt… the voice mumbled. I’m so sleepy, but… shaven up to the top, then a nice overhang of hair. Tell her I want to be her friend.

All right, called the Queen. Nothing wrong with any of that. He sounds a little confused, but his heart’s in the right place. Who reported him?

Smooth, said Justin.

Dan Smooth reported him? What’d he say?

Said he hurt a child.

Smooth doesn’t lie about stuff like that. Get to the bottom of it. Tell this guy he’s gotta come clean or I’m gonna cut his balls off and cook ’em and make him eat ’em.

Awright, Maj, the tall man said. Want me to kick him around?

Just talk to him. You can do that well.

That Henry Tyler’s waitin’ on you.

Oh, he is? I heard he left that girl I got him.

That’s right, Maj.

All rightie. I’ll see him.

| 206 |

Where is she, Henry?

I don’t know. I stopped seeing her after she told me her real name.

Ah. So you stuck it out that long. Well well well. C’mere.

He came to her.

Kneel down.

He knelt.

Touch me, Henry, said the Queen. Just touch my shoulder or touch my hand. It don’t matter. Oh, you’re my sweet little baby boy. That’s right. Now close your eyes. You’re going to see that Irene you love. Close ’em tight. Now tell me what you see. You can tell me. Don’t be ashamed.

The Queen was squeezing his hand.

He saw the true Irene as a slender girl of nine, silently carrying her baby brother up and down the stairs.

You’re right, he whispered. I saw her.

She was a little girl, wasn’t she?

Yes.

You know what that means?

What, am I like Dan Smooth?

No no no. Inside, you’re little, same as her. You wanna be her friend. You wanna play with her. But you can’t, ’cause she’s dead. Ain’t that right, Henry?

Yes, he said dully.

You need to cry? You can cry in front of me if you want. Don’t mind about me.

He squeezed her hand. He said: I’m not sure I can, uh….

All right. Now close your eyes again. Here goes.

He saw perfect fish-ribs and kale amist codfish and red sauteed onions. Irene was eating with chopsticks, somewhere in the wide streets and malls of Koreatown. It was a dish called cho-rim. Now she was smiling and saying something, but it was all silent. She couldn’t see him. Her old uncles, all dead like her, smiled wearily and picked their teeth.

She’s having fish for dinner, right? said the Queen with a knowing smile.

Uh huh, said Tyler, nodding his head with an effort.

That means she’s been saved. She’s in heaven now, Henry. You don’t have to worry about her. If you see a dead person that you love, and they’re eating fish, that means they’re eating the body of Jesus. They’re gonna be okay. But you know that Irene’s not your kind, Henry. She’s a Christian girl. When she died, she left you. She never could have been with you. You know that, Henry honey? You got to know that.

Tyler’s stubbly face twitched, and a long tear began to ease out of his left eye, slowly, slowly descending his cheek. He felt no relief.

Don’t think about her too much. If you do, she gonna ache.

I—

Baby, I’m gonna ask you a question, whispered the Queen. And you don’t have to answer, ’cause I already know the answer.

Tyler began to shake and shiver.

Did you have sex with Irene, Henry? It’s okay. You can answer.

Another tear came out of him, this one burning hot.

Henry? Sweetheart, you okay? Sweetheart, did you and Irene make love?

He wept.

Listen to me, Henry, said the Queen, taking his head between her hands. Not to answer me is to deny her. You remember how Peter denied Jesus? I don’t know him, he said. Did you know Irene? Did you have carnal knowledge of Irene?

Tyler groaned. He tried to speak, but could not.

| 207 |

He knelt down and threw his arms around her, burying his face in her waist. Then slowly he sank down to the concrete floor, and clasping her ankles, placed his forehead on the floor. He lifted her foot and placed it on his neck with the shoeheel pressing down. She remained still. She neither withdrew her foot from him nor did she lean her weight on it. Together they listened to the squeaking of stolen shopping carts, and Justin yelling: Shut up! Strawberry screamed again and again. Kitty was silent. He gripped the Queen’s foot encouragingly, and she pressed down on his neck ever so slightly. The two of them stayed like that for a very long time and then he said to her: I am yours.

What do you want to do? she said.

I want you to…

You can tell me, she said very gently.

I want you to be my…

He was clinging to her tightly and his body was trembling.

Look at me, the Queen said so gently.

He looked her in the face.

Are you serious? she said.

I was dreaming about your breath, he said. I wanted to drink it in.

When he gave her the gold chain, she began to cry.

| 208 |

I love you, darling, he’d said to Irene.

Love you, too! she always used to whisper, kissing him again and again. But by the end she only palely replied: Thank you for loving me.

There was nothing pale about the Queen.

| 209 |

He slid his hand around the Queen’s shoulders and she got up and moved away, as he thought, but a few moments later they had come face to face and his mouth was on her mouth and her lips opened. His tongue was in her mouth. She was sucking his lips. He kissed her until his vision went black. — Thank you, Africa, he said. There was a roaring around him. All he could think of was: Oh, God. Oh, God. Thank you, God.

He stumbled away and sat down, weak. He kept whispering: Oh, God, oh, God. His heart rushed. For this alone it was worth having lived.