The Royal Family

| 324 |

On Larkin and McAllister just past the old library rose another grimy granite mausoleum, whose neoclassical statues on high were speckled and pitted by polluted air so that they now resembled the flesh of a Capp Street girl, and beneath these poxed entities rose from a sleeping bag, not unlike those of a priest elevating the host, a pair of arms. The arms embraced a dog, which opened its mouth and softly panted, while the hair of homeless outcasts blew in the wind. The dog was tied to the left arm with a length of clothesline because he sometimes liked to wander beyond his own good. He almost never barked. When he was a puppy, the biker he’d then belonged to had trained him in the ways of silence by biting his ear whenever he uttered any sound, even a whimper. The biker had moved to Ohio, abandoning this dog now skilled in silence. It was evening, and the arms were both tired. Their owner was a man named Crutches, who whispered: They tried to gimme a ticket for littering. Can you believe it? Yeah, well, I be rollin’ it up so quick so they don’t see… Well, I be movin’ so fast…

Crutches’s comrades were squatting and smoking.

One of them pointed. Brady’s Boys were patrolling past.

Vigs! Better let the Queen know, whispered Crutches with a wink.

I saw one right over there, a vig was saying. Right behind the sheriff’s office.

And I seen you, too, said Crutches to himself. You can’t slip nothin’ by me.

Ready to do it again? said the first vig.

Okay, his colleague replied. Here’s an easy one. Leviticus 18.3.

Let’s skip the Egypt part. That’s irrelevant. God says to Moses: You shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan, to which I am bringing you.

Good, but you forgot to say Amen. Now Leviticus 20.23.

And you shall not walk in the customs of the nation which I am casting out before you; for they did all these things, and therefore I abhorred them. Amen.

Sighing, Crutches got up, gripping one of his eponymous instruments of locomotion in each armpit while the dog waited patiently, then slowly grated, dragged and clattered his weary way down to the Turk Street parking garage, outside of which Strawberry was trolling for sex work. As Crutches wheezed and cackled Aintcha an eyeful now? the dog with surprising initiative lunged forward, almost pulling the homeless man down, and licked her miniskirt.

Aw, ain’t that sweet, the whore said. He wants to kiss me.

Hey, Killer, cut that out! Listen, Strawberry. Tell your Big Bitch there’s new vigs in town. They got like uniforms and everything. It looks bad. I told Maj before, I…

Okay, Crutches, I’ll tell her. She’s already heard. But I gotta go now. I’m kinda busy right now, okay?

Any luck?

Oh, my regular shoulda showed up half an hour ago. I was hoping to do that one quick flatback and…

An’ tell her I don’t want no reward or anything, but…

But you didn’t tell us just out of the goodness of your goddamned heart, right?

Amen, sister! Sure has been one tough month. And they got these red jerseys, well, maybe vermillion you might call it, with the letters B.B. embroidered on the front. They say it means Brady’s Boys…

All right, Crutches, thanks. I appreciate it. Now lemme do my job.

I guess I’ll never see it. I guess you streetcrawling bitches won’t send one goddamned rock my way. Do I get cynical? Sometimes I don’t feel like doing my job.

| 325 |

Now, did anyone see my little encounter with the man across the street? said Rodrigo.

Yes, we posted you.

That man is scum. That man’s a Queen’s man. Put him in the database. His name’s Crutches. He talked back to me. He practically threatened me. But I got the last word. Remember that, troops. The last word must be yours. Sometimes you gotta draw your line in the sand. Form up, form up!

Rodrigo paced like a tiger and went up to the flag-wavers who were ignoring him, and he cried: Hey, why aren’t you training with us to stamp out dirt?

A teen approached, and soon Rodrigo was shaking his hand, saying: Good to meet you, man!

The tall gangbanger types would smile, wad Rodrigo’s leaflets up and toss them. Rodrigo kept smiling. — You gotta be loud, he told his shyest soldiers. You’re Brady’s Boys.

Can I take a picture of you with my little girl? a grandmother said.

Sure, lady. Right over here. Post me, boys.

Someone threw a bottle on the sidewalk, and a Brady’s Boy rolled it carefully away with the toe of his boot…

| 326 |

Shyly and halfheartedly, a Brady’s Boy got out a leaflet and handed it to the small, slender black woman.

Mm hm, said the Queen.

And, ma’am, if you’d care to help us with a small d-d-donation… said the boy.

What is it you’re tryin’ to do, honey? Put the hookers out of business?

That’s right, ma’am.

What do you have against hookers?

We have n-n-n-nothing against them, ma’am. We want to help them. They’re all abused…

You mean raped.

Th-th-that’s right, ma’am.

Here’s a dollar, said the Queen. You seem like a nice boy. Have you ever been with a prostitute?

No, ma’am. Excuse me. Ma’am?

Yes.

Wh-wh-where are you from, ma’am?

And you ask everybody that, don’t you?

Yes, ma’am, said the boy, remembering his squad leader’s instructions: Royce, you gotta smile at ’em, say hi, how ya doin’? Then you’re gonna ask ’em: Are you interested in getting involved?

Well, I’m from the South, said the Queen.

A-a-ah, said the boy uncertainly. That’s good.

Yeah, but now it changed a whole lot since I been there last time, it seems.

Like how?

Like it’s raggedy now. The house I was raised in, that’s gone. Just an empty lot. I was hopin’ to see the house I was raised in.

The boy had run entirely out of utterances. Returning the leaflet to his hand, the Queen returned to Justin’s side, sighing: The younger generation…

Marching proudly back on down the parade path, the boy reached HQ: a small, grimy storefront on Golden Gate just past Polk, where beneath a wall of plastic cartons filled with empty beer cans his colleagues were being videotaped by Channel Seven News. He was afraid, and ran to go get doughnuts.

Hey, at that Tenderloin street fair there were about fifty of the Queen’s guys bothering us, a guy with a long greasy ponytail was telling Channel Seven. — Really badmouthing us, you know. They’re always armed. But I’m right there, where my family is. I’m a Brady’s Boy, and I’m ready for ’em.

I have a very bad background, one of the vigs, big-armed, bearded, and sideburned, was explaining to a starry-eyed reporter. See, I used to sell heroin, crack, cocaine. I even got my own sister addicted so I could pimp her out and make money to buy more powder. I turned her into a devil worshiper. Oh, Lord Jesus, can you believe my sin? She was worshiping at the altar of the Black Queen, ma’am, you know, the Queen of the Wh — the Prostitutes. But Mr. Brady gave me like a window. He let me look through that window and I saw the promised land. He turned me around. So I’m grateful to him and his organization.

What about your sister?

She just completed a recovery program. She’s married, with four lovely kids.

Clean green jackets hung on hangers in the niche under the loft. The vigs sat on dirty sofas. Some were bounty hunters, good people who helped tight-smiling Mr. Cortez get ninety-six percent of his bail-skippers back (whoever cosigned the bail form had to reimburse Mr. Cortez for the bounty hunters’ fees). Others were saved persons, zealots, saints, careerists, thugs, depressives, world-fixers, henchmen, ideologues, devotees, compassionate Buddhas, sadists. Maybe it didn’t matter what they were. By the trash can, trays of half-eaten turkey lay on the table by the microwave; the homeless delegation hadn’t come for it yet. This was HQ; this was the throne-hall of judgment.

For the benefit of the starry-eyed reporter, the vig held up a fuzzy toy leopard — a gratitude-offering from a girl he’d rescued from the Queen last week. (Actually, Brady’s slapper had bought it at Macy’s.)

Rodrigo, would you tell us all the story behind this leopard?

Yes, ma’am. This young lady, she was at Turk and Jones, which I don’t mind telling you is kind of a bad corner, and, well, you know, she was working, and then this pimp she’d tried to run away from started bothering her, because she wasn’t bringing in money for the Queen no more; she was on her own, so that pimp was under instructions to punish her and bring her back into the fold. The Queen’s murdered young girls for less. Justin’s this pimp’s name. He’s got a record as long as the Bay Bridge. Well, I politely asked him to leave her alone, ’cause I could see she was scared, and he pulled a knife on me, so I socked him good and then called for backup. A couple of my buddies was witnesses. We held him until the cops got there, and we helped the girl press charges for assault. Now the Queen don’t mess with her no more.

And is she still — working?

No, ma’am. She’s a paralegal. She’s helping battered women. Especially rape and incest cases. She told me she wants to devote her life to stopping prostitution at the roots.

And what’s the best way to do that, Rodrigo?

We gotta start a public awareness campaign. Go after the johns who are exploiting the women, go after the pimps, get the Queen who’s at the heart of it all.

| 327 |

Ah, but easier said than done! Looking down from the summit of Jones Street into the grey canyons of the Tenderloin into which tricky johns sometimes spurted like drops of semen (all right, baby! croaked Strawberry in her sexy druggy voice, flinging her arms around the man), how could one hope to see the Queen lurking in her squat tunnel with its twin rows of steadily diminishing ceiling-eyes, or the Queen’s spidery spies like Crutches and Kitty and the crazy whore scuttling to and from the parking garage?

You’re not supposed to give witnesses anything, laughed Smooth, because then you’re paying for the testimony and it’s not objective, you see.

Oh, fuck that, growled Crutches.

Give the man his little rock, sighed the Queen. Thank you, Crutches.

Thanks, Maj, said the homeless man, hobbling off.

Any other business to take care of? Anything else this Queen’s gotta do? I know I need to help Strawberry change Sapphire’s clothes—

I can do that, Maj.

Allrightie then. I’m gonna ghost away now.

Naturally, said Domino from the side of her crooked mouth.

You got a problem with that, Dom?

What’s the difference if I have a problem or not? You’ll do what you want to do.

Talk about the handwriting on the wall, chuckled Dan Smooth, who had come to find an acquiescent underage runaway of any one or more of the thirteen sexes; if the Queen could not be of use to him in this matter, he would go to Polk Street, where other wall-writings said LUVYBOYS. — How did it go, Maj? Can’t I borrow your Bible — you know, the one you keep between your breasts? Oh, but I remember now exactly what it said: Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin.

