The Royal Family

| 83 |

Again he drove to Sacramento with its black parking lots given meaning by cars, its malls so thoroughly placed and identical in composition that every three or four miles one thought to be back at the same retail outlets no better or worse than the cigarette-burned pillowcases of San Francisco’s whore hotels; and the night was hot and still. His mother slept. Dan Smooth sat out on his back porch on Q Street, drinking rum.

Right on time, said Smooth, or at least I presume you’re on time, because I can’t see my watch. It’s been a bad summer for gnats, I’m sorry to say.

Well, maybe the next one will be better.

Spoken like an optimist — hee, hee! And I’m just the opposite. I know I’m not your type, but you can’t do without me, can you?

I’ll hold judgment on that, Dan.

And did you decide anything?

Yes, I did.

Well, tell me about it later. She moves around a bit, you see, Smooth explained. Hops around, like a lap dancer. You can’t always say where she is, but you can find where she is, if you see the distinction.

Yeah, I get it, said Tyler, longing to look at his watch. He thought of the old criticism of Wagner: great moments and horrible half-hours. With Smooth the moments were horrible, too.

You plan to fuck her?

Well, your photo didn’t really turn me on, Dan. No offense. I’m sure she’s a nice Queen, though. I guess I’d just as soon keep it all business.

What does turn you on, Henry? queried Smooth, something moving in his face like the crawling silver shadows on a barmaid’s chin of the change which she is counting behind her half-wall.

As I said, I’d rather keep this thing professional.

Oh, get off your high horse! What are you afraid of? Don’t you realize that you have the look in your eyes of a man who has sexual relations with prostitutes, and don’t you know that other men who do the same can always pick you out? You bear the Mark of Cain, brother!

Tyler grimaced.

Have a shot, Henry?

All right.

There. Now what turns you on?

What turns you on, Dan? Child molesting?

I want to tell you something. I can tell a great deal about a man by his face. Not just his eyes, but his entire face. His mouth, for instance. I like to inspect a man’s mouth. I can see from your mouth that you like to go down on women. I can see all their itty-bitty pubic hairs stuck between your teeth! (Oh, I could talk endlessly about textures. Maybe I don’t have a moral sense, but that’s normal. Maybe I do have one, but if so where did I put it?) I see I forgot to offer you a shot. Help yourself. Well, as I was saying, how do I know you don’t suck guys? Well, because you never did come on to me, and I know I’m quite attractive. Elementary, as Sherlock used to say. You don’t like me, do you, Henry? I can tell that from the color of your nose. You see, most other men, if they want something from me, they brown-nose me a little. Why else do you think my asshole’s so clean and shiny? They pretend not to mind — oh, they just have to pretend. Grin and bear it when I talk about what I talk about. But your nose is a good honest pink drinker’s nose, and not a bit of shit on it. Now, as for your ears, Henry, I regret to tell you this, but you have envious ears. I’m not going to tell you how I know that, though, because old Dan Smooth’s got to have a few secrets in this world, just to keep the ears of his fellow man envious. And as for children, to answer your question, no, I can’t tear myself away from them. If I were going to be marooned on a desert island and I could take only one food with me, you know what it would be? The earwax of a ten-year-old child.

What if it came out of envious ears? said Tyler.

Interesting case! But you still haven’t answered my question.

That’s just how Brady used to talk to me.

Maybe because we each have something you need. Maybe my ageing eyesight’s not so good. Maybe there’s brown on your schnozz after all, brother. Maybe there’s brown stuff packed way up between your nostrils—

All right, Dan. What turns me on is a sincere woman. That’s all.

And what does she smell like?

You know, Dan, a lot of people on this earth fall in love with each other first and then have sex afterward.

But not you, Henry — ha, ha, not you! Remember, I can see your Mark of Cain glowing right now in this darkness! It’s brighter than my bug-zapper light! So don’t lie to me, buddy, because we’re both children of the same wicked God. Are you trying to deny that you care what they smell like?

That’s right.

How about a high-grade armpit? Like roast coffee, almost — well, it depends on the—

Usually I shake hands instead of sniffing armpits, Dan.

Oh, then he likes mannish women. Office types, in executive blazers. But they use deodorant. Old Dan doesn’t like that one bit. And you say it doesn’t matter?

It’s not my number one concern.

So you’d do it with anyone then. You’d fuck anybody no matter how she smells. Talk about perversion. Talk about obscenity. This man dares to get sarcastic with me because I have certain fantasies regarding children, when he himself is nothing but a — I have no words — a mere functionary! There’s something inconsistent about you — yeah, yeah, something brutally untrue. And you deny it; you deny your own animal nature. I disgust you, but what’s inside your guts? Children of the same God, I said! And the Queen, she can see your Mark of Cain! That’s why she stayed away from you, because she’s good. Whatever she does, she — oh, what’s the use of explaining it to you? You don’t see me as a human being; I’m just your way station. So. Where’s my reward?

Right here, Dan. These Swedish postcards.

Well. Well! That was thoughtful. Are they illegal?

Probably. I didn’t flash them at any cops—

Where did you get them?

From a friend.

How nice of him. Or her. Let me go inside and look at them. You wait here.

Give her this, said Smooth, returning a quarter-hour later. It’s just glass, but she’ll know what it is. Give it to some whore, and make up a good line, so the whore’ll think it’s something important, you see…

| 84 |

The sheets smelled of body odor. The closet door yawned and creaked. He turned on the television at once and kept it loudly going at all times, so no one would know whether he was there or not — better that they assume he was there, so they didn’t break in. The door was barely held together by a pair of angle-nailed planks, and the bolt came out of the lock with a single tug.

He hadn’t stayed at the Karma Hotel in a couple of years. He was ready to essay it again after his less than sleep-filled night at the Rama. The Karma had once been filled with the scents of fresh Indian cooking, but it didn’t smell like curry anymore, and the old lady wasn’t stirring her pot of beans, and her daughter no longer wore a sari, nor did she bear the round red caste-dot on her forehead. America the melting-pot, thought Tyler to himself. The daughter looked older, dirtier, and angrier.

Can I help you? she said, neither recognizing him nor wanting to help him.

You have any rooms?

I.D., she said.

(That was new. They never used to ask for identification.)

He passed her his driver’s license and she wrote the number down, after which at her curt demand he surrendered twenty-five dollars. Last time it had been eighteen.

His room stank. On the television, a woman screamed.

It was almost sunset. Leaving the television jabbering away, he descended to Capp Street and found a girl.

My room? the girl said.

No, come up to mine, he said. I’ve got all the equipment there.

What, are you into S & M or something like that?

Something like that, he said.

Where you staying?

The Karma.

They don’t let me in there.

Well, let’s try.

What the hell, the girl sighed. Just as a tired barmaid draws her paper towel across the beer cooler in slow arcs, with untouched space in between, so Providence had incompletely abscessed this person, who still possessed many strangely healthy places on her thighs here bared to the open air.

What’s yours, said Tyler, looking her over acutely, heroin?

Yup.

How many times a day?

Just five.

Well, that’s not too bad, he said.

They went back to Mission Street where at the street-grating he rang the buzzer, and someone let the lovebirds in, so they ascended the stairs to the second grating, which buzzed at their approach like the wing of an immense metallic insect, and then they were inside and facing the half-door behind which there had once been the smell of Indian cooking.

Can I help you? said the same woman.

Mutely, he showed her his key.

Don’t get smart with me, the woman sneered. I was nice to you before, but now I see what kind you are. You see this notice on the wall? NO VISITORS. You know what we call men like you? Trash collectors.

You gotta pay for my visit, idiot, the whore said.

He gave the woman a five, which she snatched with a snotty look. (He’d heard that the city planned to condemn this place.) Then she turned her back on them both, which he interpreted as permission granted for their private and consensual proceedings.

In his room the television was screaming again, because a murderer was eviscerating someone.

Pay me first, the girl said.

He gave her twenty.

Well, you gonna unzip or am I supposed to do that? she said.

You know the Queen, don’t you? he said.

Oh, great, the girl said. Another fucking cop trying to jack me up.

From his night bag Tyler withdrew a fat manila envelope called “EVIDENCE.”—This is from Dan Smooth, he said, breaking the seal. Can you remember that name? And I’m Tyler.

Tyler, huh? How about if I just call you Blowhard?

I thought that was your job, said Tyler.

He upended the envelope over the bed, and a fat blue crystal fell soundlessly out. — Now, this is one of the missing jewels to her crown, Tyler explained. You wouldn’t want to steal a jewel from your own Queen’s crown, now, would you?

The whore just stood there holding the twenty.

Now, am I a cop or not? he said.

You? You stink of cop.

All right. Fine. If I’m a cop, can I catch you anytime or not?

Not if I run fast enough, sucker.

If I put the word out, you’ll end up at Eight-Fifty Bryant faster than you can put a rubber on with your tongue.

I believe you, officer. You bastards always have all the power. But I’m no rat. I’d rather be put away than rat on my Queen.

No one’s asking you to be a rat, honey.

So what do you want? You want me to blow you and give you back the twenty? God knows, I’ve had to do it before.

I want you to take this jewel to the Queen, he said. Then you can do whatever she tells you to do. If you don’t take this to the Queen, if you keep it for yourself, then I’m going to have a problem with you, and once I tell the Queen, she’s going to have a problem with you, too. And tell her I’ll be waiting here.

