The Royal Family

| 15 |

To say that there were times when Henry Tyler knew his life was ashes would have been an understatement in the English manner. People who possess no backbones whatsoever (and preferably no minds, either) can be most easily pleased, like children eating ice cream; where the ice cream money comes from, and under what conditions they receive it — to say nothing of the sanguinary destiny of even the most miraculous vanilla-chocolate cow — never breaches the barriers of their victorious vacuity. Next case: Roman senator types, so prodigiously favored or ossified with backbones that they can scarcely sit down, constitute the second most fortunate regiment of souls; when events fail them, pride carries on, and when the latter dies they will probably succeed in staggering a few steps farther, fortified by philosophic resignation, until they fall at last into their open graves, muttering: At least I did the right thing. — Tyler, like most of us, had not so much claimed membership in as been claimed by the third group, comprised of those who know, and are shamed, but do not or cannot act. If the grim first half of that black Book (rarely to be met with in Tenderloin hotels because its pages were long ago cannibalized for rolling papers) truly knows whereof it speaks, why, then Tyler’s own losers’ club got inaugurated in the days of Cain and Abel, whose parents, like evicted junkies who boast that even now they can wrap the landlord around their grimy little fingers, had continued to insist that they could still get right with God. Why, sooner of later He’d have to forgive them! It just wasn’t Christian for Him to go on holding a grudge like that. After all, they’d only eaten one apple — they hadn’t even finished it, if you consider the core, which had borne a worm or serpent or something (and wasn’t that God’s fault, to provide them with rotten fruit?); no, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, that apple had scarcely been worth saving. (Thus spake the whore who’d stolen a mere twenty from Tyler’s pocket while he was on Mason Street calling his answering machine.) Remembering Eden’s swanky landmarks — the silvery river of vodka, the meadows of opium poppies springing white and orange in a nutmeg breeze, the Chinese-style zen rock garden whose sparkling pebbles were all refined crack cocaine — Adam and Eve could scarcely believe that their happy pre-Lapserian eternities had become dust. Anyhow, they weren’t damned; they were on parole. Nothing was final. If I put a gun to my head, I know perfectly well that even after I’ve pulled the trigger I can always duck out of the way or even blow the bullet back down the barrel with a cheery gust of breath, because it was I who initiated the cause; what injustice if I couldn’t control the effect! — No matter, the expelled spouses said to one another; He could come talk to them anytime and they’d help Him see the light. (Call this no backbone at all, or else backbone so well crystalized as to occupy the cranial cavity.) But Adam and Eve’s boys, sullen, lice-infested, and pallid from too many seasons of hunting blind-fish in the familial cave, never owned that solace. Imperfection had not originated with them, nor had responsibility. They were cursed without meaning or recourse. Cain, unable to believe this at first, crept near Eden as soon as he was grown, and found only an angel with a flaming sword who threatened him with death. Cain wanted to know why. Still unable to believe in reality, prepared to bow and beg to make life other than it was, Cain somehow retained in his mind the image of the Hall of Justice in San Francisco, where a steady or lucky customer may well meet with the expressionless lordliness of the white-moustached, paunchy, black-uniformed guardian of the entrance, who stands with his arms at his sides while Cain, the man with a problem, explains and explains. Finally, in a clear and even friendly voice, the guardian settles everything: Go to Room 101 tomorrow. That’s really the best way. — Okay, thank you, says the man rushing furtively away. — Cain was certain that there must be a Room 101 thereabouts, within which mercy would be served on little plates, glistening like slices of fresh-killed fish. And, although he never would have thought himself capable of doing this, he fell down on his knees before the angel and bowed his head. The angel struck him a glancing blow with his sword, and Cain’s garments burst into flames. He rolled in the dust until the fire was quenched, cupped mud on his burns, then rose and again uttered the word: Why? — It has nothing to do with you or me, replied the angel. But understand this, boy: you’re going to be punished as long as you live. Automatic bench warrant. Now I’m going to count three. If you’re not running back to your cave by then, I’m going to burn your legs off. Don’t ever come back here. One… Two… — Cain told his younger brother everything. — Maybe it isn’t the same for you, he said. Maybe God likes you. I’ll show you where the place is. Then you can ask the angel to take pity on our family. — But Abel had already made up his mind not to tempt wrath with more impulsive sallies. Hadn’t they been warned? He whispered to his brother that he was afraid because he was still too little, that he couldn’t run quickly, but the truth, which he had expressed in the language of expediency only because that would produce the best effect upon his brother, was that he actually accepted lifelong submission as a moral principle. Who was correct, then; who was exemplary — Cain or Abel? I don’t care, as long as the angel wouldn’t let anyone speak. (By stating the matter thus, I fall perhaps a shade on Abel’s side, being unconvinced that his visit to the the gates of Eden would have been any more pleasant than for Cain.) — Enough of all this. Let’s just get on with it, as Tyler’s proudly impatient brother John would have said. — History with its taints, reverberations, irrevocable deeds and preexisting conditions may temporarily explain how a soul finds itself shackled, or not, but, while questions of how may be resolved to any degree of satisfaction, questions of why remain unanswered, merely slimed over by arbitrariness. Do you believe in original sin? It seems awfully unfair, and ultimately inexplicable. For Eden, take for instance the squiggles of light on the sunny dance floor of Pearl Ubungen’s Tenderloin studio, where Pearl, pretty and a little famous, sat with her baby in her lap saying tatatatatatititi and her dancers’ obliging heels going bimbimbimbimbimbimbimbim. They were rehearsing for some “event.” A church bell tolled in the tower. In the sunken courtyard, barefoot Asian children played. Then came the fence, and then came outside where a shivering man in a hooded sweatshirt slowly urinated in his trousers, whispering obscenities. Where did he come from? Why did he stink? Why were he and the children, separated only by that fence through which each party could see the other, clothed in such different fortunes? — To put a point on it, Abel prayed timidly to a God Whom he feared, of Whom he expected nothing — correctly, as we know from the tale’s round words, for God declined to protect him. As for Cain, he abandoned himself to anger and crime. He couldn’t kill God or the angel, so he killed Abel. Somewhat wanting in backbone that murderer was, too, for he pleaded innocent, just like any cheap pimp who’s gotten busted. But grant him this: In the end he did at least wear his Mark with defiant pride, and set out most adventurously to take up housekeeping with Lilith’s daughters and other whores in the Land of Nod, which I’ve always assumed was the place that heroin addicts go to, somewhere far past Jackson Street’s ideograms white and red on different colored awnings, somewhere out of Chinatown, maybe behind the Green Door Massage or in the Stockton tunnel or even Union Square where a red substance resembling Abel’s blood offered itself for purchase in the windows of Macy’s. And Cain, I read, begat Pontius Pilate, who begat firstly innocent bystanders, and secondly good Germans, and thirdly Mr. Henry Tyler, that newly ageing lump of flesh with the same stale problem of an irremediable spiritual impotence — nay, rottenness — of which he had not been the cause and for which there could be no solution. Acquiescence would render him more contemptible than he already was, and quite possibly doom him — I cite the precedent of Abel — while backbone would get him into trouble just as it had Cain. And yet Tyler said to himself: Someday I want to show backbone. I want to do something daring, good and important, even if it destroys me. — And he waited to be called to that worthwhile thing. — Sometimes he saw the narrow face of an angel opening to utter languages which he could not speak, enmeshing her words in that crazy metal spiderweb of ceiling which characterizes certain fancy poolhalls. He wanted to believe in these annunciations sufficiently to act, but the difficulty was that such backbone-showing demanded legal if not biological incest, for Tyler’s angel was his Korean sister-in-law, Irene, who, not beautiful but dear, came to him for help with all her marital problems because she knew him to be on her side. Sometimes she kissed him on the lips.

Am I my brother’s keeper? asked Cain, but Tyler (such is history, such progress) no longer thought to ask. This dereliction had to do less with any childhood offenses which his brother might have committed than with a mutual antipathy almost chemical in its inarguability, reinforced by the many successes of John in business. Unlike Cain’s, Tyler’s jealousy never drove him to the commission of actual evil (which would, as we’ve agreed, require backbone). The nature of the brothers’ relations promoted aloofness rather than feuds. And propinquity did not even permit open disregard. There was, in the first place, their mother to be placated. She lived a mere hour and a half away, in Sacramento, which inevitably branded their existence with periodic family gatherings. Both Tyler and his brother dwelled and worked in San Francisco, that ingrown little city which with improbable regularity draws friends, relatives, and other enemies across one another’s path. What could they do? Most of all, of course, there was Irene, thrilling, perturbing, and — he granted it — strangely conventional almost to the point of shallowness — but he loved her for her gentleness, her acceptance of him, and her easily satisfied neediness. No doubt the illictness of his feelings deepened them, in consequence not only of human nature but also of the corruption of his voyeuristic occupation. Tyler hunted for people and stalked them, mostly because they were doing something wrong or because somebody refused to trust them. (If I get hired, that means something just went wrong, he liked to say. This has gotta be a low point for my client.) Even the rare missing persons cases which he took on had little to do with love or a yearning for reunification. Only once in his fourteen-year career had he ever done anything as pleasant as put a lady in touch with her old sweetheart.

The search for the Queen of the Whores typified his bread and butter. Mr. Brady, he was sure, had no particularly honorable or romantic motive in seeking her. The narrow omnipotence which Tyler rented out to his clients came to inform his own heart with a dreamy absence of scruples, and a habit of perceiving from a too professional standpoint anyone who interested him. This is not to imply that he spied on Irene, nor that Irene’s own qualities had nothing to do with attraction — for she was truly unique, not in her character but in her soul. And she was wounded; her soul cried like a wounded bird’s, and he heard the cry. John did not hear, at least not anymore. Isn’t that the natural outcome of marriage? John committed small and egregious rudenesses toward her family — an excellent way to make an Asian woman suffer even to the point of weeping. One February weekend Irene’s parents threw a birthday party for John, and John showed up with someone who claimed to be an old college friend who looked critically at the food and asked: Is this event catered? — No, said Irene’s sister Pammy. Mom and I cooked it all ourselves. — Oh, the woman said. I didn’t think it was catered. No wonder there’s nothing here worth eating. — A look of disgust flashed across John’s mouth, but he said nothing. Irene wanted to cry then for her sister’s sake. She said to Tyler (who of course hadn’t been present) that she didn’t care when she was walking down the street alone and some white person said: Will you look at that Chink! but when anyone insulted her sister or her parents in her presence, it was all she could do not to attack. She said that she must be a very bad person because she often felt such impulses. Tyler, slowly shaking his head, wondered if that meant that she often got called a Chink. He thought to himself that there couldn’t have been any human being more special and good than Irene. It hurt him to see how John treated her. Had he also cause for grievance, Tyler wondered (knowing from his work as well as from his own memories the wretched secrets which may infest domestic life), or was John simply morally inanimate? John was so cold with her — unconfiding and unhappy!

Irene said that once she’d asked her husband why he didn’t divorce her if he felt so miserable, and he just turned toward her with a weary look and said: Because I know you’ll take good care of me.

Don’t you think that’s wrong? Irene said.

Oh, he’s trying to be nice. That’s just John’s way…

But isn’t it wrong?

It’s too bad, honey, said Tyler, stroking the back of her neck. It’s really a shame. Remember, I told you how it would be before you got married.

I know. I’m sorry.

Don’t be sorry, sweetheart, he said, embracing her. She kissed him passionately on the lips.

It was a fresh cold winter’s eve of shiny raincoats and headlights of stalled traffic like luminous pairs of dinner plates stood on their edges; the pavement had become an ebony liquid which reflected upside down the people walking on it, stuck by the soles of their shoes to their inverted selves. Tyler had invited Irene and John out to dinner, knowing that John would be too office-burdened to attend. Sometimes he wondered if his brother were angry at him, or grateful for taking Irene off his hands, or simply oblivious. Mostly he tried not to think about it. They were walking down Geary Street now and Irene was squeezing his hand. He wanted to put her fingers into his mouth and suck them one by one. They strode along in happy silence. Tyler felt everything to be proceeding as it should. No surprises would frighten him.

Among those Japanese restaurants on the edge of the Tenderloin he had chosen one called Kabukicho. The client who’d first taken him there, an old Japanese banker very correctly jealous of his young wife, had been amused by the resonance of such a name in this place, for Kabukicho is one of Tokyo’s red light districts. Tyler had smiled uncomfortably, fitted his fingers together, scratched his poorly shaved chin, collected his check, passed across the table the sealed white envelope of color photographs which documented just what the wife had been doing for three days and three nights in the Nikko Hotel, and pretended to be as amused by those photos as the banker strove to be — gleam of spectacles, gleam of teeth, wide carnivorous mouth! Then the banker said: What do you usually say to the client under these circumstances? — Oh, I don’t know, Tyler muttered, rubbing his chin. I remember this gal who sent me to check on her husband. She calls in tears at eleven at night, her life’s destroyed. Just, you know, I’m not a shrink, I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry it happened. I guess that’s what I usually say… — He never saw the banker again. That had been good money, with which he’d bought a new computer, coaxed his car into compliance with the smog inspection, reduced two of his most pressing credit card debts and paid rent for two easy months. Kabukicho thus offered good associations, not to mention good food. He also liked the polite, well-ordered bustle of the place. The clocks were sashimi dashboards and everything was neat, Asian businessmen flipping open their cellular phones, earnest young white social-democratic couples singing out: Thank you very much! as they went out the exit, squeezing past the line of rich and hungry folks sliced multiply by the blinds through which could be seen pink and green neon reifications of Tyler’s loneliness across the street.

The sign said: SORRY — NO RESERVATIONS ACCEPTED. Tyler led his date to the head of the line and said: Excuse me; we had a reservation for two. — The waiter studied him without comment until Tyler drew from his wallet an embossed silver card which the Japanese banker had given him. The waiter accordingly clasped his hands and led them to the far end of the sushi bar, where a potted bamboo obscured them from the cardless vassals whom they had cut. Irene giggled with pleasure and squeezed Tyler’s arm.

I love you, darling, he said.

Love you, too! she whispered, kissing him again.

She had dressed up for him, and her long brownish-black hair fell warmly down to her shoulders in a spill of glorious asymmetry which dominated her gold necklace and the careful leather buttons of her long red dress. Impassively cleaning his glasses, he imagined his mouth on her cunt for the rest of their lives. How long could that be under such circumstances? A week? Just as a sashimi barman must continually wipe down the counter, so Tyler felt compelled to touch this woman as often as he could, in order to thereby scour away the sooty gloomy thoughts that blew in upon his shining mind. He would not think about the ordinary, unforgivable sadness of the world for as long as he could be next to her. She ordered flying fish roe, a salmon skin handroll, some yellowtail, unagi, and octopus. To give him pleasure, she ordered a beer for herself; she knew that it made him happy when she drank with him.

Did you work today? she said.

Yeah, still with that crazy rich guy from Missouri, he said as the barman’s knife began flickering across the translucent windowpanes of fish, cutting them into shutters.

What does he want from you?

Oh, he wants me to find somebody in the Tenderloin.

Is it dangerous?

Not at all. It’s kind of interesting actually…

You look sad, she said.

Sometimes I get so goddamned sad, so sad for everybody. Well, sad for myself most of all, I guess, since I’m as selfish as the next guy, but you know, Irene, all the time in my job I see people hurting themselves, hurting each other, pissing on each other, sleeping in their own piss. I wish I could help just one of them, but I don’t know how.

You’re an angel, Irene said. You really are. I feel so selfish compared to you. All I ever worry about is my own little life…

You’re the angel, not me, he said, finishing his beer. The waitress looked at him as she took the bottle away, and he nodded. Irene hadn’t finished hers yet. She was extraordinary to gaze on, but he didn’t know why, her face being in fact puzzlingly ordinary in each of its parts; it was the affection and gentleness that animated it which made her so sweet to look at.

How’s life at home? he said.

You know how it is, she said.

Sure, he said. Should we try the fugu?

After he’d paid the bill he helped her on with her raincoat which was yellow like a child’s and walked her past the sharp-cornered marble pillars of hotels pimpled with raindrops, their lamps reaching smeary fingers of light up into the cool grey sky. Tourists were hurrying out of closing shops. He glanced down into the Tenderloin and saw the folded neon leg of a woman winking but never unkinking.

Please don’t tell any of this to John, his sister-in-law was saying.

Don’t worry, honey. The car is up this way.

You know, I told my mother about you. She thinks it’s funny that you and I are so close.

Have you told her how you feel about your marriage?