You implying I want to bring her down? shouted Domino, angry and unbalanced. Smooth was shocked now because his schoolboy pride in a perfect recitation had enticed him into the onionskin layers of Biblical exegesis; he’d forgotten what the gaunt blonde woman had said to call forth the allusion; he only wanted to be calm and pleasant like John in an expensive restaurant; he wanted everybody’s praise; he needed the world to obey him and therefore validate his spidery intelligence which had so often been crucified with a dozen nails of humiliation and censure driven through every leg; but in this craving he was no different from Domino herself who in turn had scarcely two hours since hurled her needs against the needs of Chocolate, whose beauty had happily over-flowered hers all week because very late on Saturday night, hunting through the yellow darkness of Capp Street (white walls stained yellow like old photos fixed too long in the hypo bath), she’d spied a nebulous silhouette and pounced, imparting forgettable satisfaction to a forgettable man, so that on Sunday afternoon, ignoring the well meaning urgings of Beatrice, who patronized Mexicali Hair Design on Capp and Twenty-Eighth, she’d dropped some of her winnings at the African beauty parlor on Divisadero in order to get her luscious black hair combed, woven, greased and moussed into peaks like fragrant meringue so that she grew young and bulletproof again as she had been before dropping the first of her eight unacknowledged children now casually growing in the state of California’s foster homes, never knowing their mother or each other, waiting to swell in strength and cunning sufficiently to pay the world back since they could hardly pay back their multitudinous and anonymous fathers or their hidden progenitoress who now with her white white smile and her face thrown back goodnaturedly, almost funlovingly gazed into the windshields of oncoming cars, her eyebrows plucked, concertina wire’s shadows on her cheek. To the drivers whose saintly dispositions allowed them to give themselves what they wanted and forgive their own impending mistakes, Chocolate projected above all warmth and freshness like the affectionately sexual equivalent of bread baking in a bride’s kitchen, an impression which she did not consciously control but which was founded on her charming girlish manners and highspiritedness not yet completely stamped out of her even after those eight crack-addicted babies about whom Tyler had read in her medical record — in fact, one could argue that the insouciance with which she gave birth and walked away as if a baby were nothing more than excrement proved that highspiritedness and perhaps even strengthened it by endowing it with a certain expedient proficiency. She stood smiling clear-eyed right into the sun, made for love as it seemed to the drivers, her brown eyes friendly and seeking friendship; Chocolate loved to laugh; she allowed jokers to pay less, and because her memory was growing increasingly imperfect, she could hear the same joke any number of times and still be amazed by the punchline like a virgin on her first date or a true believer who reads the Gospels over and over. (Gosh, she’s too beautiful to be a hooker! cried a Brady’s Boy in wonder. — I dunno about hookers really, said his partner. I come from Philly. In my old preccinct our major crime was theft of auto.) She herself was entirely capable of banter but unable to recite any preconceived funny story, a deficiency which she would have preferred to correct, at least until late afternoon by which time her identity had usually become confused and temporary with too much cocaine tweaking which poisoned her with paranoia so that she became argumentative; and within the expanding bands of shadow on Mission Street, beneath the double row of palm trees, her drivers now descried an entirely different woman whose wildly angry eyes burned like acid through their illusions of love and pleasure. It was on one of these evenings — this very one, in fact — when, seeing silver-miniskirted Domino approach her (for like the tall man she could see everything coming; she could watch everything out of the very whites of her eyes), Chocolate remembered that night on South Van Ness when she’d betrayed the blonde, after which the Queen had pronounced her an evil little bitch and commanded her to apologize, warning: You got to bear your cross now, baby. Domino’s always gonna hate you. — Terrified, Chocolate now conceived the belief, the only possible belief, that Domino, who was looking old as she waggled her long expressive cigarette at the passing cars, was coming to settle matters because the Queen remained with Tyler somewhere on Ellis Street, leaving Chocolate alone just as Chocolate had left Domino alone to get her skull cracked by that monstrous Ada over money she didn’t own, and so, just like the Queen herself with her cracked Biblical prophecies, Chocolate shuddered beneath the weight of a satanic epiphany in which every circumstance pulsed with meaning aimed at her, as if she were imprisoned naked and paralyzed in the center of an immense crystal of methamphetamine whose cold facets let in the world’s eyes; she wanted to be dark like the darkness but her consciousness glowed, conspicuous to the point of peril. Had it been morning, Chocolate would have been equally certain (like Dan Smooth) that the world was a vast machine whose organization and purpose was solely to fulfill her wishes; now the machine was meant to crush her. The streetlamps were conspiring to fall on her head. The lunar shine of Domino’s ultrablonde hair flowed around her shoulders as she stalked among the parked cars. The Queen had sold herself to Henry Tyler for the night in order by her visible abstention from this malignant courtroom now called to order in these dark streets for retribution to be done. Strawberry had abandoned her on purpose. Bernadette had deliberately stayed in. Beatrice was pretending to suffer from venereal disease in order to excuse herself in the direction of the faraway clinic. And here came Domino, her crooked mouth twitching into a sneer which actually represented mere and simple happiness, she having copped prime heroin which could offer more kindness to her than any human being’s body or soul, but as her coarse, gaunt, greasy face loomed larger and larger, as her shadow came down upon her, Chocolate, unavailingly longing for her to break contact much as Mission Street suddenly veers beyond Twenty-Fifth to avoid a golden-bleached hill of white houses, could not puff out her breasts and strut proudly by but began to shiver, and the worse she shook, the more her longing cracked into shards of incontrovertible hopelessness until Chocolate, absolutely sure beyond terror or horror that within fifteen seconds the first hammerblow would break open her forehead, screamed: That money was mine. Where did you spend my money, you goddamned thieving honky bitch? meaning only to eloquently and passionately clear herself of all charges by atainting her accuser with the crime of prior betrayal; but of course Domino was not much given to self-abasement. For a moment she could not even comprehend to what Chocolate was referring, there having been so many transactions, exchanges, extortions and abuses like pale birds crossing dark Tenderloin windows between that night and this, but from the first, being accustomed throughout her tragic days and nights to expect ambuscades, she understood that the other woman now considered her alien,enemy, devil, animal; and without hesitation she withdrew from her battered silver purse one of her three naked razorblades, and held it aloft. Had it been just her and Chocolate, she would instantaneously have slashed the black woman’s face from cheek to cheek, leaving her screaming and bloody, because she knew as does the slender-boned snake that striking rapidly and repeatedly and above all first comprises the only answer to the menace posed by titanic creatures such as Chocolate, who outweighed her by at least thirty pounds. But between them lay the warm brown shadow of the Queen. Domino had never punished Chocolate for abandoning her to Ada that night because the Queen’s love for them both had ransomed her, and Domino had actually loved her afterward, no matter how fitfully, as on that night when her aborted fetus pursued and oppressed her, and she’d gone in to Chocolate so that her mourning would be heard. Did she truly love her? Maybe she didn’t, but both of them had been nourished from their Queen’s mouth. Or maybe it was simply that Domino did not want to go apart from the Queen anymore to live in a desert of fear as she must do should she hurt her sister, even if her sister meant to hurt her, so she strode slowly and impressively closer to the black woman, then said: You see this razor, bitch? Well, do you? You know what’s gonna happen to you now? and Chocolate started screaming and flailing, completely out of her mind. Domino recognized this. With a cruel smile she scooped up a broken bottle, flung it casually at Chocolate’s feet, and strolled away. The brokenhearted black woman didn’t try to follow her. Domino went home to the Queen, resolved not to snitch, trying to believe that she’d been good in her restraint, and she even compounded her lovingkindness by giving a little china white to Lily (who hadn’t been able to find a nice gentleman who would solve her withdrawal sickness), but she could not stop shaking and trembling just the same so that her heart fluttered like the crazy whore’s singsong sinsongs. It was the unnnaturalness of her reply to Chocolate which unsettled her. The natural thing to do would have been to fling herself on that nigger bitch and cut her up good so that her stinking guts slid slimily out. She longed to attack somebody, and here Dan Smooth with his smartass Bible quotations was insinuating that she meditated treason against her Queen, to whom she’d just proved her loyalty by that act of self-arrest, so, clenching her fists, she said to Smooth beneath her teeth: You don’t know a thing about me, you misogynist bastard. You just—

Oh, I’m so tired of this, said the Queen. Dom, you know you don’t have to stay if you don’t want to stay. You sleep on it, okay? Henry’s waitin’ on me now.

You see? said Domino to the world. Nobody pays attention to me. They just…

| 328 |

She’s a real asshole, Chocolate confided to Bernadette. She thinks just ’cause she be eatin’ out the Queen’s ass she gonna always have that house slave position. Well, she was a plantation nigger once just like the rest of us.

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

I hate that blonde bitch. An’ she be kickin’ her friends goin’ up every rung of that ladder. Well, in this life we all gotta go back down that ladder, too. An’ it’s harder to kick your friends on the way down, ’cause they be watchin’ to grab you ankle an’ pull you. Domino she calls herself. She be nothin’ but a doggy style ho.

And the two women chattered happily on in this vein, but unlike Domino they took care that their Queen did not hear.

| 329 |

The Queen had agreed to meet him at Zapateca’s Bar on Mission Street, a place he’d never been before, a rather ordinary place whose low dark ceiling was dusted with glitter and smoky atmosphere like some concretion of the loud Spanish-language songs with which the battle-axe behind the bar sang along. At 7:00 on that Tuesday night there were a couple of pool players and a man kissing a woman’s ear at a table and two men at the bar gazed in morose parallels at the brightest spot of all, which was the back-lit shelves of booze bottles, most of which were almost empty.

Tyler sat facing a calendar from the Firearms Training Academy.

Well? she said.

It’s pretty bad, he said.

So you scoped it out for me, said the Queen. You did your job. What a good boy. C’mere, baby.

He got up and kissed her.

Allrightie now, said the Queen, slowly unwinding his gold chain from her wrist. Now tell me what’s goin’ on.

He saw a john whispering something into Beatrice’s ear, and he saw Beatrice slap the john’s fat stomach and gape her half-toothless mouth in a scream of laughter that cut through the smoky sounds; she was immensely pleased with herself.

He buys girls, he said. And then guys come in and fuck ’em and sometimes torture ’em to death. Everybody pretends it’s not real.

You’re so sweet, she said. Henry, you know I love you. What else’ve you been doing with yourself?

Tyler knelt. Slowly he took off her shoes. He massaged her feet

And then all these vigs. He’s behind that, too. There’s a morality sweep going on, said the Queen, standing suddenly, making him stand. — It’s so strange, she went on. Well, not so strange. Moses says thou shalt not kill, but then he stones a man to death for gathering wood on the Sabbath.

I don’t know about that stuff. I don’t understand it. It’s just politics, he muttered, narrowing his tired eyes.

I wish we had more time to plan it and shit. Just for the fuck of it we can… we can… oh, Henry, it’s gonna be over so soon, she said.

Tyler felt a lump in his throat. — I thought you were — well, magic, he said. I mean, that’s—

Sure, but the Chosen People always win. The ones on God’s side. The ones on Jesus’s side. I don’t wanna talk too much. You were good, Henry. We all were.

When Tyler was small, his parents had brought him to some vast city which must have been Los Angeles (funny that he couldn’t remember John’s presence) and he recollected walking with them at night through a crowd of happy people gazing into lighted shopwindows of everything — and it seemed that the lights and happiness would go on forever but suddenly Tyler’s family arrived at a dark desolate place where a man glared at them and they were all alone. Later he understood that all light, everywhere, must burn out, but the reason that the Tenderloin fascinated him was that it combined the dark desolation with the shiny rouged and glowing-skirted merchandise. And now the future was like that, pitch-hued all the way to substancelessness, with an evil substance lurking in between time’s atoms.

Varicose-legged, the ageing Queen sat drinking her beer, her veins like all the rivers. She said: Well, at least maybe we’ll snap our fingers in his face—

| 330 |

He stayed with her all night and she was loving in an absentminded way. At dawn her many children were all asleep in one room in the Layla Hotel down on Seventeenth Street, all except for the tall man, who was making a run with the night’s earnings to get them a baggie of quality white girl, and she herself began yawning, lying weak and passive in his arms on the moldy itchy carpet, so he said he was going to see about some business, went downstairs to the front grating, turned back the springloaded deadbolt, and went out into the rising day, wishing to solve the future before it happened, to save his Queen as he had failed to save Irene, but then suddenly he thought what a relief it would be if the Queen and her entire crew disappeared from everywhere so that he could pull himself back out of the way of his own impending blight; suddenly, even the Queen herself seemed like some nightmare entity who for all her lovingness and splendidness was inevitably ruining him. What if he didn’t want to be ruined? He could call John and apologize. John would save him, if he humbled himself. But then what would he do; which doom would he find instead? What was it that he needed to do, in order to live with himself, and become no longer grey and sneaking? — Ah, he actually thought that his life could be fixed! He thought that only momentarily, of course, and only because at the moment he unlocked the driver’s door of his car he saw in the corner in the hot sunlight a dear little Vietnamese girl laughing and mock-boxing her father. He envied her father, yes he did. Just as Dan Smooth said, he had envious ears! He wanted to be married as his mother had advised, and he wanted to subsequently raise a child lovingly and playfully. Really he wanted the most impossible thing — namely, to be like everyone else, which was what almost everyone wanted, which meant that no one was like anyone else, not Tyler, not his brother, not the Vietnamese child or her father, certainly not the Queen, who of all the people he’d ever met, including Dan Smooth, was the only one who’d sincerely never wanted that, not Irene or Celia, who both did want it most desperately, not Chocolate, who at two o’clock in the morning in that hotel room as the Queen lay in his arms had been haltingly reading out the personal ads from a yellowing newspaper, saying: SBM, what the fuck’s that mean, Maj? Hey, Maj, you asleep? Sor-ree. Oh, single black male. All right. A brother. SBM, thirty-nine years old, well, that’s little old but maybe he’s saved hisself up some money for me to spend. Maybe he’s old enough to be faithful. Spontaneous, honest, caring, but is he handsome? Don’t say nothin’ about handsome. What do you think, Justin?