That bitch downstairs isn’t gonna let me in again. You gonna give me five so I can—

That’s possible. Okay. So I’ll be waiting on Capp and Sixteenth in two hours, say, ten o’clock. If the Queen wants to give me any message or see me herself, she can find me there. So here goes the jewel back in this envelope, and there’s a letter in there, too, in case you forget my name and Dan Smooth’s name, and, darling, here you are.

| 85 |

Queen or no Queen, it’s getting old doing this, he thought — older if no Queen. I’m getting old. Open the night case. Unlock the hard case and open that. That’s not breaking the law, exactly, because a hotel room is a residence if you’ve paid for it, and even in California a citizen is allowed to play with his own possessions at home. The slide is open. Firmly thumb-nudge fifteen rounds into the magazine, which now waits ready to be fed into that oily hole, so do just that, then thumb the catch to close the slide: snick—a much less noisy sound than the bolt-slam of a street-sweeper shotgun, but authoritative nonetheless, and comforting to the proposective user. Now squeeze the release stud; catch the magazine as it returns to you, reborn from the grip. Fourteen rounds in it now, one left behind; add another copper candy (I recommend exploding hollowpoints). With the heel of your hand, shove the magazine back inside. Sixteen rounds, one of them chambered. Here it is now, your cold heavy little underarm pal. What would Smooth say about the smell of that? Zip up your jacket and look in the mirror to see how obvious the bulge is. If you feel so inclined, wash the lead off your fingers by means of this sink whose porcelain is stained yellow by the piss of whores and johns. Increasing the volume on the television, which now offered for his moral furthering a science fiction program about men kept as sex slaves in a world of beautiful hungry women, he went out, locked the door as far as it was capable of being locked, descended past the Indian woman, who cried out: Is she gone yet? If she isn’t, you’re gonna have to pay double. Is she still in your room? and after passing through both gratings, which is to say semipermeable steel membranes, found himself gazing upon the red letters of the Walgreens pharmacy shining like stars, the tail of the “g” flickering. A rush of hatred for everything he saw spewed out of his soul, spreading like the concentric circular patterns of the subway station’s tiles until it had reached the farthest building that he could see. Everything stank. A homeless man’s fat dog ran past as quickly as a whore can stuff fifty bucks down between her tits. His owner, vainly seeking to overtake him, stumped along on crutches, a bedroll upon his shoulders, cursing. Right at the curb a quartet of mariachi musicians in white cowboy hats formed and began singing loudly, their blank faces and sadly drooping moustaches as red as new bricks in the rain. The red Walgreens sign made them redder. Now the night-leaners began to come out from their burrows, thickening the bases of lampposts while they got the lay of the land, then striding shadow-legged across the light-stained street…

Five minutes before ten. He walked down Sixteenth past the old theater and waited. No whores at all, he saw; perhaps there’d been a sweep; let’s see, it was getting on the end of the month, so their general assistance checks ought to have been long spent by now; where were they? A sweep, then; this was an election year.

Across the street an addict was mumbling, his words, like Dan Smooth’s, reminiscent of the structure of graphite, which is to say comprised of slender hexagonal plates of atoms which slough off at a touch like the multitudinous crusts of a Turkish pastry.

Then, at long last, the tall man came, tall as some dancer on stilts, that tall dark man who moved with easy intelligence, flaunting under his arm, his long grey arm which drooped down like a freeway off-ramp, the envelope called “EVIDENCE.”

Tyler raised his hand, like a parachutist about to pull his rip cord. — I’m the one, he said.

I’m not here to hurt you, the tall man said. She’ll see you now.

You work for her?

You asking my business? said the tall man.

If you want to take me someplace, I’ve got a right to ask what you do. I’m not messing with anybody’s business. You can ask that chickie who brought you the envelope if I treated her wrong.

She went and told me you didn’t pay for her time, the tall man said.

Well, I gave her twenty, Tyler said. You can either believe me or not believe me.

Matter of fact, I believe you. And I’m gonna tell the Queen, too. That white bitch can lie on her own time. Now, I don’t have all night. You coming or not?

I’ll walk with you, Tyler said.

The tall man slipped the envelope called “EVIDENCE” under the windshield of an abandoned car, and began to walk rapidly down Capp Street, never looking back. Tyler followed as quickly as he could. At Eighteeth they turned south and continued all the way to the old mayonnaise factory at Harrison without speaking, and then the tall man said over his shoulder: You a cop?

Nope.

You a vig?

What’s that?

Vigilante.

Not me.

That’s good. We don’t have much use for vigs.

They kept walking, street to side-street, side-street to alley, and then suddenly they were in a tunnel that Tyler had never seen before, shiny-scaled like the Broadway tunnel upon whose walls crawled the ghosts of cars and the squiggly fire-lines of reflected tail-lights; but here there was no traffic, although from somewhere came the dull ocean-boom of many vehicles; no, it was stale air from many ducts, or maybe traffic from elsewhere coming through by conduction. The tunnel was narrow, and they went in single file, the tall man’s heels ahead of him clapping lightly down upon plates of textured metal, the ceiling rainbowed with all the colors of dirty gold. Far ahead of them, he saw a shaveheaded woman carrying a suitcase. She vanished into one of the square tomblike openings which had been so occasionally spaced into the yellow walls.

| 86 |

What about the octopus-minded of this world? They were wriggling their fingers, which were as thick and cold and white as the bars of a hospital bed. What about Tyler and Brady? Well, they were as confident (or unwary, perhaps) as the legs that marched, ran, trudged and danced across that spidery whirr of shade on the sidewalk where a maple’s leaf-souls shimmered and shook in the shadow of a breeze; the legs were darkened and eaten by it as it trembled; what if the sidewalk opened suddenly there like a rotten decomposing glacier? Three policemen walked through the shadow, and their navy blue unforms became darker. What if a world tore itself open right beneath their shiny shoes? Deep within, we might find people living according to the same cultural laws as that species of slavemaking ants called Formica (Polyerges) rufescens, about which Darwin wrote: This ant is absolutely dependent on its slaves; without their aid, the species would certainly become extinct in a single year. The males and fertile females do no work of any kind, and the workers or sterile females, though most energetic and courageous in capturing slaves, do no other work. They are incapable of making their own nests, or of feeding their own larvae. Down, down! A spider-girl’s chin pressed itself against the floor, eyeballs rolling. Tyler experienced the same feeling that he always had when after a long browse in the secret, cozy, and almost airy Poetry Room upstairs at City Lights where the window looked out on brick walls, a flat roof, and above everything a row of beautifully dancing laundry — he was almost in the sky, the world muffled and distant — he then passed the row of black and white Beatnik postcards and began to descend the long steep black-treaded stairs which pulled him down past clumps of newspapers and manifestoes, down, down, back into the world. When the old nest is found inconvenient, and they have to migrate, it is the slaves which determine the migration, and actually carry their masters in their jaws. So utterly helpless are the masters, that when Huber shut up thirty of them without a slave, but with plenty of the food they like best, and with their own larvae and pupae to stimulate them to work, they did nothing; they could not even feed themselves, and many perished of hunger. Huber then introduced a single slave (F. fusca), and she instantly set to work, fed and saved the survivors, made some cells and tended the larvae, and put all to rights. What could be more extraordinary than these well-ascertained facts?

What should I draw? said the Queen aloud. Something like a shark or a stingray. Nothing cute. My girls don’t like nothing too cute. What’s gonna make Domino happy? What’s gonna make Strawberry come? What’s gonna make Kitty some fresh money? — Magic marker in hand, she upstretched against the concrete wall behind the grating, straining upward in her high heels so that her fringed skirt danced, smiling a little as she drew. She did the charcoal-colored eyes as far above her head as she could reach. The fringes quivered against her buttocks. Her little feet silently slid upon the light-pocked concrete.

A woman with two shadows raised and lowered her arm with a strangely mechanical air. Her ankle-length white dress was as porcelain. She froze, turned, seeming to stand on a rotating platform rather than move herself. Her hand-edges chopped air like knives. She bent, bowing to one of her shadows, while the shadow behind bowed to her. Now she joined with her shadow, becoming a vast writhing mound.

What is it, Sapphire? asked the Queen.

The porcelain woman covered her face and giggled. Then she began to stammer: S-s-s-some-b-b-b-body…

Oh, somebody’s here, huh? What a good girl. Always looking out for your Queen. C’mere, baby. Queen’s gonna kiss your pussy…

L-l-l-uh…

Love you, too, Sapphire. Lemme kiss you. Quickly now. Can’t keep guests waiting.

The girl approached, shyly scuttling sideways, timidly entered the Queen’s arms. Sweat formed like milk on her porcelain face, and her pale legs began to writhe in the darkness.

Uh-uh-uh. Oh. Oh. Oh, oh, oh.

That’s a good girl. That’s my girl. You’ll always be Queen’s little girl. Now go let the man in.

| 87 |

An old, old face, he thought when he saw her; a face without any whites in the eyes anymore, a palish head upon a dark dress. Old, but maybe not so old — but a middle-aged black woman, just as Smooth had said. Older than in the photo — old, old!

What’s your name, please, ma’am? he said.

Africa, replied the woman with a faint smile. I’m the Queen.

She had a codeine girl’s sleepy froggy voice, her perfume and soft crackly sweater further manifestations of the same, a narcotic blood that dizzied with a sweet scent that was half a stench — well, maybe she actually smelled like smoked leather.

Take my cigarette, she said to Sapphire. And go make them be quiet.

The porcelain girl fled, her shining mouth pulsating with strings of mucus. Distant whispers ceased, and the silence crawled in his ears like sweat.

So there’s this guy who wants to do business, Tyler said. Mr. Brady’s his name. One of those losers with money. I don’t like him and I guess he doesn’t like me, because he fired me, but he’s been looking for you.

Are you the one who wrote me those letters? said the Queen.

Yes, ma’am.

And you beat up one of my girls, she said.

No, that was him. That wasn’t me.

But you set her up to get beaten up.

I have some responsibility for that, he admitted. I thought he was too dumb to know the difference. I didn’t know you were for real, and I thought she could fake it and he’d pay her and then she’d give me a kickback. I’m sorry. I looked for her after that, but I never saw her. If you can tell me where she is, I’d like to make amends. Financial amends.

You’ll make amends to me, the Queen said.

Here’s two hundred bucks, he said, pulling out ten twenties. I wish it could be more. But I didn’t beat her up and this is my money which I’ll never get paid back and work hasn’t been going very well lately.

What kind of work?

I’m a P.I.

Take his money, Justin, said the Queen.

He saw the tall man’s hand. He began to count money into it, and a flashlight shone upon the bills by magic.

The flashlight wandered. Hunched and kneeling, with her hands over her face, the porcelain girl was a whitish thing, a strange staring thing, her dress like a sail catching in a breeze. It widened as she leaned back and spread her legs. Imperceptibly it stretched, like a sail catching air. Her eyes almost closed, her wrists gripped one another in turn. Then she began to masturbate. In the stillness, Tyler could hear the creaking of her shoes. She began to club her temples with her bent wrists, like a wrought-up windup doll.

You’re carryin’ a piece, the Queen said.

Yes, ma’am.

Justin, take his piece.

Tyler hesitated for a moment. Then, deciding to see matters through, he drew the gun out, careful to keep it downpointed.

Mind if I make it safe? he asked.

Go ahead.

He dropped the magazine out, brought the slide back to unchamber the sixteenth round, put magazine and cartridge into his coat pocket, handed the tall man his gun.

And you’re Tyler? said the Queen.

Yes, ma’am.

And the fellow lookin’ for me?

