The Royal Family

| 117 |

At four-thirty, suddenly the stream of bending knees, clicking high heels, straining sweaty throat-tendons began to increase, which is to say that it actually became a stream instead of a collection of episodes. Tired secretaries finishing the early shift, a few with shopping bags as well as briefcases (they must have gotten out even earlier, and run to a department store, a health food store or a record outlet — or had they done the deed at lunch hour?), were now reinforced by plump men with belt pouches, dependable beetle types. But as late as a quarter to five, the newspaper vendor was still basking against his kiosk, drumming his pallid fingers, resting his feet upon a plastic crate. Then the next wave of homegoers, more dense and urgent than the first, formed from everywhere, like scattered raindrops from the skyscrapers on high, joining together according to a single law even though each drop strove to be blind to all the others. They were all bipeds; their internal organs were similar, and they were going the same way. Yet they insisted on their uniquenesses and specificities. And in this I think they were correct even as they flowed together, some of them even running to join the mass, running down the clanking metalled stairs. But still the old newspaper vendor only grinned and gaped and wisely picked his fingernails. His hair was as blindingly white as the metal temples of his spectacles. He understood very well that this was just the beginning, that his time was not yet. Sour-breathed office workers descended, then came the first bigshot, a suit man, a necktie man. He was a man with a comfortable leather briefcase which exhaled the smell of mild nonconformity. I pegged him for either a lawyer or a high-priced psychiatrist (post-Freudian). Seeing him, the newspaper vendor got to his feet. He cleared his throat and began to cry out the headlines just as the next wave came upon him, a torrent as of glossy beetles. I was once one of these. I remember being tired, hoping for a seat on the streetcar, wanting to get home, dreading the effort of making dinner, knowing that the day was already gone because there was not much left in me, so I’d have to sleep early; maybe I’d read a page or two, or make a phone call; then I’d lie down “for a minute” and at seven in the morning the alarm would buzz in the harsh insect language which ruled me because I must now become a beetle again. Why must one be ruled? Because in the morning and at night, the financial district expands in all directions, following municipal routes. The intersection of Church and Duboce streets, for instance, which at other hours belongs to another neighborhood, suddenly becomes one of the financial district’s vacuum cleaner hoses, which sucks up busloads of beetles into its darkness. At night it becomes one of many gas-jets discharging sweating, burning beetle-atoms all over the city. For this is the entrance to the subterranean realm, whose walls are now graffiti’d much more than I remember them to have been when I myself was a reinsurance drone rushing anxiously toward the financial district every morning, hoping that my streetcar would not stall in the tunnel and make me late. I was a beetle, and how could I not be? If I were late, I would be in trouble. If the streetcar stopped, or if, already overloaded with beetles, it passed me by without opening its doors for me, I began to worry and seek my watch, calculating that if help, movement, came within seven minutes I still had a chance of not being late. I could not think of anything else. I was afraid to lose my job. The evening rush hour, even if still subjecting its participants to the laws of beetledom, was less harsh. Among the beetles I saw women wearing name tags and blood-red blazers, secretaries in black miniskirts, an ambiguous-status man in a loud tie, and they were tired; duties awaited them at home, but home was not work. If they lagged a little, or went twenty paces out of their way to buy a newspaper from the old vendor, they would not be burned for heretics. Now the five o’clock wave had struck, and its emerald dresses, its blowdry hair, and its neckties with diagonal grey stripes like subway tracks created a more formal impression. This wave took substance from the salaried workers. By five-thirty, business suits positively set the tone, and instead of beetles I spied many elegant benevolences chatting with the newspaper vendor, who, pop-up oracle, was explaining to them all the secrets of life, interspersed with horse-racing tips. (You want my tip? Don’t bet on the horses.) Meanwhile, of course, the rush went on, and among its foaming vectors I began to glimpse recurrent subspecies: executive secretaries in goggle-like Italian sunglasses, misfortunately ill-timed tourists trying to unfurl their maps, friends and lovers (some of these comprising the adulterers whom Tyler stalked) touching shoulders, office-gossipers telling secrets, glasses-polishers who vaguely smiled, their neckties themselves as wide as smiles, and, darting among them, the bicycle messengers who kept the world running. There they all were on that bright and slanting artery, Market Street, with its buses, streetcars, and museum-escapee trolleys red and green humming through the web of blue-grey tracks. And then, just as I noticed an elegant businessman in a white shirt and shiny shiny shoes who was smoking in time with the beeping of a bus, I realized that it was six o’clock and that the seashell roar of departing humanity had dwindled; the tide was running out. The newspaper vendor sat back down on his crate, silent now, his face as blank as the file cabinets behind the dark green windowpane of Olde Discount Stockbrokers.

