The Royal Family

| 442 |

It’s going to be a decent open casket funeral with flowers, John said. And a top-quality casket, too. That’s the least we can do for Mom.

Tyler looked at him.

And you’re going to wear a real suit for once, I hope, John went on. Assuming you want to attend. Assuming you’re willing to do that much for Mom.

And will there be a brass band, with all the brass painted black? Tyler said. I’m sure Mom’s going to hear every note.

Don’t you irritate me one more time, you asshole, John told him. I’m trying to deal with you now for Mom’s sake. It’s not because I like you. You’re dead to me, Hank. Irene and Mom will always be alive in my heart, but you’re nothing but a goddamned corpse.

What can I say to that? replied Tyler, swallowing. You’re so convinced you’ve been wronged—

I’m not even talking about that. I’m not even thinking about that (a self-evident contradiction, thought Tyler). I’m just talking about the fact that you make me sick. Now, I’m making all the arrangements. Are you going to participate or not?

Participating means what, if you made all the arrangements? — Oh, I get it. It means paying.

I’m doing you a favor, Hank, believe it or not. You know you’d screw the arrangements up. Your idea of a funeral would be a travesty. You’d cut corners. You know that with me on top of it, it’s going to be done right.

Tyler was stunned to hear in his brother’s voice a tenor almost of pleading. Pity gushed through his blood vessels and dissolved the hard stone of rage in his chest.

(You feel totally passive in a way, Dan Smoth had once told him. Totally open.

(But Smooth had been talking about popping amyl nitrate.)

I understand, he said.

Do you mean that, Hank?

I know you’ll do the right thing for Mom.

Okay. At least you’ll do that much.

Yeah.

At least there’s a corner of you that’s not completely—

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tell me one thing, though. Did you ever love Mom? Did you care about her?

Look, said Tyler in a shaking voice, I’ll try to cooperate with you if you can just keep from getting abrasive. Can we make a deal, John? Can we lower the crap level for the three days?

So I’m abusive, John said. I know that’s exactly the catchword. I could say that about Dad and go cry my heart out at some abandoned children’s group. You could say that about Dad, too, but you’d rather say it about me. But who slammed whose fingers in the car door? And, more importantly, who screwed who over?

All right, John, I give up. Go have your own goddamned funeral.

Naturally. The asshole walks out on his responsibilities once again.

All right, Tyler sighed, how much will it cost?

This was the kind of question that his brother could process well. The reply came quickly: five thousand for the casket, two thousand for a classy embalming job (he’d found a really good place, the best in Sacramento), six thousand for the plot, seven hundred fifty or thereabouts for the flowers, two thousand for the service. John had it all written down, in two columns. He’d employed the octagonal silver pen which Celia had given him.

I get it. So that’s thirteen grand plus eight plus two, so twenty-three grand, right?

Very good, said John. You can add. I already knew you and my wife could multiply. Get it?

All right, so my half will be around twelve, I figure…

What’s the matter? Too rich for your blood, Hank? You going to come crying to me for another loan?

And I guess I’ll finally get to chat with Celia again, he said, determined to be polite to the very end. That was his only plan now. John doubtless had other plans.

Aha, returned his brother with accustomed mirthlessness. You want to chat with Celia. Well, why should I be surprised? Just don’t expect me to leave you alone with her.

Would you please cut it out?

Fine. I apologize. You’re innocent. So how’s the spying business?

Slow, said Tyler, drinking thick bitter coffee which slowly dissolved the ache in the back of his head, like an archival wash patiently clearing a yellow fixer stain from a photograph.

When was the last time you actually talked to Mom?

About a week before she…

I was there, Hank. She asked for you.

I was—

Yeah, where were you? Out fucking around?

I—

In the Tenderloin?

Capp Street.

For Mom’s sake, I tried to reach you all day. She kept asking for you, so I kept calling and calling.

I—

I kept calling, but your answering machine was off. Technical difficulties, I guess, laughed John. And Mom kept asking me where you were. And she loved you so much, but you were busy cavorting with whores, you goddamned asshole.

Yeah, something like that.

And the phone rang and rang, but you weren’t fucking there! You were out spreading AIDS!

I don’t have AIDS, John.

Whatever. Don’t you want to know what Mom said about you?

I guess I don’t.

Then you never will. I swear before God right now, Hank, that I will never, ever tell you what Mom said.

Get a grip, John, please.

Listen to that! Bastard tells me to get a grip! And meanwhile he—

How’s Domino, John?

His brother’s face altered, and Tyler could not resist a sense of triumph.

| 443 |

So how much pain did she feel? he asked.

Oh, not much. She was having her chest pains, and then about five minutes later she—

John began sobbing.

Tyler sat across the table gazing at him, wanting to put an arm around his shoulder, knowing that if he did then John would punch him. He inquired of himself what the Queen would do, and knew the answer: Comfort John. Slowly his head drooped down toward the floor.

| 444 |

Dan Smooth put him in touch with an undertaker named Mort Robinson who was willing to talk.