Jonas Brady from Missouri. That’s his name, ma’am. You know him?

Sure I know him, she said with a grin. Klexter, klokan, kladd, kludd, kligrapp…

He heard a sharp click, and tensed, believing for a moment that somebody had loaded his gun, but then the omniscient flashlight showed him a drop of water trembling on the concrete ceiling; when it fell to the floor its echo harshly slammed. He nodded then. The Queen’s eyes glittered ironically.

And why are you here? she said then.

I–I want to know you, he replied, to his own surprise. (That was what he kept expecting Dan Smooth to say.)

Ah, said the Queen.

He waited.

Down on your belly, said the Queen. Hands behind your head.

He obeyed. He was in for anything now. The floor was damp.

Okay. C’mere. Stay on your belly. Crawl over here like a worm. Closer. Now slide your hands down back of your neck. Raise your head and look at me. Can you see me? Now I’m going to spit in your mouth. I want you to raise your head and open your mouth wide for me like a little baby bird.

She leaned forward, her eyes hurting and confusing him, and her face descended, her eyes shining almost malignantly, and then her full lips began to open and somebody shone the flashlight on them and her lower lip began to glisten with spittle, and then a long slender thread of it crawled down from her lip, with much the same speed as a spider descending its strand, and he was shocked to find how much he wanted that spittle inside his mouth. He didn’t even know why he wanted it. Warm and thick, it began to coil round and round upon his tongue. He felt it before he tasted it. She leaned closer, her face above him like a falling planet so that she was almost kissing him. Then a foaming frothing tide of saliva spilled into his mouth as she breathed on his face. Her breath smelled like cunt. Her spit tasted like cunt.

Later, when she let him go out, he saw the spider-girl advancing on her chin, on her knees and on her palms.

| 88 |

He drove home, dropped two credit card bills into the trash, opened an official-looking letter which crowed: IMPORTANT NOTICE! You may already qualify for our unique Debt Consolidation Loan up to $500,000 NATIONWIDE! (he filed that likewise in the garbage), and then, gazing out the kitchen window at the creeping silver ocean-fog, he tapped his ballpoint against his teeth and added to the details description sheet:

TEETH White

EARS Oval, L ear only pierced

FINGERNAILS Long, unpainted, dirt under nails

He went back to the beginning of the form, thought for awhile, and wrote:

AGE Approx. 45.

Then he changed it back to:

AGE Approx. 40.

He made other corrections:

CLOTHING Castoffs? Sweatshirt, jeans, tennis shoes.

JEWELRY Large hoop earring in L ear, bangles on left wrist

PECULIARITIES Round scar on right calf (bullet wound?), abscess marks on arms, tattoo of skull on left wrist, mole on left cheek, strong smell of perfume.

He stared at the form, which now seemed as vain to him as the scribbles on the walls of a hard-luck hotel. He felt tired and woolly-headed. The angry, anxious sadness that he felt in his chest like a hard chestnut whenever Irene occurred to him now ruled him, and, massaging his breastbone, he had to admit the evidence: There was, as Smooth had said, absolutely no reason for him to be seeking out the Queen. But the seeking was over now, and maybe something would come next to rouse either further sadness or further alarm. It was his characteristic to admit what he could not change — which is to say, he confessed it to himself if not to others. Once Irene had said to him on the telephone: I could never be angry with you, and he’d been so happy that he’d cried. Whenever she had spoken to him he had always felt eased, except that last time in the restaurant on Geary Street when her decision had already entombed her; she used to make him feel the same way that his friend Mikey did when he came back from Alcoholics Anonymous meetings; Mikey had been sober for forty-two years, but twice a week he went to A.A. and talked and listened to his own kin, then got relief; sometimes he got sick and couldn’t go, and then he turned desperate and mean. Tyler didn’t turn mean, but he knew the other feeling all too well, the feeling of no rent money, and John’s anger, and his mother’s reproach, and loneliness, loneliness above all — how he loved Irene! She was his sickness, his dear little disease. God and Irene, are you one and the same? Because I can’t find either of you. Not that I ever believed in You, God. But, Irene, I believe in you just as much even though I can’t touch you; Irene, I’ve got to get you back. Your death is an impossibility. My need proclaims that. I’m going to find you somehow, or else I’ll pretend.

On the details description form he added to PECULIARITIES: Lesbian or bisexual.

| 89 |

Now, the court thing, I have absolutely no control there, Dan Smooth was saying on the phone. And I don’t have the time to get involved.

He hung up. — FBI turds, he muttered.

Lacing his fingers together, he then surveyed Tyler and said: How did it go?

I saw her, said Tyler. I don’t know what to make of it.

I like you more and more, Henry. You don’t bullshit. Sit back, relax, pour yourself some Black Velvet. Working man’s drunk. I want to finish watching this. I was right in the middle of the good part when that administrative bitch called. Speaking of bitches, how’s Mugsy?

How do you know the name of my mother’s dog?

It’s in your file, fella. Right under the note about Black Velvet.

You’ve been spying on me?

For the Queen, agreed Smooth. He turned the knob of the dusty old television set, which was not quite at arm’s length from his eyes, and indented the blue button of the videocassette recorder. The movie resumed.

The girl shook her hair out of her eyes as the man put his penis into her butt. There was not any sound.

Imagine videoing this, said Smooth. Imagine the happiness.

Tyler sighed and poured himself a drink. — Yeah, just imagine, he said.

Let me find this, muttered Smooth. Just one second. Now, see, what I’d really like to find here…

A young boy’s milk-white buttocks were wiggling

There was one other kind of really really bizarre scenario, said Smooth. It involved lots and lots of toilet paper. No, you really have to see this.

Here were glowing aliens, shimmering green watercolor-light; the aliens kept bowing toward each others’ middles.

To me this is really erotic, said Smooth. Really really erotic. Almost always, part of it is the fantasy aspect. Now, in this one, I’m the father and he’s the bad boy. I’m saying right here: Are you ready for a B.M. fantasy? and he says yes. I say, lean back in the chair. He says: Danny, I’ve had this fantasy, too.

You think he meant it or he was saying it to get more money out of you?

I think he meant it, Henry. I wasn’t paying him anything.

Tyler refilled his glass.

He’s already fourteen, Smooth went on. I still love him. These things happen. Also, as I was telling you earlier, the whole thing happened in my mind.

You mean he’s just virtual?

Well, it’s a confessional time for me, said Smooth almost shyly. I also really don’t want to like fuck up and do something evil. This scenario is…

His voice became silent for a moment. Then he said: I’ve never hurt anybody, Henry.

I believe you, Tyler said. I guess I’m a Canaanite, just like you said.

The Queen saw that right off, Henry. Don’t think she didn’t. You’re in now, boy.

Smooth swallowed, drummed his fingers, and gazed into Tyler’s face very very earnestly. Finally he whispered: See, there is this other thing. The Queen is so gorgeous sometimes. And always so special to me.

| 90 |

Down the hall from the room upon whose door a sign read DO NOT DISTURB — I DON’T HAVE NOT A THING — PLEASE DON’T KNOCK there was a room on whose door somebody had written and taped a sign which read IF YOU WANT SOMETHING, DON’T ASK. IF YOU REALLY NEED IT, GO ELSEWHERE and across from that door was a door charred and kicked and smeared and scraped, whose upper half had been replaced by plywood already splintered by abuse, and whose doorknob had given way to a handle held in place by two Phillips head screws now worked half out; Tyler had had to turn them in again with the point of his pocketknife; and inside that room, rendered holy by an incandescent doughnut in place of any lightbulb, Dan Smooth was sitting at the foot of the bed like a wise grave doctor; and the junked-out whore named Sunflower, who’d a quarter-hour before stirred the white lump into the rust-colored liquid in the bottlecap, heaped it to bare lukewarmness, and fed it to her hungry arm on the second stab, now lay on her side mumbling so sadly in a soft hoarse voice; she was naked because Tyler had given her money for the dope, and so when she came with him she’d stripped by habit; it was likewise by habit as well as concern that Tyler sat stroking her pimpled buttock as he would have stroked the forehead of a good dog or a sick child, as he would have had somebody stroke him if he could have found anybody like Irene, whom he could have been a good dog to.

… ’Cause I slept there all night, he bought me a burrito and then he told me: That’s four dollars right there. That’s how he treated me, the whore said. Are you listening to me?

Yeah, I’m listening, sweetheart, said Tyler.

Sighing, Dan Smooth got up and began to piss gently into the sink. When he had finished, he stood there for a moment buttoning his fly. Then he lightly tapped his fingernail against the faucet.

The whore’s eyes jerked open in terror. — Is that a knife? she said.

It’s okay, Tyler said.

What is it? Is it a gun? Is he loading a gun?

No, honey. He’s just making music in the sink.

Oh, said the whore, subsiding. He heard her weary breathing. He liked her and was sorry for her. She was twenty years old and looked fifty. She was ruined.

I have so much respect for you and the both of you that I trespass with, she said with an effort.

I respect you, too, Sunflower, he said.

Hey, can you pop this zit on my butt?

This one? It’s pretty flat.

I want the white stuff to come out, the whore fretted. Can you pop it for me, please?

Okay, said Tyler, setting thumb and forefinger pliers-like about the red spot and digging into the flabby flesh. Nothing came out.

Is that better? he said.

Yeah, that’s a lot better, she sighed. Feels like lots of white stuff came out. You wanna know me? You wanna listen to me? Are you listening to me?

Here I am, Sunflower. Here I am listening.

My father fucked my sister first time when she was five. He fucked her doggy-style, and he put his hand over her mouth so she couldn’t scream. Her pussy was all bloody and her asshole was all bloody. There was blood coming down to her knees. Then he fucked me when I was five, and then he fucked my other sister when she was five. But my other sister went and told on him. So me and my sister told my father not to do that no more…

And he listened to you?

Yeah, the whore said. Tears boiled out of her eyes.

He stopped fucking your sister? said Tyler gently.

Yeah. He, uh, well, he… he…

He fucked you and your older sister instead?

Just me, she sobbed. My sister couldn’t take it. Said it hurt too much. But I–I heard the youngest crying, and when I saw the blood, I knew…

It’s okay now, sweetheart. It’s okay.

I wanna be a shield, she said. I was a shield for my sister, and now I protect all the men who come to me. They give me their pain. It comes out their cockheads. It just hits me. It just hurts me. It stays with me. That’s all I wanna do. I wanna be a shield for all the men in this world, and all the women, and all the kids. They can come and shit on my face if they want to; they can even shit on my goddamned face. You wanna shit on my face?