Must be butt ugly. Just like you, Choc.

Don’t you disrespect me, nigger! Honest, caring, enjoys parties, all right now, all right, swimming, outgoing, down to earth, no drugs, oh, so he’s that kind of asshole.

Then she went out, and was soon lying naked and weary after sweaty sex with a stinking old man, her arm wrapped around her head as if to hug and console it for having been kissed by someone for whom she felt no love, while Tyler drove home, pressed the PLAY button on his answering machine, which related in his brother’s curt voice: Guess you’re out of town. Mom called about an hour ago, and they’re going to send her home tomorrow at the shift change at seven-o’-clock. Anyway, that’s where we are. — I get it, muttered Tyler, throwing out threatening letters from credit card companies. He opened his solitary remaining piece of mail, which proclaimed:

STARS AND STRIPES FUNDING IS NOT A GOVERNMENT AGENCY

Is It Worth Three Minutes to Cut Your Payments in Half?

Dear Tyler001error69 Henry G.,

Wouldn’t you like more cash in your pocket with a $200,000.00 loan from Stars and Stripes Funding, Inc., at a LOW, LOW fixed interest rate of 14.99 %? Consolidate your bills. No equity needed. Save thousand and thousands of dollars. Take that dream vacation, Tyler001error69 Henry G. Call toll free.

Then he thought: Thank God I don’t fall for that. Thank God I can say fuck you to all equity. Thank God for my Mark of Cain.

| 331 |

The Queen, rolling off a concrete block in the abandoned meatpacking plant, then walking like a crab, pale with dead eyes, asked Tyler of whom or what he had dreamed; and while he considered, she laid her middle finger across his wrist, in order to drink in his pulse. He had dreamed that he held a small black spider in the palm of his hand, a perfect little spider which bit him. — Ah, said the Queen, you had the spider dream! and he was afraid. That’s good, baby, the Queen whispered, sliding her long, long grey tongue into his mouth. He felt nauseous but also excited. Soon he was relearning the spidery angles and steep curves of her buttocks. Her eyes were rimmed and outlined. She leaped on him. When her orgasm came, he was terrified by her round and screaming eyes as she squatted on him, beating and scratching at his flesh.

Her tiny feet mastered the palms of his hands as he raised her up, setting her upon his shoulders for her to command and worry at his body. His love, his life, had become as richly weird as the Queen’s hair hanging down from her bowed head in darkness.

| 332 |

Her pussy tasted like crack. The girls could drink from it all day and their cravings would go away. But the more they drank, the more addicted they were. (For that matter, Celia craved the sharp knife-crease of muscle behind John’s knees.) Her spit was just the opposite.

| 333 |

The Queen said: Maybe I’ll get pregnant.

He smiled. Tears came into his eyes. He thought of that little Vietnamese girl he’d seen playing with her father that morning and realized that something that good could happen to him and perhaps be safely hidden behind the high gates of anonymity for a long, long time until death and destruction came, and then the eyes narrowed in his grey face and he realized that sentimentality was corrupting him. It was all false, like Hitler killing millions of human beings while weeping over the cruelty of fox-hunting. But where did such false emotions come from? He feared himself and his own unreliability. And yet weren’t such errors perhaps the necessary consequence of taking an uncharted path? He felt that he had to learn as much from the Queen and love her as greatly as he could before the vigs came, not only for her own sake, but because her love and her truth might well comprise his final chance to learn who he was, where he must go, and what was expected of him. He did not believe that he was destined to be a father now, because Irene… But Irene’s child… He sat very still, insufferably unable to think.

Domino, seeing now in him the uprolled eyeballs and pale puffy cheeks and slack-hanging lips of Sunflower in her last months of life, feared what she saw, and accordingly attacked it, sneering in her most stinging tone: Henry, don’t you even care what Maj just said? Is that shiteating grin on your face a sufficient response to anything? I think a man should be committed. Whereas you…

He scarcely heard her. He felt so anxious and alone that he almost screamed.

Beatrice, whose breath was as rotten mucilage oozing and crawling with disease, coughed apologetically into his face and said: Henry, you okay? I doan know, maybe you look so sad…

Yeah, I’m all right, he said heavily.

And you think you gonna be pregnant, Mama? I get so happy I’m gonna light a candle for you…

I don’t believe it, said Tyler harshly. Somehow I just don’t figure it’s going to happen.

You know, Henry, I got to say it takes two people to create a child. I doan know my English, but I think society is coming to like thousands of years ago. All of a sudden women, they saying, this is my body, and I know that ’cause I said it too when I had my baby; I swear I didn’t want him. You have to remember though that there are two people involved. I had to get involved!

Yeah, then where’s the little brat now? said Domino, grinning elfishly as if she had her back up against some wall and were slowly upcurling her tongue at the oncoming cars and licking her lips, back and forth, back and forth, with an intensely mirthful but also lustful expression in her huge-pupiled eyes.

Yeah, Dom, so maybe I doan be no good. I know that. I’m no good. But Henry he still want to do the good thing, so we should help him. Henry, when your novia she talk about get pregnant, you better believe in case God is listening and think about sending you a baby. You want a baby? Baby gonna take away so much of your pain, Henry. You gotta believe. Please Henry, you—

Then where the fuck’s your little Mexican brat? screamed Domino, whose soul was itself as lost and sad and grimy up close as the face of Beatrice, whose belief in the Virgin, which meant belief in herself, had been reduced to mere endurance palliated but perhaps by that very token rendered more dangerous and poisonous by the sincere and unmitigated love of her Mama, her Queen as Beatrice’s hair twirled heavily down the sides of her face and she bit her thin, herpid lips to keep herself from tears, her forehead lined, the bridge of her nose doubly lined, and her huge, lost eyeballs mottled like the full moon with its faint mountains and seas.

Henry, she whispered, it all starts from the fact that when you do those types of practices, you gotta get responsible for your actions. And our Mama Queen, she’s knowing that already. Mama takes responsibility for all of us already.

Domino said: Did he take responsibility when he knocked up your brother’s wife?

Hush up now, said the Queen. Ain’t nobody gonna talk to Henry about that. And nobody need to make Bea start cryin’ for nothin’. Domino, when you gonna see how much you hurt yourself with that kind of talk? You—

But, Maj, don’t you even care that Henry was an asshole to that Oriental whatsher-name? She offed herself, and here’s this jerk walking around scot-free like some rapist who preys on little girls. Don’t you think that Henry ought to pay for what he did? Aren’t you on our side?

Domino, said the Queen, that’s between Henry and me.

You don’t understand, Maj. Oh, hell, it’s all so pathetic. Nobody understands. And Beatrice just sits there and blubbers, and Henry’s mad at me, and you’re mad at me when all I did was say the truth.

See how she manipulates, laughed Strawberry, throwing back her head and fanning her hair across her shoulders as Domino liked to do. — She’s jealous of all the attention Henry gets. She wants to be sad so she can get first in line to be comforted…

With an eagle-like scream of rage, Domino rushed her with her long silver fingernails whirling like airplane propellers, but the weary Queen said: Hush, Domino. C’mere, sweetie. And Domino fled into the Queen’s embrace, nuzzling her armpits like a puppydog.

It’s so crazy, Tyler muttered, and no one said anything, so he hung his head and cleared his throat and very carefully asked the dark cracked windowpanes of the abandoned meatpacking plant: When will they stop bugging me?

When you let it go, said the Queen, rocking the sobbing girl. You got to let Irene sink under the earth and turn into grass. That’s what she needs to do now. She wants flowers to come up out of her breast. Don’t hold her back.

I get it, Maj, he said. But I…

You don’t have to say anything you’re not ready to say, the Queen told him. You know I love you?

I know it. Are you pregnant?

I don’t believe so. Not yet.

Strawberry said: Listen, Henry. I don’t know so much about you and Charlene—

Irene, he said furiously.

Irene. And it’s not really my business. But we talk about you all the time, because you’re the only man who ever comes to visit us, aside from Justin, who lives here, and, I mean, good heavens, it’s nice to talk about men once in a while! Gosh, I wish you’d buy us all a drink at the Wonderbar and we could just sit and—

Tyler shot a quick shy look at her, and, seeing that she was not his enemy, became if anything even more dejected and humiliated. The dead woman would not let him go. And his Queen would never become pregnant, because she herself had prophesized that her purpose on earth would all too soon be fulfilled, the purpose to which she’d been so supremely faithful, and he’d be left alone again as he had been after Irene died, because the Queen had insisted that it must be so. But gradually his own self-pity became as gentle and blurry as Strawberry’s when she got drunk or entered the heroin nods, swaying and doubling and tripling. Didn’t she mean well? Didn’t she? And the Queen sat so silent! Why? Was this supposed to be another ordeal like his obedient worship of the false Irene, something whose bitter uselessness would further hollow out his heart into an ashtray in which Domino or anybody else could stub out cigarettes? But surely Strawberry meant well. She said: My brother was in college with a girlfriend and she, well, she became pregnant. I was always very close to my brother and I was the first to hear. And we celebrated. When I think back on all the champagne we went through! Oh, everybody was so happy, it was all like a dream! They could have had an abortion, I know. But he decided he was going to marry this girl. I don’t know why I’m even telling you this, maybe just because it came into my head just now when Maj was talking about having a child and I… God, I could use a drink at the Wonderbar. I could use a motherfucking drink. Anyway, they had a child. He finished college; she didn’t. She always resented it. So the marriage broke up. She broke it up. But he really has a kid that he loves. Maybe his life would have been different if they’d had the abortion. But who’s to judge him? He got his life together. It worked out for him. Most of the time the circumstances just need to be negotiated. How do you grow without conflict and difference?

Are you saying I don’t want conflict? asked Tyler in a dull, exhausted voice. Are you saying I’m afraid of something? What are you saying?

Oh, can’t you leave him alone, sighed the Queen. Leave my man alone.

Beatrice said: Excuse me, Maj. Excuse me, Henry. Excuse me, Strawberry. I have to say something about abortion. Some people they doan believe that at the time of conception the soul enters the body. I do know that doing away with any form of life, it’s not a nice thing.

Yeah, and how many babies have you killed with your own coat hanger? snarled Domino from the Queen’s arms.

What’s all this about? said Tyler. What kind of discussion is this? — The eagerness of these women to speak of babies and childbirth, the avidity in their eyes, above all the hope with which they now regarded their Queen, as if her baby would be theirs or would somehow save them, disconcerted him as much as if he’d suddenly realized that he had no soul.