My brother wants an open casket funeral for our mother, he said. Is that reasonable? I’d like to save some—

Oh, they’re almost always open caskets. Just yesterday I did one closed casket. The family didn’t want to see her, because she was old. It was the first in a long time.

But just what is the point? I figure an hour after the funeral she’ll be in the ground anyway, so—

The point is art, Henry. A good embalming job is a pearl without price. When I first started thirty-two years ago, if somebody fell out of an airplane, you had to make ’em look pretty or they thought you were a lousy funeral director. When I started, they wouldn’t let you use gloves for the autopsy. They used to lock up the gloves to save money. Everything had to be done the hard way. And now they try to take shortcuts such as closed casket funerals where they don’t have to do anything except roll the corpse into the box. In my way of thinking, that’s not art. But lemme tell you something. It’s all a crock of shit. When my time comes, run me through the garbage disposal, man. Henry, you know how many times I’ve had a stiff sit up and thank me for a job well done? I’ll bet you can count the times.

I figure it’s going to be around twenty-five grand.

So you’re going lavish. Your brother has a reputation for that. I remember his high school graduation. Well, Henry, take it from one who knows: It’s all vanity. Let your brother throw his money down the hole. This industry is nothing but a guilt trip. Don’t swallow it. Don’t think you’re doing your mother any favors. Who are you using?

Lewis.

Oh, him. Little glitzy, but he does a good job. Listen, Henry, I can call him up and get him to switch that mahogany job for a plain pine box. He’s using mahogany, isn’t he?

Yeah, I—

See, I knew he was the type! Switch it, man. Nobody’ll ever know. It can be done after the viewing. The burial will look just the same. Save you at least three grand right there. And…

Let me think about it.

So you’re going to stick with the program. Hey, I respect that. Who am I to come between a guy and his mother?

| 445 |

For some time now Tyler’s debts had been rising, but this sudden new expense, for which he really should have prepared and for which he had laid away nothing whatsoever, in part on account of his unwillingness to acknowledge to himself the seriousness of his mother’s condition, in part simply because his obsession with the Queen requires him to neglect everything else, looked fair to trip him up. Last year he’d resigned from the Department of Motor Vehicles database in order to regain possession of his twenty thousand dollar bond, but somehow that money didn’t go as far as he’d expected. Now he couldn’t search the DMV records directly anymore, unless he wanted to take a chance and employ somebody else’s password. If they ever busted him when he did that, he’d be sunk. The previous August, in between desperate stabs at loving the false Irene, he’d taken a hot grim Sacramento freeway drive to the credit counselor’s office, weaving between long white trucks filled with tomatoes. As he watched, a tomato blew off and smashed on the asphalt, and then his right front wheel went over it — a bad omen. He felt nauseous. Broken glass sparkled loathsomely in the yellow grass. The American River was low and brown. (Decades ago, he and John had gone to the riverbank to see a meteor shower, but there was too much ambient light, so in disappointment Tyler had focused his binoculars upon the canted half-moon and actually saw a crater, as well as the tan continent of serenity which clung to that clean white sea of light which bled white beauty into the darkness, like a menstruating goddess.) Green lawns and long low offices with their grass lawns assaulted him. He turned in, and the shadow of a bird passed over the black parking lot.

It was lunchtime. The office, immense, air conditioned, bright and carpeted, lay almost empty. He had an appointment. The receptionist led him to his assigned place in front of the L-shaped desk with the two computers.

His credit counselor wore an eggshaped stone in her wedding ring. She was very well kept. She grimaced. She said: I’m not an attorney. I recommend you consult an attorney.

Dandy, said Tyler. Why didn’t I think of that?

And this is just a copy, the well kept woman said. You just sign right here. And here. And also here on page three.

| 446 |

Celia, suddenly anxious that she might not yet possess the perfectly appropriate dress to wear at Mrs. Tyler’s funeral, and encouraged in this nervousness by John, who believed it impossible for anybody to take too many pains at the impending ceremony, drove with the two brothers down to I Street in order after obtaining the appropriate parking validation to join the big-buttocked matrons at Macy’s stalking down bargains, lonely old ladies inspecting tag after tag, letting the fabric drift through their fingers; hearty old shopping women with two Macy’s bags already in each hand, still wandering and gathering, while from ceiling speakers so-called “easy listening” music fell like a mist of insecticide, not quite drowning out the real music of cash registers. A crisp indigo skirt hung in the PETITES section like a pinioned butterfly; that would have looked very pretty on Irene (who’d been fascinated by shoes and who knew every relative’s waist size). An Asian mother wheeled her little boy in a stroller, looking for something secret and specific. A saleswoman in high heels clattered rapidly back to PETITES, returning an escaped dress to prison. Women mulled through the sales racks in meditative pairs, slowly nodding and considering. Sometimes they looked up, gazing vaguely toward a nonexistent horizon. This was the kind of place in which, like an elf-queen’s cave, one spent a moment and lost a life. By some cheerfully hypocritical caprice, the addictions that it sold were all legal; thus they lacked the thrill of real need and predaciousness. Macy’s smelled better than the Tenderloin, and people didn’t hurt each other in its chrome-trunked forests of sweaters and checked pants-skirts; Tyler used to rebel against it all, as if he were some Communist, but now he was contented enough to sit in one of the overstuffed armchairs because he wasn’t struggling anymore; he had no hope of working free. This place had belonged to Irene’s world, so how could he have anything against it? Where could he go anyhow?

| 447 |

Two necktied men swung open the double glass doors as John, Celia and Tyler entered the funeral parlor. — Aw, horseshit, Tyler muttered.

