The Royal Family

| 258 |

I’ll tell you a truth as long and naked as a cocktail waitress’s leg: Tyler did not like Las Vegas. Only for a check with more than one zero on it — or for his Queen — would he have consented to leave home, venturing beyond the white-candied mountains of his Sierras spiced with treetops. There were three new hotels and then there was Feminine Circus, they said. Already as Las Vegas spread her thighs before him like a collage of silicon chips on the tan plain, he saw the black pyramid of mediocrity like a dull jewel, the Sphinx crouching out in front. That was the cheap easy place where he had to go. That was the Hotel Luxor. John and Brady and the rest wouldn’t be caught dead there. They all had suites at Feminine Circus.

The pink ticket said:

$ $

GRAND OPENING

FEMININE

CIRCUS

TONITE!!!

Free Free Free

SEX SEX SEX SEX

No minors permitted beyond

family areas.

$ $

And indeed, it truly was Sneak Peek Night at Feminine Circus — the largest virtual sex casino in the world (this week, at least). — But it is amazing what half a billion dollars will do… the C.E.O., one Jonas Brady, was musing aloud at the press conference. Half a million dollars a day for three and a half years! — A jungle of people blossomed behind the ropes. Not very far from them, a man whose cardboard sign read DOWN ON MY LUCK — THANKS AND GOD BLESS stood frozen beneath the freeway. If only he had known about the free hors d’oeuvres at Feminine Circus! The cool and concentrated faces of the musicians on their bandstand cast musical intellections down into the empty space of the future, for the sake of which the well-dressed people standing on the curb sipping drinks, the TV cameras and the people who served them, self-important geeks with light meters and duffel bags, glum security men in black suits, politely downpointing the antennae of their walkie-talkies, the police with their Sam Browne belts, hands close against their batons, were all here to do reverence.

Then a long silver limousine pulled up and everyone said: That’s her.

It’s the Queen! a small child cried in the silence.

A flunky opened the silver door.

We have to have a twenty-foot opening in here! a security man called.

Weary and disgusted, Tyler moved to the back of the crowd, where the biped and her handlers could still be seen on a big granular screen near the righthand stage. John and Celia were there somewhere, he supposed, probably up near the front in VIP seats. He hoped that they were having a good time, and that John was being decent to Celia. For a moment he wondered whether he should try to find them, perhaps by querying one of these men in long coats who held walkie-talkies repeatedly and sternly to their ears; but he but quickly sent that naive idea packing — why would he have any more to say to his brother in Vegas than in San Francisco? Besides, his presence would make John anxious. To hell with it.

Asian tourists in black suits cautiously raised point-and-shoot cameras. Children staring upward and rapidly moving their lips as in prayer, bare-shouldered women who showed thigh, women in leather jackets and furs who held almost completed cocktails with a maraschino cherry in each glass marking the icy ruins, bigshouldered men who pushed through the other heads like bulls, chains of old ladies who wriggled between professional ladies in grey blazers who tapped their toes; these were Tyler’s neighbors, and while he did not dislike any of them he would much rather have been on Mars. The faces were waiting faces. At least they were more alert here than inside. They still granted reality priority over its lookalike; something was about to happen, no matter how self-serving and trivial; maybe they would see people instead of virtuellas.

Another celebrity disembarked from a limousine, and the lady next to Tyler said: Who is it?

I can’t see his face so I don’t know, her husband said.

Who’s this Queen they keep talking about? asked Tyler innocently.

It’s Queen Zenobia from Lollipopland! a small girl informed him.

Don’t talk to strangers, said her mother.

Why, I’m not a stranger at all, ma’am, said Tyler brightly. My name’s Henry Tyler, U.S. Marshals. — And he flashed his toy police badge.

Oh! Well, officer, that’s Queen Zenobia from Lollipopland. Say hello to the nice officer, Darlene.

Hello. Are you really an officer?

Yes, Darlene, I really really am, Tyler beamed. He leaned toward Darlene’s mother, winked, and whispered: Vice Squad.

Well, they say this Queen Zenobia is really quite a…

Is that a fact, ma’am, said Tyler in amazement.