No thanks, said Tyler, squeezing her hand. That wouldn’t make me feel happy.

But did Maj spit in your mouth?

Yes, she did.

I knew it. I could see it.

She lay still for a while. Dan Smooth opened the tap but no water came out.

Hey, how much did you gimme? she said.

Twenty.

And what about your friend? Why’s he here listening? He was supposed to gimme thirty, and he didn’t give me squat.

He’ll give you ten.

I love you, the whore wept. I love you. I’m so alone and I have so many contacts.

I love you, too, said Tyler, because he would have been her shield, too, if he could.

No! she screamed. Don’t say that! I’m here and you’re not here—

She fell asleep, and began snoring loudly. Mouth open, face flushed, she opened and then re-closed her eyes, sinking into the earth of dreams, her knees studded with immense white circular scars, her black-grimed toes faintly twitching, and in her sleep she continued to scratch at those angry speckles on her buttocks.

Four knocks, and they let the Queen in. The Queen was alone, but three tall black men stood waiting in the hall outside. She was wearing a man’s hooded sweatshirt which shadowed and overhung her dark old face into anonymity. Dan Smooth bolted the door. She put her left arm on her hip, threw her head back and extended her right wrist to be kissed. Tyler got down on his knees to do the honors. — You brown-noser! laughed the Queen, pleased. You heard what our friend says about noses? Hah! Now what about you, Danny boy?

Dan Smooth bent over the Queen’s hand.

The Queen shook her hood off and stood there for a moment, smiling almost grimly. On the bed continued the long, slow, gasping breaths of sleep.

You gentlemen owe me twenty in visitor fees, she said.

This dump charged you?

They always charge me. They don’t know.

One Queen, three bodyguards, cackled Smooth, pulling a twenty-dollar bill from his sleeve.

Good arithmetic, said the Queen. But why can’t you multiply?

They’re not old enough to bleed when I fuck ’em, said Smooth.

Did you get off on Sunflower’s story? said Tyler challengingly. She bleeds from both ends.

You don’t need to pick on him, Henry, said the Queen. Danny’s a good man. Sunflower’s daddy wasn’t. We would have taken care of him but Sunflower didn’t want that. Sunflower’s my baby, she cooed, kissing the woman’s dirty toes.

She turned to Tyler and said: You see what she’s about? You see why she’s good? Jesus Himself ain’t fit to pop her zit like you done. Jesus on the very cross of torture and shame never suffered like she suffered. And I don’t care how much He gave. He never gave like she did. I know her so well. Queen’s come to give her little baby her reward. My baby, my darling little baby. Queen’s heart’s gonna break.

And between the naked woman’s legs she laid five one hundred dollar bills and a baggie with enough China white for Sunflower to kill herself ten times over.

Tyler said nothing. The Queen looked him in the eye and said: It’s up to her. Gotta give her some happiness. If she don’t O.D., she can come back to me for more favors. Queen’ll always take care of her. If she wants to go into rehab she can. If she wants to sell that powder she can. But I know she gonna wanna take that happiness. I know she gonna wanna go home.

| 91 |

He saw that for himself, said Smooth, and Tyler realized now that the Queen, who was both very busy and very subtle, had come not only to see to Sunflower but also to judge him and perhaps to try him more deeply also. Spitting in his mouth wasn’t enough. — I can vouch for old Hanky-Panky here, Smooth went on. He saw the goodness. We don’t none of us have to be riding him. I knew his sad eyes from the first. He and Sunflower have the same sad eyes.

How many are like her? said Tyler.

She’s one of the best right now, the Queen said. Queen’s not gonna tell you all she knows, but there’s several. Well, they wear out. In this town, maybe twenty thirty forty girls are our shields. They take the pain and keep it. They help all the rest. You wanna see how much pain she’s got inside her? Look here.

Partly unzipping her sweatshirt, she reached down her neck and presently pulled out what resembled a copper penny with eyes and lightning bolts carved or engraved into it, and protruding octopus-fashion from its edges many copper wires knotted into tiny holes in the disk; the ends of the wires had been wrapped around what might have been black seeds.

Got any rubbers on you, Smooth? she said.

Let’s see now. Let’s see, the man said, thoughtfully licking his lips. Oh, here’s an old dried out one under the bed. Smells pretty fresh…

Well, whack it against the wall or something. Clean it off.

How about a plain rubber band? said Smooth. I keep one around my address book.

Yeah, that’ll do. Now, tie it around the charm, respectful like. Good. You just watch this, Henry. Don’t say nothing; don’t do nothing. Just observe. Danny, hold the rubber part. Don’t touch the copper, ’cause it’s magic. Now touch it to her. Slowly. No, wait. You do it, Smooth. But she’s used to you, Henry, so you should hold her hand. She’s gonna be scared. Okay, Danny boy. Give him a show. It’s only a show.

Dangling the copper spider by its improvised thong, old Dan Smooth, holding his breath, bent over the recumbent woman and slowly began easing it down above her ankle while the Queen stood praying: In the name of the Mother and the Daughter and the Holy Ghost! and the strands of wire began to writhe and quiver of their own accord. One touched flesh, and then the light flickered and went out, and the stinking darkness exploded with deep blue sparks and Sunflower jerked up screaming like she had that first time when her father sodomized her and in the room across the hall a radio immediately went on loud because they didn’t want to know about any screams. Tyler felt no electric shock. He held Sunflower’s hand as tightly as he could and wiped the tears from her eyes, and then the lights came back on as Dan Smooth took the talisman away and Sunflower fell back on the bed snoring.

She won’t remember nothing, said the Queen. See, that’s all the pain she has inside her. Too much for any human being to get out even by magic.

| 92 |

We take pride in our Queen, because she has the power, Smooth was explaining brightly. Glowing in the darkness. Talk about animal magnetism! Well, believe you me…

It didn’t hurt her, Henry, if that’s what you’re thinking, said the Queen.

What about his pain? asked Smooth, with a sickening mixture of malice and pity. Hank’d be a crybaby if he knew how — look into those eyes of his, Maj; how can we get that pain out of his eyes?

That’s what everybody asks me, said the Queen with brightly bitter humor. — As if I’m not the biggest shield of them all! Well, it’s an honor, I know.

Tyler said nothing. — Of course it’s only his second time, Smooth finally blurted, looking him up and down and shaking his head.

(Outside, in the hallway, an old woman was shouting: Fook a-you, beetch! Goddamn it! Fook-a-you! Oh, I sorry. I fook a-you today, you fook-a me tomorrow. Fook-a I sorry!)

Smooth leaned forward and whispered so that the hot wet breath tickled Tyler’s ear: Now imagine if Sunflower woke up and we knew but she didn’t know that there was a window there.

| 93 |

Certain appearances to the contrary, Dan Smooth was, as Dostoyevsky would have put it, an excellent man. First of all, the loathing which his so-called proclivities caused others to feel was more than counterbalanced by his usefulness to society. The police relied on Smooth, and consequently protected him, on the understanding that he would do nothing indiscreet. Indiscretion meant, for instance, raping and murdering a child. As it happened, Smooth was more bark than bite. He did not merely take pleasure in offending others (other adults, that is); he had a positive need to do so. This characteristic in no way contradicted his general spirit of friendliness and helpfulness; like most people whose thoughts or needs are a little bit odd, Smooth inspired revulsion among the homogenous masses of car-drivers, television-watchers, jurors, and baseball addicts. With children he had a way — or, rather, a quality, for “way” implies method — which drew them to him. On airplanes, infants would drop their pacifiers, reaching out to touch his nose; and when he’d bend to pick up the slobbery things, the children would strain toward his hand. — Are you ready? he’d say to the ones who could talk. — Yeah, they’d say shyly. — Are you ready? he’d whisper dramatically. Are you ready to fly? — To their parents, had they been unaccompanied by their delicious offspring, and had Smooth believed that he could get away with it (for he was realistic to the point of cowardice), he might have said with a pleasant smile: Excuse me, but would you mind if I sniffed your asshole? Dogs do that, you know. — Mostly, being the graduate of many bitter experiments, he kept to himself, and served up silence with the pleasant smile. Take a baby bird in your hands, so that it absorbs your smell, and its parents will shun it to the very death. Take an ant from one nest and drop it in another; the ant-law requires that it be destroyed. Galileo and Göring, Jesus and Socrates, eccentrics, murderers and saints — all must be neutralized by the swarming super-organism in any way possible. Only three paths for such creatures can preserve them. The first is to hide, like terrorists and hermits; the second is to be in some measure needful or powerful, like rocket-scientists, kings and jesters; the third is to defy. Dan Smooth in fact employed all of these strategies. He had many connections, but few friends, and his neighbors did not know his name. The police, as I said, found him useful; few sex crimes investigators were more thorough than Dan Smooth; and his informants in the demimonde and the holy order of pedophiles supplied him with information of a consistently high purity. The famous Kaylin Kohler case, in which a ten-year-old girl from Redding was abducted from her own home, raped, tortured, and buried alive, was solved thanks to a tip from Dan Smooth, whose electronic alias had been Ticklequick; entering a “chat room” from his personal computer, he announced his intention of trading seventy-five cubic centimeters of saliva from a twelve-year-old Caucasian boy named Rodney for an equivalent volume of urine from an African-American female of similar age — or, to quote his message in full:

Hey, pervs! Ticklequick is back! Hv. 75 c.c. vanillaspit (Rodney, guarant’d 12, uncircumc. & hairless) for swap; seek chocopiss from virg. hairless slit 12 & under: MUST BE FRESH. Also NEED NEED NEED photos for swap. PLEASE NO RECOG. HEADSHOTS. Help Ticklequick put lemon on his lips. E-mail Big T!