They kept the lights burning all day in there, to mimic a vigil atmosphere.

John, is my tie on straight? Tyler whispered. I haven’t worn one in so long, I—

Let me adjust it for you, said Celia with a friendly smile. He felt her cool fingers on his neck.

It’s all right now, she said.

Thanks, Tyler said. Which room is it? I—

Hank, you were just in this room yesterday, John said. Are you going to screw up now and wander into the wrong room?

Henry, do you want me to run and get you a drink of water? asked Celia. Are you okay?

No, I—

Hank’s fine, laughed John. It’s just an act he puts on to get the girls. Here’s Mom.

Mom never wore lipstick, said Tyler.

Yeah, well, it’s not so bad on her. What do you think, Ceel?

She looks very… well, I don’t know. I feel a little uncomfortable. I—

Hank, where did you get that ratty necktie? That looks like one of my high school castoffs.

I think it is.

Did I ever tell you about Gaspard’s? That’s the place for ties. If I’d known you were going to wear that piece of shit necktie, I would have — oh, hell. So that’s Mom.

Tyler stared at his mother’s corpse in silence.

I remember that dress, Celia said faintly.

Of course you do, John said. That was her favorite dress.

She looks so thin, Tyler said.

That’s because you haven’t seen her in a long time, John instantly replied in a needling voice.

Henry, why don’t you sit down for a minute, Celia said.

I’m fine, Tyler said.

He’s actually eating up all your attention, John explained. Hank’s a bit like a vampire. Well, that’s not exactly the right comparison at a time like this, but…

But you get the gist, Tyler said to Celia, who said nothing.

| 448 |

When he saw how happy John was to get a bargain on the casket, Tyler felt him to be innocent; he felt that he himself had fallen so far below him, into hellish guilt. He thought John infinitely better than himself. John thought the same.

| 449 |

John rolled the wine around in his mouth and made a face.

It’s okay, sir?

If this were a cabernet I’d send it back.

He’s a schmuck, said John to everyone (a category comprising Celia, his brother, some of the neighbors — his mother’s best friends Mr. and Mrs. King were on vacation in Santa Barbara — and an aunt they hardly knew). I’ve had this waiter for two years and he never improves.

Celia cleared her throat. — I feel a little tickling feeling, she said.

How’s the wine, Hank? said John.

Good, thanks.

Well, that was a beautiful, beautiful funeral, Mrs. Simms said. You brothers certainly went all out.

It was the least we could do for Mom, John said.

And, Henry, it was such a pleasure to see you doing your part.

Thank you, Mrs. Simms.

You looked so nice in that suit. Did John loan it to you?

No, it was a rental, except for the tie, which I, uh—

That’s the sort of man I like, said Mr. Simms. Pays his own way. No obligations.

And the casket was beautiful, said the old aunt. Was it mahogany?

Tyler nodded with his mouth full, hastily swallowed, and prepared to explain, but by then John was already saying: Celia and I looked at every damned casket they had in stock. When we saw the mahogany, we knew it was just right for Mom.

And she was smiling almost, said Mrs. Simms. Well, well. And what’s going to happen to the house?

Hank and I were about to talk about that, said John, and Tyler’s heart sank. He cleared his throat and was swallowing a mouthful of half-chewed asparagus, trying to think of some polite way to change the subject when John slipped his arm around Mrs. Simms, leaned toward her as her husband and Celia looked complacently on, and said: Now tell me the latest with your daughter. — Then Tyler remembered: Oh, yes. Mrs. Simms has a daughter.

She still doesn’t want to work. She wants us to keep doing everything.

Well, what are you gonna do? John chuckled. Maybe she’ll change her mind.

She listens to that Satanic music in her headphones. That really bothers me.

Well, her friend does, Mr. Simms interjected. We don’t know about Fiona. Maybe Fiona listens when we’re not around. How would we ever know?

I read that Satanism is the biggest problem in America today, said Celia. Of course I never—

It really bothers me, Mrs. Simms repeated. Actually it makes me quite upset to talk about it. Could we please talk about something else?

Have you tried one of those reprogrammers? the elderly aunt put in. Apparently they can kidnap your child and readjust her to get her back in tune with reality. They do a lot of work with cults.

It really bothers me, said Mrs. Simms. I need to see the dessert list now. This place has the best desserts.

Look, Hank, said John. Why don’t you let me buy you some shares of Tostex? It’s a revenue builder.