Just then a man cried: Ladies and gentlemen! and then a lady in red ruffles who might have been Betty Boop said something so squeaky, echoey and affected that for the life of him Tyler could not understand a word. Everyone applauded, and she introduced the Marquis de Sade: There he is, everyone! Then they all came, Cleopatra, Snow White, Bambi, Barbie, Helen of Troy in a silver miniskirt, the Queen of Sheba, Queen Zenobia, the Wicked Witch of the West, Mata Hari, Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland. They came in a coach whose driver wore a red hat like a folded prickly pear lobe, like a giant set of testicles. Tyler thought that he saw Munchkins, but they might have represented some other even more obscene constituency; their hats were a combination of semifilled condoms and Christmas stockings. There was so much feedback on the microphone that he could barely hear their imbecilic song, which echoed in the cold night like death.

Can you see anything? the man beside him said.

No, I can’t, the wife said. And I’m cold and my feet hurt.

Another limousine came, crammed full of big-eyed cartoon animals, and Tyler thought that he would be more ashamed to wear their livery than to hire himself out for sodomy; but he saw a happy smile on the face of the girl beside him, while a man in black just behind craned rigidly at the animals, bugging out his eyes as if he had just been executed. What gave him the right to deride his fellow Americans’ pleasure? Whatever bearing all this might have on his Queen, his love, he ought never attack any harmless means to happiness whatsoever, no matter how sentimental or false it might be. The crowd cheered, clapped, leaned forward smiling; this meant so much to them. The celebrities for their part stretched their faces wide in smiles of yearning love. Cameras and microphones sprouted on monopods above people’s heads. Grinding his teeth, narrowing his eyes, he forced a weakly trembling smile onto his face, according to the best impulses of repentance, but small Darlene saw and whispered: Mommy, why does that man smile so phony like that?

In the outer darkness across the street by the Hotel Tia Maria marched three thousand union souls with their white pickets: We say no way! Brady say, take away. We say no way! They began to trudge and swarm like ants back and forth in the darkness. Brady say, take away. We say no way! Their pale signs bobbed and crossed on the sidewalk. Their line stretched so long under the sky. Because the sidewalk constrained them, they comprised (Tyler suddenly realized) one of the first large entities he had seen in Vegas which had contours. He could actually sense the width of this angry crowd which stretched across the sidewalk and paraded back and forth; he didn’t have to see it on a TV monitor. It meant something. He didn’t know whether he agreed or disagreed with it but at least it was real. The picketers for their part had nothing to look at but the vast pink cliffs of Feminine Circus and then the blue slab under which the huge screen glowed and Jonas Andrew Brady, the big cheese, appeared on it to cry out: The world’s largest sex casino! Can you take a hint? Seven thousand beds! and the picketers raised their signs high, trying vainly to drown him out, yelling: Union! Union! Union! Union! and then AFL! CIO! AFL! CIO! in loud almost bullying voices which would not go away, and some of them were ululating like Arab women.

Tyler went around the back of Feminine Circus and saw a sad man in coveralls who was dragging bags of laundry into a black truck whose side read STERILIZATION. Tyler wondered where the dirty laundry came from when the place wasn’t even open yet.

He said to the security guard who watched him there in the cold emptiness beyond the crowd’s edge: What do you think of those union guys?

They’re making a lot of noise, the man replied, shrugging.

A handshake on the giant screen signaled the first firecracker, and the strikers went crazy, screaming Union! Union! Union! Union! but the crowd in the valet portico paid no attention, and subsequent fireworks annihilated the union message like artillery shells, brightly granular in the black desert sky, sandy crabs and spiderwebs that glowed. Every now and then Tyler could still hear: Union! Union! All right, let’s get the line movin’! Let’s keep it movin’! Union! Union! — The dynamite was beautiful, and blue beams whirred and sliced around in the vast cold sky. Dozens of fireworks shot up from behind a distant hotel with a noise like bull-roarers, polluting the night with smoke, burning the whole sky green; it rained light straight up as the band played “Back Alley Girls.” On the bandshell, Brady laughed into a dozen microphones: What happened? It was just a dream five years ago and now it’s a VIRTUAL SEX METROPOLIS!