Under FBI supervision, Dan Smooth spat into several dozen test tubes to furnish the nectar of fictitious Rodney; in exchange the FBI received and analyzed eighteen test tubes of piss, two of which contained significant levels of both testosterone and alcohol, one of which evidently came from a lactating woman, and one of which proved to be so old (the collector who sent it had perhaps kept it in a jar in some hot garage in the Central Valley for twenty years) that it could not be analyzed; these were discarded, leaving fourteen samples whose levels of estradiol, estrone, estriol, and pituitary gonadotropins were consonant with those of prepubescent girls. Thanks to improvements in laboratory techniques, only two of these were disqualified as nonsecretors, meaning that they were so chemically taciturn that not even the blood group could be read; this left an even dozen samples of young girls’ urine, which the FBI grimacingly permitted Dan Smooth to sniff and crow over, arranging the shining test tubes in order from pale transparent lemon to the rich dark orange-brown characteristic of a pure palladium photograph; and of course Smooth made many such comments as: This one ate asparagus for dinner, I know. Ah, if only I could have been there when she peed! — for, as I mentioned, Dan Smooth followed all three strategies, the latter one being bravado and defiance; he was by his nature kin to the killer, the exception being that he did not kill; and so the FBI ran DNA matches on those twelve test tubes of yellow light and dark, and the ninth test tube granted them a positive lock on Kaylin Kohler’s DNA, which led them to one Eugene Kenneth Brewington, who was convicted the following year, sentenced to death, and, after eight years as a guest of the state of California, at great expense actually executed by lethal injection, as a result of which Mr. Brewington’s attorney fell upon hard times and the district attorney, two FBI investigators, one forensic technician, and one field investigator in Redding received promotions, while Dan Smooth received no public acknowledgment whatsoever, but an obscure government draft for twelve thousand dollars arrived in his post office box one day, and a dispute which he was having with the Internal Revenue Service was abruptly decided in his favor, and he received a permit to carry a concealed weapon and a strange sort of untouchable status within the circles of law enforcement, as if he were one of those captive cobras in Bangkok whose venom can be milked for the greater good; and his cachet was confirmed when a hard gaunt FBI woman wanted to investigate and arrest the other eleven finalists in that competition of gold-filled test tubes, but Ticklequick, arguing that so doing would block his channels of information forever, not only succeeded in protecting his peers but even managed to obtain by special courier about two weeks after Mr. Brewington’s execution those eleven vials of vintage for his supposed delectation; needless to say, they had gone sour in that time, and Smooth’s real motive was simply to destroy that evidence once and for all, since he was well acquainted with three of the eleven collectors, and suspected the identities of two more; by the Golden Rule, so to speak, they would have done as much for him. The FBI woman became Smooth’s enemy, but he for his part was so filled with pride and happiness at the way that everything had turned out that he contented himself with a few mild remarks to her, such as: Is it true that you have an eleven-year-old daughter? I’d love to lick her cunt. — Dan Smooth, needless to say, was not stupid. The FBI woman did not have any children, and he knew that; thus his utterance, which came as naturally to him as any disquisition on the weather, could not be considered as any kind of threat. Since he could not have her friendship, he actively courted and received her hatred, so that when he returned to his house in Sacramento it was in a haze of triumph, magnified by his possession of the eleven test tubes, whose contents he immediately decanted and poured down the toilet. The test tubes themselves, which might contain residue even after thorough washing (although, their official seals having been broken, they were unlikely to find use as evidence) he gave to an acquaintance — not a friend, mind you, not a friend! — who, a former member of an armed anti-government militia in Oakland, now lived in Roseville, pursued a lucrative vocation as a non-union electrician, and on weekends experimented with the manufacture of strange and sometimes illegal handgun cartridges. This man had perfected the exploding bullet, the mercury-tipped bullet, the poisoned bullet; he had even for his own amusement hand-loaded special ammunition designed to murder the shooter rather than the target: within the casing’s coppery blankness lay, in addition to the gunpowder, a distant descendant of C-4 explosive guaranteed upon firing to turn a gun into a rapidly expanding constellation of shrapnel. Such cartridges were difficult to test, but Dan Smooth’s acquaintance had worked it all out in his head. Testing would almost have been cheating; unquestionably it would have evinced weakness of faith. The electrician was happy just to keep his little babies in a regular factory ammunition box; nobody knew their nature but he. When Smooth proposed that he create in his bullet-caster an amalgam of lead and brittle glass which would shatter upon contact with flesh, and when Smooth further informed his acquaintance that this was genuine FBI glass, the electrician grinned happily. Smooth stayed to watch the glass be disposed of. The electrician mixed him a rum and Coke, and then he drove home. It was a hot Sunday afternoon. — The earwax of a ten-year-old child, he muttered with a laugh. He sat in the back yard sweating. His tomato-soup-colored tom-cat slept on the grass beside the corpse of a young bluejay which it had slowly tortured and killed. Smooth did not seat himself before his computer keyboard which resembled a grimy ear of Indian corn; he did not become Ticklequick, because he quite correctly supposed that the FBI monitored all his keystrokes. Besides, all that had been simply to protect the Queen. It had been the Queen, of course, who’d found the killer for him. Like him, she received no recognition from the public; she’d acted simply out of goodness. At FBI expense, Smooth had brought her an immense bouquet of red, white and yellow roses, those being the color of his three favorite bodily fluids.

All this sounds perhaps like farce, so perhaps we should look deeper into Dan Smooth’s soul. About his sexual attraction to children it should be said that for him — in his own mind, at least — it had all begun as a matter of moral and intellectual curiosity. It is easy to disbelieve such an explanation, easy to insist that such but rationalizes his evil urge. But since other people ultimately remain unknowable, we may as well accept their own explanations of themselves as first approximations, barring further examination. He read in the newspaper one day about a father convicted of molesting his son and daughter, who were twelve and eight, respectively. The account, typically dry, grim and brief, merely announced that both children bore signs of repeated abuse, and that the man had been sentenced to twenty-five years in prison. The mother was dead, apparently. And suddenly Smooth had a vision of the children crying as their father was handcuffed and driven away. They would grow up in an institution, perhaps separated from each other as well as from their father, perhaps beaten up or raped by other children, perhaps not. They would masturbate constantly, Smooth supposed (because he would). How evil had the father been? Suppose — which probably had not been the case — that he had done what he had done out of love. Suppose that he had fed and clothed them, helped them with their homework, listened to them. Suppose that he had witnessed them in sex play with each other, joining in only out of tenderness. Suppose that they had voiced some childish confusion about the difference between boys and girls, or how babies were made, and he had simply instructed them. Suppose that he had not hurt them. Suppose that he had liked it and they had liked it, too. Suppose that what he had done was good. We might well wonder why Dan Smooth wanted to suppose these things. But we do have to grant him the openness of a born scientific investigator in an epoch of harshly preconceived conclusions.

Then there was the married woman who fell in love with her fourteen-year-old foster son. Her husband divorced her. She wanted to marry the boy. He wanted to marry her. When she became pregnant with his child, they threw her in jail for years. Dan Smooth could not understand why.

The curiosity of small children regarding bodily functions frequently presents an erotic component. Smooth’s niece, Darcy, had become fascinated with urination at the age of four. Whenever he came to Atlanta to visit his sister, Darcy wanted to play with him, and he was simultaneously thrilled and frightened by the complicity he read in her smile. If he let himself go, he just might remember something from his own childhood which would draw him into the mirror, where, astonished and conquered by something about himself he’d never before noticed, he’d cry: Aha! — but that never happened. Darcy liked to be carried piggyback. When he lifted her up on his shoulders, she’d wrap her legs tightly around his neck and begin rubbing against him. Sometimes he’d have to go to the toilet, and Darcy cried when he closed the door. He actually had to lock her out. — It’s just a phase that all children go through, his sister said curtly. — When Darcy was five he visited his sister for Christmas, and Darcy’s older sister got the flu, so they left Smooth to babysit while they went to the doctor. Darcy was sitting in his lap watching a cartoon on television, for this happened long before videos, and her body was very little and smooth and soft, and her breath smelled like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. She was wearing a red and green plaid dress for Christmas. The hem of it had ridden above her chubby knees. She clamped her thighs around his leg and began to slowly ride him up and down, pretending to look at the television. He did not know what to do. Suddenly she turned her head, and in her eyes he saw that look of darkly shining consciousness, which he had the incredible faith or arrogance to label the look of original sin. He swallowed. Grown women had on occasion looked at him that way, and accordingly infected him with their desire, but never so intensely as this. He did not know what was going to happen, but he knew that whatever happened he would never ever mention to Darcy’s parents. Darcy turned her head back, but she was gazing not at the television anymore, but at her own squiggling crotch. The red and green dress had now retreated into her lap so that he could see her white underpants. Slowly his hand began to move. Smooth could not stop it, and did not want to. His hand descended through the air, inch by inch, and came to rest on Darcy’s soft, pink thigh. The little girl put her hand on his hand and giggled. Then she began to hump his leg faster. His hand swam slowly up her thigh, and now it rested on her panties and he could feel how she was hot and damp there through the flimsy cotton. She opened her legs wider and with both hands pushed his palm firmly against her mound.

Over a beer in a quiet bar, he told a doctor in San Francisco about it — about that much, at least. The doctor regarded him with the same alertly bristling skepticism of any good policeman, knowing or suspecting the rest, and Smooth, not yet hardened, choked out: I didn’t do anything. But she wanted it, you see. I am sure that she wanted it.

The doctor said nothing.

Smooth said: Is that normal?

Of course what you’re telling me is not normal, the doctor said carefully.

Could the kid have wanted it?

Dan, said the doctor, these are dangerous speculations to follow. You know very well that children don’t necessarily know what they want, and that what they want isn’t necessarily good for them. Furthermore, while I’m not a specialist, I would say that if she was consciously aroused and seeking to arouse you as you describe — in other words, if you’re not fudging a little — then she’s already been a victim of abuse. Her father, perhaps…

I know Max pretty well, said Smooth. And he doesn’t bear that mark.

Child abusers don’t bear a mark, Dan. You can’t tell. I could be one, or for that matter you could be one. Do you understand me?

But it’s not very good science, you know, Smooth insisted. If they don’t want it, then you can’t do it to them, because it’s abuse. If they do want it, then they must have been abused. That’s what you’re saying, right?

If ten minutes before dinner your niece wanted to gorge on candy and ice cream, would you let her?

Maybe on special occasions I would.

Dan, Dan!

Why is having sex necessarily bad for a child?

Oh, come off it, Dan! the doctor shouted angrily, and in his face for the first time Smooth saw the look that he would see in the faces of others for the rest of his life.

When I was a boy, I used to jerk off, Smooth said. You know that old saying: Ninety percent of all teenage boys masturbate, and the other ten percent are lying. And when my Daddy caught me, he tied my hands behind my back. I had to sleep on my side for a good two years. When I asked him why it was wrong to jerk off, he got angry, you see, the same as you’re angry now, and he said that it was a sin and that it would make my pimples worse and that it would weaken my eyesight and maybe I’d even go crazy. Now, was any of that true?

Don’t be so hard on your father, Dan, said the doctor with an ingratiating laugh. You’re my age. We grew up before the sexual revolution. And your father — well, everybody thought that then.