| 118 |

John had not yet departed the office. What use for him to hurry home? What use had there ever been, indeed? The bitterness of returning to an empty place did not perhaps greatly exceed the prior bitterness of entering a loveless one. He had always worked late in any event. When Joy and all his colleagues left, it was as if a certain banked and gentle flame within him suddenly brightened, warming, almost gilding his solitude. Every task became facile — or so it seemed while the hours flashed unobservedly by. Meanwhile, neither insults nor sorrows wrung his heart. A vague recognition of Celia struggled up to the surface of his mind, but she never expected him until late, and then only if he telephoned first. Hating crowds, longing to be the nucleus of a well-ordered zone, he worked comfortably all through rush hour, with brass-locked dark attaché cases bobbing past his window. Cigar smoke blandly perfumed the street. Mr. Singer, that solitary old law-tycoon with bald head bent, had long since stalked toward the Muni stop. Mr. Rapp’s wife had picked him up just as Irene used to do for John. At seven, wanting to stretch his legs, John wandered down to look at the green quotation numbers jaggedly positioned, crawling leftward above the world in the open door of the Pacific Stock Exchange. Catching a blue glimpse of the security guard’s belly protruding from behind a pillar, he smiled scornfully, then retraced his steps past the lovely honeycomb-reflections of tawny skyscrapers in the polished bays of other giants. — Working late, Mr. Tyler! observed the doorman cheerily. John tried to smile at the man. He needed to review Brady’s documents on consolidated leverage. He also meant to phone Celia.

| 119 |

On Steiner and Jackson by the park, there rose a small yellow three-storey house the foliage of whose trees had been lovingly pruned into compact green balls like certain fireworks at the initial stage of the burst when the green dazzle (which appears so unwholesome by day and so eerie, even sinister by night) was at its maximum, having not yet converted its fuzzy edges into full-scale rays. This was the steep sunny windy place. This was Pacific Heights with its trembling dandelions and sidewalk moving sales. Celia lived here. On week days she was there almost infallibly by six-thirty every evening. Her business card offered her name and telephone extension in small black capitals beneath the name of the firm, which marched in immense gold letters across a zone of regal purple. The first time he saw it, John pitied her. She was, however, considered a competent broker. Her policies, which, like John’s literary efforts for Rapp and Singer, were scarcely meant to be read by human beings, nonetheless seemed to renew themselves on time, and to be neat and somehow easy, because most of Celia’s clients liked her. Her voice, friendly, yet modulated by the requirements of her impersonal epoch, could often be heard emanating from her cubicle in a steady telephone warble. No one had any real fault to find with Celia, as we have already seen from her personnel file, but at a quarter past five she was rising, wishing her colleagues goodnight, that trademark scarlet purse hanging from her left shoulder. At five-twenty she was waiting at the bus stop for the number 1 California. (Unlike Irene, who’d been at least in part a southern California girl, Celia did not drive everywhere.) Although she had never articulated her sentiments even to herself, she felt somewhere deep within her that whatever forces controlled her place of business did not regard her life or happiness to be of the slightest importance. They could, if they chose, demand that she relocate to Minneapolis, or they could close down her division at half a day’s notice. Her father treasured up several such experiences, and her brother seemed to lose his job every two or three years. Granted that neither her father nor her brother had anything to do with the insurance business, Celia nonetheless believed that all such disappointments were of a piece. To her, and perhaps to many others in her generation, it seemed that the future would be worse than the present, that “stability” was a fantasy, and therefore that the proper way to live was to work decently and inconspicuously, for good compensation, and, while not foregoing retirement funds, to spend as much as possible of that compensation on movies, restaurants, “fun” clothes, nice furniture, a good view, and such indulgences. (I don’t want to be inspired by pain, she said to her friend Heidi. I want to be inspired by love.) If John’s self-distracting industriousness meant little to her, so did intellectual or spiritual seeking of any kind. It was not that she was incapable, only disinterested. Heaps of possessions and vacations adorned her life, and she went on toward the grave, neither happy nor sad. Credit card companies, mortgage brokers, long-distance telephone salespeople and resort profiteers continually solicited her. While she did not like them, they partially satisfied her anxious desire to be acknowledged. Every now and then she used her credit cards to buy things she could not really afford, and throughout the first or even second payment the satisfaction she experienced was almost sexual. Everyone she knew lived similarly.