That would hurt her too much. I always tell her I’m so happy, John’s so good to me… Because, you know, when he was making me cry before we got married, she told me to break it off, but I wouldn’t…

A big drunk black man sauntered up to them and shouted in Irene’s ear: I’m gonna fuck you up, you slanteyed stinking Chink, stinking Chink—

Tyler put his right arm tightly around her and slipped his left hand into his coat pocket where the pistol was. — Don’t feel bad, sweetheart, he said to her, never taking his eyes off the man’s face. You’re not Chinese, so he’s not talking about you.

He led her around the man, who stood there swearing and muttering.

Her hand was fiery with hot sweat. Her fingers were squeezing his with all their strength. He could not stop himself anymore. He brought her fingertips to his lips and begin to lick the hot, delicious sweat.

| 16 |

Now Irene was gone. He almost couldn’t bear it.

Driving across the cable car tracks, which offered rain-light more glancing than the tips of hustlers’ cigarettes, he heard someone yelling from the direction of Glide Memorial but couldn’t see a soul. He spied a man and a woman doing business by a grating. He saw a woman, drunk, shaking her dead-snake hair and spreading her fingers from which raindrops fell as if she were a Calico hundred-shot assault pistol ejecting bullet casings onto the concrete. He turned on the windshield wipers to control this very fine rain like sooty static crawling down the building-fronts, and discovered directly in front of him a man slowly walking as though his feet hurt, dragging an immense vinyl gripsack; he braked until that man was out of the street. He rolled down the window and drove to Turk and Leavenworth, where a callipygian woman snailed her way through the rain, too wet to bother lowering her head anymore. Rain began to dribble down onto the passenger seat. He saw a single darkly brilliant strand of Irene’s hair on the headrest. Somebody honked behind him, but the orange hand of a DON’T WALK sign thrust itself balefully into his perceptions. He rolled up the window. The light changed. Advancing west on Turk Street, he saw a man drinking from a styrofoam cup and gazing at the reflection of his shoe on the pavement; then he saw a man whose raincoat resembled some sea mammal’s skin, sleeping in a puddle of urine and rain.

He saw Domino go skittering into the parking garage, shot three souvenirs of her with the four hundred millimeter lens, and noted down the time and frame numbers on the surveillance report form on his clipboard.

He drove up to North Beach to see if Irene’s living room window were still lit. It was not. Perhaps John had come home and they were already fucking, but he didn’t think so because she’d told him that they hardly ever did it anymore. Maybe she was reading in the bathtub. Maybe she had gone to sleep. Perhaps John had asked her to pick him up at work.

Easily and rapidly now he rolled down the shining streets to the Tenderloin where outside the XX and XXX preview booths, guys in baseball caps were having a discussion. Extending the antenna microphone, he heard:

They be tryin’ to say they ask for it.

Shit, baby, yeah. My ho done ast for it. I give huh a good smack upside the jaw.

Hey, you s’pose it’s true what they say?

(Somebody honked behind him. He pulled into a loading zone and let the car pass, which it did, angrily blaring its horn.)

You better shut your lip. Lookit that honky in the car over there like some spy for Vice.

He don’t have nothin’ on me!

Nothin’ but parole violation, mothafuckah.

Hey, I’m goin’ to court, I say I sold dope on a bet. That’s all it was, Your Honor, just a mothafuckin’ bet.

And yoah ho won’t nevah bail you out!

If she doan bail me out, she done ast for it. I’m gonna break huh teeth. She’ll give bettah head then anyways…

Hey, remembah what I said. Maybe it’s true what they say.

Maybe honky over there needs a piece of rock. A nice big piece of white girl.*

What they say?

They say when you talk vi’lent ’bout yoah ho, sometimes the Queen be listening…

Fuck that bitch! I ain’t scared a no goddamn bitch! Brain’s in her cunt; my dick is twice her I.Q.!

An’ my dick’s the othah twice of yours!

Hey, check out that honky sittin’ there. I doan like that honky. He come out here, I fuck him up—

Tyler, bored anyhow, but glad to learn that the Queen might represent justice, pulled out of the loading zone and drove to Eddy and Jones where a knowing pimp was explaining something grand to his knowing wife-employee; there walked Domino in the rain; he remembered the shape of her bullet-scar. Her nose looked longer than usual, as if she’d been telling more lies about the Queen. The red neon whisper HOTEL made rain-sweating bricks blush, as if on fire with the slumlord’s lust.

He honked four times, and she came running. He said: Do you remember me?

Sure, asshole. You’re the misogynist. Are you dating or not?

I’m lonely, he said. I’ll pay you five bucks just to ride around the block with me.

Ten’ll work.

How about seven?

Fucking cheapskate, she laughed, getting in. He counted out a five and two ones from his wallet, added another single for courtesy, and drove silently around the block.

Here we are, he said.

You mean that’s it?

Uh huh.

You know what? said Domino. You’re a fool. You’re making me really angry.

Because you got something for nothing, but it wasn’t enough? Or did I hurt your feelings because I didn’t want to fuck you?

Look, pal. You don’t know the first thing about my feelings. So don’t patronize me.

I’m not trying to patronize you, he said. I was just lonely, that’s all. And I thank you for riding with me.

She softened. — All right, she said. What’s your name?

Henry.

I’m Domino.

I know.

She kissed his cheek faster than any rattlesnake could ever strike, then leaped out of the car and loped away. Tyler smiled uneasily, scratching his chin.

Uncovering no activity at the entrance to the parking garage (a fact of little probable value, which he recorded nonetheless on the surveillance report form soon to pad out Brady’s files), Tyler drove up to Union Street where an immense pear of light bloomed from an apartment’s stairway and stretched halfway across the pavement. A truck blinked its weary lights, and a foghorn warned of the least dangerous thing.

His brother John came out, holding another woman’s hand.

| 17 |

Once Irene had asked him whether he had any reason to believe that his brother might be unfaithful, and he, professionally knowing that all men and all women were unfaithful to something, said: I don’t know. I wondered that at your wedding. I hoped that he’d be good to you. I wanted you to be happy…

And tonight, of course, he’d been holding Irene’s hand.

| 18 |

John Alan Tyler was not yet sufficiently established in his career to own a house in San Francisco, much as that would have pleased his wife. This had less to do with money than with the allocation of money. (Doesn’t that apply to all of us? Couldn’t the crazy whore buy a mansion in Pacific Heights, if only a certain percentage of her gross receipts went into the piggybank for, say, seven thousand years?) Although John was still young, having only recently passed the third-of-a-century mark, he received a salary almost commensurate with his idea of his own importance. Much of it he had to spend on clothes, because in the office it was a matter of faith for all to appear in five different suits a week, with extra apparel for interviews, public appearances and business trips. John did not set this policy, and I cannot disparage him for abiding by it. Then there were his neckties, which his brother had mocked during that first meeting with Domino. You wouldn’t believe how expensive a necktie could be until you’d gone shopping with John, who remained convinced, perhaps rightly, that everybody who mattered knew how much those neckties cost, and treated the wearer accordingly. — His elder brother, to whom stripes were stripes and plaids were plaids (or, when he was drunk vice versa), did not matter. Still, John would say one thing for Hank: He was very good to Irene.

John was well aware that his wife had reason to feel neglected. He loved her sincerely. When she had broken off their engagement, he hadn’t even reproached her, although sitting alone he’d slowly squeezed a wineglass in his hand until it shattered. John belonged to the Order of Backbone. When called upon, he could be generous and magnanimous, even good. Once Irene agreed to marry him after all, their future deliciously in the bag, he did not feel quite so called upon. Irene was an excellent woman who’d undoubtedly go to heaven when she died. But a necessary part of her excellence was an idealism which he admired but did not share. To speak more plainly, John had discovered that Irene was positively mushy with fantasies. She’d required a “fairytale wedding,” which he’d provided, although his mother had been against it and he was still paying off the bills. She also expected to live happily ever after. She seemed to believe that since they were married, he shouldn’t work anymore, just stay home day and night with her. She was spoiled. John had to put her straight. First of all, he explained, he did have his friends, who had known him long before he’d met her and whom he was not prepared to dismiss simply because he had married somebody. Then there was the fact that he did have to go to work amidst the tan-hued, grooved cliffs of the financial district, where below mailboxes and flags, chilled by the Transamerica Pyramid’s steeply tapering shadow, breadwinners hastened to new appointments, with their neckties blowing. Irene for her part had started as a dental receptionist, but then the dentist got audited and that was the end of that. She was reading the want ads now — so she said. John wished that she didn’t get so sad and bored, especially on those foggy rainy nights when he must stay late at the office. Precisely because he did not intend to work for Rapp and Singer more than another five years (unless they made him full partner on excellent conditions), he had to put in his time. He wanted a brilliant promotion, and then he wanted to transship, probably for Harville and Keane, although Dow, Emerson, Prescott and Liu occupied a comparable place in his aspirations. Once he had gotten in solid with Harville and Keane, which would take another three years of late office nights, he wouldn’t be much over forty and Irene would be just thirty-four, at which point they could start a family. John knew not to stop at one child, which would otherwise grow up lonely and spoiled like his wife. He himself had benefitted from the fraternal relation, as he was the first to acknowledge; certainly Hank felt the same way. Sometimes he wished that he and Hank had been closer in age. As John saw it, the second child ought to come quickly after the first — ideally, not more than a year later. Two nearly at once would be less work for Irene than two spaced several years apart. Besides, they could play together. Whether or not there would be a third child remained open to discussion. If Irene felt strongly one way or the other, he would not quarrel with her. When he closed his eyes, however, he could imagine two little boys and a little girl; he could almost see their half-Asian faces and dark eyes as they played games on the living room carpet, their voices lowered because he was working. The boys would be named Eric and Michael, and he thought that their sister would be called Suzanne. Irene could choose their Korean middle names, which she’d most likely do in consultation with her extended family. She had already agreed to stay home for a few years once the babies were born. In fact, a few months after their marriage John had spoken with his mother-in-law about this. Where was Irene then? She must have been out shopping with her cousins, or playing golf with her father. The conversation would have taken place at Christmas, when they always drove down to Los Angeles. Although Irene loved to complain about his rudeness to her parents, he and they actually got along quite well. Irene’s mother said that Eric, Michael, and Suzanne all sounded like excellent names. In confidence, she told John that Irene lacked common sense. She hated to say this about her own daughter, she continued, smiling and ducking her head, but that was how it was. Irene always went about with her head in the clouds. Her mother thought her quite lucky to have met a man like John, who would take care of her and perhaps indulge her a little. John nodded while his mother-in-law refilled his soju glass. He knew that nothing he could do would make Irene’s parents happier than transforming them into grandparents. And Irene wanted children even more than he. In about seven years, then, life would be exactly as it should be. They would have a house in Marin, which would soothe his southern California girl of a wife, who remained unaccustomed to this crowded, expensive city where most people had to live in apartments.

Meanwhile he wished that he could make Irene happier. Sometimes, not often, he told her to take the credit cards and go shopping. Then he did his best not to wince at the bills. It pleased him to imagine her pleasing herself at Macy’s or the Emporium, and he attempted always to take her mother’s words to heart. Poor thing, she did need a little indulgence. But how much indulgence was enough? She might have gotten more out of him, had she not so frequently expressed the view that he kept her on a leash. She truly didn’t realize what she cost him. Regarding the payments on her wedding ring, Irene had quickly put him in his place: These were to be accomplished by him in much the same style as defecation — behind a closed door, with all evidence removed at the end, and no reference to them afterward. Well, his mother was almost the same way; he could understand that. But Irene, unlike his mother, almost justified the appellation of spendthrift. At the end of their very first tax year he had been sickened by the marriage penalty, which was hardly Irene’s fault, but he had still been deluded enough then to believe that a man need hide nothing from his wife. The result of that conversation had not quite been what John expected. Well, John had learned! He no longer criticized her to her face, and he never had the heart to speak ill of her to others, either. When the bills came in, he paid. Irene would buy what she wanted to buy — oh, shoes for Irene, exercise classes for Irene, Irene’s trips home to her parents, Irene’s ski lift tickets. Let’s not mention Irene’s habits in grocery shopping (she had to get the most expensive brands of everything, especially paper towels, which she truly wasted), or Irene’s allergies, which required them to buy a humidifier and an air purifier, both items which increased their utility bills. And the quarters for the washing machine dowstairs! He couldn’t believe how many quarters Irene needed all the time… Then there were the restaurants and then there were the clothes. Because such bargains proved his wife’s budgetary unreliability, John computed all the finances himself, and by the time he’d wrapped up that homework and maybe (more rarely than he realized) went bowling with his friends or watched a cop show on television, or sat through a romantic video with Irene, it was time for bed. He got very tired at night, even on the weekends; Irene had no idea how hard he worked! When he turned out the light, she sometimes rolled into his arms. At first he’d found that flattering, but it became an imposition. He wished that he could make a deal with Irene, but venturing onto that subject, like the matter of the wedding ring, would cost him no matter what. He felt guilty to disappoint her. And yet it had begun to seem that he disappointed her no matter what he did! If that was truly how it had to be, why open his mouth? He talked with his friends, who agreed that night after night a man couldn’t be expected to lie always at the ready, and if he wasn’t, then what right did the woman have to sulk? He wished that his friends could explain this to Irene; better just to say that he was tired. One night she’d forgotten to take her pill, as he’d discovered when he got up to drink some water. He shook her awake and made her swallow that pill then and there. Didn’t she know that they weren’t ready to have a baby? Irene said that she was sorry. A couple of nights later, he heard her vomiting in the bathroom. She said that the pills sometimes made her nauseated. Well, he didn’t want to compel her to take her pills if they made her sick, but he didn’t want a baby yet, either. As a matter of fact, carnally she had never appealed to him. One of the reasons that she had broken off their engagement that first time was his unceasing commandments to lose weight. Particularly with her clothes off, there was something grotesque about her shining belly and her big breasts. Her pubic hair in particular seemed obscene. It was so dark and rank, like weeds. Actually, her entire body sickened him. He tried not to contemplate the fact that he would be looking at it for the next half-century. John had chalked up several relationships before — not that he’d ever been promiscuous like Hank — and he admitted that the female form had ceased to surprise him. In his view, sex was the least important part of marriage. Barton Rapp at Rapp and Singer, a man of more than sixty, had told him that after age fifty or sixty, most married couples preferred to sleep apart. They got a better rest that way. — You know, John, Mr. Rapp had said, one morning you just wake up and realize that you’ve had enough. — John didn’t yet feel called upon to make that separate bed a habit, but there were certainly nights when he would have preferred his own mattress. Although Irene fortunately did not snore, she had a habit of smacking her lips in her sleep, as if she were hungry for something, endlessly, loudly, revoltingly, like his mother’s dog Mugsy lapping up water from a bowl. Sometimes her noises awoke him, especially on nights when office worries pressed down upon his brain. Or, startled by some inimical dream, she might jerk suddenly, coiling all the blankets around her. She had any number of ways of ruining John’s sleep. Usually he told her to get ready for bed while he was saving his files on the computer, and he waited until he heard her come out of the bathroom before he actually powered down. Then he drank a glass of skim milk, brushed and dental flossed his teeth, urinated, washed his hands, shut off the bathroom light, and stood in the bedroom doorway. Sometimes she was reading a romance and sometimes she was staring at the ceiling. The light switch was by the door, and it would have been pointless to get into bed and then right out again, so he turned it off as soon as he came in If she was reading, she put her book face down on the vanity; he always waited for that sound. Then, closing the door behind him, he undressed in the dark. He would already have taken his suit off when he’d first come home, so it was no worry to drape his casual clothes over the back of the chair. — Good night, he’d say, getting into bed. — Good night, said Irene. — Sometimes he laid his arm across her shoulders then. He didn’t have to set the alarm. It went off automatically each morning at seven-twenty unless he reprogrammed it. On Sundays they often slept in until eight-thirty or nine, unless his work was pressing or some anxiety awakened him. Anxiety might on second thought be the wrong word, for John enjoyed his life and his work. He was a capably practical person, and the impression of youth and foppishness which he unknowingly gave off to the senior partners only made them smile indulgently, for youth would pass, was passing already; as for the other, they knew that the promptings of such vices would drive him up the ladder, whose price at every rung they would extract.

I cannot say that there was much talk about John in the office, Roland Garrow with his slicked-back hair being the funny one, the one whom everyone in the office laughed about. Roland had been known to come running in five minutes late, with his tie askew; he patronized most of the same stores that John did, but John did not tell him about Donatello’s, a small shop in San Mateo, of all places, which sold hand-painted silk ties direct from Italy. Once John saw the mark of sooty lips on Roland’s tie and smiled all day; he realized that Roland had caught his tie in the elevator door.