But was it true?

Of course it wasn’t true. But that has nothing to do with—

Yes it does. If a child wants or needs to masturbate, you’re saying that that’s harmless, right?

Yes, Dan, said the doctor grimly.

No matter what the age of the child?

No matter what the age of the child.

Then if a child wants to have an orgasm, and you help the child have an orgasm—

And did you have an orgasm when you stuck it up her, Dan? said the doctor wearily. How loudly did she scream? How much did she bleed?

He never saw that doctor again. The next year he didn’t visit his sister, and the year after that Darcy was seven, and in the middle of the night, when he was asleep in the guestroom, Darcy crept in and almost silently closed the door behind her.

Let’s speak of accidents. One sunset at a gasoline station in El Cerrito, they gave Tyler a restroom key and when he turned it in the door a woman’s voice cried: Uh-uh-uh! He stood outside, a little ashamed. — Sorry, he said to her when she came out. I didn’t see anything. — That’s okay. You responded real quick. — Wasn’t Dan Smooth in equal measure a bystander and victim of God’s tricks?

She was wearing her pink nightgown with the dinosaurs on it. He could see its paleness in the dark. Her breath smelled like toothpaste and tomato soup. Gazing at him wisely with shining eyes, she put her finger to her lips as she got into his bed. Instantly she was in his arms, holding him tight as she rubbed up against him, and his penis was hard. He rolled her onto her back, and his hand was on her underpants just like before, and then his middle finger had gone inside her panties, and he brought his hand to his mouth and sucked his middle finger to get it wet and then slipped it between the lips of the child’s vulva, the soft and ever so delicate lips which were to render those of any mature woman so comparatively coarse forever, so rough and hairy and repulsive to him. What was the meaning of how he felt? He was sure that he hadn’t sought this out. He was equally sure that to deny and reject this experience was to do wrong both to Darcy and to himself. He knew that in a moment he was going to slip the panties from the hips of this softly giggling girl. The doctor was wrong. She had never screamed and she had never bled. But then he was equally sure that he was going to send Darcy away. He groaned with anguish, looking into her eyes. Then the doctor’s words crawled inside his skull again like hungry insects, and he thought: I am not sure. I cannot be sure. And to do this and not to be sure is to do wrong.

Clenching his lips, he sat up and removed his hand from his niece’s pants. He sucked on his middle finger again, just to get the taste. Where was the harm in that? The taste was sweet and rich, like sweet and sour fish in a Chinese restaurant. He almost ejaculated.

The panties had somehow worked themselves down to her knees.

You see, honey, it’s time for you to go back to sleep, he made himself say.

No, Uncle Dan. Can’t I please stay with you?

I’m afraid if you stay with me we’ll get in trouble.

I won’t tell, the girl said. I can keep secrets.

That’s good, honey.

So can I stay?

He bit his lip hard.

Can I?

So you never tell secrets? he temporized.

You want to hear a secret?

Yes.

She whispered in his ear: I like playing doctor with you. That’s my secret. It feels good. I want to play doctor with you again. Right now.

Well, honey, go to sleep and we’ll play doctor tomorrow.

You promise?

I promise, he lied. His plan was to pack up and leave the house immediately after breakfast.

The child touched him through the jockey shorts he wore. — I want to play doctor right now. I can’t sleep if I don’t play doctor with you.

Her little fingers spidered so curiously up and down him. — I want to see it, she moaned. Please, Uncle Dan. I want to see it.

Once Dan Smooth had seen a pearl, a new pearl, freshwater or saltwater he couldn’t remember, but it was so small and shining and pink. Wet and pink it had been, with a gleam of light on it that changed according to the angle of his glance. It was so new and clean and pink.

Suddenly Darcy began to wail loudly. — I want to see it! I want to see it!

He heard the bed creak upstairs, and then his sister’s heavy footsteps. Darcy! his sister called. Darcy, honey, are you okay? Where are you, sweetie?

The silence lasted as long as man and child stared into each other’s eyes. The child saw the man’s fear and felt her mastery.

If I keep quiet, will you let me see it? she said.

Yes, he whispered. Later. Now pull up your underpants, quickly.

Darcy! Darcy! called the mother loudly.

He could hear her footsteps coming downstairs.

He had his hand on her underwear trying to pull it back up and she was trying to push his hand away and crying: No, no, no, no! when his sister opened the door.

That had been almost twenty years ago.

| 94 |

One night Smooth told that story to Tyler just as it had happened, but needless to say he had to elaborate upon the rich fresh animal odor of the little girl’s underpants, which approximated the steam-smell from meaty minestrone; and to Tyler’s mind this detail alone condemned the account as a lie, because how would Smooth have been able to sample and savor that smell without seeking it out? He didn’t consider the other equally plausible possibility that Smooth had incorporated this into the old memory, either on purpose, to twit Tyler and amuse himself, or inadvertently over the years, confusing what had really happened with what might have happened, or with what had happened with other little girls who had either liked him, or not.

| 95 |

The next time Tyler saw the Queen, he was looking for a parking place near Eight-Fifty Bryant, where an industrial job required him to check the recent court records of one Earl J. Simmons; and because the police cars had taken every available spot he started round the block, assuming that he would probably have to complete the circle for nothing and then go a different way, when he spied Our Lady whispering into the tall man’s ear in a doorway. The tall man noticed him right away (and once Tyler got to know him he would learn that the tall man never, ever forgot a name or a face). Tyler saw him touch her shoulder and point. She was wearing cheap dark wraparound sunglasses. There was a car behind him, but Tyler rolled down the window and waved. The Queen smiled. Her left hand rose to her cheek, and tilting her head, that gaunt, strange, small woman fluttered her little finger at him in a discreet wave.

| 96 |

That’s it, that’s it! Irene used to laugh when Mrs. Tyler made the dog twitch. There she goes! Oh, Mugsy!

She’s had these spots for a long time, said John. Maybe it’s from where they took out her ovaries or something. There’s something remaining. Are you a cutie? You’re happy, eh? You’re happy.

Fondly he scratched the old dog. John was very good to dogs.

That had been last year. Today Mugsy was at the vet. She had bone cancer, his mother said.

His mother was lying down resting. He felt so sad, so lonely and sad, so sad, watching the silhouettes of trees on the lawn across the street slowly join the darkness. Not so far away, he heard a long freight train.

The newspaper said that somebody else had gotten shot in Oak Park. The newspaper said that Wall Street was worried about the impending economic recovery because if there were more jobs, stock prices might go up, which would be bad for certain Fortune 500 companies, he didn’t understand why.

He went to see if his mother needed anything, but she was asleep, so he got into his car and drove to the Torch Club to have a beer. John had always been more partial to the Zebra Club, which was a jock kind of bar where to triumphant hurrahs the bartenders breast-squeezed pubescent girls on their birthdays and then poured double shots of the young things’ favorite concoctions down their throats as a reward; doubtless they weren’t allowed to do that anymore. Tyler didn’t care either way; John had been one of the hurrahers. But who knew what kinds went into the Zebra Club these days? Tyler found himself driving past, peering into the open door. He couldn’t see anything but he heard happy lustful shouts.

One good thing about Sacramento was that it was always easy to park. He stopped to get a quick shot of Scotch.

The President can’t be acting alone, said the man on the next stool. Who pulls his strings?

Which ones? said Tyler, thinking about Irene.

Who pulls the President’s strings? I’m asking you a question, guy.

The man was very drunk, angry and red in the face. Tyler pretended to give the matter due consideration and then concluded agreeably: Must be the Trilateral Commission.

No! the man roared, lunging. Tyler sidestepped him and tripped him. The man’s head hit the floor hard, and he lay there.

Why don’t you take a walk, guy, said the bartender. I’ll deal with this.

All right, said Tyler.

He went out and wondered what it was that he hoped for from the Queen. Expectation was growing in his heart. He had the feeling that he might be capable of change after all, and the thought of becoming different from what he was refreshed him so deeply that at this fatal moment he agreed with himself that it hardly mattered whether he were to change for the better or for the worse. But what did the Queen have to do with any of it? Suddenly he felt the the breath of evil was on his neck, and he walked down the street shuddering.

He went home and ate low-fat yogurt with his mother, then slept. In the morning he drove to the vet’s to get Mugsy. The dog stank of death. She could barely raise her head.

Well, Mom, it doesn’t look good, he said.

You have to expect those things at Mugsy’s age, his mother said, scarcely looking at him.

Last year, or maybe the year before, Irene and his mother had been lying together on his mother’s couch. John’s sleek little laptop computer glowed on the dining room table, while Tyler sat very slowly picking at his fingernails and staring at the moisture on a cold bottle of beer. The dog pillowed her head in his mother’s lap. Irene said: Mom, what would you do if your dog wasn’t around?

Maybe kiss John and Henry, laughed Mrs. Tyler, but since they’re only interested in working…

Irene smiled, rubbing her eyes.

| 97 |

On that second night, Dan Smooth was at the Torch Club, too. It seemed that one couldn’t get away from Dan Smooth.

Buy you a beer, boy? said the pervert.

You must be feeling flush, said Tyler. Sure, go ahead. I’ve made about two hundred dollars in the last month and a half.

I bet you were just reading about the economic recovery and feeling envious because you knew it didn’t include you. Isn’t that how it was, Henry? Isn’t it?

Come to think of it, Dan, how about if I buy my own beer? And after I pay for it, you can stay here and I’ll go to the Flame Club.

I think he likes me! Smooth stage-whispered to the bartender, who shrugged.

Tyler drank his beer steadily, looking away.

Sunflower woke up, said Smooth.

And then went back to sleep for good, huh?

She wanted it, Hank.

I get it. I don’t know if I agree with it but I get it.

And did you see the Queen again, or didn’t you see the Queen?

Yeah, I saw her. She waved one finger to me.

That means she likes you.

Everybody likes me, Dan, even you. I have so many friends, I keep trying to make enemies.

You know what, Hank?

I prefer to be called Henry, not Hank.

You don’t like me, do you, Henry? Smooth was saying in his wearisome way. Did you know that you just misquoted the old proverb.

I like you fine as long as we stick to business. But we don’t have any business right now, which is why I’m going to the Flame Club.

See you there, said Smooth, rising as if to accompany him.

Tyler sat down, narrowing his eyes. — I never had my very own stalker before, he muttered.