She was a tall, pleasant-looking person with long reddish-blonde hair. She remembered Irene as wearing round glasses which made her look old, with her hair up. Irene had never liked to do anything with John. Celia suffered few doubts that she was prettier and more agreeable than Irene.

She had enrolled in the paralegal course less out of any interest in John’s profession than to prove to both John and herself that she was not one of those hapless easy girls who wait around by telephones. Another thing she did to fill the time was keep lists, the latest of which went:

apologize to CCK

apologize to Dean and Stacey

call Ellen to link template to Dean

get Sandy out of the loop?

finish first memo to Jerry

call John and ask him The Question

set up tutorial

When Irene died, she began to suffer from terrible nightly headaches which impaired her studies, so she ended them. She believed that she had a great deal to reproach John for; however, now was not the time to air her grudges, but to deposit them in her mental vault where they could earn compound interest. It had become her intention to marry John even though she had no faith that he or any man could be “right” for her. When she thought of him, she thought of compatibility, security, stylishness. Sometimes she thought of having a baby. All these supposed motives helped to conceal that brutishly simple craving for companionship which draws widowers to street whores, crowds to dictators, monks to God.

I can’t believe that Cardinal O’Connor, her brother Donald was saying on the phone. I detest that Cardinal O’Connor. He’s exerting control and that’s what I hate in religion. If you really look at him he’s a revolutionary. He wants to throw out ideas to change people and he wants to tell people how to do things. Give the mother the ultimate choice.

Just a second, Donny, she said. There’s a call on my other line. I think it’s John.

Well, what do you think about what I said?

Just a minute, Donny. I’ll be right back. Hello?

You’re busy, said John.

Are you coming over?

No fear of that for at least two hours, he said. Can you wait up?

I was going to make dinner for you. I guess I can eat alone…

Well, you’d better get back to your other call, he said. Who is it?

It’s my brother.

Tell him I can’t stand the ties he wears. Tell him I’ll take him to Donatello’s and show him how it’s done.

Oh, good grief, said Celia. See you.

Goodbye, said John.

John?

What?

Is something wrong?

I’m so glad that everybody keeps asking me that, said John, hanging up, positively grinding the phone into its cradle like some accolyte of mortar and pestle…

| 120 |

Rapp’s already fifty-seven. I don’t know what he’s going to do when he retires. Me, I’m counting the days, Mr. Singer had said to John that afternoon, scratching his baldness. — Three hundred eighty-nine.

I’m sorry, said John. Three hundred eighty-nine what?

Days, John.

John’s watch gleamed on his wrist at the edge of the white tablecloth. He raised his frosted mug of Sierra Nevada in a sort of toast and said: Well, Mr. Singer, we all have to reach that final deadline someday.

Ever the sentimentalist, John. Tell me this: Do you enjoy these private lunches?

Of course. By the way, the Brady contracts are almost ready for you to look at.

What do you mean, almost ready?

They’ll be ready on Thursday, unless Brady makes more changes.

Good, good. Brady’s definitely a live one. I know you take him out often on our nickel. Roland lives for private lunches, by the way. At least so he tells me. Mondays, lunch with Roland. Thursdays, lunch with John. See? I have it all here, right in my palmtop. It’s got a built-in deadline alarm, too. Does Roland confide in you?

I pretty much stick to my work, John replied. It’s no good getting confided in.

Do you feel as if you’re somehow in competition with Roland, John?

Well, you made me full partner. You didn’t make him full partner yet. I guess when you do, I’ll have to compete with him. For the time being, I ignore him.

You know, John, I really like you. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because you’re such an unreconstructed sonofabitch. You just don’t care. You’re a hard young man, and hard men get things done. Do you know who Heydrich was?

World War II was before my time, said John. I’m a know-nothing.

Come on, young John. Don’t let me down. What was Heydrich’s first name?

Reinhard. Do you want me to back-burner the tobacco deal so we can wrap up Brady? I have to tell you that he may insist on more changes.

What’s a meteope, John?

A rectangular slab above the architrave of a Doric temple. Can I go now?

Smiling a pink self-satisfed smile, leaning forward, Mr. Singer said: You know, Rapp and Singer have kept the same offices since ’67. That was when they still had cobalt at Walter Reed Hospital. I guess they mainly use electricity now. Sometimes cesium. I’m going through all that again with my sister. In ’67 it was my wife. You have a brother, don’t you, John? What would you do if your brother were in intensive care, waiting to die?