We just be sharin’ our thoughts with you, that’s all, said Chocolate from the doorway, while Sapphire, rocking back and forth in the corner, whispered: Luh-luh-luh-luh…

I love you, too, he said to the retarded girl, who seemed to be uneasy, like a dog which knows something is wrong when its master begins packing his suitcase. She had sat in the same place all night, watching her mother and her sisters with wide and anxious eyes.

I want a baby but I can’t, said Strawberry. I had two children they took away an’ put in foster care, and now I don’t know where they are. And my third died in crib death. That’s the one I cry for. And then I got pelvic inflammatory disease, so now I’m sterile.

| 334 |

When Irene reached her sophomore year of high school in Westwood, she and four classmates — one Chinese, two Japanese, and one other Korean — secretly if lightheartedly founded what they called the Virgins’ Club. Really it was an excuse to gossip, go out to movies together, and help each other with homework — a particular benefit in Irene’s case, since she was only a B student and had always been even in elementary school when her mother used to punish her for not coming home with perfect grades. The Virgins’ Club met neither regularly nor formally. Nonetheless, its rules had teeth. Each girl swore not to have sex before marriage, and never to wed any man of another race, in order to avoid disappointing her parents, who by immigrating in the first place had left themselves all too susceptible to such affronts. Indeed, when Irene raised her hand to swear the oath, she saw before her her dear mother’s fine face and thin dark arched eyebrows. Their promise, then, emblematized daughterly love, which must remain inseparable from clanishness, and perhaps it reassured those schoolgirls in their warm expectations that the families which they each would surely found would resemble the ones departed, protecting them from futurity, keeping them happily isolated like the emerald rectangle that is Union Square, set into its bezel of brick and concrete. (And here one might also make analogy to the Queen’s court, with its exclusiveness, secrecy and helpfulness.) In Irene’s opinion, it was the Chinese girl who broke her vow first. In her freshman year at San Diego State, defiant in the face of family ostracism and de facto expulsion from the Virgins’ Club, she married a nice boy from Saudi Arabia. One of the Japanese girls dated a white boy in her senior year, and the rumor flitted around the Virgins’ Club (which by that time had become rather too loose-knit, nourished only by increasingly far-flung telephone calls from one member to another) that she had given him everything, but none of the remaining virgins chose to address her silence directly because that would have been rude and because, like Cain, they were not their siblings’ keepers, and above all because the Virgins’ Club was itself mere silliness which, had it been completely immersed in the solvent of sexuality, could have dissolved without repercussions. Both of the Japanese girls did end up marrying Japanese, and the other Korean girl married into a rich Korean family in Brentwood. Irene, of course, ended up with John. The other Korean girl and one of the Japanese girls came to Irene’s wedding. They said that they were very happy for her.

By then Irene’s brother Steven, who was a software engineer prone, like John, to elegant neckties, had already married a good Korean girl whom he considered slightly beneath him and who gave him a son before her wifehood was a year old — singular fortune for her, because Irene’s mother, who’d thought her frivolously delicate until then, immediately held her precious. The impetus now lay on Irene to conceive, although her parents regretfully understood that John preferred to postpone that beginning; themselves being postponers in the name of self-sacrifice, they accepted in their first-generation American hearts what John had chosen for entirely different ends. Irene kept modestly silent. Although she mentioned her mother and father hardly at all, Tyler afterward wondered whether her understanding with them on this crucial subject of maternity might have anything to do with her suicide. One night in September when the vigs had already arrived in San Francisco and he was sitting alone in his apartment, asking himself when he’d go to worship his Queen, he suddenly visualized Irene picking up the telephone to call Los Angeles and tell her parents that she was pregnant. Her mother would have known the very first instant that Irene was not smiling with pleasure. And how would she and Irene’s father interpret that? Their own natural impulse to be joyous would have been stifled by Irene’s listless, anxious monotone. They would wonder what had occurred between her and John. (I think John is angry at me, Irene had publicly said during that final vacation in Monterey. John, you’re angry, aren’t you? — Tyler had found that very distasteful.) No doubt, since Irene’s parents had never met John’s brother except briefly at the wedding, it would scarcely have occurred to them that there might have been third parties involved. Tyler, imagining that familial conversation and all the subsequent ones for the remaining months of Irene’s life, could hardly keep from groaning. And now she was dead, killed, self- killed, self-murdered. The Queen had made him promise not to forget her. The false Irene was always asking him about her…

I’ve prayed so much for you to get pregnant, Irene’s mother said in Korean. Children are a gift from God.

Irene made no answer.

Have you had good dreams? her mother pursued. If so, it’s going to be a boy…

But before the worst had happened, Irene’s womb continuing as yet unripe, her sister’s family came to visit. Steven and Pammy craved a vacation in Mendocino County, so they left their son in San Francisco for the weekend. — Of course! said Irene, brimming with enthusiasm in order to deacidify the impression conveyed by John’s sullenness. — Be a good boy now, Pammy instructed the child. Be obedient to your Auntie Irene and your Uncle John. — Bewildered, with big dark-framed spectacles, he sat playing video games as soundlessly as possible while Irene peeled garlic in the kitchen, wishing for more counter space, a larger refrigerator, and a dishwasher capable of more even results. Her nephew’s presence did not make her uneasy because at that time a child associated with her did not symbolize anything negative to John. Indeed, she smiled a little to herself, dreaming of how it would be when she had her own baby, her dear little soul which she could love without reserve, being no longer dependent on John’s moods for anything. Her smile became almost spitefully triumphant when she considered how plausible it would be when she ignored John as much as he’d ignored her throughout their married life; she could spend all afternoon bathing her baby and then take him out shopping, and when John came home there would be no dinner waiting; they’d have to go out. Of course, John enjoyed dining at restaurants anyhow. When the garlic was all finished, she washed her hands, wondering whether she should drive to the Korean market to buy short ribs, which she could marinate easily and well in vinegar, Coca Cola, sesame oil, and red pepper paste, or whether she could treat the boy to one of those restaurant meals she’d so slyly imagined. If John were too busy to imprison himself in such trivialities, she could always count on Henry to take her, probably to that stretch of Korean markets and restaurants on Geary between Eleventh and Tenth, with their signs in squat Hangul characters and their kiosks for the Korea Times (fifty cents a copy) — a district which would after her death and burial insistently murmur to Tyler of her, like a yellowjacket buzzing inside a seashell. — Laurel Heights, on the other hand, was John’s territory because near the former pioneer cemetery there now stood an unassuming liquor store to which John sometimes drove to buy cask strength Mortlach (eight-year-old, imported by Cadenhead’s for about eighty dollars a bottle). Once Tyler had made his own journey to the grave, who would remember him, and what place would they associate with him? No place, probably; he was nothing and stood for nothing, not even the Tenderloin. He might as well be homeless.

As it happened, Irene’s self-pitying bitterness proved to be unfounded, on this occasion at least, because John liked his nephew and tried to win him over with presents, remembering how when he and Hank were children their abandoned mother had worked so hard and remained so poor; there’d been many things John had craved then: new clean sneakers like his schoolfellows, T-shirts, a nice watch, a Green Hornet lunchbox. Even now, one of the ways to put John in a good mood (although Celia had not yet learned this, and Irene never would) was to give him toy trains — an infantile transaction, to be sure, but surely John in his own way needed to feel taken care of, his expensive neckties and professional ambition aiming not only at egotism but also at safety and ease. And so he took his nephew downtown to the F.A.O. Schwarz on Stockton and O’Farrell, right on the edge of the Tenderloin, and allowed him to choose a hundred dollars’ worth of toys. The child, however, who actually lacked for nothing, thanks to Steven’s income, remained with John at all times shy and mistrustful. He sensed in his uncle a hardened silence which only a tolerant and perceptive adult could have recognized as something damaged; the child experienced it as stern dislike. The pallor of his uncle’s skin alarmed him, too, and he seemed to give off a strange smell. When he sat on his Auntie Irene’s lap he felt less homesick, believing for as long as she held him that his mother and father would truly return in only one more day, whereas John with his unnerving gift of toys presented an alien distraction, indicative of a plot to make him forget his parents, who if he let them escape from memory for one instant would immediately cease forever to exist. Above all, he perceived in John the desire to possess him, and he would not be possessed. He would not be tricked.

After they had gone back to Los Angeles, John said: That kid liked you more than he did me.

Well, what do you expect? said Irene. He ought to like me better. I’m a blood relative. I’m his aunt. You’re just his uncle-in-law.

We don’t do things that way in my culture, John said. I love my aunt and uncle both the same. It doesn’t matter which one’s the blood relative.

You mean you hate them both the same, said Irene, waxing her eyebrows. When was the last time you sent them a postcard or called them up?

That has nothing to do with it.

It has everything to do with it. Anyway, you married a Korean. That’s how Koreans are. If you don’t like it, you can divorce me.

What a goddamned cold thing to say!

You heard me. If you don’t like the way I am, you can divorce me.

So you can marry Hank?

I think you should be grateful to Henry that he treats me so nice. Saves you the trouble.

Are you in love with him, Irene?

Excuse me, Irene said. I’m going to close the bathroom door now. I want to pee.

| 335 |

Sacramento was rainy and windy, then sunny and windy. The September cornfields, greenish-brown, had just begun to go, like a cyanotype exposure nudged by many many photons into its first perceptible color shift: a permanent image was forming on the paper just as death was settling on the cornfields. He sat in the living room of his mother’s house reading in the Bee about a father who stabbed his wife and warned the children that if they told he would kill them, too; then the father drove away, leaving them to wait for two weeks of obedient silence in the bedroom with the decomposing body. Violent death in and of itself retained little power to disturb Tyler’s already anxious ease, but the hiddenness of that family’s literally rotten secret reminded him of Irene’s suicide, whose threateningly garish message remained only half obscured, like some Chinese movie poster behind a grating. Irene had loved Hong Kong action films. He remembered the posters in those two Chinatown theaters; forcing his mind away from the dangerous, morbid image, the grinning teeth and red calligraphy of heart’s blood from his murdered heroine, he withdrew from the grating, struggling up from memory to optimistic convenience even though the way remained as steep as the street-slope at Powell and Sacramento Streets; now he couldn’t see that threatening poster anymore. It was a grey day in his skull’s San Francisco; Tyler drove up through Chinatown on that lackadaiscal, that torpid throughway appropriately called Sacramento; he couldn’t get away from Sacramento even though his purpose might be shaded by clouds and awnings. By the First Chinese Baptist Church on Waverly a lady was awkwardly carrying her child. She struggled a little way up the hill and stopped just past the Chinese Playground, panting. He gazed pleasurably upon a Chinese girl whose hair was as shiny as her little black car. Then the poster began blinking red and black, red and black behind his closed eyes, no matter how tightly he squeezed them — red and black, red and black: Irene’s blood, Irene’s hair. For a moment he thought he couldn’t stand it, but if he didn’t stand it then what would happen? — All right then, he said to himself. Here is the poster and I am looking at it. This is the movie which Irene wants to see. Irene takes my hand. I am afraid that one of John’s colleagues will notice, but at the same time I don’t care, or I guess I do care but I wouldn’t let go of her hand no matter who saw. I pay the cashier for two tickets. We go inside, and now the poster is behind us. I hold Irene’s hand so tightly that she can’t pull it away and leave me. We sit down in the row of seats, and with my right hand I reach across myself to take her right hand while my left arm goes happily around her neck. Irene loves me. Irene will never love me. I love Irene. I love you, Irene. Irene, please let me kiss your cunt.