So how can we make your sister-in-law into business? asked Smooth with a cruel smile. I helped you out, you see, and so now I get to sock you in the balls — metaphorically, of course. Did your sister-in-law’s cunt turn you on? Did it have that kind of mohawk pattern of little black hairs that so many Asian women’s cunts have? You know how they shave — well, the whores, anyway. They worry about bikini lines in Asia. Now, me, I’ve always thought that bikini lines have their charm — as zones, you know. I like to see those little black hairs peeking out. It happens sometimes, and it’s even sweeter when the woman’s not aware of it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, said Tyler. Your filth gets pretty boring after a while.

Fine. Did you fuck her or not?

Maybe I’ll just go home. If you park in our driveway, that’s trespassing, but if you want to sit in your car and watch the house from across the street, there’s not much I can do. But I’m going to pull the blinds down. You won’t be able to see anything.

Henry, answer the nice man. Did you do your sister-in-law or not?

How many little kids have you popped, Smooth?

It’s childish, you see, to answer a question with a question. And just because you’ve met the Queen twice doesn’t mean she trusts you. I could put in a bad word about you if I felt like it…

And so what if you did? What do I care if the Queen trusts me or not?

You tell me, Henry. But if I want to get you, I’ll get you.

Is that a threat, Dan? I know how to deal with people who threaten me.

Now things are going ugly, Henry, and I don’t want that. I never dreamed of offering you physical violence. But you keep going out of your way to hurt my feelings. Put yourself in my place, Henry. Ask yourself how you’d be feeling.

Aw, he’s going to take his bat and ball and go home. Hey, I did some homework on you, Smooth. I heard about how you raped your own niece a few years back. Now I know why they call you Dan Smooth. At least you don’t use sandpaper. Do you use petroleum jelly when you break ’em in? People like you should be stood up against a wall. You’re a loser, Smooth, a sick, half-wit pervert. Oh, I admit that I’m a loser, too. The crazy whore was right. That shithead Brady was a loser. All I do is hang out with losers.

That’s my little optimist. (Bartender, one more round each, please. Here’s four dollars.) Does it get you hard to deprecate yourself? Does it, Henry? Does it?

Tyler rubbed his grey forehead, turning away. — Thanks for the beer, but I think you and I are through now, Smooth. I know that I owe you a favor. Anytime you want to call it in, call it in. But isn’t it kind of a waste to call it in just by making me listen to you flap your stupid ugly mouth?

Maybe we could be friends, said the older man with a sudden pleading look. I told you I saw that Mark of Cain on your forehead right away, that loser’s mark. You saw it on me. And right now the Queen’s brought us together, but she’s not going to be around forever. You don’t know yet what happens to the Queen.

Tyler leaned on one elbow on the bar. — So that’s what you want, huh? he said with a sour grin. You really want me to be your buddy? For how long? What’s the minimum time I can get away with? And do I have to start this very evening, or do you take rain checks?

Yes, Henry, I know you hang around prostitutes. But you’re not really one of them. When you pretend to be, you just act like a barbarian.

I guess that’s what keeps getting in the way of any possible friendship, Tyler said. You keep condescendingly defining my life, and you also enjoy irritating me by slashing at my privacy. And that pisses me off.

I think you’re implying that I should be more sincere. Well, Henry, maybe I’m sincere, but I just adopt a frivolous tone to protect myself.

Like when you talk about eating kids’ earwax.

Oh, I’ve done it, Henry. You can trust me there.

Yeah, all right. And this morning I took a crap, but I don’t have to go around telling other people about it.

Why not, Henry? I’d love to hear.

As long as we’re being sincere, I guess I believe that that’s true, and it kind of bothers me that it is.

Why does it bother you? You’ve never done anything to bother people?

I couldn’t say that, said Tyler with an almost jeering laugh.

Well then.

But if I do something that I don’t think other people will like, I keep it to myself.

If you needed to deal with me for business you could deal with me?

Sure.

And you have dealt with me. So that proves that you can deal with me, fellow Canaanite. You remember what happened to the Canaanites, don’t you?

Let’s see, said Tyler. Yeah. Yeah, I remember now. The Chosen People exterminated them all, or something like that. Moses got the word. No, they must not have exterminated them all, or there wouldn’t be all those car bombs in the Middle East.

You might be surprised, said Smooth, but I study the Bible a good deal.

No, I’m not surprised.

I know the Bible fairly well. Not just the New Testament, but the Old Testament, too, the real stuff, where God doesn’t hide His naked cruelty behind His Son. Do you believe in the Bible as literal prophecy?

Why, no, Dan, I don’t.

That’s good. I’m glad you’re not a fanatic, Henry. Well, the Queen is quite the little believer. It’s one of her sweetest qualities. (I could talk about the Queen endlessly, by the way.) Maybe that’s why I want to be your friend. I love to talk about my Queen, but I’m supposed to keep her secret, so you’re the only one.

Tyler waited.

I picked up my habit of Bible study from her, the older man continued. She’s a Canaanite, too, you know — did I tell you that? Sometimes I repeat myself. And she’s a witch like the Canaanites were — Baal, Moloch, you name it, she prays to it. I guess that’s why she knows so much about the future. I can see from your expression that you’re just being polite and you don’t really give a rat’s ass about that stuff. Well, that’s fine. But you did come on to me, and you came on to the Queen, and so I suppose you want to study us as if we’re bugs — or study her, at least. Read your Bible, Henry. That’s the best way to know the Queen. That’ll make her happy. And you don’t have to take any of it literally if you don’t want to. Now, as for us Canaanites, well, from our Queen we know that the Chosen People are coming to wipe us out. We may have a few car bombs ready, but I’m sorry to say that eventually they will wipe us out, because we’re the losers. Call it an analogy if you want.

Let’s see, said Tyler. The Canaanites sodomized little kids, too, didn’t they? And burned them alive?

You’re going nasty on me again, Henry.

Fair enough. But it’s true, isn’t it? I’m sorry.

That’s better, Smooth said with satisfaction. That’s the first time anybody’s said sorry to old Dan Smooth in quite some time.

All right. And if it pleases you, I’ll be sincere with you, as long as you’re sincere with me and don’t try to drag anything out of me.

Oh, so it’s not a reciprocal thing, Henry boy? You give me one thing and I have to give you two things?

I won’t try to drag anything out of you, either.

But that’s not fair. I’m loquacious, Henry.

Okay then. Did you feel any remorse when you ruined your niece’s life?

Would you believe that I never touched her?

No.

You’re good. I send lots of love your way. Would you believe that whatever I did to her she wanted?

No.

Well, would you believe it if in return I promised to believe whatever you told me about Irene?

Don’t say her name to me, sonofabitch. I never want to hear that name on anyone’s lips. It hurts too much.

I’m the Queen’s minister of foreign affairs, you know, Henry. Well, one of them. And if I make a recommendation to her about you one way or the other, she’ll probably listen, because she likes me and she doesn’t have envious ears, you see. I distinctly heard you ask her for help. Do you believe in the Queen?

Tyler hesitated. — I don’t know, he muttered. When I see her, I believe in her, in something about her. When I’m away from her, I think it’s all bullshit.

You’re honest, Henry. I like that.

Thanks, Dan. I aim to please.

Spoken like a good whore.

Something else we have in common. We both have a soft spot for Domino.

Ah, said Smooth.

I’m not in love with that girl but I kind of like her. She’s so out there.

She’s had a hard life.

What got her started?

Well, it was very… She was found not guilty, but another judge found her guilty of violating her probation, so first he threatened her with prison, then he stuck her in a drug program, and she ran away…

How old was she then?

Fourteen.

That’s a shame.

You’ve noticed that I never asked why you were looking for the Queen?

Yeah, I noticed.

Then trust me now. Go on, drink that beer. What are you really up to?

I don’t even know myself, Tyler sighed. When it started, I thought that guy Brady was just a sucker and I could give him some thrills and get some money out of him without doing any harm. I never thought there was a Queen. But after a while he half convinced me, and then he canned me. And so I lost my reason for looking for the Queen. No money anymore. Then Irene died, and I needed something to do.

That’s how it is for me with children, said Smooth. It’s just something to do, although now I don’t think I could stop it, even if I were castrated. You heard about this new chemical castration bill they’re debating up here?

Dan, just what do you do with those kids?

Whatever. But only if they want it. I swear that by God and by the fires of all my little idols. And tell me, why do you think Mr. Brady wants to meet our Queen so much?

Oh, he can pay big. Not that I ever got much of it. He wants her for some sex act.

He’s the Chosen One, you see, Dan Smooth explained. He’s come to burn us all out of Canaan.

| 98 |

Silently he opened a Bible, drew his slender forefinger down Psalm 106, verses 34–39:

They failed to exterminate the peoples,

as the Lord had ordered them,

but rather married with the nations

and followed their ways.

They served their idols,

which entrapped them.

They offered up their sons

and their daughters to the demons,

poured out innocent blood,

the blood of their sons and daughters,

whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan;

and the land was polluted with blood.

Thus they became unclean by their acts,

and played the harlot in their doings.

| 99 |

At Ocean Beach, where Taraval Avenue ended, it was smoky and foggy that night. A small crowd stood around a bonfire which trembled and shivered behind a windbreak of wooden flats. The revelers, who were pretending to enjoy themselves (it was a solstice celebration) were shaking with cold. Sparks scuttered across the sand. Tyler stood on a street-level dune, looking down at them; their smoke stung his eyes. Behind them the dark ocean twitched.