Pull the plug, said John. And I’m going to back-burner those tobacco people.

Mr. Singer had a trick — actually less than unique — of staring wide-eyed through his glasses into his interlocutor’s face and repeatedly addressing him by his first name, possibly because some book on business sincerity had advised it decades ago, or simply in order to retain the name in his memory. — Well, John, he’d say, it certainly was a tremendous disappointment about Reginald. He won’t be coming back. — I don’t suppose so, said John. — Mr. Singer leaned forward and took a deep breath, and John knew that the next word he would hear would be his own name.

John, he inquired, what does your brother do?

He’s a snoop.

A lot of attorneys don’t want to say after the Nader stuff that they’re using private eyes. But you have to do it, of course. Can you recommend him, John? We’d use him on your say-so.

My brother? Hell, I don’t know.

You said you’d pull the plug on him — hee, hee! Oh, yes, now I remember that he let us down that warehouse job. I’d forgotten about that. Or was he sick? Didn’t you tell me he was sick? Say something, John.

You were talking about cancer, Mr. Singer.

Cesium is what they use these days. At least that’s what they tell me. You’ve never had cancer in your family, have you, John?

Not yet, Mr. Singer. But there’s always a first time.

In my case, it’ll be the third time, if we count my wife. Of course a wife is not a blood relative.

John, of course, had no idea that just then Mr. Singer was remembering his young wife’s lonely moments before the mirror, searching for her first wrinkle, wanting not to find it, hoping that when it came her husband would say that it didn’t matter. Mr. Singer had caught her in front of the mirror almost every day when she was Irene’s age.

So you were diagnosed? said John, squeezing his napkin in his lap. Well, I’m very sorry to hear that. And your parents?

Auto accident. Are your parents still alive?

Yes, said John, knowing that by the rules of discourse Mr. Singer, by virtue of his unsolicited confession, was now entitled to pick and poke through John’s private life as he pleased.

You know, John, sometimes it helps to talk about these things. You understand why Rapp’s not here today?

Doctor’s appointment, said John, who knew everything.

When he heard my news, he got a scare. He went in for a checkup. They’re probably giving him the sigmoidoscope treatment even as we—

Raspberry venison and spicy mussel salad, said the waiter. Enjoy your meal, gentlemen.

He’s new, said Mr. Singer. John, is our waiter new?

I don’t think so. His face looks very familiar.

And how’s life, John?

Fine.

I know it’s a painful subject.

Nothing compared to the sigmoidoscope treatment, said John, and Mr. Singer laughed and from the first steaming blue shell-tomb extracted with little silver pincers the occupant, which he dipped in butter and laid softly upon a bed of noodles.

John, I’m going to ask Roland to help you with Brady.

Is that a vote of no confidence?

Not at all, not at all. But you and Roland need to learn to work together—

Ah, thought John to himself. That means that he wants to make Roland full partner. Of course Rapp might not agree. I wonder if I should go along with this or make waves…

Do you object?

All right. I object.

Then I won’t ask him. You see, I’m actually trying to help.

Noted and appreciated, said John through his teeth.

How are your in-laws coping?

They’re not really on my wavelength. We don’t keep in contact.

Ah. And how’s your mother?

Fine. Better, actually…

Why don’t you and your brother get on? Mr. Singer suddenly inquired.

Well, do you remember when I came to work with my left hand in a bandage? He slammed a car door on my hand.

And it wasn’t an accident?

Nope. Hank doesn’t commit accidents; he commits crimes.

Well, too bad we’re not in the personal injury business, said Mr. Singer with a wink, trying to be upbeat, although with John that was sometimes difficult.

| 121 |

It had been a hundred and seven degrees in Sacramento at noon on Monday when Tyler passed the sidewalk of unfriendly summer school kids who kept wiping their sweaty upper lips, and he turned into his mother’s driveway, whose hedges gave off the sour-bitter smell of malathion; his mother had been having problems with scale insects, so she went to Home Masters and purchased more of that poison sometimes used to commit murders, then went to work with her pump spray can. As soon as he got out of the car, his head began to ache, he wasn’t sure whether from the malathion or simply from the heat, to which he was no longer acclimated. His T-shirt stuck to his chest and shoulders. A truck went by, clothed with grafitti as so many of them were now. There was a sour-bitter taste in his throat. All auto doors locked, his duffel bag over his shoulder, Tyler approached the front door, hating Sacramento, and rang the bell.