In Tyler’s heart a feeling had begun to unfurl itself until it was as big, tall and ugly as Sacramento’s new courthouse. Sooner or later, he always got that feeling from his brother. It resembled his sensations upon entering the Wonderbar early on a rainy weekday afternoon and seeing the sadfaced unhealthy regulars already there, the jukebox silent, the place dark and ghastly, and no one wearing even the excuse of exhaustion, the day not having yet advanced sufficiently to be dismissed, merely wasted and dismissed like life itself, passing without desperation, passing, just passing, until cirrhosis, accident, stroke, cancer, suicide, homicide or heart attack.

The other thing is that you’ve got to improve your cash flow. What I want is for you to take Mom’s house.

Well, John, that’s very—

I mean, it needs a lot of work to maintain it, but at least you could live there rent-free until you grew up and made something of your life.

Oh, fuck off, Tyler said.

Mrs. Simms gasped.

Or if you sold it off, well, of course you’d get socked with capital gains, but you might as well take what you can get. I mean, how often do gift horses come begging in your life, Hank?

Oh, every once in a while, but they usually give me V.D.

Unbelievable, said Mr. Simms.

Cut the clowning around and face facts. You’re a nobody and you’re going downhill fast. You’ve got to try to reverse the slide. It’s a bit late, but you can still make something of yourself. Just write off the first forty years and forget ’em. Just—

I don’t want the house.

So you don’t want the house.

When the time comes to clean it, or sell it, or whatever, I’ll come up if you need my support. I can do unskilled work—

I don’t need your support. Mom needed your support. But that’s something I guess you never—

This is so unpleasant, said Celia.

The will’s going to get probated in this case, John informed him. So…

Tyler continued to be silent.

You know what? You know what the difference is between you and me? I may be a pain in the ass sometimes. I may be meticulous or demanding. But at least I feel something. At least I act. I know you think I pick on you. You’re much more polite than I am in conversation. But I refuse to get mad at myself. You may be more polite but you’re the exploiter in all this. You just sit there on your fat duff and—

Mr. Simms cleared his throat and said: I know that at stressful times like this, feelings within families, sometimes run high, but—

Yeah, you’re right, Tyler said wearily. Of course, even that you can’t accept. I can see your face. You think I’m just trying to avoid conflict.

Should we order more wine? asked Celia.

What are you about, Hank? That’s just what Singer always asks me. And—

And what are you about, Mr. Noble Principles? How do you answer him? I know! I just bet I know! You say, leave me out of this!

John laughed a merry, ringing laugh and struck Tyler on the back. — You’ve got me pegged, he said in high good humor.

How do I feel about this? Tyler asked himself. Why, how terrible! I must be damned! I feel nothing. It’s just as he says: I am nothing! But how can that be? Didn’t my Queen promise me I bore the Mark of Cain? Maybe it’s he who’s nothing. But compared to me he is noble. At least he never…

Look, said John. When all’s said and done, I don’t want you ending up as some homeless bum, okay?

I don’t figure it will come to that, said Tyler palely.

I don’t believe we’re wanted here, said Mrs. Simms. This is such an extraordinarily personal conversation.

You hang out with homeless people, don’t you? I mean, those crack whores, those tramps…

In John’s eyes, Tyler thought he saw an appeal: Don’t say anything about Domino in front of Celia. Please.

(Smooth white shirts and soft black trousers, shiny black shoes — that was how Domino thought of John. She gave him good marks for money, cleanliness, and deportment. But now he was trying to run away from her. It was only natural that she would refuse to let him go. And he had gone.)

Yeah, some of them are a bit transient, he said.

The homeless guys that get forced into that lifestyle, I don’t really have a beef with them, his brother announced. The ones that choose it really piss me off.

Something in the pomposity, in the sheer chutzpah of this man’s assertion, why, it reminds me of Domino, Tyler realized. He clenched his fists and said: How’s Brady?

Fine. I hear you parted on bad terms.

Well, he laid me off.

He fired you.

This is the atmosphere I always come back to, Celia told Mr. and Mrs. Simms with an ugly smile. — They say you can’t escape your background, so this must be my background.

I had no idea it would be like this, said Mrs. Simms.

John, he laid me off. We had an agreement, and—

I’d like to see a copy of that agreement.

Now who’s spying and snooping?

I want to help you, Hank, John pleaded.

Oh, you’re the better man, Tyler said. You’ll do fine. You don’t lie to people the way I do. You make good money. You wear nice neckties. You take care of yourself and others…

Do you want me to forgive you or not?

What kind of forgiveness would it be, if it were up to me? Anyway, it’s too late.

How do you know what too late is?