He had never taken Irene here, and yet in his heart the place was somehow associated with her. The night that she and John had come to his apartment for dinner — how long ago now? — and Irene had insincerely praised the overcooked chicken (he burned it! his brother had jeered in reply. Henry, you’ve got to get married!), he’d remembered the lovely red and white herringbone stripes of some codfish fillets he’d seen just that day in Chinatown; he should have bought those instead, but the truth was that he had never cooked a storebought fish in his life. As a boy he’d caught the occasional trout or sunfish up in the gold country; he’d cleaned them and roasted them on sticks over campfires with the other boys; but seafood had made only exceptional appearances in his mother’s home. Those had been the days when — for inland white Americans, at least — the thought of fish conjured up, at best, deep-fried frozen fish sticks dipped in tartar sauce; they’d smelled like wet dogs. The truth was that he’d gone by one of those markets on Grant Street, expressly to please Irene, and for a long time had observed the white fish-balls, the yellow scallops, the tentacle-crowned carrot-colored balloons of marinated octopi (how to characterize those in a details description report?), the pouting-lipped carp so fresh they still jumped in the balance pans, the black and white X-patterns of cod-skinned provender, the reeking raw conches on their beds of dripping ice — and immediately had become apprehensive of doing the wrong thing, of buying something that was no good, or cooking it wrongly so that it would taste foul not only to him and to his unpleasantly outspoken brother but also to Irene — and, after all, nothing tastes as bad as bad seafood. So, in the end, like many another politician, he’d fallen back upon mediocrity, and satisfied no one, either. Given his occupation, we can hardly accuse him of following always the pattern of safe thinking — although, indeed, what else should we have expected Tyler to do while walking a dangerous path, but to tread cautiously? As it happened, his undistinguished culinary efforts had been effective far beyond his imaginings; for Irene, seeing the dull red flush upon his neck and face when John insulted the chicken’s flavor and presentation, had immediately understood to what extent their awkward host had labored to the limit of his abilities, and pitied him — a pity no less sincere for her laughter on the drive home, when her husband apostrophized Henry’s dinner in picturesquely emphatic terms. Of course Tyler never knew of her feelings, not daring to raise a subject as potentially odorous as golden-red fish blood curdling on day-old ice; so after washing the dishes he drove out to the ocean, stood upon the sand, and indulged in feeling sorry for himself. He pretended that she was standing in the wave-shallows, that she smiled at him and (the goal of many a pervert) understood him. And yet, while the continuation of Irene’s heartbeat might not be an indispensable precondition to such fantasies, her death, precisely by universalizing her absence — he could not merely pretend that he wouldn’t see her in his apartment anymore; he’d never see her anywhere, never, never! — thereby legitimated his playing the game in any spot that he chose. All San Francisco belonged to her now, and Sacramento, too — and Los Angeles, of course, especially Forest Lawn… But not just Forest Lawn. Thus the magical energy of that spot began to decay.

| 100 |

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

| 101 |

They were underneath the Stockton tunnel that night, Smooth had said. He took Tyler down the dripping passageway to where the tall man waited, and then there was a room where a woman’s naked straining back pulsed, the vertebrae alien eruptions held in by frantic fingers.

Hello, Sapphire, he said.

L-l-luh… gurgled that pale masklike face.

In the corner, he saw long arms, long legs scrabbling.

Like these visitor fees, a toothless old transvestite was saying. The Seville where I stay, that place hits up my tricks for ten bucks every time. Not five bucks, but ten bucks. And I don’t really care, Maj, ’cause it’s out of the trick’s pocket, not mine, you know? I’m making money and they’re making money. But the other day I brought my girlfriend in, and they wanted to charge her a visitor fee. So I went ballistic. I said: She’s a friend, not a date, and I’m not making any money off her, and what you’re doing is illegal, so if you want to call the cops you can but if I go to jail then you’re going to jail with me.

Then what?

Then they said, okay, forget it.

Okay, said the Queen. So you don’t really have a problem.

But it’s not right, Maj! They shouldn’t be trying to—

All rightie. What hotel you say it was?

The Seville.

Oh, that place. Can you remember this, Justin?

Yeah, said the tall man.

Okay, Libby. We’ll take care of it. Now run along, sweetheart. Queen’s got other things to do.

The Queen slipped her arm around Smooth and whispered something in his ear. Smooth opened his mouth wide until his tongue and palate became bulging cushions of mirth.

Oh, cut the crap, Smooth, the Queen laughed. Henry, the things he says about you and me. Your ears should be burning.

Seeing a familiar blonde and sullen face behind her shoulder, Tyler said with a wink: Well, maybe they are. I bet you said I was a misogynist, didn’t you, Smooth? That’s what Domino always says.

Who the fuck are you? said Domino. I never saw you before in my life, cocksucker, so where do you get off using my name?

Honk three times whenever I need you, Tyler said. Just like in the fairy tale. Oh, no, it was four times, wasn’t it? And you have a motorcycle scar on your leg.

All right, Henry, the Queen said. What’s the point?

The point is that I paid her good money to bring me to you and she took my money and said she didn’t know anything. I saw her watching me, too. Was that your policy at the time, Maj?

Oh, now they got you callin’ me Maj, too, said the Queen. That’s nice.

I don’t even remember you, Domino said. But it sounds like you were one of my johns. And it sounds like you were a misogynist, all right. And I just did as I was told. And what’s more, if I ripped you off, you just take your place in line before you complain about it. Anyone who would pay to have sex with a woman who has no options deserves to get ripped off. What’d I do, steal your watch or something? No, you’re wearing a watch…

Now, Domino, that’s no way to do business, said the Queen. Maybe I was raised different. Some of you people just don’t show no respect, and that’s no way to run a business. ’Cause that’s what we’re out here doing, Domino, and I’m talkin’ to you. People wanna be nice to you, you wanna give ’em the same courtesy back.

Queen tells it like it is, said the tall man.

Aw, go to hell, Maj.

All right, Domino. We’ll take this up later. Why don’t you go someplace else to be nasty? Now, Henry, excuse me, but it’s been a long night so far and lookin’ like it’s just gonna get longer and longer. What can I do for you?

Oh, I just kind of came by.

That’s nice.

What kind of pudding is in here? whispered Smooth, patting the Queen’s breast.

Plum. Plum pudding, child.

What kind is in here? asked Smooth, reaching between her legs.

Coconut.

Are you my Ocean Queen or my Chocolate Queen?

Both.

Now he’s jealous, laughed Smooth. Tell me, Ocean Chocolate Queen, is Henry jealous of us or not?

That would be private and confidential, said the Queen.

Tyler stared at her, somehow hypnotized by her sagging, used-up face.

| 102 |

Here’s my business card, said Tyler.

Thank you, said the Queen. Oh, you gave me two.

So I did, he said.

He took the extra one back, not touching it where she had touched it, and returned it to the little metal box in his shirt pocket.

Why don’t you keep ’em in your wallet? asked the Queen.

The condoms leak on them, said Tyler, and the Queen chuckled and shook her head.

When he got home he gloved himself in latex, opened the box, laid the card down on his glass slab. He had used the business card trick several times. The cards were imprinted on lightweight plastic sheets — a special order which had cost him an extra ten dollars. This nonabsorbent surface was an almost ideal base for latent fingerprints. Whirling the fingerprint brush between his hands as he pressed down on it so that the bristles fanned out into a configuration not unlike those at car washes, he worked it into soft readiness. Then with a plastic spoon freshly washed in rubbing alcohol and rubbed dry he sprinkled a pinch of fingerprint powder onto the business card — not too much, because that would have darkened the print excessively. Then, holding his breath, he caressed the brush across the card in a series of light passes, and brought to light the Queen’s finger-whorls, alternating white and black, like the wood-grain of German expressionist block prints. Now he could work more finely, and traced his gentle brush along her ridge-tracks, bringing his face down near the places she had touched and slowly allowing air to issue from between his lips, purging the unneeded fingerprint powder. Next for the fingerprint tape. Good cops needed only five or six inches, but he allowed himself eight, tacking down one end to the glass slab and then pressing his thumb along the rest of the tape until it lay flat and firm upon the first sharp print. He recognized his own prints (central pocket loop) and didn’t tape them over. Here was another whorl print, so he taped that. Then he reversed the card and powdered it. There were again the recognizable whorl prints, these somewhat smudged from contact with the adjacent business card, but he taped those anyway. Then he dropped the card into a plastic bag.

He called up a detective he knew, but the detective had been transferred or quit, as it seemed.

This is Henry Tyler, he said to the detective’s replacement. Who’s this? Let me see… — He snapped his fingers. — You must be Detective Collins. Didn’t we meet at the policeman’s ball last year?

You have a good memory, said the woman with her trademark chirpiness. He remembered her as a trademark passive-aggressive bitch. — Now, Mr. Tyler, I’m very busy, and the whole office is swamped. What do you need?

Gosh, that’s funny, said Tyler in wonderment. I’m swamped, too. Fancy that!

I’m sure you are, said Dectective Collins, the angry edge already in her voice.

I was wondering if you could run a check on a set of latents for me, said Tyler. That would really be helping me out.

Does this have anything to do with our jurisdiction, Henry? asked Detective Collins with bitter alertness.

No, it would just be a tremendous favor to me.

Well, Mr. Tyler, as I just explained to you, we’re quite swamped around here. We’re in the midst of a major investigation.

Yeah, I get that, but—

Well, sir, it’s not going to happen, the woman said, irritation in her voice. I don’t even come in until ten o’clock, and I work until seven or eight.

You’re the best, Detective Collins, said Tyler cheerily. I certainly understand your situation, yes siree. Detective Collins, I want you to know that I am your slave.

Sighing, he unpeeled the tape and wrapped it around another business card. Then he got the magnifying glass and looked at the index fingerprint to get the secondary code. A ridge count of nine: inner loop, then. Now for the sub-secondary. He didn’t have both thumbs, so he couldn’t get the major division. He counted ridges on the thumb print, to get a partial key, then computed the second sub-secondary.

The phone rang.

She knew what you’re doing, said Smooth. Our Queen’s no fool.

Tyler grimaced.

Have you got a match yet?

Detective Collins was not disposed, said Tyler drily.

Oh, she’s a piece of work, said Smooth. She doesn’t like pedophiles, either. Let me give you another number. This is Detective Roy Gardner. No “i” after the “d.” You can mention my name.

You’re an amateur, said Detective Gardner, inspecting Tyler’s tentative alphanumeric fractions. Well, you got the whorl group right. Secondary and sub-secondary correct. All right. Leave this with me and call me tomorrow.

No match, said Gardner happily on the following day. She’s not in our files. She’s not in the FBI files, either.

| 103 |

What’s your name again? said the tall man.

You know my name, said Tyler.

What’s your name? said the tall man.

Henry.

I don’t want no trouble, said the tall man. You wait here and I’ll see if she want to talk with you.

Tyler scratched his chin and said: While we’re at it, Justin, what’s your name?

Aren’t you the wiseass.

Alone now, Tyler sat in that world-famed rendezvous, the Wonderbar, and beside him sat his fears.

The tall man returned and said: Not today. We all got too much shit goin’ on today to show you any heart…

| 104 |

That night Tyler was sad, and Smooth dreamed that his niece Darcy was a small child again, and that it was Christmas and he had given her a doll which resembled her. Suddenly he saw that Darcy had crawled into the fireplace and was silently convulsing and burning on the coals. He rushed up, removed the screen, and reached in with his bare hands to save her. His arms burst into flames. When he pulled her out, he found that it was not the real Darcy at all, but only the Darcy-like doll, which Darcy had rejected and thrown into the fire.