The front door opened almost at once, offering him air-conditioned air with a sour-bitter odor. It was John.

Has Mom been going crazy with the pesticides again? said Tyler, concealing his surprise at this apparition.

Oh, so you can smell it, too? said John. Well, don’t just let the hot air in.

Tyler stepped inside, and John closed the door, a bit too quickly, he thought, a bit too loudly. The two brothers went into the living room. John sat down on the sofa, staring down at a water glass a quarter full of Scotch. Tyler went to the kitchen and got a bottle of fizzy water from the fridge. He was still carrying his duffel bag. He walked back to the front hall and set it down behind the umbrella stand. Then he returned to the living room, where John sat holding the untasted glass.

Where’s Mom? Tyler said.

You mean you don’t even know where Mom is?

No, I guess I don’t. How are you doing, John?

Fine. Mom’s chest pains got pretty bad yesterday. I just drove her to the hospital. I would have waited there, but she insisted that I come back here to let you in. It wasn’t as if I couldn’t have left you a note…

So that’s how it is, Tyler thought. He said aloud: Well, John, I’m here now, so should we go to the hospital?

It doesn’t matter now, said John vaguely, waving his hand.

Tyler inspected his brother closely. He said: John, are you drunk?

Let’s leave me out of this.

Leave you out of what? You always want to be left out, or have something left out, or — oh, forget it.

I could punch you in the face right now, John said. The glass trembled in his hand.

Tyler was so made — or had made himself — that any threat effectively depersonalized and professionalized him, lowering between himself and the world several thicknesses of bulletproof glass. He smiled mirthlessly at his brother and remained in place, watching for any indication of abrupt movement from this body which might possibly strike at him.

Oh, you goddamn coward, said John after a while.

Tyler continued to smile, saying nothing.

Now John raised the glass to his lips and gulped it. He grimaced. His shoulders slumped. Tyler, with his not inconsiderable knowledge both of his brother and of violent people, was satisfied now that there would be no open battle. There had not been for a very long time. Because alcohol makes possible the realization of certain ugly wishes which fear (politely known as reason) usually keeps locked away in the lowest iron corridors of the cerebellum, Tyler had experienced for several instants a sickening surge of dread, far surpassing the anxiety he’d felt at the news of their mother’s condition — not that he didn’t love his mother; nor was he at all, as John had intimated, a coward; but there had been a number of occasions when as children they’d bloodied one another’s noses; the antipathy between them was now so old that its causes were as lost to his knowledge as the creation of the world; he did not want to see it come out. Once while scuba diving he’d discovered within inches of him an anemone wriggling its tendrils, like any rotten apple upon whose top live and labor maggot swarms; and the sight of that actually inoffensive creature sometimes came back to him in dreams; his skull was the apple, and he did not want to feel the maggots of anger and hatred burst out. That was what he dreaded. And now, of course, Irene lay dead between them. When you swim up toward the surface of the sea you see a dimpled mirror of great sacredness; this is the goal of life and art and reason, to break through this barrier and leave the anemones once more invisible in the blue darkness; but on the other side one finds mosquitoes and weary heat; one goes to work and gets older; the anemones are still there, but they cannot come out; neither (more’s the pity) can the beautiful corals beneath the sea, or the schools of yellow fishes raining down headfirst; that was one of the reasons why Tyler continued to pursue the Queen of the Whores, because he was convinced that the secret tremendousness in which she lived would be lovely like that; and anyhow anemones inside other people’s skulls didn’t bother him; it was only his own that he feared; John’s anemones of course were Tyler’s.

Well, he said, should we call the hospital?

Let’s just go, said John. What’s the point of sitting around here? I’m drunk. I’m worried about Mom. You’d better drive.

| 122 |

They went north on Highway 160, passing the Chinese restaurant where less than half a year ago Tyler, John, their mother and Irene had come for sizzling shrimp and cashew chicken. It had been a round table they sat at, Tyler flanked on either side by his blood relatives (although since the table accomodated five there was, naturally, an empty place between the two brothers). By some coincidence he found himself directly across from Irene, who smilingly enjoyed the food.

You probably want another helping, don’t you? John said to her affectionately. You’d eat anything. You’re a vacuum cleaner. No wonder you’re getting fat.

Irene lowered her huge almond eyes.