Roland was actually quite clever. Mr. Singer, who prided himself on his ability to distinguish mere immaturity from inability, had let it be known that he was charmed by Roland, while Mr. Rapp likewise indulged him, admiring the young man’s energy (he could certainly shoot out a quick if unpolished brief), and being entertained by Roland’s anecdotes of nights misspent on the town. Both partners liked to consider themselves bon vivants who had sowed several football fields’ worth of wild oats, although in their day they had actually resembled John far more than Roland. They enjoyed good wine; Mr. Rapp was, as he put it, passionate about opera, had a box seat, and in the mornings was often to be heard whistling some aria from “Tosca” or even “Lucia di Lammermoor.” He went to Seattle every two or three years to witness the Ring. It was said that the San Francisco Opera would come into quite a bit of money at his death. Mr. Singer exemplified a more down-to-earth type; baseball fan and egalitarian, he was the one to whom the clients came when they needed a deferment on their bills. I repeat: Both of them were delighted by Roland, particularly Mr. Singer with his thin, cackling laugh. Roland had quickly become their rosy one, their prodigal if not quite their son. John, on the other hand, lacked a sense of humor. He was not what you’d call Mr. Personality, Mr. Singer once said. Naturally, personalities finish last. There were no plans to make Roland full partner.

They knew very well that John was thinking about leaving. For one thing, all junior partners thought that way. Industry policy as much as personal cunning had taught Mr. Rapp and Mr. Singer to make the young ones work as hard as possible. That way, they themselves didn’t need to work as much; they deserved to coast a little now, after all! (Mr. Rapp had already begun to talk about retirement.) And if John, Roland, Ellen or even Yancy left, then the bosses would have already gotten their money’s worth. The other half of this pincer movement was to pay high bonuses, and to imply that promotion was within sight. This invariably resulted in more work for more years. I cannot accurately claim that John understood this, for to him the minds of others were not simply those proverbially closed books, but closed books which he had no interest in reading. And had it been explained to him, it would not have affected him in any way, unlike Roland, who would have slammed his fist in his palm and shouted: Those bastards! then taken a long lunch on the company and hurried defiantly back to work. Most likely Roland in all his defective elegance had already done precisely that. Call him Abel. His only mistake, which of course Mr. Rapp and Mr. Singer tacitly encouraged, was to flatter himself that he truly belonged to the circle. Ellen was a cipher, and Yancy a drudge. I’ll give them no space in this book. As for John, he studied his own interests well, but the motives of others offered him small relevance. (One result of this thinking was that he grew surprised, even infuriated, by actions of others which he had not foreseen and which, therefore, might appear to him as betrayals.) At any rate, if he performed his share, and more than his share, then the cup of success must inevitably fill, no matter how he judged others, or others him. In Irene, of course, he’d won a true companion, who’d drink of that cup with him as it brimmed, and who accordingly must grow happier and happier. Meanwhile he worked, and went out with his friends, most of whom, like Roland, had not yet married; it was to be expected that they sometimes flirted, and when they did, he would, too, which was why Hank now chanced upon him holding a woman’s hand.

| 19 |

Tyler’s first thought was to drive on, in order to avoid embarassing his brother. But then he wondered whether John had seen him, or recognized his car; John had an eye for cars, especially cars which had once belonged to John. Unhappy and ashamed, he rolled slowly to a parking spot half a block ahead, locked the doors, and walked back to the apartmentfront, while rain ran down the back of his neck.

Apparently he had done exactly the wrong thing, because John hadn’t seen him. He was now passionately kissing the girl, who of course opened her eyes and, spying Tyler over the back of John’s head, panicked and pulled away. John turned around quickly.

Hello, John, said Tyler.

He knew the girl. Her name was Celia Caro, and she worked for an insurance company in the financial district. John had introduced her once at a miserable party which Tyler had regretted going to. She and Irene had met several times.

So you’re snooping again, said John bitterly.

Tyler dealt with this as he had dealt with the black man’s comment about Irene’s race, by deflecting it. In the years he’d devoted to his job, which did indeed involve snooping, he had learned that this was the best way to prevent truculence from gaining its desired stranglehold. — I just happened to be driving by and I saw you, he said. Wondered if I could buy you a drink. You’re welcome also, Celia.

I have an interview early in the morning, said Celia awkwardly.

All right. How about you, John?

You know what? said Celia. I’m standing here in the rain, and I’m not getting any drier. I’m going to bed. Goodnight, Hank. Goodnight, John.

Goodnight, said Tyler.

John said nothing.

They walked silently around the corner, and John said: Here’s a good place. This Branden’s.

Ah, thought Tyler to himself. So he comes here often.

And how was dinner? said John when they were seated at the bar of this rather ferny and overpriced watering hole — a John kind of place, thought Tyler. Slow, silent, massive fanblades turned like windmills.

Very good, thanks. Sorry you couldn’t make it.

Sorry I couldn’t make it, agreed John with what his brother suspected of being sarcasm, gulping half a Scotch rather savagely. I was wrapping up the Peterson case. You read about it in the papers?

No.

Oh, well, forget it. Somebody got terminated and somebody else is suing.

You’re suing?

Exactly, said John proudly. Tyler relaxed. He had begun to make his brother happy.

But that narrow, immensely powerful mind kept whirring in its narrow track, like a snowmobile circling round and round at rope’s end, grinding deeper into the powder until it finally grazed hardfrozen earth, and John said: Was it to spy on me that you came here? That’s all you do day and night, your filthy spying.

John, I didn’t know you were with Celia, and until now I didn’t know where Celia lives.

And you’re going to fuck me around with Irene, aren’t you? You’re going to tell Irene, aren’t you?

No, I’m not, said Tyler easily. He was so used to humoring people that promising the moon came readily to him. It was a reflex. He did not have to decide whether or not to be bound by that promise until later. Besides, he could not think of any earthly or celestial reason why he ought to make Irene sadder.

Slowly the light faded from those glaring eyes. John trusted him. Tyler finished his beer. He wanted to do something with his hands, so he signalled the bartender for another.

Have you called Mom lately? said John.

Tyler knew that John hoped to catch him out. As a matter of fact, he had telephoned their mother just yesterday, but John would be annoyed not to have that to reproach him for.

Not lately, he lied. How’s she doing?

Fine, said John, stirring his drink. Then he said: I talked to Mom for about five minutes at lunchtime. She’s having chest pains again. She said that you called yesterday, he added triumphantly. I guess you just can’t be straight with people even if it’s more trouble to be crooked.

Oh yes, said Tyler. That’s right. I did call her yesterday. But she didn’t mention her chest pains to me.

Are you saying her condition isn’t serious?

No. I guess I’m saying that she tells you more than she tells me.

(This was another lie. His mother had informed him of her chest pains, but he wanted to flatter John.)

You’re crooked through and through, said John happily.

Tyler was cold and tired rather than angry. He did not want to see his brother again for a long while. But he had been trying sincerely to please him, and he had succeeded. He felt in some strange way needed, hence worthwhile. Then there was Irene. He couldn’t forget Irene.

Rows and rows of inverted glasses crouched upon the shelf before his eyes. They were precious crystalline fruits filled with the light of emptiness. His eyes began to hurt when he stared at them, so he gazed around the barroom and was pleased to discover between the notes of loud but muffled music worshipful young girls and boys, gracious old baldies, starry-eyed men who longed to get into the pants of the women they were buying drinks for, loud-talking boyfriends explaining and explaining, girls out together, shaking their heads at each others’ wit. A drunken blonde was bowing and clutching her crotch as she waited for the women’s room.

And how’s everything at work? he asked, wondering if he were repeating himself.

Fine. We just got a six-million-dollar case but I don’t know how deeply they’ll let me sink my teeth into it. Oh, I guess I told you about it already. The Peterson case…

(So he’s a little drunk, Tyler thought.)

And how’s the home life?

Couldn’t be happier, said John, drumming his fingers on the edge of his beer glass. — Irene’s a great gal, terrific gal.

They sat there awhile, and John’s throat jerked, and John said: How about you?

Lucrative.

That’s a switch. You ought to quit while you’re ahead. Get a decent tie; find a respectable job…

Tyler ducked his head. — Where’s the best place for ties?

Gaspard’s, said John, his face lighting up again. That’s a hell of a classy place. Even that clod Roland knows enough to go there. But — well, sometime I’ll have to take you to Donatello’s. That’s my little secret. You wouldn’t know a decent tie if it strangled you. But I can run you over there sometime. Actually, Irene has got a pretty good eye. Maybe she—

I guess silk is the thing, Tyler said, a little uncertainly.

At Donatello’s you don’t even wipe your ass with less than a hundred percent handmade silk. But it’s not cheap, I’ll tell you that. Last Christmas Irene bought me one of their Fog City Paisleys, a unique print actually, and though it almost killed me I made her take it right back. Irene was not happy. It one of those nights. But the next day my bonus came, and that’s the tie I’m wearing right now.

Pretty fancy, John. You’re lucky you married someone with such good taste.

She knows what I like, said John complacently. Well, I guess I should be getting back. Celia can run me home.

Okay. Let me just get this barkeep’s attention.

Forget it, said John. I’ve got a running tab here. No, I mean it. You took Irene out tonight. Don’t think I don’t keep track of those things.

| 20 |

Tyler went to a pay phone and checked his messages. Pressing the three digits of his secret code (which he knew from professional experience would not be much of a secret to anyone who cared), he heard the tape rustling backward, and for a moment was certain that Irene was calling him, or maybe Brady, but it was only some unfaithful husband he’d nailed who was threatening pathetically and drunkenly to sue him for invasion of privacy. Tyler had the geek’s home number. Composing himself to be a mouthpiece of friendly warnings, he telephoned, but got no answer, although it was already after eleven. The mistress had left town in a hurry, and he didn’t think that the man would be staying at her place anymore. Who knows; could he have shot himself? He was a gun collector. That would be convenient, Tyler thought. I hate dealing with these assholes, in or out of court.

He drove down to Larkin Street, photographed a drug deal for his friend Robert the cop, rolled past the parking garage and noted no traffic in or out, an observation which would not thrill Brady (although Brady nonetheless kept a notebook filled with such tabulations as Mamie [from Atlanta], age 28, on 8th betw 38th and 42nd; $20 + $5 for drinks—30 min) but just the same Tyler recorded No traffic in his surveillance report; then, via North Beach (where not far from the sequinlike neon beads of Adam & Eve a crowd of bus-attenders stood outside City Lights, ignoring the delicious books in the window, indifferent even to the black and white paperbacks of Howl stacked up in pyramidal altars to the 1960s), he returned to Union and saw John’s car still parked in front of Celia’s. If he had to guess, they were quarelling, not smooching, because his visit would have left Celia defensive and John simply mean. Not that it was his business. Why didn’t he go back to North Beach? Sometimes he stopped at City Lights to buy an issue of Industrial Photography Quarterly, which proferred tips on espionage, displayed photographs of pistols he couldn’t afford to own, and in its back pages sometimes consented to carry mail-order ads for locator fluid, not the good stuff that he bought with his special I.D. at the film department of Adolph Gasser’s, but stuff that was good enough to cut the good stuff with. He thought about calling Irene just to hear her voice, but that would be wrong. Sometimes zeal accomplishes the opposite of its objectives. He started toward City Lights, but by the time he’d emerged from the Broadway tunnel, whose sparkling yellow walls were that night silhouetted by hooting roller bladers, he’d changed his mind. Back to Polk Street — he remembered when Johnny Love’s was Lord Jim’s, actually not so long ago now. It had begun to drizzle, so that the car ahead was smeared and glowing. Crawling reflections made his own vehicle bubble inside like an aquarium. Hoping that John would be good to Irene when he did come home, he cruised down to the Mission, yawned, and checked out Capp Street where a weary old junkie was breaking in a spring chicken, explaining: Put your leg out, way out, and bend at the knee — that’s right! God, my feet hurt. You know how your toenails hurt when they’re too long? And I hate all this traffic. It’s just too hectic. It’s not calm. Now bend your back leg, too; okay, honey, straighten it out, lock it and wiggle your butt; yeah, show ’em some ass just like the Queen said… — but then the two whores saw Tyler’s slow-cruising detectivemobile and he had no more reason to linger, so he stopped at a gas station for unleaded and a stick of cheese-flavored sausage, admired the grand old curvy-cylindered-windowed Victorian houses on South Van Ness, swam past the parking garage, from which two whores were just then emerging (he photographed them and scribbled something down in the DESCRIPTION OF ACTIVITIES line of his surveillance report), wound his way back to Union Street and found John’s car gone. Grimly grinning, he said to himself: Am I my brother’s keeper?

| 21 |

The following morning, when John arrived at the office (in the corner of his eye Irene’s car just beginning to pull away), a new doorman was there. They gazed at one another’s uniforms and passed without speaking; John had never even known the old doorman’s name. In the elevator beside him rode his plump secretary, Joy, whose spectacles goggled at the world from an unbeautiful but serene round face. She’d cut her hair short, and was wearing a blue dress. — Hi, Mr. Tyler, how are you? she began breathlessly; I’m a little harried but I did call him today…

Who are you talking about? said John. Say, is my tie straight?

Mr. Brady, she said.

What did he say, Joy?

He got the deposition, and he said to tell you that he’s very satisfied.

John smiled.

The elevator arrived. Pink-cheeked Joy scurried into her little cubicle, of which a cassette player and tapes took up a quarter, and John, passing by, glimpsed the baby seat for when she worked on weekends, the filing cabinet and the two desks crammed end to end. — Good morning, Mr. Rapp, he said.

Morning, John. Congratulations on getting Brady.

Oh, thanks, Mr. Rapp, laughed John, blushing with happiness.

Joy peeked out of her lair, her smile expressing full unity with Mr. Rapp’s mazel tov.

| 22 |

The amber button buzzed on John’s desk phone. Lifting the receiver, he depressed that unnerving crystal of luminescence, and said: What is it now, Joy?

Mr. Rapp and Mr. Singer would like to bring you to a private lunch, said Joy’s voice, a little arch at the knowledge that it bore imperious tidings.

When — today?

Mmm hmmm.

What time?

One-thirty.

Okay. Thank you, Joy, he said, hanging up. He made a note on his memo pad: Call Mom tonight. — He e-mailed a memo to Joy to do a search for Brady, Jonas A. on both the LEXIS and NEXIS databases and bring him hard copy. Returning to the Veblen brief he’d been preparing since yesterday, he pecked in three cunning additions to the boilerplate; he thought they’d lure an approving smile to Mr. Rapp’s face if he read them, which Mr. Singer certainly wouldn’t. At one-twenty-five his screen chimed. His stomach ached, and his fingers were feeling sweaty. He went to the men’s room, washed his face, and adjusted his tie.

Boccaccio’s, John? said Mr. Rapp, with a smile that was not the approving one; it was the smile that meant nothing. He had left his blazer in the inner office, as was his custom when not receiving clients, and his starched shirt was as white as the solid left behind after sodium has consummated its marriage with ethanol.

Sure, said John. I’m ready.

He felt that he could not eat anything. He did not know whether he was about to be rewarded or punished, and that uncertainty made him nauseous.

At Boccaccio’s, which was right across the street from a women’s shoe store swarming with golden high heels, black high heels, sandals with double or triple straps, sexy boots, silver snakeskin affairs that came up to the knee, they sat at one of those uncomfortably “intimate” tables so beloved by those office dictators whose hobby it is to gaze into one’s anxious face. He saw that the full partners were planning to order wine. John ordered a beer just to show them that he was his own man. They nodded indulgently.

What do we live for? declaimed old Mr. Singer in his best populist voice. Some fellows live for women. I live to eat. I’m not fat or anything, but I enjoy my food. Barton Rapp, now, there’s a man who lives for his operas and his wine rack.

(John had heard all this before.)

Mr. Singer leaned forward and fixed John with his eyes. — And what do you live for, John? he said.

I live for my work, replied John, trying not to be irritated.

Mr. Rapp frowned and waved a finger. — Not good enough! he said. Everybody works to live, but very few of us — not even full partners, John — can say the reverse. What about your wife? Don’t you live for her?

Let’s leave Irene out of this, said John as his wife’s unlovely face hung before him.

Have it your way, John, said Mr. Singer. Let’s put it like this: What are you about?

John gulped at his beer and tried to smile.

Mr. Rapp tapped his wineglass with a musical sound. — When you ask who a person is, what he’s about, you’re really asking what his fetishes are.

I don’t have any fetishes, Mr. Rapp, just habits. Are you dissatisfied with my work?

A tough guy, purred Mr. Rapp with a loopy smile. We like that. On the contrary, John. You’re doing an excellent job.