Okay, this is it! laughed Irene nervously. You’re too tall! — And she let go of his hand.

How about if I buy you some elevator shoes?

When I’m in an elevator shoe mood, I’ll call you.

Then a train mooed, half-cow, half-wolf. It must have been a long train because the strange call went on and on. His mother slept; she was not well. He went out for coffee and scones. The burglar alarm of the bookstore next door made everyone grimace. After half an hour it had not stopped, and his ears rang. He strolled home. His mother was still in bed. John had taken Mugsy to San Francisco for the duration. The phone rang. The new private nurse was very sorry, but she needed to reschedule the interview for the day after tomorrow; there’d been a death in her family. Tyler said that he was very sorry. He thought about driving immediately to San Francisco, getting some work done in case he had any work to do, then returning in two days or perhaps three, when the nurse, red-eyed, he supposed, had paid steady homage to the dead relative whom he hoped she had loved; but eighty miles each way would have given his old car a beating, so after his mother had woken up and been given all her pills he began the three-hundred-mile drive to Los Angeles, rapturously meditating on nothingness. Yes, he was homeless. He wanted to be homeless. Only when he was under the ground would he have a home. He overnighted in a motel in Panorama City. Early next morning he purchased from the florist (now an old friend) pink rosebuds sparkling with water, and achieved Forest Lawn. The back of his neck tingled; he was afraid that maybe he’d meet John or Irene’s brother Steven, but Irene lay most fortunately alone. — I’ve got to, I’ve got to, I’ve got to got to forget about her, he said aloud. — Her headstone had been freshly cleaned, probably by her mother. He stood the flowers in the iron ring and made his getaway. Industrial Security Supply was the cheapest source for microphone batteries, so he stopped there and bought a four-pack of those, made in Thailand now, he saw, then browsed unenthusiastically through the latest offering of tricks and cheats over in Demo Sales, had a burger, gassed up, and got back on Interstate Five — winds at Grapevine, dusty winds all through the Central Valley, dancing trees in Sacramento, leaves on his mother’s roof. He got the ladder out of the garage and went up with the push-broom to clear the gutters, which needed to be redone, but there didn’t seem to be much point in spending the money until he and John had talked over what would happen to the house after their mother was out of it. She was still resting. (When you get elderly you have to expect such things, she’d said.) He went to the supermarket and bought two sacks of groceries, trying to remember what it was that John usually got for her. He was not a good son. He admitted it. He was not so good at anything. Wouldn’t he be better, if he could get out of everything, too? Was Irene out of it or truly in it at last? And the Queen, where would she go when she was out of it? For a moment he longed to visit Dan Smooth, who was probably snoring on the front porch on Q Street, and who had all the answers even though those answers were unpleasant and might well be incorrect. But it was so hot that Tyler had already begun to fall asleep, too. Nothing could be of any use. In the front yard, withered red maple leaves whirled and clawed like fans in summer. At night it rained hard. He was up early the next morning with his heart most anxiously pounding and an ulcerous ache in his guts. The Bee was on the front porch. He slid off the rubber band, unrolled it, and read about a man whose wife had told him she was leaving, so the man shot his two little boys and then himself while she was screaming on the phone to the police. He went out for coffee. Every time he showed up at that cafe he met new help. Strangers everywhere, he thought, and then immediately saw his neighbor Mrs. Adams tying up her dog to the lamp post.

Why, good morning, Henry, said Mrs. Adams.

Morning, Mrs. Adams, said Tyler. How’s everything with you today?

Oh, my darned dog won’t poop. He’s done number one, but he just won’t do number two. And it’s really important for him to do number two. He’s just impossible all day until he does number two.

Sometimes I feel that way myself, said Tyler. Can I buy you a coffee, Mrs. Adams?

Why, how sweet of you, but I’m actually in a bit of rush. But do tell me how your mother is doing. We’re all so concerned about her. Your brother of course has been absolutely wonderful with her. It makes me laugh to see him out there mowing the grass just like he used to when he was a little boy. In his suit and tie yet; he comes straight from work…

Actually, cutting the grass was always my job, Tyler said. John had to take out the trash and rake the leaves.

Well, he certainly has kept his sense of responsibility, hasn’t he, Tyler? Just yesterday I was passing by and saw him up on your roof on his hands and knees, picking all those leaves out of the gutters.

That was me, Mrs. Adams.

Henry Tyler, are you telling me that after all these years I can’t tell you and John apart? — Oh, there he goes. There he goes. Oh, good doggie. What a good little doggie.

She bustled out, smiling. From her bright new daypack came the pooper-scooper and the plastic bag.

A moment later she was back. — Terrible, that story in the paper, don’t you think?

Not very nice, Tyler agreed, sprinkling some powdered chocolate in his steamed milk.

Why do you think people do those things? You’re around those sorts of people all the time; haven’t they told you anything?

Oh, they’re a lot like the rest of us, Mrs. Adams, Tyler said. They just tend to act a little more on their feelings, is all. Is that cappuccino yours?

They make such good cappuccino in this place, Mrs. Adams said. Ted and I went to Europe last spring and we tried a different coffee house every morning. I don’t even remember all the places we tried. But we never found any coffee that held a candle to the coffee right here at River City.

And what did Mr. Adams think?

Oh, he can’t tell the difference. He’s been an easy husband. Whatever he eats or drinks, to him it all tastes the same.

That’s the way to be, all right, said Tyler. I wish I could kill all my taste buds.

John has the most sophisticated tastes in your family, wouldn’t you say? I read in the Bee that drinking a glass of wine every night is good for your heart. He keeps buying your mother bottles of wine whose names I can’t even pronounce!

That sounds like John, said Tyler.

Wasn’t it a shame about Eileen, said Mrs. Adams.

Irene, Tyler said, something exploding in his chest.

That’s what I said. Irene. Why do you think she was so unhappy? You were very close to her, I understand.

Something was bleeding inside Tyler’s chest.

Weren’t you, Henry?

I certainly was, Mrs. Adams. Yes, ma’am, I certainly was.

Then how could she—

She wanted a dog, Tyler lied gleefully. That was the real reason. She wanted a little Airedale just like yours, but John wouldn’t let her have one.

John wouldn’t let her have a dog? cried Mrs. Adams in indignation. And what business was that of his? What could anyone possibly have against dogs?

He said that they were nasty, disgusting creatures. He just refused to let her have one, Tyler explained, following up on his attack.

But isn’t he taking care of Mugsy?

He put her in one of those no-name kennels. Full of disease and vicious pit-bulls, I hear. They just tear apart dogs Mugsy’s size…

And Mugsy’s in one of those places? How horrible!

Horrible’s exactly what it is.

And you just sit there and let it happen? Shame on you! Remind me never to trust Bubbles to either of you!

John hates dogs, Tyler explained. You wouldn’t believe how vitriolic he gets.

Well! said Mrs. Adams. I never knew that about John. And to think that I even let him sit our dog once — not Bubbles, of course. That was before Bubbles’s time. I let him sit Jessie. Do you remember Jessie?

Why, sure I do, Tyler lied.

And I paid John very well, too, at that time, Mrs. Adams said. Twenty-five dollars. Do you think he mistreated her?

Oh, I don’t think so, said Tyler, continuing to play the part most masterfully. Although with John you never know.

You never know, repeated Mrs. Adams, hypnotized. I never knew that about John. I never, never knew.

| 336 |

His mother was resting. He’d already filled up the refrigerator and telephoned his answering machine which connected him to San Francisco like still another long foul snail-track of memory. One message: A lady wanted him to find out why her husband got off work at eleven every night but never came home until one. Maybe four hundred dollars if he got lucky — half of October’s rent. The Sacramento Bee reported two more robberies in midtown and a rape-murder in Oak Park, the latter possibly perpetrated by some of the gangbangers in peaked or tasseled wool caps who leaned up against the window of Ray’s Taco Rico on Broadway, which had been around under various names since the 1930s; he used to go there for shakes and burgers with his high school co-inmates who’d believed that they had important things in common; maybe they did; maybe they had; Tyler had lost touch with all of them. He drove down to Ray’s and ordered a burger. On the wall hung a calendar, courtesy of a beer company, which sang the praises of the GREAT QUEENS OF AFRICA, in this case Queen Amina of Zaria. The gangbangers came in. Ray kept saying: Right here, cheese and chicken salad, right here.

Are you happy, dear? said his mother weakly.

Don’t worry about me, Mom. I’m more worried about you.

You sound just like John.

I get it, he chuckled. A headache was coming on — the same kind of headache as when some long snort of speed-cut cocaine wears off. He massaged his eyebrows.

Henry?

Yes, Mom.

Did Irene actually borrow my copy of The Possessed? I can’t seem to find it. I remember when I told her… oh, dear. She probably thought she had to read it to please me.

I’ll go look in the living room, he said.

There it was, in the third shelf down of the bookcase by the piano, in its usual place in the five-volume set of Dostoyevsky, with every book crowned by distinguished dust.

By late afternoon Tyler was going south on I-80 with the Bay on his right, shining blue, brassy and silver — a worked surface, as an artist would say. His friend Adrienne said that there was going to be an illegal Survival Research Laboratories performance down on Second and Natoma; they’d been banned in the city; maybe sooner or later they’d get tired or burned out and the strange furtive machine performances in night parking lots would come to an end, so he probably should have gone; he kind of wanted to, but he was feeling sick and tired.

| 337 |

He opened his mail, which said:

Dear Henr Tlyyyr & Mrs. Henr Tlyyyr,

We are pleased to offer you our unique financing program to bring instant, guaranteed relief from the burdensome payments you may be making on outstanding credit card balances, mortgage payments, automobile loans, and other consumer debt.

He crumpled that letter up and threw it at the wastebasket, but missed. Then he opened a beer.

He was behind on the rent again.

He telephoned the court clerk he used to go out with and asked her to please look up an Africa Johnston’s misdemeanor case from 1978, but the lady said: Henry, those records no longer exist. They have been deleted. Paperwork Reduction Act.

But I have the case number, he said.

I’m sure you do, she laughed. Listen, Henry, I really really really have to go.

| 338 |

Soon after that the vigs started coming around everywhere, terrorizing the street girls, calling the cops on them, and sometimes even going undercover to date them in order to ask where the Queen was, because, as Stalin once said, Cut off the head and the body dies. Once the whores knew who those men were, they rejected them and their money in scared, angry voices, but the only way to find that out was to go with them the first time. A vig whose gaze was as sick and ugly as one of those dark bars in which the regulars celebrate their own birthdays went up to Chocolate’s trick pad at the Royal Hotel for a fifty-and-ten,* fucked her without a rubber, then offered her a hundred dollars more to introduce him to the Queen. He said he wanted her for a bachelor night.

I’m the Queen of the Tenderloin, said Chocolate. I got my own line. I lay out my line. They follow me themselves.

She was lying sideways on the stinking bed with her reddish-chocolate thigh up on the pillow. She hadn’t taken off her pair of copper bracelets all summer because they eased her tendonitis, which tortured her more than ever now because she was an old bitch as she put it. — You’ve jerked off too many pricks! sneered Domino, to which Chocolate, never tongue-tied, replied simply: Your time gonna come, Dom, just like mine.

The vig said: Don’t bullshit me, bitch. This is the last time I’m gonna ask you nice. Now take me to the Queen.

Chocolate with her beautiful kissable mouth and those sweet, hurt eyes of hers lay gazing at the man with an almost flaming gentleness, in order to conceal her intense fear and hatred, and she was silent, thinking to herself: If he starts trouble I got to grab my high heeled shoe an’ bang on the door till the manager comes. Then I’ll get eighty-sixed from here but at least I…

How about it, bitch? said the vig with a tight little grin. Ain’t you girlfriends with the Queen?