John slipped an arm around his wife’s shoulders. Across the table, Tyler, electrified with jealousy, gazed into Irene’s averted face.

| 123 |

It’s not serious, the doctor said to John, Tyler being the less well dressed of the two. Has she been following her diet?

I’m sure she has, John replied. She takes very good care of herself. But I’ll have a talk with her. If Mom’s been naughty, I guess I’ll just have to lean on her a little.

Well said, well said! I can see that Mrs. Tyler’s in very good hands. Now, you’ll want to keep the air conditioning going while this heat wave lasts. That will make it easier on her heart.

He turned to Tyler. — And you are…?

The other son, Tyler said.

Oh, said the doctor, turning back to John. I can see she’s in good hands.

| 124 |

They passed the Chinese restaurant.

How are you feeling, Mom? said Tyler.

Not very well, honey. I want to lie down.

Nobody said anything. John looked gloomy and anxious. They got home and John insisted that their mother lean on his shoulder while he helped her into the house.

Can you make it upstairs, Mom? Tyler heard him saying.

Tyler poured himself a drink out of John’s bottle. Then, slowly, he went upstairs.

Can we go to the store and get you something, Mom? he said.

That’s already taken care of, said John sharply. Don’t tire her out.

Tyler leaned against the dresser, smiling sarcastically. Their mother was lying in bed looking at them both as if she wanted to say something.

You just lie there and rest, Mom, John was saying. We’ll take care of everything.

Have a good rest, Mom, said Tyler, a lump in his throat.

He went downstairs to wait for his brother. He finished his drink, which was very smooth and good; John of course bought nothing but the best. Again he wondered how much Irene’s coffin had cost.

John was still upstairs with their mother. Tyler stood up. He went to the kitchen to wash his glass. There was a saucer in the sink with bread crumbs on it, and he washed that, too, remembering a night a year or so previous when he and John and Irene had all been here for dinner and Irene had gone out to the kitchen to do the dishes. John was telling their mother some story about work. Had their mother been telling John a story, Tyler never would have chanced it, but since John had no greater listener than himself, and their mother came in a close second in that department, hanging, as always, on John’s every word, Tyler got up quietly and passed through the swinging double doors to the kitchen where Irene stood over the sink with her hands in detergent lather, and he slipped his arms around her from behind. He had meant only to embrace her about the waist, and it shocked him to find his palms had opened and were grasping her firm little breasts. Her nipples were hard against his hands. Irene continued to wash the dishes, not pulling away, not saying anything. He stood there like that with her for a moment, and then he let her go. She went on washing the dishes.

Leaning up against the refrigerator, Tyler had said: I wish I could have married you.

You’re so sweet, said Irene.

I wonder what that means, Tyler thought to himself.

He got a bottle of fizzy water for his mother, and one for John, and went back into the dining room where John’s story was still going on. When it had finished, John pushed the bottle away from him and said: And how was Irene, Henry?

Later, when John was in the bathroom, Irene came to him and laid her head down on his shoulder, and he stroked her hair.

He finished rinsing the glass and saucer. He thought to himself: After Mom dies, I don’t want to come back to this house ever again. It hurts too much.

He heard John’s footsteps, quick and sure, coming down the stairs. The booze must have worn off. He heard the steps in the living room, then he heard them come toward him.

How is she? he said.

You’re not thinking about Mom, said John, unsmiling. You never think about her. I know who you’re thinking about.

Should we go buy her some groceries?

All right, said John, slugging down a glass of cold water from the sink. I’ll drive.

Where are you parked?

Down by Mrs. Antoniou’s house. I left the driveway for you. There’s not enough room for both of us.

Tyler waved at Mrs. Antoniou, whom he saw peering at them from behind her tiny window in the front door. Her lawn was as unhealthily dry as always, and marred by crab grass. The Rosens next door always complained, worrying, perhaps, that crabgrass was as catching as crabs. Domino had had crabs. They got in the car, and John inserted the key. Something chimed, and their shoulder belts slowly whirred down. John fastened his lap belt, but Tyler didn’t. John frowned but didn’t say anything. Resting his chin lovingly upon his own left shoulder, John backed out of the driveway and swung the car’s hindquarters west. Then he shifted and let out the clutch.

How’s work? said Tyler.

Fine, said John.

You still working on Brady’s new company?

Oh, I told you about that? said his brother, surprised. That’s right; you were one of his clients.

No, he was one of my clients.

That’s what I meant, Hank. He came to us right after the Peterson case was resolved.

Pretty lucrative?

The Peterson case?