… And Tyler swam through the double ranks of costumed weirdos and never-nevers, entering the marble lobby that blended into the gullet tonsilled and tumored with slot machine banks down which everyone milled. This was just how Brady wanted it to be. At that intimate media lunch he’d confided: The name of the game in this part of Feminine Circus is to get a whole bunch of people to walk by a whole bunch of slot machines. Because this is the family area. Now, the adult area will go on line tomorrow; and the name of that game is of course to pack the booths, pack the booths, pack those goddamned simulation booths with real paying customers! Hey, boys and girls, we’re on an upswing! — But while Brady’s stated goal regarding the slot machines had now been reached, the coin-swallowing lips on many of those appliances remained masking-taped, they being freshly born; their equivalent of baby-birdcries was: WAITING FOR PROGRAM DOWNLOAD. Tomorrow morning it would be the same here as it always was now at the Luxor, where a girl said dully: I remember when I first started playing poker here I never liked it, and then she put another quarter in. Of course the Luxor literally did not bear scrutiny. Whenever Tyler (breaking the rule of all wise old private eyes, which was, You can’t pull a real surveillance wthout three people) stood in one place too long and took notes, a security guard would come to watch. Then, too, the Luxor’s walls so often rang hollow when he tapped them, whereas the MGM Grand was so grand that he couldn’t even find the walls; and here at Feminine Circus he was always lost even when he knew where he was. The crowd came pouring in for free food, congesting the rooms until the waitresses in white aprons who ferried silver trays of new food above their heads could barely get through.

Tyler could not shake off a certain respect, even pride (strange to say) in the vastness of this place! It was an American place, big and colorful and hollow; probably ninety percent of the people on earth would give anything to spend money in places like this. The reflection of a flashing star above a quarter slot (more favored by the “average gambler” than nickel, dime or dollar) beat within a forgotten glass of wine as if it were a heart. Two media blondes in short red skirts sat side by side at a Jackpot Jungle and a Home Run, drinking margaritas. — No, we’re not virtualettes, they kept telling everybody, we’re real!

Tyler approached these ladies and said: Excuse me, but could you help me get Queen Zenobia’s autograph?

Sir, said the nearest blonde, I’m terribly sorry, but Queen Zenobia is terribly, terribly busy.

Well, I’ll be, said Tyler, open-mouthed.

You probably will, said the blonde.

The other blonde, pitying him, said: Never mind. She’s not the real Queen Zenobia. She’s just a stand-in. Mr. Brady is still trying to cast the real Queen.

Ah, said Tyler wisely. Well, thank you so much for your time. Let me just ask you one thing.

Mm hm? said the blonde.

Would Jesus demand that we reject all this?

The woman stared at him.

Cain would say it was up to us, said Tyler with a sinister chuckle. And he walked away.

He felt very hungry, but figures streamed so urgently between the weird cold rainbows in the niches of slot machines that for the moment he gave up the effort to fill his plate. A pharmacist was coming out of an unmarked door muttering: Norpramine, desapramine… — Tyler considered that a little strange. Somewhere beneath the triple-decker ledges of silk flowers which ascended to the starry ceiling, a man’s hands almost touched, one being wrapped in a twist of napkin, holding his plate, the other seizing a taco on the plate to bring it to his mouth; Tyler saw only this detail of him without the wholeness. A middle-aged woman stood at the center of an aisle between slot machines, throwing back her head and smiling. There was a lot of talk and happiness, and Tyler wondered if that was because so many machines were off. — They say it’s virtual, a woman said, and another woman said: They say he’s got the Queen. — People walked purposefully, stood speaking to one another, looked into each other’s eyes, and enjoyed the food, which was quite good; Tyler finally snagged a squishy handful of steak tartare. When he caught his breath, he found himself in a large bay in the wall-coast papered with what were in fact very beautiful butterflies and weeping willows (those murals are actually handpainted on real canvas and then put up like wallpaper! one of the guides imparted reverently.) A virtualette identified for Tyler by a change girl as Sweet Pickins’ writhed her six arms above a bank of dollar slots beneath a LOVEBUCKS kiosk whose red telltale of millions kept going up and up and up, by perhaps a dime a second, and from afar Tyler glimpsed friendly monsters passing.

| 259 |

There was another kind of virtual reality, too, as the procession of tourists who went up Las Vegas Boulevard from the MGM Grand to the Luxor learned when they reached the corner trodden with soiled fliers, and at this corner a boy stood trying to pass the fliers out discreetly folded so that they didn’t look like what they were. A man accepted one, and as he bemusedly opened it, the silicone-pumped boobs leaped out and he, his wife and the children opened their mouths and then he strode back to the guy and said: Listen, buddy. You, take this back! I don’t want this crap.