I have one girlfriend. Me. Me alone.

You know the Queen?

Nope.

You know Henry Tyler?

If I did, would I tell you? I don’t know you.

You know me now, the vig said.

Yeah, right.

And I’m watching you.

Well, watch me all you want, ’cause I ain’t doin’ anything illegal, and if I am, you ain’t gonna catch me!

What about what you just did with me here?

That ain’t nothin’. That’s only entrapment.

Are you the Queen?

You’re full of it.

Looking her in the face, the vig said: I hear the Queen does magic. Black magic. Listen carefully, Chocolate. I’m going to quote you Leviticus 20.27. A man or a woman who is a medium or a wizard shall be put to death; they shall be stoned with stones; their blood shall be upon them. Amen.

Uh huh, said Chocolate.

Are you the Queen?

Are you a jerkoff?

You gonna miss me when I go?

No.

Can I miss you?

No.

What’ll you do if I miss you?

Fine. You can miss me all you want.

Come blow me again, bitch.

Uh-uh, said Chocolate, sitting up and reaching for her high heel. — I already done my job. I’m gonna give you my mouth motor, first you gonna gimme that hundred dollars…

The man leaped up, overtowering her, and snatched the shoe out of her hand, so Chocolate began to scream as loudly as she could, and right away the manager came and she was safe…

| 339 |

And Jesus elevated Mary Magdalene above the rest, said Smooth. You know why?

Because she was a whore, said Tyler, bored. He could not imagine why he had wished to solicit the man’s advice on anything. Smooth was as lively as a bumblebee, buzzing and buzzing about. He exhausted Tyler like Mission Street’s slow and stinking sunlight.

Not only that.

Not only what?

It wasn’t just that she was a prostitute. Henry, are you listening to me?

Yeah.

Also because she was His servant, you see. Because she washed His feet with her hair. And when the Queen spits in your mouth, she’s giving you a chance to be elevated—

Well, Domino never swallows, said Tyler. She told me for her it’s the same as a blow job. She just tucks it under her tongue and then spits it out when she can.

Well, then, she can’t be elevated, now, can she, asshole? said Smooth.

And do you admire Domino?

Oh, she and I go pretty far back, said Smooth. I’d have to say I — well, I—

They were on Powell Street. A little girl with tight shimmery golden laces on her sneakers took lipstick from the duty free bag and opened it, at which her mother nodded and lovingly explained.

I’d like to get into that, Smooth said.

I bet you would, said Tyler.

Ah, but it would be as illegal as a bail bondsman’s referral to any particular lawyer. You like illegal candy, don’t you, Henry?

I’m sick of your insinuations. Can’t you lay off for five minutes?

You’re being rude to me. And, you know, all this will end. Right now she’s your shield, but once she’s gone, you know what’s going to happen, pal? Irene will come right back and haunt you. No matter where you run, she’ll spot that Mark of Cain. Don’t worry; she won’t kill you, because God prohibited that. She’ll just torture you. She’ll say: You were supposed to be my keeper and you—

| 340 |

Mike Hernandez in Vice gave him the telephone number of a retired undercover cop named Morena who might know something about Brady. As soon as Tyler mentioned the name, Morena perked up. — Sure, he said. Don’t you remember that cop who got shot? Officer Marcus, his name was. One of his last duties was to work surveillance on Brady’s house. Who knows what he saw and what he knew? He drove to a big mall, I think maybe it was Stonestown. And the mall was closed. There was an eyewitness who saw something. I think his name was, oh, fuck, I forget the chump’s name.

Shot, huh? said Tyler.

Right in the everlovin’ head.

I get it. It’s starting to come back to me. Now wasn’t that the case where the cops themselves wanted to close it down?

Yeah. Marcus’s partner was the shill. He said: I disagreed with what my partner did. He shouldn’t have been in the parking lot of that mall.

What did he mean by that?

Nobody knows. He met with Internal Affairs and after that he refused to say anything.

So you think Brady had him bumped off?

Yeah, although I can’t prove it.

Well, well. So that’s our Jonas.

Jonas? Whaddya mean? This is the great Tyrone Brady I’m talkin’ about. You know, the guy Brady Alley’s named after. Patron of the arts. Jonas Brady now, I know who you mean but I’m not talkin’ about him. I got no beef with Jonas Brady. He’s a law and order guy.

| 341 |

In a crack-smoky room of another hotel which would soon burn down, the tall man was helping moaning Strawberry shoot herself up in her tired veins while Domino was insisting to the Queen: I said that’s not mine but the cop said right. I had a warrant outstanding so they took me in. So I was at Eight-Fifty Bryant and I was wearing my black and white polka-dot coveralls. You know, since I’m Domino I always try to look like my name. It’s brand recognition, see what I’m saying? And they wouldn’t give me my fucking overalls back. And they—

But I got you out, Domino, didn’t I? I got five hundred dollars together and your pal Danny Smooth posted your bail.

What the fuck do I care about that pervert? Domino shouted. And if you’re trying to make me feel guilty you can just throw me back in the hole, so help me!

Domino, I love you, said the Queen. I’m always looking out for you. You know that. And you love me? You love your Queen?

Yes, Maj, said the girl sullenly. Of course I do. You know that.

Allrightie. What is it then, child, you want your overalls back? They should have given ’em back to you when they checked you out. Ain’t those your street clothes? And what about that silver cocktail dress you got?

A long tap on the door, then two shorts, then another long.

The Queen smiled.

Who the fuck’s that? said Domino.

You know who it is, said the tall man, looking over his shoulder, so give her some space!

Oh, said Domino, making chewing-gum noises. You going to fuck Henry again tonight?

I was fixing to, yes, said the Queen, looking her in the eye. You got a problem with that?

It’s none of my business really.

That’s right, said the tall man, so shut the fuck up!

Hey, Maj, when the shit comes down, are you gonna skip with Henry and leave us all to face the music? I heard a couple girls saying that.

Let him in, would you, Justin?

Hold it right there in the vein until I get back. That’s right. I said hold it there, bitch. Oh, Strawberry, you’re such a goddamn pretty little bitch. Don’t come on like some fancy girl.

| 342 |

Does the Queen like to drink dark coffee? a panhandler whispered from the side of his mouth.

Fuck cappuccino! cried Chocolate, drunk and high. She’s got more than mocha’s got to offer.

Gimme a kiss, Chocolate.

I’m glad I’m not barbeque, the whore laughed, kissing him. I saw how messy you are when you eat barbeque. If I’d be barbeque I’d be all over your face.

Hey, Chocolate, somebody told me you also go by the name Brenda. Is that true?

Don’t do that to me, said the whore, her eyes narrowing, her face tensing into chocolate-colored steel.

Brenda, where’s the Queen?

Fuck off! the whore screamed in terror, trying to run away, but this time the vig grabbed her and held her and pulled slowly in toward his face to whisper: You’d better think about it, Brenda Wiley. Because one of these days I’m going to get you…

| 343 |

Tyler, sitting beside Dan Smooth in a taxicab watching the very slow rotation of a heavy rubber tire on a trailer which then suddenly shot by, exposing the man who stood with folded arms on the corner of Sixteenth Street by the Esta Noche bar, through whose doorway he could see winking strings of what appeared to be glowing and crystallized piss, saw behind Mr. Folded Arms a man in a baseball cap whose heraldic device consisted of a red light bulb with a slash through it, and then the legend, tricked out in white letters: BRADY’S BOYS. — Look at that vig, he muttered.

They’re all right, man, the cab driver said. They’re doing the good thing to help the people. But Brady kind of a character. Like you know he made some allegation the Queen tried to ex him.* Well, that never come out positive. Police can’t find no wrongdoing on the part of the Queen.

You like the Queen, don’t you? said Tyler.

Well, sir, I never come right out and say that, but her girls help pay my rent, man, and like they’re always big tippers; they smile at me, you know…

Perfect praise from the mouths of babes, said Dan Smooth out of the side of his mouth.

Take a valium, Dan.

But police can’t find no wrongdoing on the part of the Queen, the cab driver repeated. Since then I lose my respect for Brady.

The light changed at last. The driver accelerated. They went to the Tenderloin.

Wait here, said Smooth when they got to the parking garage. He ran inside and came out with a dirty envelope. — All right, he said. Now let’s go to the Little Angels Foundation on Broadway. — I want to pick up some medication for Sapphire, he explained.

What’s in the envelope? said Tyler.

Smooth opened it. — Warnings about vigs, he said. The usual stuff.

In fact, I really don’t like that Brady all that much, the taxi driver said.

Yeah, we figured that out, said Tyler.

And how do you vote, Henry? said Smooth.

I’d vote for her, sure.

You erectile old understater, you. Well, you know already that she’s going to leave you, said Smooth. Consider yourself already left. I know I’ve said that to you before, but you clam up every time. So I’m going to keep hammering away. I’m going to force the little thighs of your soul apart until you answer me, Henry.

Why should she leave me?

People die, you stupid ass. Sisters-in-law, for instance. People get tired of people. People get sick. People run away.

So all you’re telling me is that nothing lasts forever.

Yeah.

What if I tried to become more like her?

You’re just becoming more like the rest of us, Henry. You’re turning into a sneaky, money-hungry bullshitter.

Whatever, said Tyler, getting out. He passed two vigilantes in the attire of Brady Boys. The first one was sweaty and out of breath. — We chased ’em a couple blocks and then they split up, so we split up, the vig was saying. I caught one guy…

Smooth leaped out of the taxi, giggling. Tyler looked into his eyes and said: Are you doing speed again?

If you’re doing crystal, you — literally, you… you… When you find a good thing and don’t know when you have it, that’s another thing people don’t understand.

Oh, for God’s sake.

For Cain’s sake, you mean.

From the doorway of the Jewel Hotel, Strawberry was drunkenly laughing: You get burned out. You get tired! and she gave the tall man a kick in the ass. The tall man snickered.

Afternoon, Justin, said Tyler.

Hey, boy, said the tall man. Where’s your faggoty car?

Don’t you remember how I drove it up your ass last night? Where’s Maj?

Upstairs in Strawberry’s room. She said you could wake her if you came by.

All right.

Hey, Smooth, what’s up? You look doped up.

If you ever do a three-way scene, don’t do it in Sac, laughed Smooth. That’s what I learned from my experience.

I don’t have time for your bullshit. Gotta make a run. Maj is in Room Twenny-Nine.

Strawberry led them upstairs to the lobby where they each paid five dollars to the unshaven clerk, and then Strawberry unlocked the door of number twenty-nine and laid her finger on her lips, pointing to the Queen snoring softly on the unmade bed as the TV said: See, these agents I guess you could call ’em of the Queen, they lie in wait for girls at the bus terminal. Runaways, innocent girls without much experience of the world. They love it there.

I expected that, said Smooth. That’s just how it was before, see. The Chosen People would show up and say, all right, open the gates of your city. If you let us in right now, you’ll be our slaves forever. If you don’t, we’re going to besiege you and then kill you all — well, kill all the men, I guess, rape all the women and children and sell them for slaves…

Dan, there’s nothing about raping children in there. That’s just your wishful thinking.

Well, sometimes I get carried away.

Mute the sound, would you, Dan? We already know the crap they’re going to say.

True enough, said Smooth. It’s not beautiful.

Should we wake up Maj?