I’ve got to take a leak, muttered Mr. Singer to himself. He got up and strode toward the back, his round bald dome accompanying him like something sacred — talk about the Music of the Spheres!

What are your fetishes, Mr. Rapp? said John in his most level voice.

You’ve got guts, John. There’s a fine line between guts and impertinence, and you’ve never crossed that line.

Thanks, Mr. Rapp, said John.

Are you ready to order, gentlemen? said the waiter.

I’m going to have the warm spinach salad with chevre, said Mr. Rapp. And I believe that’s all I’ll have. John?

I’ll take the same, said John. And another beer.

John, John, go ahead and eat! Don’t let me stop you! I’m an old man.

All right, said John. How’s the salmon today?

Excellent, sir, said the waiter. It’s probably the best thing on the menu. That garlic aioli is to die for.

Fine, said John. I’ll take the salmon.

I’d like the terra cotta chicken, please, said Mr. Singer, now returned. And a small green salad. Do you understand that concept? A small green salad.

Very good, sir, said the waiter. More wine?

I understand you’re going to be a father, said Mr. Rapp, blinking sentimentally. Congratulations, John. No, thank you. We have enough for now.

Thanks for the congratulations, said John, wondering who had told him about Irene’s mistake. — It may be another false alarm. By the way, Mr. Budrys hasn’t gotten back to me yet with the amended tobacco brief.

Oh, he hasn’t? Well, you know we’re getting pretty close to deadline on that one, John.

I’ll lean on him, said John.

Well said! cried Mr. Rapp, clapping his hands. John, you’ll go far.

But you never did tell us what you’re about, said Mr. Singer. Or did I miss something when I peed?

I’m about nothing, said John. Exactly nothing.

Spoken like a full partner, chortled Mr. Singer.

We think you have the makings of a full partner, echoed Mr. Rapp.

Well, thanks, said John awkwardly.

| 23 |

That afternoon there had been no message from Brady and no other work, so Tyler went back to Larkin Street to observe yellow RX-7s and white Chevys emerge from the Queen’s parking garage, fouling the air. He watched them for a long time, writing their license plate numbers in the lines of his youngest surveillance report, emptily perceiving rather than learning, of which he was tired. The grin of light between a car’s belly and the shiny concrete floor widened as the little wheeled monster rolled closer. The buzzer sounded twice. Across the street, a dirty foot hung out of a dirty sleeping bag; a longbearded man sat upon the sidewalk, gazing pupillessly at another sleeper whose red underwear made his buttocks one with the square tail-lit backsides of cars. The buzzer sounded again. The car came out, its brilliant yellow eyes suddenly impoverished by the day. After that, a shaveskulled guy strung chain across the darkest tunnel. Watching the car go, Tyler spied a black-and-white crawling lazily by, bearing to the police station a silent young man with his chin on two fingers which hid behind the goatish beard; Tyler had seen him selling drugs sometimes on Jones Street. The police car went around the corner and out of the life of Tyler, who continued to sit in the yellow zone, dreaming of nothing with an almost Leninist confidence. Finally he cruised up to Union Square, rolled down his window, inched along in traffic (which, unlike most people, he loved; it gave him time to see things), and studied the giant palenesses of black and white glamor girls in the store windows. He counted the stripes on the awnings of hotdog stands. If he could simply get a name for the Queen, he’d be able to run an extended trace; then he’d surely snatch her social security number, her statewide criminal record, and some address, however worthless. He loved extended traces. It was a white, foggy afternoon crawling with obsequious light, which must have been why the darkness between buildings refused to be worshiped, let alone lovingly touched. He took a spin across the Bay Bridge. Behind him, the trunks of skyscrapers faded into fog regularly notched with greyness where the windows were. Irene had mentioned seeing plum blossoms in Berkeley or Oakland. He drove around for an hour or two, but didn’t spy any. At dusk he returned to San Francisco. The line at the toll booth wasn’t too bad; he struck the Mission in twenty minutes. He wondered what Brady was doing. Under what pretext could he call the man up? No news was not good news in Tyler’s occupation. Thanks to credit card debt, his savings account now trembled not far above zero — absolute zero, when every last financial molecule falls still and silent — but he didn’t want to check his answering machine, which surely bore no offerings of work. Feeling blue, he parked in an alley just off Sixteenth and Valencia, zipped his jacket over the bulge in his left armpit, and wandered into one of those little cafés with excellent coffee and bad art on the walls. A name, a name, and then she’d become real. Maybe the bail bondsmen would know her — but he had to get a name first. There being no reason not to finish this wasted day as he’d begun it, he ordered a bottle of mineral water and sat himself down at a corner table to read the Guardian ads: Women Egg Donors Needed! — Redundant gender description, thought Tyler. The other patrons hunched at their own tables, reading.

On the bulletin board it said Lesbian Housemate Wanted and SELF-DEFENSE FOR WOMEN and Piano Lessons and Hookers, Watch Out for These Men! Tyler read this last. It was a warning about the Capp Street murders. Two prostitutes from that business district had wound up in dumpsters down by China Basin. A third had gotten away and given a description of the killers.

Well, he thought to himself, let’s go take a stroll down Capp Street.

It was a cool spring night in the Mission. Beyond his coffeehouse, where two girls were snuggling as their fingers pecked out destinations on the electronic highway, two men chatted yawning like sentinels, their hands on their heads, and past them an old lady was panhandling. The old lady had tears in her eyes, and she kept shifting her aching feet. Tyler suddenly thought to himself: She knows as I will never know how hard a sidewalk can be. — She asked Tyler for fifty cents, so on principle he gave her a quarter. A minute later she wandered into the coffeeshop, then back out again as he stood irresolute on that corner, wondering how he could drum up more business; and with no recognition she asked him for fifty cents. He’d asked her name, which was Diane, so he knew to say: Why, hello, Diane! and she jerked awake for a moment, then stumbled away.

His friend Roberta the stripper just happened to be passing with her shiny new bike, and cried out: Hi, Henry! I saw that! That old woman must be in Nirvana.

He knew that this was a sarcastic and even hateful remark because Roberta hated Buddhism. — No, he said earnestly. She’s desperate, so she can’t have reached Nirvana yet.

Hey, I’ve gotta go meet my friend Mollie up on Haight Street, said Roberta. You wanna come have coffee with us?

Oh, that’s really nice of you, Roberta. I just don’t have any energy tonight. — He was longing for Irene.

Are you depressed? I’m depressed. My boyfriend really used me. I fucked him because he was in a rock band but after that I fell in love. I would have married him. But then he turned out to be quite the sonofabitch.

I’m sorry to hear that, Roberta, he said.

You want to buy me coffee? Actually you don’t have to buy me anything. I have money.

You’re a nice person, Roberta, he said. I’m sorry you’re having a rough time.

So, how’s the job? You track down any interesting people? Hey, you can stay at my place if you want. You can sleep on the living room couch. My roommates are pretty cool about it.

Roberta, do you know anything about the Queen of the Whores?

I’m just a stripper, not a whore, remember? I mean, I believe in the sacred Whore-Goddess. Maybe that’s what the Queen is. You sure you don’t want to stay over?

I wish I could, but I have scabies, he lied.

Oh. Oh! And I’ve been holding your hand! Let me go wash my hands! Nothing personal, but I don’t want to get that again.

After Roberta left him he entered a clean and pleasant secondhand bookshop which played music from the time when he was young. He browsed through The Patriarchy at Work and Difficult Women and Sisterhood Is Global. There was a cat on the sofa. The pretty Asian girl who was shelving books smiled at him. He wanted to sit down and read for a while. Instead he bought a used Steinbeck paperback and strode out, past the singing panhandlers, the bright lavender hotel doorways that said VACANCY. He saw a tattoo parlor that he didn’t remember from before. — Of course he didn’t get down to the Mission that much. The Tenderloin was more his area. — At a phone booth he called his answering machine, discovering no message from Brady, who perhaps was busy enjoying the carnal knowledge of some cottonwood tree. Down on Mission Street the tall hooded bullies were yelling and the hard girls were bending over the sidewalk, saying: You dropped a rock. Where’s my rock, bitch? — Gonna fix that motherfucker up, save me a little bit, he heard a pimp say. He returned to the subway station’s cold night sun of radiating tiles, stood by the pay phone trying not to call Irene, picked up the phone, put it down, took a quarter out of his pocket, thought some more, and then walked away with the quarter in his hand. Capp Street was empty — strange, since the beginning of the month was long past, and the whores’ welfare checks long spent; maybe they were scared of the Capp Street killers. On the other hand, this evening had hardly progressed to lateness. Maybe it wasn’t strange at all. He strolled to Seventeenth and Eighteenth; still not seeing any oral or vaginal workers, he turned around and at once somebody began to follow him from the darkness just beyond Eighteenth, dodging between the mountainously laden garbage cans. He felt a prickle of fear. — I know the Queen, Tyler called over his shoulder. — The footsteps stopped. — Well, he thought to himself, what’s in a name?

In a fast food restaurant he bought french fries and then entered the men’s room to count his wallet. Two hundred and three dollars. Enough.

Can you give me a room without too much crack smoke? he asked at the Rama Hotel. Last time there was crack smoke coming in through the wall and I didn’t get much sleep.

That must have been some other hotel, said the manager, bored and angry.

Okay, said Tyler. I believe you. I’m sure the room will be great.

He went up to his room, which cost twenty dollars plus a five dollar key deposit, and sat there for a while. Then he wrote a letter to the Queen of the Whores, politely requesting a meeting. He copied it out four times. Each letter he put in its own envelope addressed to the Queen of the Whores. Before sealing these literary efforts, he took four eyedroppered vials from his pocket. Each one contained a differently keyed locator fluid. Marking them separately with that treacherous spoor, he licked the envelopes shut. He left one on top of the dresser. The second he took down the hall to the bathroom and hid in the toilet tank, taping it underneath the lid, right on top of somebody’s heroin stash. The third and fourth he kept with him. Descending the stairs, he swung the grating open, and peered out into the night. Mission Street was getting worse every month. Two tall men waiting outside snarled at him. His hand was in his jacket pocket where the pistol was. Perhaps they saw the lack of fear in his face (although he actually did fear them), or perhaps they meant no harm, for they let him through. He walked back along the night sidewalk where homeless men rattled their shopping carts, got into his car, drove across town to the Queen’s parking garage in order to add another stultifying line to his surveillance report, dropped the car off there so that no one would smash the windshield, slid the third letter to the Queen under the grating by the third floor, took the bus back, and got off at Sixteenth and Mission where the subway station was now a crack cocaine bazaar. He saw two hulking pairs of shoulders enter the gratinged street door of the Rama, and strode quickly to grab it so that the manager would not have to buzz him in, but the closer he got, the higher loomed those shoulders, and suddenly he was apprehensive again. He wondered whether he might be getting ill. Once his brother had hired him — probably out of pity — to do a little investigative work on a toxic dumping case which was of interest to a certain realty corporation, and late one night as Tyler approached the factory warehouse he’d suddenly been almost overcome by a panic which seemed causeless. He went home, lay down, and was sick for a week. This performance, needless to say, did not endear him to John’s firm. Pacing half a block up and half a block back to give those shoulders time to disappear, he rang the buzzer at the Rama. When the hideous cawing of unlocking sounded, he pulled the grating open. A whore and a pimp stood in the hallway. — It’s not enough, the whore was whining. — You argue with me, you’ll go back in the penitentiary, said the pimp. — Their mouths kissed the long yellow crack-flame as Tyler said excuse me and passed up the stinking stairs to the second grating, whose button he had to lean on for a long time before the manager buzzed him in.

What room? said the manager, who obviously didn’t remember him.

I kept my key, thanks.

Don’t talk smart to me, filth, said the manager. What room?

The one with no crack smoke, said Tyler, turning his back on the manager and going up the second flight of stairs to the hall where his room was. A door opened and a man clothed only in tattoos of angry demons leaned out and spat on the carpet. Out of his side-vision Tyler glimpsed a naked old woman straining to pull a dildo out of her ass. Tyler walked down the corridor to the bathroom and looked inside the toilet tank. The letter and the baggie of heroin were both gone. From his pocket he withdrew the fourth and final envelope and set it openly on top of the toilet tank.

In his room the first envelope was still there. But somebody had painted on the bottom drawer of the half-ruined dresser an image of a naked woman whose hair was charred pipe resin or a similar black substance and whose lips were lipstick. Between her breasts ran these lines:

IS WOUND BUT ONCE

No man has the power

to tell where he will

stop at a late

or early hour.

To lose one’s wealth is sad indeed

To lose one’s health is more

To lose one’s soul is such a loss

To lose one’s Queen is all.

He saw another lipstick stain where someone had stood on the bed and kissed the wall.

| 24 |

He went down the corridor to the bathroom, and on his return the night breeze felt good so he approached the street window and saw a whore creeping up the fire escape. She put her finger to her lips when she saw him. He nodded and waited.

I’m so cold, the woman whispered when she reached him. Please please please. I’m alone and I got a room already in the Westman Hotel.

What’s your name?

Barbara.

He looked at her for a long time. — Hey, he said softly, I remember you when your name was Shorty.

I remember you, too. You were living in the Krishna then.

Yes I was! laughed Tyler. I was between jobs then. And you—

Yes. Hey! Guess what! I kicked! I’m not shooting up anymore!

That’s great, he said, half believing her.

So, please…

Maybe later, when I have some money, he said smoothly.

You don’t even have two dollars? I’m hungry.

Here’s a buck, he said. Listen, Barbara—

Aw, what the hell. You can call me Shorty. We go back a ways, don’t we?

OK, Shorty. I need to meet the Queen. Do you know how I can do that?

The Queen! What do you want to meet her for? What’s she got that I ain’t got?

Somebody’s paying me, he said.

Oh, that’s different. You gotta do what you gotta do. Well, I’m in business for myself, so I don’t really know her. But the other girls say she lives underground, you know like in the sewers or under the subway or something, always moving around, but always in the dark like some bug that rules the bug colony. I never went looking for her. They say if she wants you, she’ll find you, but if you go poking your nose in her business she’ll fuck you up. Like seriously fuck you up. But you didn’t hear anything from me, right?

So she’s mean, Shorty?

Talk about mean! That girl is one hundred percent bitch. You look for her, you watch your ass, Okay? ’Cause you’ve been good to me.

Thanks, Shorty, he said, squeezing her in his arms.

| 25 |

That night Tyler dreamed of an extermination machine in the shape of a cubical steel face within which the mouth was a bladed trapezoid. The condemned marched into the mouth one by one. They bowed their heads, reminding him of the way that everyone gazed at his or her tapping shoes at the V.D. clinic. (Once he’d met a client there. Another time he’d been a patient there.) The blades macerated them. He dreamed of this all night, sometimes managing to struggle awake, but it was as though the architect of this machine kept dragging him back down to gaze upon it. At dawn he was sad and anxious. It was just light enough for him to see bloodstains and squashed bugs on the walls. He itched all over. He got up, pissed in the sink, and dressed. Shorty was staying in room number 302. He took the first letter to the Queen and slid it under her door. Then he returned to his room and lay down, trying to sleep and failing. There was piss shining on the vinyl runners of the stairs when he finally went out. A man and a woman were sitting in that estimable liquid. The woman said to her companion: I’ll do it soon’s he gets out of the hall. — You talking about me? Tyler inquired politely, zipping up his fly. — I’m just saying this hall is none too big, the woman said. — Tyler nodded at her. He saw that the man had fallen asleep.

He rang the buzzer on the manager’s hatchway and got his five dollars back for the key.

Hey, if you don’t need that money, you can give it to me, a whore in the hallway said.

And you can do the same for me, he said.

Well, the whore said, scratching her scars, I might sometime do you that favor.

I’ll just hold my breath, honey, said Tyler, swinging open the top grating.

Be careful out there, said the night janitor.

He descended the final stairs, peered through the street grating to make sure that nobody was lurking, and went out. A sad black whore, hooded against the rising sun, was walking slowly toward the bus stop. She gazed back at him longingly. He saluted her, mouthed the word Queen, and went on, passing a parking garage whose cage gaped empty just inside the doorway. There was nobody inside the ticket taker’s heavily glassed booth, which was set reclusively back in the darkness.

No way the Queen’s in a parking garage, Tyler said to himself. It’s got to be just a goddamned letter drop.

Hallelujah, he thought then. I actually believe in the Queen.

He walked and walked, scratching. On South Van Ness near Twenty Second a black-and-white slowly came to a stop, double-parked, and from its two mouths expectorated two cops the darkness of whose uniforms seemed to keep the last remnants of the night. He didn’t recognize either of them. They mounted the painted steps of an unpainted Victorian and rang the doorbell. Their hands were on their holsters.