No, I meant Brady.

Very.

Listen, John. There’s something you ought to know.

Sour grapes, is it? said John with his usual quick intuition of Tyler’s worst motives. You want to backstab Brady because he fired you? I’m going to take us to Priceway.

Okay, fine, said Tyler.

So what should I know?

You know what Brady’s business is?

Of course I know. Are you saying I don’t do my homework?

It’s virtual girls, right?

Well, that and a lot of other things. Slot machines, restaurants, a family arcade. So what?

He may be riding for a fall. I’ve heard from at least one source that those girls are real, although I haven’t verified it. It’s forced prostitution and maybe worse, do you understand?

Yeah, you’d know about that, said John, steering. Look, Hank. Don’t worry your head about that. You’re way out of your depth.

Okay, John. I just don’t want you to get in trouble.

His brother laughed and laughed, so that Tyler could see the adam’s apple jerking and twitching. — That’s news, he finally said.

There was a long silence, and then John finally said in a tentative voice: About Brady, I…

You what?

Oh, forget it. Forget the whole thing.

There was another silence, and then John said: Well, are you willing to check him out for me?

What do you mean?

You’re a private eye, Hank. What do you think I mean?

We have access to this stuff, yeah, we’re licensed, and I maintain a lot of insurance. I really think if we don’t self-regulate the government’s going to come along and do it for us.

In other words, no.

Oh, I’ll do it. I’ve already done it. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. What do you want to know?

You’re telling me you won’t do it. You’re saying you won’t help out your own brother.

I never said that at all.

Then what’s all this crap about self-regulation? You think I don’t know a euphemism for no? You don’t have the guts to say no outright, do you?

You know, John, I’m tired of your crap, Tyler was shocked to hear himself say. I’m really tired of it. How long are you going to hold Irene’s death against me?

Let’s leave my wife out of this. Don’t ever let me hear you mention her name. You have no right to mention her name, do you understand me?

If you want me to leave her out, then don’t keep bringing her up. You’re the one who keeps making insinuations.

They sat there with trees and houses and street signs slowly passing them, and John’s throat jerked, and John said: You’re right. I admit it. Now tell me this. Did you ever go to bed with Irene?

No, John, I never did. I won’t deny that I kind of envied you…

You crooked bastard, his brother laughed.

What does that mean?

You know what it means, Hank. Hank the prick.

So you’re calling me a liar, John?

You were a liar before you came out of Mom.

I’ll let that one pass. Now, John, for the last time, I’m telling you that I never slept with Irene. Do you believe me or not?

Forget it, said John. We can have this out after Mom — after Mom’s better. We can’t stress out Mom.

No, I’m not going to forget it, Tyler said. We’re going to have this one out right now. Either you believe me or you don’t. If you believe me you’ve got to stop making those remarks, because I can’t tolerate them anymore. If you don’t believe me, John, then I guess I, uh, I don’t want to see you.

Is that a promise? I should be so lucky.

We can work out Mom’s care so that we don’t have to meet.

You feel pretty strongly about this, don’t you, shithead?

Okay, John, one week off, one week on. I’ll take the rest of this week being on call for Mom. If she needs me, I’ll come up. You take next week. She’ll like it better that way. It’s not good for her to see us—

Tell me about it.

So, will that fit into your schedule?

John made an illegal U-turn. — Let me drive you back to the house then, Hank, he said. You can get in your car and go back to the city right now. I’ll call you if there’s an emergency.

Oh, so you’ll take the rest of this week then?

That’s right. I’m already up here, and unlike you, some people have to work.

Let me give you some money for Mom’s groceries, said Tyler. Is forty bucks enough?

You can keep your goddamned stinking money, said John. Let’s make it Monday to Sunday. That way we each get a weekend.

Sure, John.

And another thing. Don’t let me catch you down at Irene’s grave anymore.

Tyler said nothing, but he reddened with rage.

Did you hear me?

I heard you, John. Why don’t you let me out here? It’s only a few blocks to Mom’s house. I’d really rather walk it.

John accelerated. He was doing almost fifty in a thirty-five mile an hour zone. He went through a red light. His face was the color of brick. Tyler felt extremely hot, and there was a hurtful tightness inside his ribs.

I said, did you hear me?

Cemeteries are public places, John, said Tyler with a deliberately goading laugh, and watched John grip the wheel harder with his right hand while his left hand became a fist and began to swing toward him as John’s face turned away from the road, and just then there came a yowling of horns and John’s eyes flicked rapidly back to the view ahead; they’d just driven through an intersection, and a police car was already coming with full siren.