You want my advice? My advice is no. Anyway, I’m getting jealous of you. You don’t help her be objective. She needs an easier person to be objective with — like me…

The Queen opened her eyes and said: We got to get everybody together now.

| 344 |

And so (excepting only Dan Smooth, whose presence was required in appellate court) they all assembled on a hot dark night in a room at the Lola Hotel on Leavenworth Street, Lily’s room actually, tomb of ignoble desperation transformed by her into a dreamy hive of noble madness where she could rest and get high behind locked doors, no longer seeking any solution but searching nonetheless for something which in Beatrice’s case would have been God but for Lily comprised a flickering candle-flame to burn away the darkness inside her until the wax had melted and she had to go outside again to sell the hole between her legs which once had been a penis and which she now thought of as tissue neither male nor female, merely some orifice upon whose functioning, like that of her anus, the health of her body depended — no honey meant no money, and without money she’d be vomiting in the sink again. Heroin lit the way for her, and so did the Queen, but so also did what might as well be called self-improvement. Still at some remove from the innermost reaches of divinity where the Queen ceaselessly trod and where the crazy whore and Sunflower quite simply dwelled, Lily reflected in her eyes her glittering, glancing fishy friendships with the other women of the streets, who mostly despised her for her instability, in accordance with Darwin’s laws; and because the Queen did not speak of her very frequently, it was easy enough for them, egged on by pitiless Domino, to make fun of her stench and bleating voice, although they had to agree that she was inoffensive; she’d never fought anybody. Quite the contrary — there lived in Lily, as in Beatrice, Sunflower and the Queen herself, a longing to give of herself. In Sunflower’s case, the longing had been to give everything so that self would be exhausted, whereas the Queen and Beatrice were sweetly busy in their doings; as for Lily, what she dreaded most was disappointing others, which was why she had rendered allegiance to the Queen, of whose goodness and kindness she had no doubt; the Queen wanted to become her mother, and how could Lily have the heart to refuse? Having pledged herself, in one of her typical Lilyisms she continued to sleep apart from Maj whenever she could afford to do so because if she lay down too long among other people, their images sometimes began to dance around behind her eyes with increasing velocity until they became nightmares which spent themselves furiously inside her soul. Whenever a man paid her more than twenty dollars she always asked him: You want a picture of ugly old me? I can give you a photo of my ugly, ugly pussy if you want. I have one right here in the pocket of my… — She laughed until she cried whenever the man said no. When he said yes, she searched for the photograph but she was all out; she didn’t have any more.

The wall in her room said LETITIA ROSA 10-20-96. Letitia Rosa was Lily’s real name.

The wall also said:

Rule Numero Uno: Don’t use God’s name in vain.

Do — always Respect everyone and speak with a pleasant tone of voice.

Don’t bring anyone in unless you let me know first and I okay it.

What occurs in 26 stays between the present party. Our Business — stays our Business — no exceptions.

When I say go, time to go! No potting around.

3 chances—3 times are 86ed from 26.

Break bread — no nasties.

No money, no honey.

Pay before you stay.

Some bucks before you fuck.

No tight ass so tight it squeaks when you walk, you cheap something for nothing busters.

Money’s made for us and you to spend.

You show love and fairness you get the same and most of the time even better my friend. Good people deserve great service.

Love’s 3 Ms—

My Mom

My Money

My Man

Don’t play the player cuz the player don’t pay.

Sex is evil all is sin sin is forgiven so sex is sin.

Suck me fuck me make me bleed kinky sex is all I need.

Jealousy has no set conspirator so beware of the coy steps of happiness for deep within the heart lays the truth of their interactions which you see by looking past the lost in despair. Smile and you’ll always get trapped cuz demons are here.

Well, we got a problem, said the Queen.

Her children remained so tensely silent in that room that all could hear the click of a cigarette lighter in the hall. Lily, proud of her hospitality yet shy, sat on the toilet seat peeping through the doorway.

Anybody here not know what it is?

And the royal family huddled together unspeaking as if they were incapable of uttering language or even of comprehending what their old, old Queen was intimating as she sat there on the edge of Lily’s mattress with Sapphire on the carpet kneeling down between her legs, head in the Queen’s lap, sleeping.

Allrightie. I s’pose you all heard Henry’s story.

Beatrice cleared her throat and said: I doan know. Because we have something inside and they doan want us to…

Her words died as they left her mouth. The lightbulb buzzed tremblingly.

The Queen said: We can’t none of us make these vigs go away. They’re onto us and they wanna get us. They see that Mark of Cain glowin’ in the dark on our forehead, so we can’t even run, ’cause if we do we just make a movin’ light. I’m pretty sure they’ll get us. And that Brady man, the one that beat up Francine so bad that time she ain’t never come back to us, he wanna be playin’ a double game. He wanna have his whorehouse over there an’ he wanna bust us over here. It ain’t reasonable, so we can’t reason with him.

An’ we can’t ex him, the Queen went on. We can’t do nothin’. ’Cause my power’s just about used up. That’s what the Bible says. An’ the Enemy never lies in His book. It’s all true an’ all cruel. So.

She cleared her throat and said: I love you all. An’ maybe some of you all gonna get your reward real real soon.

Lily’s skirts rustled in terror. Lily was remembering the death of Sunflower. Gazing at Lily, Kitty wrung her hands. But Tyler feared nothing. He was thinking of what Irene used to call “bow envelopes,” envelopes white or red, containing cash, which on New Year’s Day the old relatives presented to the younger ones, who then had to bow down to them in love and respect. Whether his reward would prove to be love, enlightenment, freedom or death, he knew that he would kneel to his Queen and render thanks.

Anybody got somethin’ to say, better say it, shrilled the Queen, the corners of her mouth twitching and grimacing like unquiet water in its tides.

So I think we should find this Brady man, said Domino. And I want us to find this part of this Brady man, she added laughingly, wrenching her favorite dildo, Clitilda, from its altar beneath her armpit where it always stayed when it was not in the abandoned meatpacking plant in her striptease cage improvised from wire and stolen parking meters. (She had constructed it, with the tall man’s paid help, because it had always been Domino’s dream to strut on a stage and get applause and big money without even having a customer breathe on her, but she was too old now for that and too abscessed.)

And do what? You heard me say we can’t ex him.

Why not?

C’mon, Dom. You was there in that Vietnamese restaurant with me an’ Henry an’ Danny Smooth when I opened the Book. You know why.

Domino’s face turned scarlet with humiliation and rage, and she hung her head. Later, when the tall man tried to remember what Domino had said about Brady, he could not be certain that he’d really heard anything, because, after all, the blonde uttered such poisonous statements day and night that it was better not to listen. He was the only one who even attempted to remember.

The thing about the Queen is she teaches you things, whispered Lily, whose legs were were blotchy and stringy like a mummy’s flesh. If you pay attention, Queen’s gonna show you how to—

Because you wanted to be one step ahead of the police, right? demanded the crazy whore, stroking the TV’s withered wires which resembled dead branches. — I mean, you wanted to have a mutual slumber party. Isn’t that what you’re saying? But the police want to search for somebody who’s awake. So stay asleep, Maj. Don’t stay awake.

Well, Mary, said Domino drily, I know that’s how you go through life.

I doan want to qvarrer with anyone, whispered Yellow Bird, but the crazy whore, acknowledging this advice with an eloquent wave, leaned forward and said: Domino, you think of beauty as something skin deep. The first thing is, you’re jealous of the Queen for trying to go to sleep as soon as she hears about anything. Because you’re just somebody intelligent who’s had weapons used on you, so you want to use music on her but I’m completely innocent.

Fuck off, you crazy bedbug.

Gun up! cried the Queen. All of you pay this some mind. Get ready, now.

Why don’t we just leave town? Strawberry said. Me and Chocolate, we were talkin’, and we thought maybe up in Fairbanks there’s a lot of action and the Vice cops won’t know us when we get there, so I thought maybe—

You ever been to Alaska? the Queen inquired mildly.

Well, I had an opportunity once and I should have taken it since I just pissed away my money anyhow.

Lot of girls comin’ up missing even there, said Bernadette through parted lips and wise eyes. Some Canadian chick was tellin’ me they just wind up dead, so many girls now, shit, I dunno, seven, eight—

The Queen leaned her weary head back against the wall and closed her eyes, on her lips a sad half-smile which almost broke everybody’s heart.

What’s up, Maj, what’s up? cried the tall man.

My blood pressure, she said.

I prefer to give those sonsofbitches the slip, Domino opined then. Hell, I can always leave town. I don’t know about the rest of you sluts…

And which town you fixin’ to go to?

What the fuck’s the difference? Any town’ll work. Any town where men have cocks and wallets.

And if they follow you there?

Busted is busted, Maj. Excuse my French, but I’ve been there before.

Fine, said the Queen. So Domino’s headed for Vallejo or Stockton or maybe Idaho Falls. Anybody else?

Lily giggled in a panic, but finally managed to say: If somebody’s spying, and you take a radius of four blocks and cut that radius down, I discover that in that whole four block radius I can hear what they’re saying when they’re talking about me. For instance, this old lady said I was pretty. She came to check me out: You are pretty. I’m not sticking it in right now, she said, because it don’t have what it takes to stick it in you; I’m saying it was an incident of look and blah-blah-blah…

You do this for a living? Domino sneered at her.

Thank you, Lily, said the Queen. Anybody else have something to mention?

Beatrice gave me these jeans, continued Lily with a horribly anxious smile, afraid that she had already said something bad or wrong. — I had to cut ’em up, though. I just get afraid somebody’s gonna cut me up…

Oh, shut up, bitch, said Domino.

Dom, you got to calm down tonight, said the Queen.

Go fuck yourself, Maj.

I mean it. We got a problem and we need to scope things out.

When those vigs get a bug in their ass, they don’t quit, the tall man said at last. I reckon they’re gonna be gunning for us. Maybe I can knock a couple of their fuckin’ heads together…

Nobody in this room cares about me, Domino said. You’re all just going to abandon me when Brady drops his dime. And, Maj, you’ve changed. All you care about’s that bastard over there. And what’s that bastard got to do with anything?

Henry here’s my main man.

Tyler cleared his throat and said: Hey, I’m on your side, Domino. We just need to figure—

Will you shut the fuck up?

Opening one eye, Sapphire clutched the hem of the Queen’s skirt and began to whimper.

Sure, honey, Tyler said with a bitter and sophomoric grin.

The Queen parted her lips slowly to let the cracksmoke out and said: Now listen up. If something happens to me, part of me gonna go inside Sapphire. Not every part, but the love part, yeah, the soul part. So please please please take care of her.

What the fuck’s that supposed to mean? shouted Domino. What does that idiot slut have that I don’t have?

Anxious Bernadette combed back her hair over and over, swaying back and forth as if she were listening to rap music through her headphones as she usually did when she was waiting to get dated at Sixteenth and Capp because that shut life out, and now she was pretending that if she rocked her body she could shut out what was happening here, but she could not, and her liquid eyes stared sidelong at Domino, whom she pitied and of whom she was afraid.

Dom, you ever made love with Sapphire?

I—

Answer the question, bitch! cried the tall man, who stank of fear and rage.

I — Justin, I — no.

Allrightie then, said the Queen. Saph, wake up, little sweetie. Open that eye up again. Now the other one. That’s right. That’s right. Are you my honey? Are you my good girl? Saph, go over there an’ suck Domino’s pussy. Gotta teach her something. Don’t be afraid. She won’t hurt you.

No! screamed Domino. Not with all of you looking! You fuckers!

Sorry, bitch, but tonight I just don’t have no more patience, hissed the Queen, staring into Domino’s eyes. This can’t always be just about you.