This ad, which Tyler philanthropically retrieved from the unfazed herald of good times, described a young Guatemalan girl (later he forgot whether she was “beautiful,” “eager,” “sexy” or “submissive”) — and no agency, oh, by no means; so of course what he got was a blonde from Alberta in a red Jeep Wrangler; she said that the hundred and twenty-five an hour was just for the agency, and she wanted a tip. He made it four hundred and she sulked because she usually got eight hundred to a thousand, which at first he did not believe. But maybe it was true, because during the half-hour that she stayed and fidgeted, the agency called every ten minutes in amazement that she was still there.

Usually I’m in and out in five minutes, she explained. That way the guy doesn’t have time to get mad before I’m done.

What can you do in five minutes? Even a blow job takes longer than that!

Well, I give him a full body massage, but he has to use his own hand.

It took him a moment to calculate the sum of these convolutions. — You mean he pays you a thousand bucks to jerk off to you?

Yeah, she shrugged. I guess you could put it that way. I’m not really a sex girl.

What are you then?

Let’s just say when I’m through they usually don’t do it again! she said with the same valley girl smile of the digitized Queen of Diamonds whose lavender breasts got obscured every second by the PLAY 5 COINS sign. — But sometimes I do get repeat customers. It still amazes me. But in Vegas it’s different. This is the big money, man. You get high rollers and they don’t care what they spend.

I guess that means you’ve got to be going, huh? said Tyler.

Why are you like that? At least I’m not a Brady Girl — I’m real, I’m me, I’m—

Then can I touch you?

Nobody touches me, mister.

Oh. So you’re not real, either. Hey, listen, did you ever hear of the Queen of the Whores?

Wake up, mister, she said, rising. We live in a democracy. And by the way, I stayed an extra five minutes. Do I get a bonus?

Nope.

Shrugging, the blonde dialled the agency and said: OK, I’m leaving. He’s not going to give me any more.

It’s kind of different here in Vegas, he said in his best hayseed voice.

She lit a cigarette. — The other thing that’s different about Vegas is that in all these hotels, even the real fancy hotels, the windows never open.

Because the people who lose big money might…?

Exactly. Same reason there are no long flights of stairs.

She was already putting her coat on and then she left him — rich, beautiful, contemptuous, and he felt only a little more empty than before.

| 260 |

Even divinities such as Jonas Brady need to procure business licenses, and although their articles of incorporation may list for their addresses such public-deflectors as John’s office address at Rapp and Singer (my client does not want to be contacted, John explained), still they need to get financing somewhere, and so for a snoop such as Henry Tyler of Tyler & Associates, Investigative Services, it’s but a fingersnap’s worth of effort to run a T.U. or a T.R. W. or any other number of credit checks, cognizant of the fact that Brady must have filled out a loan application or two in his time. No mention of cottonwood trees, but here on the blue computer screen crawled and quivered electronic proof of a pinball machine franchise, then a conspiracy to market office supplies, then the Sleep-O Hotel chain, each of them affixed in the credit bureau’s memory to a name, an address, a social security number. Back in San Francisco, Tyler had run a Uniform Commercial Code listing and learned that Brady was by definition a big shot: he owned a lot of secured collateral. — And it’s Union Bank, too, he muttered. That’s where John always refers his clients. Okay, and what about the Dun and Brad? LOOKING UP HOST, it says. Oh, come on.

COLLATERAL: Inventory and proceeds

FILING NO.: 8714060005

TYPE: Original

SEC. PARTY: Union Bank of California, N.A.

DEBTOR: Feminine Circus Co., Inc.

The public record items contained in this report may have been paid, terminated, vacated or released prior to the date this report was printed.

BANKING 08/96

Borrowing account. Now owing medium six figures.

HISTORY 08/96

JONAS A. BRADY, PRESIDENT

DIRECTOR(S): THE OFFICER(S)

CORPORATE AND BUSINESS REGISTRATIONS REPORTED BY THE SECRETARY OF STATE OR OTHER OFFICIAL SOURCE AS OF 08/96.

Business started 1995 by Jonas A. Brady. 51 % of capital stock is owned by Jonas A. Brady.

OPERATION 08/96

Entertainment.

ADDITIONAL TELEPHONE NUMBER(S)/CONTACT INFORMATION:

c/o John Tyler, Rapp & Singer, San Francisco.