He thought: I’d better call Mom today and see if she’s had any chest pains. I should call Detective Hernandez in Vice and ask him if he’s heard of the Queen. I should call Brady and ask him for another advance. I should call John and ask if he thinks Mom needs another doctor. I should call Irene.

He took the bus to the Queen’s parking garage, drove home and took a shower. After that, he checked his messages. His throat felt scratchy. Brady hadn’t phoned, but somebody named Marya whose ex-husband owed her child support wanted him to help her track the absconder into the jaws of justice, and his half-friend Roger was in town, his mother had called, John hadn’t called, a possible warehouse surveillance case danced on his tongue; Helena from Seattle, who’d never let him kiss her breasts, wondered aloud how he was doing; the Detective Institute invited him, for a forgivably small stipend, to repeat the seminar on drug abuse recognition; and the landlord was coming to repair the running toilet sometime around noon, which meant closer to three or four. Junk mail faxes crept across the carpet. Tyler ate a freckled banana for breakfast and made himself coffee. Resting his clipboard on his knee, he began to pad his surveillance report, adding line after line of spurious whores going in and spurious cars going out. That would keep Brady happy. He used up three extra forms that way. Then he tuned his television set to channel seven and clicked the remote three times to find out where his missives to the Queen had travelled. He saw a blue dot, a red dot, a white dot, and a dark grey dot. The blue dot and the dark grey dot were still at Sixteenth and Mission. The red dot was at the parking garage at Larkin Street where he had left it. The white dot, which represented the letter he’d slipped under Shorty’s door, had also moved to the parking garage.

Just a goddamned letter drop, he repeated to himself.

| 26 |

Two months earlier, Irene had become certain that she was pregnant.

Sacramento had received a wet spring. Water still shone upon the black earth, and the buttercups, dandelions and mustard flowers were a sunny yellow in the ditches. On that Sunday afternoon hardly any traffic dared to slow their progress on Interstate 80 West, which thickened the pleasure John already felt in having done his duty by spending Saturday and Saturday night with his lonely mother, whose house was crammed with paperbacks: The Algerine Captive, Growth of the Soil, The Last Temptation of Christ, Mary Webb’s The Golden Arrow; his mother adored Irene, but admonished her, as John did, to lose weight and get a job. Irene tried to smile and respect her because she wouldn’t consider herself a good person if she quarreled with her mother-in-law. Having told her once again that she was too fat, John’s mother served her an immense helping of pork chops and mashed potato with butter, becoming cross when Irene was too full to eat seconds. She admired John’s new tie and wanted to hear all about the Peterson case. John told her, in considerably more detail than he had ever told Irene. Irene, half-listening to her husband and gazing into the old woman’s face, wondered whether she were genuinely interested in her son’s life, simply because it was her son’s, or whether her love allowed her to feign interest. Either way, she was an excellent listener. (Under the table, Mugsy the dog nuzzled Irene’s thigh.) John seemed happier and more relaxed than he’d been in weeks. He asked his mother for advice, which he never did with Irene; he smiled and laughed… Deeply ashamed, Irene promised herself in future to express more interest in her husband’s affairs. When dinner was finished, she asked John’s mother what she was reading now.

I’m rereading Dostoyevsky, said the old lady. There’s one writer who’s truly ageless. I’d really forgotten how good he was.

You make it sound so easy, to read all those books! said Irene in her best admiring voice.

Well, of course English is not your native language, Irene (and Irene, smiling graciously, heard some monster in the old lady’s heart crying: You goddamned little Chink!). No one expects you to read Dostoyevsky.

If I were to read just one, which would you recommend?

You heard what Mom said, John told her, a patina of irritation now overlying the happy goldenness of his voice. Why would you bother?

Irene was determined at all costs to be polite to her mother-in-law, but she saw no reason to allow her husband’s condescension to pass unchallenged. — How many books by Dostoyevsky have you read? she asked.

What’s that got to do with anything? Is this some kind of contest?

If it is, replied Irene, continuing to play the good girl, I’m sure that Mom has won. And I know I’ve lost, because I never read anything by Dostoyevsky.

Mrs. Tyler smiled benignly. — Just reading for the sake of saying you’ve done it is cheating. You have to enjoy it. John of course has read everything Dostoyevsky ever wrote. I saw to that.

Is that true, John?

Look, Irene. Can’t we just leave me out of this?

Does he write fiction or nonfiction, Mom?

Oh, my poor dear Irene, said Mrs. Tyler.

And which one have you enjoyed the most?

How could that possibly matter to you? said her husband.

Noting Irene’s bitter grimace, Mrs. Tyler quickly replied: Well, dear, I’d have to say The Possessed, although it’s frightfully sad. It reveals in such depth the stupidity of revolution. I wish that all those terrorists in the Middle East were required to read it.

Maybe they’ve read it already, said John, still sour.

Can I borrow your copy, Mom? said Irene. I promise I’ll read it before we visit you again.

Oh, you’re such a sweet girl, Irene, said John’s mother, starting to clear away the dishes. Irene leaped up to help her.

Sit down with me, Mom, said John. Irene can do it.

Please, Mom, keep John company, cried Irene quickly. John’s right! And he doesn’t get to see you as often as he’d like.

How’s your blood pressure? she heard John say as she came back in for the glass bowl.

Oh, not so good, not so bad. No chest pains today.

John gazed into his mother’s face with a loving, worried look. Irene felt so lonely that she almost screamed.

And how’s your brother? she heard her mother-in-law say.

Unshaven and drinking as usual, said John. (Her wrists deep in soapsuds, she visualized his face slamming shut as it always did when Henry was mentioned.)

There’s something I want you to say to him, John. I don’t want it coming from me, because then he won’t listen. But I know he listens to you. He respects you, John. He loves you.

Turning off the faucet, she heard John’s silence. She heard Mugsy’s tail rhythmically lashing the table-leg. Someone must be scratching Mugsy’s belly the way she liked. Probably John was doing it. John loved Mugsy.

I want you to tell him to find another girlfriend, her mother-in-law was saying. At my age it’s not so important to be divorced. Of course I would have preferred it if Daddy hadn’t left us, but it seems that so many of my schoolgirl friends are widows already. Henry, though, still has half his life ahead of him. Well, almost half, I guess I should say…

I’ll tell him, Mom, John said tonelessly.

Irene always had difficulty finding where the spatulas were kept, and she did not want to interrupt the conversation, so she opened drawers one after the other, discovering silverware like grey claw-bones, corkscrews, receipts, medical insurance forms, everything in a clutter. In her own mother’s house everything was just so. Even the tapered ends of the chopsticks had to point in the same direction. Her mother was almost excessively clean, although she paled in comparison to her aunt, who kept everyone’s shoes in plastic bags in the closet at night so that they wouldn’t gather dust. Under the dish drainer, Irene suddenly saw one of her mother-in-law’s grey hairs, and sponged it away in disgust.

| 27 |

I had the strangest dream about Henry last night, Mrs. Tyler was saying as Irene finished drying her hands and came noiselessly back to the table. — Thank you so much, Irene. You’re a goodhearted girl.

Mom, I’m sorry I couldn’t find the spatula. I put the potatoes away in the fridge in that big bowl.

Never mind, never mind. Do you really want to read Dostoyevsky?

Of course, Mom. What was your dream?

My what? Oh, I was just telling John that last night I had a little trouble getting to sleep. When you get to be my age, Irene, you’ll find that sleep doesn’t come without a struggle. Sometimes I think that’s why old people die. They just get so tired.

I’m sorry, Mom. When John and I go to church I’ll make sure we both pray for your health.

What was your dream, Mom? said John, bored.

Well, I dreamed that Henry had married a princess — a real princess, with a golden crown! Isn’t that fantastic? Oh, dear! And he looked so happy. I think that’s why I’ve been thinking about him all day. I would certainly love to see him remarried. Irene, you’re so close to Henry. Is there anyone special in his life?

Mrs. Tyler asked this question so blandly and straightforwardly that Irene did not at first sense any menace in it. John had without a doubt made several comments about this matter; but Irene was certain that Henry had never said anything about her to his mother.

No, Mom, she said when she realized that they were both waiting for her to say something. Not to my knowledge. But I sure wish he would find someone. Sometimes he seems so unhappy.

At once she was given to understand by the changed expressions of her two interlocutors that she had said more than she should, or at least more than they wanted to hear. It was acceptable for John or his mother to broach the subject of Henry’s sadness, but Irene would always remain an outsider; admitted to the family for a lifelong period of probation, it was not for her to make judgments on the emotions of others. Later, on that Sunday afternoon when she and John were driving back toward San Francisco’s foggy white and blue rectangles, she succeeded in forgetting the frown on her mother-in-law’s face. John was happy. He drove at five miles an hour above the speed limit, smiling all the way home. It was as if he’d received the gifts of the drug Ectasy, which (according to Henry, whom she loved to ask about drugs, none of which she’d ever tried) consists of a drowsy joy which thickens around your naked skin like fur; this is the transformation of every nerve ending in your skin into an excited clitoris; you knead a breast or buttock in your hand and cannot stop because your hand is having a million orgasms; you massage your sweetheart’s back for hours; when you close your eyes and wriggle your fingers you can still see them move; your teeth keep grinding until your jaws most pleasurably ache. Irene gazed at her husband, who drove on, and somehow his very joy overcame her with the familiar intractability of her position, as solid as her room in her parents’ house with its computer, TV, telephone, beads, animal posters, and stickers. Perhaps her cousin Suzy had the computer now. Irene had told her parents to give it to her. Suzy was still in school, and the computer had not yet fallen so far out of date.

They were on the Bay Bridge now, and looking over the edge Irene saw the dark steel ships upon the pale grey sea.

Her husband was still smiling faintly. Summoning her fortitude, Irene said: John, I think I’m pregnant.

| 28 |

Slowly, slowly his head turned toward her.

I guess you forgot your pill again, he said.

Yes, she said.

Well, he said, I hope you’re happy.

How about you? she said. Are you happy?

Mom will be thrilled, he said. Well, it’s a shock, Irene. I won’t deny that.

There was no traffic at the Civic Center exit. He turned right on Van Ness, where the traffic was also abnormally light, and was silent until they got to Chestnut Street, where as he turned he said: Who’s the father?

| 29 |

Mr. Tyler lived in Wyoming somewhere. Nobody had heard from him for years. California’s no-fault divorce laws entitled Tyler’s mother to an automatic half of common assets, but, having kept the house anyway, she let the cash go. John once took her to task about this, because he believed her to be motivated only by an apprehension of being thought greedy, when the simple truth was that like her other son she honestly did not care about money. Possibly Mr. Tyler would have settled some of it on her, had she asked, but by that time neither of them wanted the death of their marriage to drag on. Not long after John had begun to go steady with Irene, he’d proposed in one of his metallic jests that Hank employ the professional knowledge which he presumably possessed to go to Wyoming and seize their father’s assets, his reward to be a ten percent commission on anything collected. — I had an assault case involving that scenario, Hank mumbled. It happened right around the Loki Hotel. This woman made a nice little scar on this young girl’s forehead. You see, she was one of these women who… — John walked away, disgusted. And the notion of sending out a Viking raider on their father’s track had died a merited death, much to Mrs. Tyler’s relief. All that was important to her was seeing her sons, which was why every July they drove down to Monterey for a week, that town not being so far away that John couldn’t pop back into San Francisco if he were needed at the office. This year he warned that he could not guarantee his presence in July, because a new client had asked him to prepare some articles of incorporation which it seemed might have ripened exactly to the point of signature by July fifteenth, commencing the infant enterprise’s fiscal year, so he telephoned his mother to ask whether May were acceptable. That would be a pity, of course, Mrs. Tyler replied, because the beach would still be so chilly in that season, but John only laughed and said that Monterey was always cold and she never swam, so what was the difference? As for Hank, he knew how inconvenient it was for John to get away at all, so naturally he would rearrange his schedule as needed. It was a rare sunny day. Mrs. Tyler had installed herself in her hotel room for a nap. Irene lay sleeping on the sand, and her hands met at an apex beyond her head, there by the chair and the empty soda bottle. She had not yet reached that sluggish, langorous, trusting stage dwelt in by so many pregnant women, when the heavy belly makes every breath a burden, and independence must be traded for resignation, with or without hope, depending on temperament. Why not hope? Too late now to kill the fetus, if one ever thought of it. Why not assume the best of the father, and maybe even of the world? The only other course, aside from denial and distraction, would be a despair compounded by its own passivity. C’est sera sera, and so… The sun glittered on her watch. Beside her, John lay very still on his back. He was gold from head to toe. The breeze strained patiently inside his swim trunks, and the golden lion’s down on his arms seethed like seaweed in the waves. His chest barely moved. As Tyler watched, busily recording nonexistent license plate numbers in the surveillance report, Irene opened her eyes and looked up at the stubble on her husband’s chin. John seemed to feel her gaze, because his hand slowly rose to touch that very place. His eyes opened also, and he sat up. — I’m getting sunburned, he said. I think I’ll go in and put my shirt on. I need to shave, too.

As soon as her husband had gone, Irene’s eyes widened, and she turned her face slowly toward Tyler’s. Tyler’s heart began pounding.

| 30 |

And how’s the home life? Tyler was saying to his brother.

Great, said John, drumming his fingers on the edge of his beer glass. — Which reminds me. Mother, you’ll want to hear this. We’re expecting.

Oh, John! their mother cried. What fabulous news! When is Irene due?

September.

Where is Irene? their mother said.

She went to lie down.

Has she been having morning sickness?

I don’t think so, Mom, but I’m not a hundred percent sure. Irene’s not a complainer.

John, you are very lucky to have her.

Yeah, I know, Mom. How’s your blood pressure?

It was normal today. Henry, aren’t you going to congratulate your brother?

Congratulations, Tyler choked out.

I think this calls for champagne, boys, don’t you think?

Well, let’s wait until the baby’s born, said John sullenly.

They sat there, and Tyler said: How’s the Peterson case coming along?

We stopped that conviction dead, said John. Irene and I can count on a good bonus this year. So they’ve asked me to take the T-scam reclamation case. I haven’t refused, although it means I’ll be pretty busy for the rest of the year.

Well, you do have to think of your career, their mother said. You certainly couldn’t have refused. I’m sure that Mr. Rapp and Mr. Singer are to be trusted. You’ve put up with so much for them. Oh, John, I’m so proud of you, and now you’re going to be a father, too! But you won’t leave Irene too much alone, will you? It’s difficult, a woman’s first time. I remember when I was pregnant with you, John, and then your father… Henry, you’ll have to look in on Irene even more often than you do. It’s a mercy that you and she are so fond of each other.

Tyler began very slowly to clean his spectacles. — I’ll certainly visit, he said, if I’m invited.

And what about you, Mom? said John smoothly. Irene loves you, too. I’m sure she’d appreciate it if you found time to help her.

I certainly shall. When Irene wakes up I must find out if she needs anything. Has she had a good appetite?

She’s going to eat me into the poorhouse, laughed John. Tyler thought it a brutal laugh.

The fog’s coming in again, Tyler said, gazing out the window.

Well, we were lucky all day with that wonderful sunshine, weren’t we? their mother said. Mugsy certainly enjoyed her walk. Henry, you need a haircut.

A cut or just a trim?

Oh, I’d say you’ve really let it go. What do you think, John?

I’d say he could use a shave, too.

All right, said Tyler a little irritably. I’ll go and get a haircut right now.

Get a shave, too, his brother said.

Yes, I heard the first time. Congratulations on the baby.

Is this the first you’ve heard about it?

What do you mean, John?

Oh, I just thought maybe Irene might have told you.

Why would she tell me before her own husband? Tyler said challengingly.

No one replied for a moment.

Irene has actually been looking a bit tired lately, their mother put in.

Oh, you think so? said John. I thought she was starting to fill out.

But she’s not so far along, is she? But it is true that the first two or three months are the worst. Later she’ll be more tired, of course, but the changes in the first few months are the most drastic. At least that was my experience with both of you.

I guess your experience beats ours in that department, said Tyler, going out the door.

My, but he looked sour! their mother said. I wonder if he’s feeling well?

He’s ridiculous.

John, you don’t have anything against your brother, do you?

And if I did, what would that be?

That’s not an answer, John.

Well, maybe it’s a question with no answer.

Every question has an answer, his mother asserted with considerable conviction.

Really, Mom? Then tell me this. Where do we come from and where are we going? Gauguin said that. I still have that book of reproductions you gave me. Where does my baby come from, and what will he become?

Yes, John, I know Gauguin said that and painted it, said his mother, rocking. He was a very, very unhappy man.

John tapped his foot.

Oh, dear. Is he jealous of you, sweetheart?