And, rising, she strode over to the blonde and breathed once into her face. From where he sat, Tyler could see only the back of Domino’s head, but the Queen’s features were plain to him now: flat, steep, hard and blank like one of those high Tenderloin brickfronts studded with dark curtained windows whose lurking inmates could see out and not be seen, brickfronts painted with the names of long bankrupted businesses, walls dropping remorselessly down to steel gratings and dull parking meters and then dark and dirty streets. The Queen was slender, but so were the old Tenderloin skyscrapers seen from a long way off; and he felt that she was already so far away from him and everyone, and perhaps her immense isolation had simply been hidden all this while by everyone’s longing to be taken care of without questions or reservations, and now what if she were actually evil?

(Irene had always been afraid of the devil. She couldn’t bear to watch a thirty-second television commercial for a horror movie, in case there might be something satanic. She was godfearing, yes, but she feared the devil even more, and in her last moments of life what if she’d fallen into a maze of horror, believing that now she’d killed herself the devil would have her in his claws forever? What if the Queen were really the devil, and Tyler now had crossed the demarcation which made him irrevocably hers to sadistically or simply implacably torment as she was about to torment Domino?)

Now you can’t move, can you? Justin, take her into the bathroom an’ take her pants down an’ lay her down in that bathtub. That’s right. Sapphire, you go in an’ do your thing. Close the door. I said close the door.

They sat in silence listening until Domino began to moan. She moaned until she screamed. Sapphire was a drug like no other, intense-acting almost to fatality, who gave such deep gratification with her purring, licking mouth that Domino despite herself and the fact that she was being raped could not forbear to feel for at least one instant absolutely and unequivocally loved. Then at last she understood why the idiot girl was called Sapphire.

You all get it now? said the Queen. Maybe Sapphire’s the one he’s really after. You gotta all take care of Sapphire…

| 345 |

After a long time Sapphire crept out on her hands and knees, licking her lips and mewling. The tall man got up and closed the door. Then they heard Domino sobbing inside. They heard her buckle her belt, and then the door slammed open and Domino came out, scarlet in the face with her lower lip trembling, and she did not look at the Queen who regarded her with expressionless sorrow, if such a thing is possible, but unlocked the deadbolt and then the other lock and stumbled into the hall and down the stairs.

Close the door, Lily, the Queen said. This here’s your house. You don’t wanna leave your house open to strangers.

Giggling in terror, Lily shut the door and locked it.

Tyler sat very still, feeling sick to his stomach. He could hardly bear to wrest himself from his illusion that the Queen was perfect. But he had seen for himself just how she could be. He could hardly believe it. Her face had altered yet again. It was rounder and older, with glowing globules of radiance dribbling from her mouth and eyes in a strange wormy blur which obscured her from him and all humanity as if she were some waxen golem melting into something squat, ruthless and terrible. He knew that Domino must be sitting on the street somewhere nearby, bent forward, weeping, herself likewise blurred body and soul in the night whose fog was as thick with sadness as wool or old sackcloth, and garish signs announced 99¢ so that she’d know what she and the world were worth, and globes and globules of streetlight, Queenlight attacked her like biting insects.

But no! She was his Queen! Small and slender, she sat there on the edge of Lily’s mattress gazing at him steadily through her dark and wide-open eyes, the wool cap pulled down all around the top of her skull and her parka buttoned up to her neck and her mouth pouted outward and tight in a calm sad challenge to those who would not know her or understand her, and tears of light ran down her cheeks.

Henry, you’re so quiet now, she said. What you thinkin’ about all this?

What do I think about what?

Whatever.

Well, the issue of the vigs, I don’t know what to say about that. I — well, what should I think? We’re all waiting for you to tell us how to react. And what you did to Domino just now, well, I guess it seems a little cruel, to me at least. I don’t get it. But I want to believe it’s another test like the false Irene you gave me, because you love Domino, I know you do, and I…

Even you, Henry, she said, slowly shaking her head. Even you.

Look, Henry, said the tall man. She a leader or not?

She is.

Okay. Well, how can she be a leader if she don’t make herself known, eh? And wasn’t Domino tryin’ to obstruct her again?

Maj, I believe in you, he said. And I’m going to keep trying to believe.

And what about what we all came here for? said Chocolate. We gonna let Domino just put her hand on us and derail everything? I mean, what we s’posed to do? What did we decide?

L-luh-luh, replied Sapphire.

| 346 |

At five o’clock the next morning Sapphire was out on South Van Ness trying in her inarticulate slobbering way to get a trick so that her sisters would be proud of her because their caresses resembled all the murals on Capp Street whose bright colors comforted Beatrice; so, trusting in the world with all the luminosity of her rotting consciousness, Sapphire crawled and squatted, underwearless, past two blindeyed strutting cops, until she spied in the deep-staired doorway of an old Victorian a bare foot, bluish-white, jerk suddenly out from beneath a blanket, twitch violently, and stiffen. Sapphire looked both ways, just as the Queen had taught her. Inside the dead man’s pocket she found, in addition to three dollars which she hid inside her shoe, as she had seen Beatrice do, a much-handled letter from overseas which said: Dearest husband, to day I’m very happy to get your letter and the Bible from you thank’s for giving me every thing and sad when I never heard from you now about you come to me again. Do you still love me. You don’t know how my heart painful every day waiting for you never have hope now. I know you are so busy than before and maybe my love doesn’t mean for you any more. I don’t know what to do with my life. I’m so lonely and missing you some night I dream about you. Like I walk in the darkness no job no money and you don’t love me like before may be I can have my way finish my life soon. Without you how my life can be. You are my nice husband. To night I can’t sleep so much think about you. I know I no good enough for you I who have nothing you have everything life with someone you love more than me. If I didn’t heard from you and then I know what to do with my life may be kill myself because I always make you trouble. Love my husband to much. P.S. the Bible from you I promiss alway read. Sapphire, who could not read, took this letter to the Queen.

And you’re sure he’s dead and not passed out? said the Queen.

L-luh-luh-uh… said Sapphire.

All right, baby. Poor gal. She probably waited and waited for an answer. Maybe she’s still waiting. Justin! Justin!

What? said the tall man.

We’re gonna write this girl, and tell her that the man she loved is dead. Can you take care of it?

All right, Maj, but you gotta gimme the money for an envelope and stamp. I don’t have no stamp money for somebody I don’t even know.

Sapphire, did he have any money on him?

Obediently, the palsied girl displayed the three dollars.

Okay, baby, you gimme a dollar — no, no, give it to Justin over there, that’s right. What a good girl. Come kiss Mama. Okay, now put that two dollars away. Or do you want Mama to keep it for you? You do? Okay. I’m gonna remember. Anytime you want it, you just come ask for it. Well, Justin, you done yet?

Done? What the fuck am I s’posed to say?

Say your man passed away. Say he died in no pain.

How do you know he died in no pain, Maj?

’Cause I know. And even if I didn’t know, the whole point is to make her feel good, don’t you see? So just write it.

Maj?

What?

How you spell dead?

How do you think you spell it? Just write it and stop bothering me. Anyway, it’s more polite to say passed away.

Then why don’t you write it if you’re so all-fired polite?

Well. What’s got into you today?

Just thinkin’ about what you said last night is enough to make anybody feel sour. And when Domino comes flyin’ back here with her claws out, who the hell’s gonna have to deal with it?

| 347 |

Look, the tall man said. You think if the Queen orders me to punch concrete and I break my hand, Queen’s gonna pay for it?

She—

Damn right she will, Domino. She’s the good Queen. And you’re no fuckin’ good. You understand?

Oh, go to hell.

And you know what else? They may drink her spit, but they all gotta kiss my ass, said Justin with satisfaction. I’m the shot-caller around here. And I’m tellin’ you right now, bitch, to go in there and get down on your knees and ’pologize. Know why? ’Cause you was at fault. You wrecked that meeting last night out of your meanness. Maj had to shut youup…

I didn’t wreck anything, cocksucker, so don’t you tell me—

Maj wanna beat up on you, you better let her. ’Cause you just a little fool. Just a little honky fool.

| 348 |

What passed between Domino and the Queen nobody else knew, but when the tall man, pacing anxiously outside, reentered the tunnel at the Queen’s summons, he found the two women holding hands as they sometimes used to do, although the Queen’s face was expressionless and Domino’s wore a look of strain. (Sure, said the Queen, sometimes Domino and me, we get on each other’s nerves, but we stick together, don’t we, Dom? We help each other.)

Once the blonde learned that for her grief was precisely the same as rage, she thought that she would craze and break suddenly, but didn’t, and because she could not let the poisoned feelings out, there was an ache in her chest, a throbbing at the back of her neck, as they sought to expend themselves by wrecking her body a little, making headaches and ulcers and sleeplessness so that the next morning, sick-faced, she’d get up with her swollen pounding heart the only vital force she had, drearily raging through the day. As she contemplated the Queen, something burned even hotter in her chest and she clenched her teeth. And yet she appeared to love her more than ever, and whenever she could ran fingers and tongue across the Queen’s chocolate stomach with all its grooves and wrinkles and adipose sandbars. There were some, such as the tall man, who said that she had merely donned the mask of goodness out of necessity, and was biding her time to betray the Queen and everyone else to the vigs, and perhaps by the mask of goodness they imagined something akin to Sapphire’s face when the Queen or Beatrice had washed her and combed her hair and trimmed it so that when she gazed straight at somebody with her inhuman eyes and parted her lips as if she would speak there might sometimes be for an instant an esoteric illusion of recognition and mutuality before the saliva began wandering from between her kissable lips. Could it be that neither Sapphire, nor Domino, nor the Queen were human? What were they, then? What were they? — But Domino was orphaned, so she must have been human. Isn’t that what being human means? And if she was an orphan, wouldn’t she seek affection’s pristine balm between the breasts of her dear Queen who’d loved her even as she’d raped her, unless of course the Queen didn’t love her? But this issue, which left Tyler almost anguished to contemplate, actually meant less to the blonde because throughout her life she could hardly continue her signatures of belief for longer than a double-flourish, and so the flickering of interpretation between love and no love had grown so habitual to her that the most ambiguous or even antagonistic act could never be proof, just as the best and most tenderest kindness of anyone could soothe her suspicions only briefly before the hairs started up again on the back of her neck and her gaunt soul growled. The pimp from whom the Queen had saved her had beaten, burned and tortured her, and yet because every week or two he’d grapple her head between his immense cruel hands and whisper that he loved her, she couldn’t fix her heart’s compass needle eternally to hatred; she couldn’t believe or disbelieve in anything, but wandered lost even when she was flat on her back and another man and then another was between her legs, urgently raping her dry womb in exchange for cash, whereas when the Queen raped her that night in Lily’s room it gave her pleasure because Sapphire was a true treasure even asleep on the pillow and now that the Queen had revealed her powers many of the other girls, including shy Beatrice, led her aside to groom her and feed her, then use her as they would use any other drug, so that wherever the Queen and Sapphire stayed, nights were punctuated by screams of pleasure as loud as gunshots. They screamed as if they were being murdered and maybe they were. And Domino cast Beatrice aside and came to Sapphire. What if she’d come back to the Queen, then, simply because she was addictive and addicted, and so she needed the retarded girl more than she hated her Queen? What license did the Queen give her to have intercourse with Sapphire? Hadn’t the Queen in effect sold Sapphire down the river by revealing her inborn skill to those who as a result could never again refrain from using her? Or was that revelation just the necessity-worship of a loving mother, so that Sapphire would be preserved once the Queen was gone?