TERMS: Net 30 days.

TERRITORY: Western United States.

EMPLOYEES: 7 which includes officer(s).

Full display complete.

And the upshot of this investigation?

Brady was Brady. Brady had committed no crimes. Brady was an upstanding citizen.

| 261 |

The next day more than sixty thousand people went between the outspread legs of the fallen angel of Feminine Circus, which from street level could be apprehended only as an asymmetrical polygon, blue and green, with so many angles bulking, sprawling, stretching and towering, but it did have a feminine head (again, à la Sphinx, like a construction paper cutout); it possessed sapphire blue triangular eyes beneath which people streamed slowly in like H. G. Wells’s Eloi going down to be eaten by the Morlocks. That was the day Feminine Circus was officially open, so they’d turned the sky on over the Sea of Love, filling it with multiple rainbow sunsets. Yes, the heat was on, pipesmoke swirled around the phony trees, and the passionless attended with big change cups between their thighs, watching the whirling oranges and BARs, scarcely looking at whatever money came out, but not unhappy. One man bantered: I put a nickel in, but it’s her machine, so she gets the winnings! — The robot angel Valentina waved goodbye in her pink rocket, curtseyed, and ascended a cable, hung there between sun and moon until people forgot her, and crept inconspicuously back down to repeat the performance another billion times. Another crescent moon crossed the sky slowly, and stars came out. Slot machines sang all around.

Oh, that’s kinda neat, a girl said.

Tyler had made a mistake. He’d judged by the Thursday night crowd. They were not sleepwalkers after all; this was the weekend now and this hotel, this incredible jungle, was alive with gambling monkeys and tigers! He could not believe how many people were passing so quickly in so many directions, drinks and cigarettes in hand; at all times cleaning ladies swept that carpet of phosphorescent flowers, combing the litter into their mouths-on-sticks; one told him: I seen Robinson Crusoe’s and I seen the Sphinx and all them others, but this is the greatest! It’s the biggest, it’s the best, it’s so beautiful! — and Tyler looked around me and saw that it was! — especially after a few drinks. The waitresses in short black skirts wiping tables with one hand, holding round trays of drinks in the other, families marching down the glowing carpet toward the elevators, some with cocktail glasses in hand; the calm, happy heads of the resting gamblers sitting around tables, lights slopping and lushing around, were all so busy that they reminded Tyler of the brochure with Egyptian symbols on it at the Luxor which read: Keno While You Sleep — Play More, Win More! Meanwhile the girl on the loudspeaker was as happy and amazed as if she’d just given birth to Jesus, crying out: Mrs. R. D. Winkler, Mrs. R. D. Winkler, you have a feminine phone call! I have a feminine phone call for Mrs. R. D. Winkler! — for, just as the gorgeous black waitress who used to work at the Horseshoe downtown said: After being down there with all those gamblers, you get used to it. You have to perform. — No doubt that was what Mr. Slapper, the P.R. guy, had in mind when, escorting Mr. and Mrs. Rapp, Mr. and Mrs. Singer, John and Celia, Roland and Amanda into the very spacious and bright cafeteria (where an off-duty Greek goddess picked up a tray and stepped into line), he said (with a smile like the long crack between a cocktail waitress’s puffed-up breasts): First of all, we call all of our employees ringleaders. Feminine Circus was connected with the Big Top until 1969. When you’re onstage, always delivering, you put on your best performance. — Passing couples upturned their heads, looking at everything; nothing in any one part of Feminine Circus was quite the same; that was a triumph in which the little Cupid in the American Girl Lounge seemed to delight, for he moved and twisted in his chair, convulsed his hairy arms, threw back his head and laughed at the stars on the ceiling.

Then a woman screamed: Ohhhhh! — She’d hit a big jackpot. The coins began to patter out. Crowds clotted behind her and watched as the coins kept coming.

| 262 |

Suddenly an arrow comprised of neon lights began to shimmer on the floor, and a siren went off. A melodious female voice said: Ladies and gentlemen, the adult area of Feminine Circus is now open for play. Adults only, please!

The woman who’d won the jackpot looked around, and found herself husbandless. Masculine Circus, Brady’s playland for heterosexual women, remained a mere blueprint.

Following the long line of men, Tyler passed through a glowing pink door…