It’s nothing. We get along fine. Don’t you worry about it, Mom, replied the son in what he considered to be a brusquely well-meaning tone, but which came out a little more peremptory than that. Mrs. Tyler, absently rubbing together her arthritic fingers, gazed into his face with large eyes.

That fog’s pretty solid now, he said.

Have you decided on a name?

Eric.

And if it’s a girl?

Suzanne. But it won’t be a girl.

So you think it’s a boy. Have you gotten the ultrasound done?

Irene didn’t want to. It’s not up to me. Nothing’s up to me.

Nothing’s up to you? said Irene in a quiet fury as she came through the door. Mom, I want you to listen to that. This is how he always is with me. This is how your son talks to me, and I can’t bear it anymore!

Irene, Irene, Irene! said her mother-in-law, with a smile of loving exasperation. I was just telling John that the first two or three months are the worst. I recall that I got very moody as well…

I’m sorry, Mom, whispered Irene, suddenly very frightened. I’m sorry, John.

Oh, forget it, said John. Why don’t you sit down, Irene? You want an ice tea?

I want a beer, Irene thought to herself. I want to get drunk. — Yes, please, she said aloud. Can I pour you one, Mom?

The pitcher’s in that little fridge, said Mrs. Tyler. No, thank you, Irene. But it’s very sweet of you to ask. Maybe John would like a refill.

John said nothing. His eyes were pale blue like the Bay on a half-cloudy day. Irene brought the pitcher out and silently filled his glass, careful not to add any more ice cubes, which he detested. Then she poured herself one.

Where’s Mugsy? she said.

Mugsy’s taking a little nap, said her mother-in-law, with the usual smile of instant inanity that came whenever that creature was mentioned. Suddenly, awaking from her loving trance, she said: Irene, is it true that Koreans eat dogs?

Yes, Mom, in Korea. But I never have. My father’s side of the family really likes them, though. You want to hear a funny story, Mom? When we first moved to this country, my second uncle and auntie went to the supermarket, and they couldn’t read English very well, so when they got to the aisle where the pet stuff is and they saw all those bags of dog food, you know, with the different pictures of dogs on the different brands, they thought it was different kinds of dog meat, and they said: Wow, what a great country America is; it has everything!

Oh, my God, said Mrs. Tyler.

I’m sorry, Mom. Did I say anything wrong? I was just trying to—

John grinned. — You never told me that story, Irene. That’s pretty good.

No, I—

I’ll tell that one at work. Singer in particular will be amused. I’m always making him laugh. He keeps asking where I get so many good dirty jokes. You know where I get them? From the Internet.

Oh, please don’t tell that story at work, Irene said. I’d be embarrassed if other people knew. It makes my family sound so fresh off the boat. That’s why it’s kind of funny, I guess…

No one will think any the less of you if John tells that story, Irene, pronounced Mrs. Tyler decisively. It’s a sweet story.

Thank you, Mom.

Hey, Irene, said her husband.

What?

Your hair looks ratty. Lots of split ends. When are you going to fix it?

I have an appointment with Jordan for next Saturday, Irene said. Can you wait that long, or does it bother you so much to look at me?

How much does Jordan cost me?

I pay for Jordan, not you.

I said, how much does he cost?

Forty-five.

Forty-five dollars! For what? Does that include his tip?

Excuse me, said Irene, but it was you who started complaining about how I look, not me. You heard it all, Mom. What do you think?

Oh, I don’t want to get involved, said Mrs. Tyler. But I do think a woman should try to please her husband.

Okay, Mom, Irene said. Well, maybe you and your son can find a cheap haircutting place that will please your son, and I’ll cancel my appointment with Jordan and go wherever you say. Is that what you want me to do?

Don’t get ants in your pants, said John. Just calm down. If you want to go to Jordan you can go to Jordan. I can afford it.

I want a beer, said Irene.

But you’re pregnant! said Mrs. Tyler, shocked.

I’m going for a walk, said Irene. Do you want me to take Mugsy?

Sure, take Mugsy, said John, with evident relief. Mugsy, like the weather, was always a safe change of topic, perhaps even the shortest path out of the family labyrinth.

Thank you, Irene, said Mrs. Tyler. Mugsy will be thrilled to get another walk. You’re such a thoughtful girl.

Thanks for saying so, Mom. Where’s her leash?

It’s in the car.

Can I bring you back anything, Mom?

Not a thing, thank you.

Mom would like some low-fat yogurt, John said. Wouldn’t you, Mom?

Why, John, what a good idea. Irene, darling, would you mind?

No problem, said Irene.

And what about you, John? said Mrs. Tyler.

I’m fine. Hurry back, Irene.

Oh, John, said his mother, you never think of yourself.

| 31 |

When they were alone, Mrs. Tyler said: It’s almost as if you want them alone together.

What do you mean, Mom?

Well, you tell him to get a haircut; you tell her to fix her hair; don’t you think they’ll run into each other?

What are you saying?

Oh, she’s such a dear little girl, John, but don’t you see that she’s discontented?

Mugsy will have a good walk anyhow, John said. Mom, why don’t you lie down until Irene gets back with your dessert? I’ll wake you…

| 32 |

The frayed vacation went on like a whore babying her worn-out old cigarette lighter to get one last hit from her crack pipe, and then one more hit beyond the last hit, until finally it was over. The two brothers each made a separate mental note never to do that again. Mrs. Tyler for her own part felt relief upon regaining her solitude, and then felt guilty to be relieved. Irene remained silent. All these reactions were customary.

John and Irene drove Mrs. Tyler back to Sacramento. Tyler went quietly to San Francisco, smiling because in his shirt pocket were three long black hairs he’d stolen from Irene’s pillow.

| 33 |

The Vincy Company wanted him to screen three job applicants on his computer. It took him forty-five minutes for all three. He sent them a printout and a bill for three hundred and twenty-five dollars.

Two weeks later they hadn’t paid, and meanwhile he’d received an envelope from Datatronic Solutions which contained a Statement of account marked “urgent.” His current balance was zero dollars and zero point zero cents. Thus likewise his balance thirty-one to sixty days past due, and his balance sixty-one to ninety days past due. In the ominous box “Over 90 Days/Past Due” the figure $190.99 had been printed in boldface. Underneath this warning of liability, the Statement of Account, still trying to be friendly with Tyler, proposed the following helpful advice: To arrange for your balance to be paid with a Credit Card, please call the telephone number above. Thanks so much for your business!!!

Gazing out his living room window at the fog-suffused red and green traffic-winkings of the Sunset, he telephoned Datatronic Solutions and said: I have a question on my bill. Well, three questions actually.

Yes, sir. What’s your customer identification number?

We’ll get to that, Tyler said. But I get to ask my three questions first. Number one: Why do you have a slashmark between “ninety days” and “past due”? Number two: Why is “Credit Card” in title case? Number three: Why do you think you need three exclamation points when you’re thanking me for my business when I actually haven’t given you any business because I owe you two hundred dollars?

Sir, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Who’s this?

That’s for me to know and you to find out, said Tyler, hanging up. He telephoned the Vincy Company and asked the woman at Accounts Payable if she’d received his invoice. She said that she didn’t know.

| 34 |

It’s just a standard incorporation thing, said Brady. I’m trusting you to help me out on this, son.

You won’t be disappointed, Mr. Brady.

Glad to hear it, because I don’t disappoint very well. So what I need right now, John, I need a hardass. I need someone to say, this is what Brady’s gonna do, no arguments. I don’t want to drag it on.

I don’t know what to say, said John, trying to be polite.

If you don’t know what to say, don’t say anything.

Fine, said John.

You got a problem with me?

Gazing into his client’s swollen, florid face, John said nothing.

I said, you got a problem with me?

Let’s leave me and my problems out of this, said John in a steely tone which Brady instantly recognized and respected.

You passed the test, sonny. All right. Now, the name of the operation is going to be Feminine Circus. Nationwide franchises planned, that kind of crap. It’s gonna generate competition. I want you to rig things for me, John, so that my enemies can’t get to me. I want interlocking trusts, dummy corporations, whatever you think I need to be protected. Until the deal’s done, I don’t want anyone to know I’m behind it. The first outlet is going to open in Vegas, so that’ll be governed by the laws of Nevada, but I want you to handle it for me because I anticipate opening two more outlets very soon in L.A., another in San Diego, and maybe one here in Frisco.

Whatever you say, said John. But I’m sure you know that Nevada, like Delaware, is exempt from a lot of regulations. So many California businesses do it the other way around and incorporate in Nevada. I mean, Nevada is corporate paradise.

Yeah, well, I’d just feel a lot safer dealing with contract attorneys who don’t have any ties to Nevada. Feminine Circus is a unique concept, John. I don’t want some big boy in Vegas to rip me off.

Fine, said John.

Now, what do you need to get started?

Maybe you could tell me a little about the business, Mr. Brady.

Entertaaaaaaaaaaainment, said Brady with a wink.

Anything illegal? said John. I don’t care who you are or how much money you have. I’m not interested in breaking the law.

That’s your bottom line, huh? Well, don’t worry about that, you little twerp. It’s all gonna be virtual reality. Electronic sex shows. Just masturbation with a few photons. No minors admitted, of course. I’m counting on you to take care of the zoning commissions. Your brother was just telling me how the Sacramento city council fucked over that Club Fantasy, made ’em install handicapped ramps for their dancers and all kinds of other shit, then pulled the plug because some day care center popped up outta nowhere…

My brother? said John slowly.

Sure. That pimply-faced Hank Tyler. Says he’s your brother, anyhow. I’m paying him less than I’m paying you.

What are you using Hank for?

Hunting up some talent for the big act. I guess you and he don’t communicate much, do you?

You’re paying me for my time, Mr. Brady, said John. If you want to squander money asking me questions about my brother, I can’t stop you. But I’d really prefer that you mind your own goddamned business.

Heh! heh! Boy stands up to me! I like you, Johnny! Listen, sonny, said Brady, waving a purple finger in John’s face with the utmost sincerity, you and I are going to go places.

| 35 |

Since the Queen had not yet replied to any of his letters (with each of which he’d included his business card, the answering machine number circled in red), Tyler made arrangements to meet his old friend Athena, who was as Greek and wise and upliftingly haughty as her name. Seeing her might get family matters out of his head, and help him with the Brady job, too.

She embraced him calmly, wearing a long black dress. They went to the hotel bar, which she knew as well as she did all the other hotel bars in that part of town, and she ordered a shot of Red and he ordered a shot of Black.

You look so beautiful, he said. Are you and your husband going to have a child?

Never, she said. How can I have a child and keep making calls?

Your husband wouldn’t be a good father?

No, she said, lighting a long thin cigarette. And what’s your news? You look tired. Anyway, why do you want me to have a child?

It would be nice if there were a little girl in this world who looked like you, he said.

That’s sweet, she said, smiling.

Cheers, he said.

Are you going to have a child? asked Athena in an innocent tone.

Tyler choked on his drink.

I’ve been looking for the Queen, he said. Do you know her?

Of course I know her. But we don’t exactly move in the same circles. Twice a week I do volunteer work and hand out condoms to the street girls—

I tried a female condom not long ago, Tyler said. It was like screwing a plastic bag.

She laughed. — You know what I do? I make all my clients wear two condoms! I’m a little bit paranoid.

Why do they even bother to stick it in? he asked wonderingly. I guess I would just touch you with my hand or my mouth or something.

Some of them do that, she said.

And your husband?

He only has to wear one. I don’t want to get pregnant, and I don’t want to take the pill, but he’s my husband.

Athena worked out of her house and advertised in the adult newspaper the Voyeur. Last weekend she had made in one day eight hundred dollars — six clients back to back, so to speak, for the full service; at the end of the day she was really tired, but it was the best money that she’d made in a long time. She paid off her credit card bills.

So you see the street girls twice a week? Tyler pursued, trying to be the conscientious detective.

I do. And sometimes I feel like there are two people inside me, one for the streets and one for the bars.

I always figured you were somehow struggling with yourself. You seemed kind of tense when I saw you last year. I was worried about you—

I was? I don’t remember.

You don’t seem as tense tonight.

Actually I’m feeling pretty tense, she said. I’m so bored with everything.

How much does the agency take? Fifty percent?

A little more. Not much.

Why don’t you and your friends set up your own agency?

You keep telling me that. You don’t understand. An ad in the yellow pages costs five thousand a month. I don’t know anyone who has that kind of money.

In Vegas they use fliers.

I hate Vegas. They don’t like me there. They want big tall blondes with those scary boobs.

So you’re bored, he said. How have the customers been treating you?

Oh, fine. I like some of them. One German banker just took me to Switzerland for two weeks. He was very generous, but I thought the food would be better. And I tried to get him to leave me alone, but he kept trying to make me angry… One man looked at me and said: Do you do this for the money? I thought that was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard…

Tyler finished his drink. The lounge waitress brought him another. There goes seven or eight more dollars, I guess, he thought to himself.

Maybe I’m more tense because I know you better, Athena said.

Well, that’s a compliment, said Tyler. Hey, I want to rip my employer off. You know a good place to hide money?

I hate you! she laughed.

She was very beautiful and severe, a slender brunette with sad black eyes. He had known her for three or four years. — Athena, I’d like to see you professionally, he said, swallowing.

Oh, stop it, she said. He could tell that she was pleased.

All right. So what’s the best way to meet the Queen?

Write her. There’s a parking garage where she gets her mail…

I know about that. I tried that.

And did she answer?

No.

I guess she doesn’t want to meet you then, said Athena.

You’re right, Tyler said. Well, I’m tired. I suppose I’ll turn in.

He left thirty-five dollars for the drinks. As they were leaving the bar, they spied a knot of businessmen standing in the doorway, and Athena sighed and said: Maybe I’ll stay here and see if I can get one of them to go upstairs with me…

| 36 |

Just as he got home, the telephone rang. He thought it would be Brady, but it was a wrong number.

The telephone rang.

Yeah, he said.

Harry Tooler, please?

Sounds like a telephone sale, said Tyler.

Oh, no, sir. This is an opportunity call.

Not interested, he said, hanging up.

The phone rang immediately.

Hello? he said patiently.

Is this Harry Tooler? said a different woman.

Is this a telephone sale?

No, sir, I don’t sell anything over the phone. I only want to tell you about my products, the woman said brightly.

No, thank you, he said, hanging up.

The phone rang at once.

I’ll stick my hairy tool in you! he shouted.

Just what’s that supposed to mean, Hank? came his brother’s voice.

| 37 |

It means I probably didn’t get that garage mechanic’s job, said Tyler.

Oh, forget it, said John. The reason I called is that I gather we’re both working for Jonas Brady.

Yep, I guess we are, said Tyler. Is it working out, being his lawyer?

I can’t help but admire the guy, said John. He knows what he wants. But since he also hired you, I wonder if he’s up to anything illegal.

I did a T.U. on him already.

A what?

A Trans Union. A credit check. John, he has very, very good credit.

He does, huh? said Tyler’s brother, impressed in spite of himself.

I ran him through TRW also and tied him to a social security number in Missouri. Nothing wrong with that.

That spying business you’re into doesn’t really make him smell like a rose, if he’s into it, too.

I get it, said Tyler. Since I’m working for him, he’s no good.

Exactly, said John.

Tyler laughed sadly. — So what do you want to know?

What are you doing for him?

Standard missing persons case. Well, almost standard. He’s looking for the Queen of the Whores, and there might actually be such a lady. I already have a few leads. Kind of interesting, actually. He’ll probably terminate me pretty soon…

How much is he paying you?

Oh, decent.

How are you fixed for money, Hank?

Oh, fine, said Tyler heartily.

I thought I saw you at the courthouse yesterday.

Well, I was, uh, researching the Queen because the computer only gives case number and jurisdiction for a defendant so you have to go to court and order the—

You’re a mess, Hank. You’re disorganized. You need help.

Oh, forget it, said Tyler.

You need a loan, don’t you?

I said forget it.

All right, I’ll butt out of your business. But can you swear to me there’s nothing illegal going on with Brady? As I said, I like him fine, but the fact that he’s—

Look, John. You yourself just said that in my line of work, people cut corners. But nothing egregious is going on. I have to tell you, though, that the guy gives me the creeps. I think he’s evil and up to no good. If I find this Queen I’m going to warn her before I show him where she is. But that’s what I always do. You see, some of these stalkers—

Evil is one thing. Evil’s only subjective. Illegal is another.

John, just be careful. I’m telling you, Brady gives me a bad feeling.

All right, whatever. Have you called Mom lately?

Yes, I have. And I called the doctor, too. She’s not doing so well, you know.

You have the nerve to tell me that!

John?

What?