You want to know about too late? Fine. I figure that since this is May, Irene was already five months pregnant this time last year, Tyler said defiantly.

| 450 |

He shook John’s hand goodbye. Celia wouldn’t look at him. He’d already dropped by the funeral parlor with his cashier’s check. It pleased him to feel that he owed John and his mother nothing now. He would make his own way, or not. He almost felt sorry for John, because it would have made John so happy to help him. Let John help Celia. He did not sleep in his mother’s house. John and Celia were there. In his motel there was a Bible in the bedside drawer, and he opened it to Genesis and read: Abraham journeyed toward the territory of the Negeb, and dwelt between Kadesh and Shur; and he sojourned in Gerar. Outside, he heard a train go clinking musically by. The place-names, ancient and strange, clattered in his mind like boxcars. He thought upon his doings, and was satisfied with what he had done.

Early next morning, anxious to escape from his mother’s grave, he packed his suitcase, guzzled two styrofoam cups of coffee in the lobby, checked out and drove toward the freeway, wondering whether he ought to visit Irene’s grave in Los Angeles, but somehow that seemed of no importance. His mother was gone, Irene was gone; soon the Queen would be gone. They shall die of deadly diseases, the motel Bible had said. They shall not be lamented, nor shall they be buried; they shall be as dung on the surface of the ground. He rejected this. John had invited him to breakfast. He and Celia were almost certainly still sleeping in each other’s arms. Tyler had made up his mind that the best policy would be to make Celia hate him, and to accomplish this in an unostentatious manner which would give John no grounds for suspicion. It was not that he thought himself in danger of propositioning her; he would much have preferred to win a new friend. But any such friendship would damage the pattern of his brother’s tranquility. Best to be gone, unlamented, where he could lie upon his Queen’s breast like dung.

Now he was approaching Loaves and Fishes on Sixteenth Street where the bleak-packed stones on the dirt comprised a pavement which plateaued up above the overpass by the railroad tracks which ran dully perfect beneath the clouds, and a longhaired girl wheeled her bicycle, whose basket was full of clothes, her husband or boyfriend in camouflage stopping, reaching under the fence for his bottle of beer. Tyler felt restless. His energies could settle on no firm object now that he had given up Irene’s grave. He longed to eavesdrop on this couple, or photograph them, or merely go steal mail from anybody’s mailbox. Displeased with these yearnings, he parked, locked all four doors, and walked through the underpass tunnel, in which somebody had painted the words WHITE POWER. Where was he going? Between Kadesh and Shur. Slowly he retraced his steps. Before he knew it, he had walked all the way to the river where it had just rained and the anise was already shoulder high and there were purple blossoms everywhere. The water trembled with blue stains between cloud-reflections. Bending down, he picked up a little plastic liquor bottle frosted by stale crack smoke.

An old panhandler stood holding an illegible message like one of the lost Gnostic Scriptures or Dead Sea Scrolls. He glared at Tyler and said: Repent.

Repent what?

Everything, brother.

I already do.

Then you’re saved. Move on, so others can see the message.

Tyler shrugged. He moved on. Then, having considered, he returned to the panhandler and said: You know what? I don’t repent of absolutely everything. There’s a dead woman I love, and I also love my Queen. I don’t repent of either of those loves. So what do you say to that, hey?

So you’re damned. Move aside.

What about my mother? She just died.

Did she repent?

I wasn’t there.

Then why ask me? Move on.

You know what, brother? I’m your enemy. I bear the Mark.

I love my enemies, because Jesus told me to. Move on.

Where do you want me to move to?

Hell.

I get it, sniggered Tyler, and he wandered off, rolling his eyes.

| 451 |

It was a Sunday warmly fogged over. He wanted to be home even though he wasn’t sure whether home meant being with the Queen or something else. Actually, he dreaded seeing the Queen. The uneasy disorganization of her hive had begun to affect him, and the loving guidance he’d previously received from her now seemed unreasonable to demand; he was selfish; she must be tired; for her sake he wanted to go away but feared that such an act would likewise be a kind of betrayal. Suddenly he remembered how late one winter afternoon, it must have been in December, he had met her amidst the immense brick and concrete buildings south of Market, some of whose roofs bore smokestacks like giant cigarettes, or metallic whirling onions for ventilation; at sunset those cubes all had pulled down as snug, heavy, thick, and safe as a good girl’s underpants those steel accordions graffiti’d with signs and signatures resembling snarled wires — pulled down snug, yes, thereby sealing off those loading docks which on whores were known as cunts. Against the steel-shuttered face of a shop whose owner had gone to bed hours since, she who was his Queen was waiting in a long pale coatdress which came almost down to her sneakers, and she was almost smiling, with light weeping from her eyes. That was the last time he had seen her happy. (She always laced her breasts tight against her chest.)

Just as the Queen’s long insectlike eyelashes upcurved whenever she nodded off, so Tyler and his car ascended into dreaminess. Wasn’t this cityscape made up of trivialities? Sometimes it was foggier than today, and the Bay Bridge’s silver girders stood alone in whiteness in much the same way that at noon Capp Street was always so wide and white, the walls of its little houses like naptime sheets. Sometimes the weather was clear, and then the city offered itself so beautifully to his gaze, although of course what one saw of it from the Bay Bridge was only John’s San Francisco, perhaps Brady’s, not his; he didn’t belong among the financial district’s computer punchcard facades whose coldness and sharpness the fog had pasteled into utopia. He drove nearer. San Francisco’s streets were inlaid with little white apartment squares. The window-pitted faces of those skyscrapers smiled on him, almost close enough to be caressed. Passing the Harbor Terminal, he descended into the zone of billboards, riddled with an anxiety which almost made his teeth chatter. There were too many secrets inside him which might fall out with a loud rattling noise, all his fear and shame corroding off rusty metal parts of his insides, so that they might clank and give him away. He had to move on tiptoe all the time. Sooner or later he’d trip up.