John, how are you doing these days?

Just what is that supposed to mean?

John, you know I’m sorry about—

Oh, for God’s sake. Can’t we leave her out of this? Just once?

Whatever you say, John.

And how are you doing?

You already asked me that.

Well, I’m asking again, bro.

I can’t say things are going so well for me, John. But you know I was always a whiner. Actually, things aren’t so bad. Why don’t you come on by for dinner on Thursday or Friday and we’ll…

| 38 |

Goddamned fucking jerk, said John. Look how he just sits there. Right turn. Right turn. Right turn, you fucking asshole!

John, said Irene, could I please ask you a favor?

What?

Please please don’t brake so hard. I’m carrying a baby, you know.

Thanks for reminding me, said John. Fucking jerk. Look at him. Just look at him.

Irene grimaced and rubbed her temples. The red neon chain blinked around the yellow sign for the Russian Renaissance Restaurant where Henry had once taken her, and then the light changed and they were past it, Geary Street leading them deeper into the fog. Red bus-lights glared, ringed around with mist like the moon in some old almanac, and then after a long light John turned sharply on Nineteenth so that Irene was thrown against her seatbelt. They crossed Anza Street. John turned sharply left again. Irene felt like vomiting. Now they were crossing Golden Gate Park. The stream of tail-lights ahead of them in the fog of Park Presidio resembled the articulated scales of some complex Chinese dragon made of bright red paper.

I don’t want you to let him kiss you hello, John said.

Aren’t you maybe worrying about nothing?

It makes me sick. I can hardly stand the bastard as it is. If he weren’t my goddamned brother…

John slammed the car faster and slower through the traffic of Nineteenth, which sloped ever so gently uphill in the fog, everything grey; it would be a night of fog, with coronas around all the streetlights.

| 39 |

Tyler lived on Pacheco, just off Nineteenth, so he was actually very close to where the old Parkside Theater used to be — one reason that he had felt pleased with his address when he’d moved in fourteen years ago — to say nothing of the cheapness of it, thanks to quiet and to fog. John, of course, had long since accepted the dismal blocky ugliness of his brother’s choice as further evidence of ineptitude, if not of actual inferiority. To him the place had and was exactly nothing.

They parked in the driveway, and Irene, sitting queasily in the car, let John go ahead to ring the buzzer for Number Four. It was all too clear to her that she had better not act in any way eager, that her only permitted role tonight would be that of mournful irritability, so that John would be able to say at last: Well, Irene seems to be out of sorts. She’s hardly said a word all evening. What’s the matter with you, Irene? I’m going to take you home. Anyway I have some work to do…

What’s the matter? he was calling to her now. Can’t you see I’m holding the door open?

Irene got out of the car and shut her door. With an impatient finger-stab on the small black remote unit which he clenched, John locked and alarm-activated the vechicle against foggy intruders. Irene gazed up at the sky, inhaling cold, refreshing fog.

| 40 |

That coffee-maker of yours really sucks, John said as kindly as he could. If you’ll just read about it in Consumer Reports you’ll understand that there’s no way it could ever make good coffee. Irene, do you think we should get Hank a decent capuccino machine for Christmas?

If that’s what he wants, his wife replied almost inaudibly.

Tyler longed to ask her whether she might be unwell; but he knew that any such question would send John into a rage.

Well, enough of this swill, said John, taking his mug and Irene’s and dashing their contents out into the sink. Tyler sat sipping steadily from his cup.

The chicken was very good, said Irene without enthusiasm.

What are you talking about? laughed John. He burned it! He fucking burned it! Henry, you’ve got to get married. Mom wants you to! Not that it’s any skin off my nose, but you’re going to starve to death or poison yourself or something if you don’t find a woman to cook for you.

Do you have anyone in mind? Tyler drawled, staring into Irene’s face.

If I did, it would be pure self-defense, John replied. I think you know what I mean. Why don’t you take out an ad in the paper or something? How long has it been since what’s-her-name?

Jackie? said Tyler with weary patience.

I wasn’t even thinking about her. She never counted. No, I was thinking about… — John snapped his fingers.

You mean Alyssa.

That’s right, that’s right! John cried with a sudden strange gaiety. Alyssa — that was her name. And she would have done anything for you, but you let her go, you stupid, stupid sonofabitch!

How long ago was that, Henry? whispered Irene with effort.

Seven years ago, Tyler said. No, eight years ago. We broke up just before Christmas 1985. She, uh… I guess she still hates me…

She would have married you! laughed John. And you showed her the door! And you said, get out of here, bitch! You said—

It didn’t happen quite that way, John.

And Mom liked her, too, his brother said accusingly. Mom would have given anything to see you married.

Well, that’s not a secret, said Tyler, his hand trembling.

So you didn’t marry her. You let her go. What was the reason? John persisted, and Tyler felt hatred red and black and wobbling rise up in his stomach.

Irene sat staring down at her plate.

I guess we just didn’t get along, Tyler said finally, relieved to hear the steadiness in his voice. Now the hatred was in his chest.

Look, John said. You’ve got to face facts, Hank. You have a crummy personality. You’ve always had a crummy personality. No woman’s going to enjoy being with you. So if you catch one, you’ve got to get your hooks in her while you can. You’re going to be miserable no matter what you do, so why not just get married and forget it?

Just pretend this is Mission Street, Tyler thought to himself. Just pretend that he is a crazy and potentially violent panhandler who must be humored. He smiled at John and was about to offer him more coffee, but then he remembered that the mugs had been taken away.

| 41 |

The following morning was blue and cool in San Francisco. Tyler sat at the counter of a coffee bar across the street from his apartment, gazing down at the wood that the steadily darkening espresso in his cup rested upon, and he ran his forefinger along the lines of grain as if they were trails of meaning in a street map. He put a new surveillance report form onto his clipboard and wrote: 2:48 a.m. Domino and other unidentified Caucasian female entered garage with middle-aged Afro-American male, exited 3:04 a.m. He wrote down the license plate number of the car across the street, added some more garbage, and that form was a quarter finished… A woman with wet dark bangs and sunglasses kept breaking off pieces of her scone and easing them into her newspaper-reading boyfriend’s mouth, after which she licked her fingers. — Well, thought Tyler, it’s obvious who loves whom.

Any new developments? said Brady, sliding into the stool beside him.

Morning, boss.

Boss again, is it? I can take a hint. Sure, I’ll pay you. Why do you need it now? You sexually compromised?

Tyler thought but did not say: Mister, you are a toad. — But then he thought happily: And a rich one, too.

Well, did you find the Queen? said Brady.

Not yet.

But you did find something?

She’s smarter than I figured. I sent her some love letters and they stayed in that parking garage. They’re still there and it’s been two weeks. She must have read them there, or somebody read them for her. I’m sure she knows about us now, but we still don’t know where she is.

Well, it’s great she knows me, but I’m not trying to get elected. I’m sick of flushing money down the toilet. I want it to stop today. I want you to take care of it today.

Why do you want to find the Queen anyway, boss? What is it you want to say to her?

Classified, said Brady. Then he winked and said: I want her to be the star attraction of a little franchise operation I’m putting together in Vegas. I’m going to teach her to sing a little jingle that goes like this: Klexter, klokan, kladd, kludd, kligrapp… You know what that means?

So Vegas is still a boomtown? said Tyler. I figured it must have hit recession by now. Shows how much I know.

The builders are building as fast as they can. Retirees are moving into that town at a record rate. We’re going to have the biggest planned community in the world.

I thought you were from Missouri.

That’s beside the point. Las Vegas has been booming for forty years. Las Vegas is not overbuilt. Eighty-five percent of the people in the United States have not visited Las Vegas.

Including the Queen, I guess.

You spend a lot of time in the Tenderloin, don’t you?

Some.

Can’t you just imagine the way it used to be when it was the Barbary Coast? said Brady with a dreamy grin. All the casino dealers in black and white, and the cocktail ladies in pure white with gold-lined sleeves, showing titty, you know, with those old one-strap skirts so short they hardly cover their asses, yeah. I want to bring all that back. Have a single gold band just above the hem of the skirt, a silver belt, and make ’em all wear a long pigtail; if you tip ’em good maybe they can slap your face with it… Know what I’m saying?

I get it, said Tyler, not very interested.

And Feminine Circus will be like that, only new and different.

How can skin shows be different?

Oh, I’ll tell you something, Brady said. I’ve had a cunt that tastes like steak tartare. That’s easy. What I’m looking for is a cunt that tastes like roasted chicken. Now, that’d be different, wouldn’t it?

I don’t think in those terms.

Now, like I said, I want all this runaround to stop today. You hear what I had to do to that phony you sent me?

Yeah, I heard she wound up with some health problems.

Somehow, said Brady with a grin, I just had the impression that she was lying to me.

You remind me of my brother, Tyler said, narrowing his eyes as he gazed into Brady’s florid face. I’d like to introduce you sometime.

John Tyler? laughed his boss, lighting up a fat cigar. The one with the Chink wife? He’s already working for me. I’m paying him more than I’m paying you.

| 42 |

What had happened on that day when Tyler had led from that parking garage a slender and submissive little black woman who silently sat down in the passenger seat of Brady’s rental car as Tyler, following previous instructions, closed the door from the outside and walked off to his bus stop? Investigate the mouth of truth, and await his splendid roar which will answer every question. Tyler had ostensibly found truth’s mouth; Brady had hired him for that. Now Brady would hear that jangled, metallic roaring for himself, or else. He stuck an unlit cigar in his mouth. The prostitute cleared her throat. (Behind her, a woman with a white shopping bag leaned against the scuffed yellow-lit wall.) Brady turned the key in the ignition, listened to the radio for a moment, backed out of the parking space, and began heading west.

So you’re the Queen, huh? he said, gazing straight over the steering wheel.

Uh huh. What do you want with me?

Oh, I guess I wanted to pay you for your time.

I don’t come cheap, said the Queen.

I don’t care if you come at all, said Brady. Coming is the man’s job.

Are you a misogynist?

Some whore asked Mr. Tyler that just the other day. Domino, her name was. I’m trying to talk like him. Hey, Your Highness, I’ve been studying up on royalty. Did you know that the kings of France in the Middle Ages were born with a scarlet fleur-de-lys on the right shoulder? My slapper told me that.

A floor de what?

You know, a triple lily flower. I’m educated. The insiginia of France. I just wondered if you had any kind of mark on your body that proved you were the Queen.

Mister, are you calling me a liar?

Would I call a lady that? Klexter, klokan, kladd, kludd, kligrapp… Come on, Your Highness. That’s the kind of question I ask.

I feel like you’re mocking me.

I’m sorry, said Brady. I’ll try to be nicer to you.

And he was. Brady’s huge shoulders rose in a friendly fashion in the slate-colored business suit, and the faint smell of cologne thrilled her mercenary desires. He spent fifty dollars on her in an Italian restaurant (she ordered some little baguette-like thing shaped like a turd) and got her all mellow and fuddled with wine while he agreed with everything she said, saying: yes, ma’am, or I think you’re right, ma’am. He said to her: You are the Queen of the nicest little city around.

I don’t get much time to appreciate it right now, said the Queen. I’m awfully busy. Where are you from?

Wherever you’re from.

Uh huh, said the Queen.

And what about Henry Tyler?

Who?

I told you. That guy that brought you to me. Has he gotten emotionally compromised with any of your girls?

I never asked him, said the Queen.

Now who’s Sapphire?

A girl.

Yeah. Thanks a lot. I already figured she was split between her legs. What does she do for you?

That’s between us, Mr. Brady.

Does she exist?

She exists.

How many girls you got?

Enough.

I’m a businessman, you know. I just might be making you the big offer. But you’re going to have to put out.

Oh, cripes, said the Queen.

Do you believe I’ve got money?

Yes.

Do you believe I know that you believe it?

Cut the crap.

Do you believe I believe that you’re the Queen?

Not yet.

Do you believe I’m dangerous?

The Queen shot him a bitter glare.

Well?

I believe you’re not a nice man. I believe you’re volatile. I don’t really want to listen to your proposition.

Oh, so I pushed you over the edge, laughed Brady, pleased with himself. Okay, let me be nice to you again.

And he was. It didn’t take long — a little more money, and he had the bitch eating out of his hand! Everybody’s the same, he thought. Feed ’em or punch ’em. Then you’ll get whatever you need. But this one stinks. She’s not smart enough to be Queen. This is a setup. This is a flunkey switch. I should send her back happy, but you know what, God? You know fucking what? I won’t.

You get out much, ma’am? he said.

You know, said the tipsy woman, I used to go to Land’s End a lot. Just to kinda watch the fog. (I like this wine. This wine has a lot of class.) It was, well, I don’t know exactly — so lovely like the inside of those seashells you can find sometimes all silvery and shimmery — mother-of-pearl, that’s the word I was trying to remember. My memory’s not so good now. But all those trees, they just stood there, so tall and dark and kind of solid against that fog. If it started to rain, they’d protect me. But if it kept on raining, then after a while they let that rain through. I guess that’s how it is, huh? Nothing can protect you forever.

Well, by all means let’s go out to Land’s End, said Brady.

He ushered her back into his rental car and began to drive slowly down Geary Street, weaving. A cop waved them down.

Don’t I know you? the cop said to the Queen.

No, officer, you don’t know me.

It sounds like the Queen, Brady mumbled. It sounds like her. That’s the kicker. That’s just what the Queen would say.

Let’s see your license, the cop said to Brady.

Brady worked his wallet out from up against his fat buttock and handed it to the cop, money and all. — Help yourself, he said.

The cop fiddled with the wallet until he found the license. — Out of state, huh? And who’s the lady?

My Queen.

I oughta send you to jail for twenty days for driving under the influence, said the cop. I can smell it on your breath.

Sure it’s on my breath, said Brady. Doesn’t mean I’m drunk, though.

The cop said: I should have you take a sobriety test. I should have you walk the white line.

Go ahead, said Brady. I still got three legs.

The cop laughed. — Get out of here, he said. Don’t let me catch you driving like that again. Have a nice stay in San Francisco.

Thank you, officer, said Brady. Rolling up the window, he uttered a magnificent Bronx cheer.

The woman was very quiet beside him on that almost fogless afternoon, all the buildings in focus beneath the smoky yellow sky. There was an Asian wedding by the Exploratorium; the bride appeared chilly in her fluttering gown.

They came to Land’s End and parked. Trees were groping and reaching, shaking like a handful of darkdyed peacock plumes tied together and whirled in a crazy boy’s hand. Brady got out and led the unresisting woman into the bushes. They gazed down at the sea for a while. Then he put his arm around her and whispered into her ear: Hey, baby, I don’t believe you’re the Queen.

The woman stiffened. — Why, you motherfucker! That’s the second time you’ve insulted me. You called me a liar, didn’t you? You think I’m lying?

Brady kissed her neck. — Yes, I do.

Smiling tenderly, he pulled out his Para-Ordnance P-12, cocked the hammer, and put the barrel to the spot on her throat that he had kissed. — You know, it has a grip safety, he said. Klexter, klokan, kladd, kludd, kligrapp… That’s Invisible Empire talk. That’s Klan talk, baby. If I don’t actually squeeze the grip, it won’t shoot, even when I pull the trigger. See?

Don’t, the woman whispered.

Now I know you’re not the Queen. The Queen would never beg before me like that.

He ground the barrel hard against her larynx and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. Withdrawing the gun from the sagging woman, he pulled the slide back and thumbed the magazine release. — You see, it’s empty. Do you know why, nigger? ’Cause carrying a concealed weapon is a felony. Hah!

From his pocket he took out another clip, this one loaded with hollowpoints. He clicked it firmly in with the heel of his hand, and forefingered the slide release so that the slide suddenly lunged forward with a steely slamming noise.

Now let’s try that grip safety, he said.

He put the gun to the woman’s head again. The hammer had remained cocked. With his hand not touching the back of the grip, he began very slowly to squeeze the trigger.

What do you want me to prove? she wailed. How am I supposed to prove that? You either believe me or you don’t. Oh, I was such a fool. I’d started to trust you. I thought you were a nice guy.

And when you tell me you’re the Queen, are you just saying you’re the Queen or are you lying to me?

What kind of a choice is that? I told you I’m the Queen because I’m the Queen.

Okay, here come two joggers. I’m going to put my arm around you and you’re going to put your head on my shoulder like this so that nobody can see the gun. If you scream, I’ll kill you. Do you believe me?

Please… please… What do you want me to do? I can give really good head.

Calls herself the Queen, said Brady in disgust, shoving her down in the mud and kicking her. The joggers were very close now. They were a young couple, spoiled and athletic from the look of them, with expensive running shoes and tinted sunglasses. The woman looked shocked and started to say something, so Brady flashed the gun, put on his most menacing expression and snarled: Keep moving, cunt!

Come on, Tracy, said the husband, let’s get out of here.

Okay, said Brady to the sobbing prostitute underfoot. He turned her over with a kick and stepped on her breast, pointing the gun down at her. — This is your only chance, nigger, he said. Where’s the Queen?

In — in the garage…

Which garage?

The one… the same one—

Where we found you?

Yes—

And she’s waiting for you to report in?

Yes… I didn’t… If you let me go I won’t tell…

All right then. Stand up, nigger. Goddamned fucking puke-faced muddy bitch Queen of the Whores, Queen of Scum… Now I’m going to hit you in the stomach. If you scream you’re dead. I’m going to put you in the hospital, bitch. I’m going to break a couple ribs. You know why? Because your Queen tried to Jew me down, and you lied to me.

| 43 |

Having cooled down, body and soul, Brady achieved the conclusion that Tyler had not betrayed him. Shoddy work, to be sure, but not dishonest — thus the boss’s conclusion; for Tyler had never testified under oath that this woman (toward whose blackness Brady admitted to have been predisposed) was definitely the Queen. Shit happens, thought original Brady. He eased himself into the rental car, opened the glove compartment, and cross-checked some receipts that Tyler had given him, pounding the calculator with his stubby fingers until he was soothed. All Tyler’s numbers were correct, he was happy to say. He knew the sonofabitch was robbing him but that was okay as long as he didn’t get too sloppy or greedy about it; such was the prime rule. Here was a manila envelope full of surveillance forms, too. Brady pulled one sheet out of the middle of the pile, skimmed it, grunted, and then took the whole stack and threw them into a garbage can. That put him in fine spirits. He eased his rental car out of there and turned back east onto Geary Street, passing the Chinese seafood restaurant with painted dragons on the walls and then Joe’s ice cream parlor, where he had never been, flashed square and white in his sideview mirror; here came the Korean barbeque joints and the Korean restaurants. Geary Street was wide, characterless, and full of traffic. At Stanyan Street the big road opened up further, letting in windy brightness. He wormed through the squat short tunnel with daylight in narrow truncated pyramids upon its tiles, rolled down the slope to Divisadero, did not read the graffiti on the bricks of the middle school, dipped under the next bridge and yawned at the astrological signs of Japantown — crab, mandala, elephant — and then rolled up the last hill whose ugly vertebral columns of apartments along the Gough Street ridge offered strategic Tenderloin views; down the curve of Starr King to Van Ness he went, and suddenly he was in the narrow canyon of old badlands which constituted the Tenderloin. Here glowed the rain forest mural on the side wall of the Mitchell Brothers theater where world-famed Will McMaster had once pissed in one corner of the Ultra Room; here stood the Iroquois Hotel where Tyler had once stayed for a week between jobs; here grew the bricks, fire escapes and Vietnamese restaurants of the kingdom. Tyler would have shot a glance down Leavenworth, which was sunny and empty, the grating retracted on liquor stores; as for Brady, he was too busy. As usual, the Queen’s parking garage offered vacancies. Up the slanting alimentary tract to the third floor he drove, mad as hell. There was the grating that Tyler had shown him, double-locked, with darkness behind it. — He shook it like an orangutan in a cage and yelled: Hey you, bitch!

The Queen did not answer.

He kicked the grating one more time, then laughed.

Tyler says we’re already burned, he shouted. Tyler says you know us. Well, I don’t give a shit! You get the hint?

He opened the trunk, dumped the half-dead woman out. Her flesh slapped liquidly against the concrete. She lay still.

In the basement the ceiling was low enough to touch, everything humming and echoing, piss and oil and gasoline on the concrete whose painted arrows lay like frozen missiles at the mouths of downramps in this gilded gloom. He heard voices everywhere, unintelligibly pulsing. At last he realized that they were coming through the pipes. Khrushchev-inspired, he took one of his shoes off and banged it against the nearest conduit: Going, goiiinnnnng! The voices stopped.

Again he laughed.

A mesh gate gave onto the utility room, which was crusted with white flakes, as of battery acid residue. Pipes like metallic mushrooms clung in rows to the walls. Here a skinny old wino sat looking at him with intelligent eyes and finally said: Are you feeling hard and mean?

I beg your pardon? said Brady.

I said, are you feeling hard and mean?

I’m looking for the Queen, said Brady on impulse.

The man’s face opened and shone. — Her name’s Gloria, he said. She is the shining sea of Gloria Gloria Gloria.

What’s your name, sir? said Brady, amused.

Jimmy.

I thought her name was Vanna, said a wide-eyed moonfaced young fellow with glasses who kept wiping at his forehead. God, my balls hurt.

Get a job, son, said Brady. What are you two doing in there?

Getting drunk on his money, said old Jimmy with a laugh. He’s doin’ some article on me for the newspaper…

Well, I’ll leave you to it. Get emotionally compromised if you want. I don’t have time for your foolishness.

If a fool and his money are soon parted, then why am I a millionaire? cackled the old wino.

Brady shrugged and, ticket in hand, strode back to the bright wide realm of that parking garage where adjoining x’es and incandescent tubes like giant paperclips bounced cleanliness off polished tiles, the floor slippery as if from some secretion bubbling up from underneath. A spectacled man bowed inside his glass booth. An LED display brightened his window.

As pretty as Christmas! Brady shouted, knocking on the glass.

Gazing round, he saw that this was even truer than he had supposed, for murals of nature lived upon the walls. Did the Mitchell Brothers own this place, too, or was nature’s sentimentalization a fad in the Tenderloin? The cashier still had not responded to his signal.

He knocked again on the glass, harder, and the man frowned, pulled off a pair of earphones, and waited.

Where’s the Queen? shouted Brady into the glass.

Maybe the guy couldn’t speak English. Shifting his polymath gears, Brady bellowed:

Donday esta el Raino?

| 44 |

Irene had an accident with John’s car and asked Tyler to take the blame, because she was scared. It was not a bad accident, just a paint-scraper, a mirror-breaker. Tyler called John at work, told him that Irene had let him borrow the car while his was in the shop, and that he had scraped a power pole. He promised to pay the repair cost. John laughed tolerantly and the whole thing was no problem. That having been resolved, Tyler phoned Irene to give her a report.

Thank you, she said. I love you.

Love you, too, he said. What did you do the rest of the day?

I stayed in bed. I was depressed at having to ask you.

| 45 |

On Monday John had to go to Cleveland for a week for a business trip. Irene had said that she would come over on Wednesday to do their laundry because the washing machine in Tyler’s apartment was free, but Tuesday night she said that she wasn’t coming. Tyler had a terrible headache right then; he really wasn’t feeling well. So he didn’t try to argue with her. He just said: Well, honey, I’m sorry you’re not coming. I’ll see you next time.

But on Wednesday afternoon he discovered that he had been missing her all day, so he called her up. He was going to ask how she was, but by the time her telephone began to ring he’d decided that that was too forward, so when she answered on the third ring he just said: Hello, Irene. I was going to be driving through your neighborhood and I wondered if you needed me to bring anything.

Nothing that I can think of, said Irene so sweetly. But thank you for asking. How have you been?

OK, he said, already bored with the conversation. What are you doing right now?

Nothing. Watching TV.

He wanted to say: Well, why don’t you come over, then, sweetheart?

What’s the program about?

I guess it’s a thriller. I don’t know what it is. Somebody is killing somebody.

Oh, he said. That sounds good. Well, I’ll let you get back to it.

| 46 |

What was wrong with him? He felt so peculiar and perplexed. As soon as he hung up he wanted to call Irene back again and he knew that he couldn’t. He actually lifted the receiver and depressed the numbered white studs, desperate to tell her: I just wanted to hear your voice. — But he left the last digit unpushed, and after a moment sighed and put the phone back to bed. — You know, I had this dream, he wanted to say to her. You and I were walking in a cornfield, and you had on this beautiful long white dress and you were holding my hand and smiling at me. And then you… — He had not had any dream of the kind. He could scarcely understand his own emotions, his almost invincible desire to invent this absurd lie. Irene would have been silent, he supposed, and then he would have gone on: You… I made you happy… — He waited a week, and then invited her out for lunch. She said she was depressed and didn’t have the energy to leave the house; would tomorrow be all right? He was busy tomorrow, but the next day she picked him up at home, since she was out in her car anyway doing errands, and they went to one of the Korean barbecue places on Geary Street. He asked her if she wanted a beer, and she hesitated and agreed. He ordered one apiece.

So how are you doing? he said finally.

Oh, you know how it is, she said. Her eyes were red and swollen.

Do you feel the baby yet?

I feel something. I don’t know if it’s the baby or not.

You look so sad, he said. What’s wrong, honey? Please tell me what the matter is.

You know what the matter is, said Irene. That’s all I ever talk about. I’m sorry…

There was a black cat on the window-seat, basking — a creature of great elegance and self-assurance which presently began to purr in the soft low buzz of an electric razor. Irene smiled at it and made kissing sounds, but it ignored her.

Did you have pets when you were a kid? said Tyler.

Irene nodded, her glass at her lips. The waitress had begun to unload the usual immense appetizer tray of kimchees white and red, pickled fish, dried fish, seaweed soup, miso paste. Irene set her glass down, took her chopsticks from the paper envelope, and began to grate them back and forth against each other in case there might be splinters. The cat went on purring.

And how’s work for you? asked Irene.

Slow. Still looking for someone who doesn’t want to be found. You had cats, you said?

She nodded again, listlessly. Then she took her chopstick wrapper and began twisting it, teeth sinking ruthlessly into her lower lip as she stared aimlessly about, spurious, objectless copy of some fighting-girl on speed who rushed back and forth along Valencia Street, looking for the two girls she had beaten because she lusted to beat them again. Irene, of course, was not the fighting kind.

John and I always had dogs, Tyler said. Sheep dogs, border collies, you know…

How’s Mugsy?

I don’t know. I didn’t ask Mom…

I always had bad luck with cats and I love them so much, said Irene. In Korea we had one cat, and when he was hardly more than a baby he went out one night and I guess he must have found some poison. Maybe rat poison. He came into the house real early in the morning, throwing up blood and this horrible yellow stuff, and he was in convulsions. I guess he came home because he thought we could save him. With cats and dogs, one of the most amazing things about them is the way they get to trust you. You can do anything to them, even if it hurts, because they know you love them and are trying to do the best thing for them. And that cat — I said he was our cat, but really he was my cat; he loved me the best, and I loved him — well, Henry, he kept looking into my eyes. He was rolling around on the rug and screaming and whenever he caught his breath he kept looking into my face ’cause he believed in me. He was sure I could do something. I took him to the vet before school. I was actually a little late for school. And I was nervous about that, ’cause I’d never been late before. I wasn’t a good girl in school that day. I kept crying and praying. And I just ran home. I asked my grandmother if the vet had been able to fix my cat, and she said, no, they couldn’t fix him. Because the intestines were all torn. The vet buried him.

Probably threw him in the garbage, Tyler thought to himself.

Bending over, the waitress reached beneath the table, turned on the gas jet, and then lit it. Blue flames danced evilly up. With tongs and scissors, the waitress took the kalbi and bulgoki strips out of the marinade and laid them into the grill, where they began to sizzle loudly. With a mechanical smile, Irene accepted the tongs from her and began to turn the meat. Then the waitress thrust the scissors into the marinade bowl and carried it away.

So they got me another cat, Irene said. Another boy cat. I was about fifteen then. I was late starting my period, but one day it came. And the cat knew right off. He started to lick me.

Were your parents happy that you’d become a woman?

I didn’t tell them. In my family we don’t talk about those things.

I know one Japanese girl whose mother cooked red beans that night to celebrate, said Tyler. And when her father wanted to know what the fuss was all about, her mother just said that a very good thing had happened.

I guess my mother must have known, because my underpants were bloody, Irene said, picking up strips of well-done meat with the tongs and putting them on his plate. — My cat sure knew. In our house the cats weren’t supposed to sleep inside. But every night at around midnight this cat would scratch at my window, and I’d get up and let him in. And he’d come into my bed and lick my nightgown all night, right between my breasts. His tongue was kind of rough, and sometimes it almost hurt, but it also felt really good. He licked so much that my nightgown turned black there. Every night he’d come and do that, and sleep with me. It was kind of my secret, I guess. It made me feel special. And in the morning when I went to school, that cat would follow me along the top of the wall as far as he could, and then in the afternoon when I came home he’d be waiting for me. Well, we were getting ready to move to America then. My grandmother was already in Los Angeles, and then my big aunt and uncle, and then little aunt and uncle, and then it was just us and we’d already sold our house. I asked my mother what was going to happen to my cat, and she didn’t answer. And one night that cat didn’t come scratching at my window. I kind of wondered and worried about that, ’cause he’d never failed to come to me before. And in the morning I didn’t see him. My mother said that he knew we were going to leave him, so he was sad and ran away. Cats just know.

Your mother probably gave him away and didn’t have the guts to tell you, Tyler thought.

You want another beer, Irene? he said. Here’s to fetal alcohol syndrome!

Oh, Henry, I’m feeling — I don’t know how I’m feeling. Can we please please finish? I want to go home and lie down…

Irene…

I don’t know. I’ve almost had it with everything.

And John?

He’s good at digging into everything. I used to tell my parents and they’d say trust your busband, but they are not saying trust your husband anymore. He’s taken away all my credit cards. He takes all my paycheck. He’s never satisfied. I’m sorry; he’s your brother; maybe you—

You know better than that, Irene.

Can we please please go now? I want to lie down. I want to go to bed.

| 47 |

Irene was supposed to meet him on Union Street. He stood waiting in front of the shop with the phony picket fence below the window. Inside lay a long narrow glass table whose legs were naked bronze women bending backward and supporting the top with their outstretched arms. Behind the table he perceived stained glass lamps (he didn’t know whether they were real Tiffanys or not,) and green drinking glasses like magnifying lenses. — He looked at his watch. — Another shop window boasting of gold-ivied dinner plates as round and white as the breasts of a girl with whom he’d once gone skinnydipping in high school, a shy girl who probably never undressed except at night, for her skin had been as pale and perfect as a hardwood floor kept under a ratty old carpet. In the next window he saw a cat made of milk-porcelain, watching herself in the mirror, a seven-drawer lingerie chest in the Queen Anne style on sale for $279.00—how many pairs of underpants did a woman need, to take up seven drawers? Next was the window of the optometrist’s shop, whose many double lenses, yes, those, too, reminded him of breasts.

Irene had not arrived. He went to the espresso bar and ordered a double shot. The coffee soon began to kick in, rewarding him with a pleasantly twitchy feeling. He went out and looked for her black Volkswagen Rabbit but didn’t see it. The orange and white # 45 bus with its long feelers drank from wires and disappeared, and that moment he knew that she was not going to show up. A watch-gaze: Forty minutes late. Irene was never late.

He began to walk east, toward the Tenderloin, and suddenly right in front of the next coffeehouse or maybe the next he met a grizzled grimy panhandler whose hands were streaked with blackish-grey, as if human flesh, like the silver it so often sells for, could tarnish; and the panhandler said: Can you give me anything?

Why, sure I can, said Tyler, grateful that for the next twenty to thirty seconds that heavy sadness in his chest and the nervousness in the cesspool of his churning stomach and the anger against Irene that dwelled behind his eyes might not be felt. He turned out his pocket, finding three dimes, which he gave the man, for the first time looking into his face. But the panhandler was gazing far beyond him. Tyler would never see what he saw.

Past Buchanan the shops were not so fancy, the jewelry plated rather than solid, the shop windows weary with glass eggs or glass snail shells or cast ballerinas whose tits he could barely see. Skinny, hairy-legged joggers headed back toward their medium-rent apartments, clutching freshly purchased cappuccinos and raspberry-papaya smoothies, emanations of royalty.

He gazed down the gentle slope between white houses that led to the Marina district where John and Irene lived.

When he got to the next pay phone he reached into his pocket and then remembered that he’d given all his change to that panhandler. He went into the corner deli and bought a candy bar with a dollar bill. They gave him two quarters back. He dialled.

Yes? said his brother before the second ring.

Hello, John, he said as mildly as he could.

What did you have to do with this? said the cruelly level voice.

His heart sank. — What do you mean?

Don’t lie to me ever again, said John in the weariest voice that he had ever heard. I just don’t have any more time for your lies.

Tyler thought for a moment. Then he hung up the phone, changed another dollar, and called his mother, who also answered before the second ring.

How’s everything, Mom?

His mother began to cry. — Oh, Henry, she wept. John just called. Oh, poor, poor Irene.