He exited at the freeway at Bryant Street near the Hall of Justice where at that moment a black man in orange sat beside the chest-starred bailiff, both gazing in parallel at the huddle around the judge, and the smiling, bustling, waxy-faced public defender prepared to be Christ. Tyler meanwhile drove to Land’s End, accompanied by the coarse buzzing of a small plane over the Bay, a fishing boat not quite on the horizon, the faint smell of pines as couples sneaker-crunched the sandy path. The day became gloomy, the sky as white as Chocolate’s best tricking sweater. When he got out of the car, a stupid little bulldog with a pink bandana tied around its throat gazed at him.

Some Brady’s Boys with their shirts off were sitting in a circle on the beach with their arms across each other’s shoulders. A man was reading from the Book of Ezra: Of the sons of Nebo: Je-i´el, Mattithi´ah, Zabad, Zebi´na, Jaddai, Jo´el, and Benai´ah. All these had married foreign women, and they put them away with their children. Amen.

Yeah, yeah. My God is a jealous God, Tyler sighed to himself.

| 452 |

He went to Green Apple Books on Clement Street, opened the Buddhist Scriptures, and read: Things do not come and do not go, neither do they appear and disappear; therefore, one does not get things or lose things.

This stunned him. He thought it one of the most amazing things that he had ever read. Thinking about his mother’s death and the Queen’s impending disappearance, he felt comforted.

But then he read: … the mind that creates its surroundings is never free from memories, fears or laments, not only in the past but the present and the future, because they have arisen out of ignorance and greed.

Irene swooped into consciousness, and he rejected this teaching. He rejected everything. He refused to accept that there was nothing more than ignorance and greed to his love. Granted, he was selfish, delusional, desperate; so must his love be. But he honored Irene. He would go on honoring her to the last, even more now, perhaps, that he could not have her.

Things do not come and do not go. Now in his anger he denied that also. He was a Canaanite, proud of his own pain. Irene was his pain. She had come. She would never go. He would carry her decomposing corpse on his back, fleeing God’s righteousness down the ages.

| 453 |

Just after the inbound L Taraval line leaves Taraval for Ulloa, its tracks curve in, along with other ingathered routes and ways, right before the Philosophers Club offers its green neon shot glass to the foggy night, gapes West Portal, whose arched palate hovers above the tooth-pillars which separate outbound and inbound lines. The gullet of that mouth goes on and on, all the way downtown to Embarcadero, where one can transfer to the beast’s intestines, the Bay Area Rapid Transit, and continue on under the Bay itself to Berkeley, Richmond, Hayward or Walnut Creek. West Portal’s long dark grooves echo with faraway voices and useless travels.

Tyler stood beside the tall man, watching a strangely crowded streetcar enter the tunnel, heading away from the sea.

Looks like everybody had the same idea, he said.

The tall man looked at him. — You mean to get out of this fucking city?

Tyler shrugged.

See, this is California, with all the beautiful pictures, and all the beautiful women, and all the rotten attitudes.

You’ve got that right, Justin.

Better believe I do.

Now hop in my faggoty car and I’ll drive you to my million dollar white man place.

Soon the tall man was drinking beers with him in the kitchen and calling him brother. Tyler said: Thanks, Justin. My mother just died.

The phone rang twice, stilled itself, then rang again. The tall man answered. He said to Tyler: She’ll see you now.

| 454 |

Dreams sought him out like hands touching Sapphire’s hands which she flutteringly pushed away. The Queen woke him up in the middle of the night, whispering: Do you love me? Are you disappointed in me? and he hugged her and they went back to sleep.

He heard the tall man stealing pills and vials from his medicine cabinet. He lay with his Queen, his dear little Queen who was sleeping now with her neck bent back and her eyes rolled whitely up in her head and her hair fluffing darkly down and back.

| 455 |

He dreamed that she had vanished and that he had searched for her everywhere. His brother was lecturing him, shouting: You’re a private detective who doesn’t want to know the truth. You know where she is.

No, said Tyler, feeling his face going pale.

Why don’t you go to Feminine Circus, you asshole? They probably have her stuffed and plasticized…

No, no, no! he screamed. And the Mark on his forehead glowed as bright as the yellow sign for the Cinnabar with the inverted white blue-bordered trapezoid of Jonell’s beyond and then Bamboo Pizza’s white crest, and finally the yellow zone of Pho Hoa Hung which had once been Pho Xe Lua and beyond which crack-flames and malice shot down into darkness and sometimes whizzed up to Hyde Street, then went left past the 222 Club all the way to Turk Street where they expended themselves in misery, disappointment and drunkenness.

| 456 |

Okay, baby, it’s okay, the Queen was whispering, and he fell asleep again, comforted by her rich chocolatey smell.

| 457 |

The phone rang. — Yeah, it said. This here’s a fella lookin’ for an asset search. I got the judgment.

All right, answered Tyler. It was eight in the morning. The Queen snored softly in the crook of his arm.

You think you can find him?

Well, your guy had one chance to hide his assets, Tyler said with a chuckle. But I have an infinite number of chances to find ’em. Who do you think is going to win?

Amen. How much will it cost me?

Minimum of five hundred. I don’t charge anything more unless I find something. Do you have his social security number?

Well, gosh, now, Mr. Tyler, I—

If you don’t have his social, I have to charge extra to get that. Not only do I have to access some expensive databases, I also have to run a check to make sure that you’re legit. If you actually have a judgment against this guy you should have his social.

Well, the judgment hasn’t quite come through yet.

I see. Do you know anything else about him?

Well, I don’t know how much money he has squirreled away, but this is his partner. His former partner I should say. I thought he was family, but he robbed me blind.

I get the picture.

Mr. Tyler?

Yeah.

This is Mr. Tyler?

Yeah.

I can’t rest until I get this guy.

There may not be enough money to pay off your judgment, sir, Tyler warned him. We’ll have to charge you five hundred dollars no matter what, just to kind of grease the wheels.

(Grease the wheels, laughed the tall man in the living room. That’s rich.)

I don’t care about that, Mr. Tyler. I want justice.

What’s your name, sir?

Bill Bullock. I treated him like a brother, Mr. Tyler, and he—

And your ex-partner lives here in the city?

I don’t rightly know.

So you really can’t tell me anything else about him? I suppose I could run a couple of traces…

Well, what’s your advice? Before I pay anybody, I need to know what I’m getting. It’s harder to trust these days.

I would never spend more than ten percent of what I might collect. You want to go ahead?

Five hundred, huh? What the hell.

What’s his name?

James R. Chong.

Lemme do some ultimate weapons research here. Lemme see if he’s on the California Criminal Index. You want to come by in an hour? No, make that two hours. Bring your retainer.

What, you mean pay in advance?

That’s what she said, Tyler laughed jeeringly.

Henry and his faggoty come-on bullshit, joshed the tall man in an affectionate voice. It sounded as if he were stealing Tyler’s cassette tapes.

You mean you can’t just invoice me? I mean, I, uh—

Well, think about it, said Tyler, hanging up on that potential client, who never called again. Stretching out his arm very carefully in order not to disturb the sleeping Queen, he captured the envelope, just yesterday received, which announced that it contained an important notice, and inside, just in case he’d forgotten that announcement, the blue-bordered flier began in flaming red letters:

IMPORTANT NOTICE!!!

and continued (employing typographical variations far more impressive than the monotonously chiseled words of the Los Angeles sign he now knew so well which said COMPARE FOREST LAWN’S MORTUARY PRICES): You may already qualify for this Debt Consolidation Loan UP TO $200,000!!! PAY OFF YOUR BILLS — PLUS! (At New Year’s, the green slope of graves had been strewn with Christmas flowers beneath the white statue.)

Letting envelope and letter drop out of his hands, he rolled back and began kissing the Queen’s lips.

| 458 |

He went to Macy’s and stood looking out at Union Square while Irene tried on dresses and she said: Come into the dressing room with me, baby and help me with the straps, so he went in and the saleslady came after him very fast and said: Excuse me sir but men are not allowed in the women’s dressing area and he said: Why? — That’s our policy, she said. — He stared at her. He said: My Queen needs me in there. — She said: Sir, you’re going to have to leave the store.

| 459 |

I don’t wanna do this anymore, said the tormented Queen. I’m so tired.

Of me?

No, baby. Of everything.

Where will you go?

Where I came from.

Who are you? he said. Where do you come from?

She continued silent, and he said: How old are you?

Well, pretty goddamned old. So now you don’t love me?

I figure I’ll always love you, he said. I just want to know you better. I really want to know everything about you, because after you’re gone it’ll be harder for me to understand everything if I don’t, you know, uh—

I’m yours, Henry. You believe that?

No.

Okay. You’re mine. How’s that sound?

Plausible.

Well, then that’s who I am. I’m the one you belong to.

Are you my God?

Kneel down.

He knelt.

People like you an’ me, baby, we don’t have no God. But sure. If you had a God, I could be your God, if you want. What the hell. I can do magic. I can love an’ kill an’ protect. I can hear your heart sighin’ an’ I can answer your heart…

I don’t get it. Please just give me something to keep in my soul.

That’s all you people from here ever say, just gimme gimme gimme…

You know I love you. You know I believe in you. I just—

Allrightie. Look me in the eyes. Now, where I come from, and where I’m going, and where you’re going, there’s a big wide red desert of dried blood that chokes you when you breathe, an’ a big yellow sun made of burning, dried-up piss that stinks so bad you can’t hardly think, an’ there’s winged demons with whips an’ that’s all there is. All a body can do is run. But when you got the Mark like I gave you, they can’t do you no harm. They just move you along like the cops kickin’ us off Capp Street for two or three weeks, ’cause we got that gift. An’ you can wander around an’ try an’ find some shade, but there ain’t no shade.

Will I find Irene when I go there?

All that dried blood, that’s from her.

I thought you said she was in Heaven.

Henry, she was, but you kept thinkin’ about her too much.

Will I find you?

If you love me, you’ll find me. If you don’t find me, it’s ’cause you breathed in too much of Irene’s blood an’ forgot me. But I’m not jealous of Irene. I’ll always wait for you. Just don’t let your mind go.

What about Lily and Sunflower? he asked in a strangely childlike voice.

They’re burnin’ up in that yellow sun, tryin’ to help us, givin’ us light.

And where’s my mother?

She’s in Heaven. You can’t see her no more.

But if I think about her really hard like I did about Irene, then—

You won’t. You know why?

I—

Last time I’ll ever ask you, baby. Try an’ answer. It’ll do you good. Henry, child, did you make love with Irene?

I — don’t you believe I’ll be thinking about you, Africa?

Sure.

Don’t you believe you’re my darling?

That’s my line, not yours, said the Queen with a hoarse and gentle laugh.

And can I ask you about Domino? I kind of figure that she—

No. I told you enough.

Just tell me about Sapphire then. You told us that after you were gone then Sapphire would be you—

Yeah, baby. Lots of pieces of me in different places.

| 460 |

Tightly gripping his skull between her knees, she urinated into his mouth and he hallucinated with ecstasy because for him as for Sapphire the womb of worshipful craving could still conceive; the power of the Queen’s secretions had never dwindled, only withheld itself from the others for their own good, to prepare them to feed themselves; the mother had weaned her children. Later, Tyler’s irony gland, which itself uncontrollably excreted upon and tainted so much of his reality, discharged chemicals in his bloodstream which incited his brain to remember one long dim afternoon years ago in the Inn Justice when his buddy Daro at the public defender’s office had bought him a shot of Glenlivet and told him the tale of a defendant he’d had to meet in the lockup whom all the other uglies and miserables had reverentially avoided before because the man kept smearing excrement on his own head, then eating it. Revolted, Daro had pronounced the man insane, but one wise old walrus at the office had aphorized: Never call a man crazy unless he eats somebody else’s shit! And indeed it had transpired that this defendant, whose crime Tyler could no longer recollect, had been shamming. And yet Tyler himself, who might not have been crazy, was already craving to eat his Queen’s excrement. Why? She endowed Tyler with herself and all the good things which God allowed her to give him because he was truly hers and faithfully went in to her without scruple or quibble or malice, so she would not wean him before she must with her absence, and every fleck of her spittle seasoned his happiness more richly than the best cocaine or heroin. And so once again we turn to the notion of chemical happiness. — In my job I meet all kinds of people, and I don’t like most of them, Loreena the barmaid once said. If I drink enough, I don’t feel anything. — And whenever Tyler drank two or three cups of coffee his perceptions improved and focused so that he could see every hair on a passing woman’s head; and this temporary superiority over his accustomed listless dullness not only pleased him but also gave him hope. Was he somewhere else? Was he escaping anything? He would have denied it. He saw every character of every advertisement — didn’t that mean he was more in the world than before? Wasn’t he living more densely, resisting death?

| 461 |

Tyler was standing in the doorway talking with the false Irene, whom the Queen had asked him to put up at his apartment for one week and who had already been the subject of three warning telephone calls from his landlord, when a man he had never before seen approached. — Watch it, said the false Irene out of the side of her mouth. You’re gonna take the fall for something or else you’re gonna… — The man had been leaning up against a lamppost for half a minute, watching him. As he came near, Tyler casually brought his clipboard down at an angle between them, keeping the man out of the doorway. — What can I do for you? he said in a neutral grey voice.

Can I talk to you in private?

The false Irene, who could barely hobble ten steps anymore but who could still shoot up heroin as deftly as a Kabuki dancer rotates his pretty wrist, thereby causing his gilded fan to flash like a fish in sunlight, stood there beside her brother, her protector whom she now desired to protect, glaring and listening.

About what? Tyler said.

Can I hire you for half an hour?

We don’t do half an hour jobs, said Tyler, keeping the clipboard between them.

Can you recommend somebody?

Try Wessels on Stockton. He might do half-hours.

Well, really what I wanted to do was put you back on Mr. Brady’s payroll. You know, help you out, cut a little deal…

Go on inside, Consuelo, he said to the false Irene. I’m right behind you.

He locked the man out and took Irene upstairs. She stuck her fishy-rotten tongue in his mouth. Gently he patted her between her shoulderblades, thinking: I participate in this not out of lust or disloyalty to my Queen, but out of duty. This is my religion now.

You got ten dollars on you? said Irene.