You don’t want to hit me now, John, said Tyler. Not in view of a cop. That wouldn’t be good for your career.

John pulled over.

Not here, John, said Tyler. This is a bus zone.

He opened the passenger door and leaped out. John, murderous-eyed, began to reach toward him, so Tyler slammed the door on his hand. He heard his brother scream with pain, and instantly his gloating, furious joy became anguish.

| 125 |

O George Eliot with your garden parties, formal dinners, long leisurely meetings, family discussions; O Dostoyevsky (beloved of Mrs. Tyler) with your glittering-eyed train-companions listening to each other’s life stories, your wretched, teeming flats inhabited by souls intoxicated by quarreling and religion; I ask you, where have all the interlocutors gone? For there are more people than ever; and more strange worlds in San Francisco, which does itself comprise a world, than can ever be plumbed! And yet Tyler cogitates alone, as does his brother. Is it television that’s done it? Or is there some other reason why people just don’t talk to each other anymore? Granted, Dan Smooth is eager to talk; he has a longing to defecate his soul’s excrement upon the consciousnesses of others; and Mr. Rapp and Mr. Singer will both likewise unburden themselves to John if they are in the mood; Celia yearns for John to communicate with her; Mrs. Tyler checks in regularly with both her sons; Irene, perhaps, seeks to explain something from beyond the grave; all the same, when I peer into the sky-blue screen of the computer on which I compose this, I see all the way down to San Francisco where Henry Tyler himself sits alone. And so many people, too! Old Chinese with bowed, capped heads, wearing jackets the color of smoke, passed slowly, occluding the gratinged streetwall as Tyler sat wearily inhaling the scent of green tea, and static distorted the white legs of television baseball players into wriggling shrimp. Less rudely than indifferently the red-jerseyed waiter set his dinner down. Snow peas, miniature corn, and white chicken pieces shone with oil. Ten dollars. Outraged, he under-tipped. Although he had been to Chinatown with Irene, it force-fed him no sad associations, unlike all the worlds of coffee shops in Noe Valley, each with its own devotees and sidewalk benches, its courtyard cafés and restaurants, to several of which he had taken Irene, its liquor stores whose virtuously learned salesmen could unblinkingly explain the palate-differences between Caol Ila and Ardbeg; on those foggy, chilly summer days, women strode along rapidly with lowered heads; boys with boyfriends walked the dog. People were talking there; he was all wrong; there were no silences. A sudden rattle of a startled pigeon’s wings, and then a family gathering of smiling Chinese punctuated the day, above which the faux Jurassic terrariums of trees reflected in the watchful bay windows of two- and three-storey Victorians provided spurious greenery. A paramedic sat in his ambulance truck, the engine idling. He, or someone like him, had probably sat just like that while his colleagues brought Irene out.

Tyler drove down to Capp Street, but there were no women on the corner. Maybe there’d been a sweep, or maybe it was merely too early.

He drove to the Tenderloin and thought he saw Domino, but she disappeared into a hotel too quickly to be sure.

He drove down to Mission Street and parked at Fifth. Then he began to stroll aimlessly. Inside the new Museum of Modern Art building, which was striped with smooth black and rough grey stone, there was a Frida Kahlo exhibit, and a bespectacled woman said rapidly to her companion: All of her portraits deal with her pain and suffering.

This concept seemed to make the other woman very happy. — Go ahead, thought Tyler to himself. Go get empowered.

I guess she’s the patron saint of women, a sour man was saying to his buddy. In this show they relate to her through their menstruations or something.

Christ, he thought, I don’t know which of them is worse. Probably the guy, because he’s so obviously malicious, whereas Ms. Spectacles there is just a parrot. I guess I prefer parrots.

Then suddenly he recollected Domino on the bed in the Tenderloin hotel room. She’d complained about something and he’d sarcastically replied that this heart bled. — Of course, it always bleeds around now, he’d said. It’s that time of the month. — He began to sweat with shame when he remembered, admitting to himself that he was as boorish as anyone. But then defiance stung him and he thought: Well, she deserved it. She was so humorless and shrill. She kept asking me if I was a misogynist. She kept…

He went to the gift shop and bought his mother an exhibition catalogue.

The sour man was at the gift shop also. He wasn’t buying anything, anything. Tyler saw him spitefully fold down the page of a book, while the other man grimaced with mirth. He kept saying unpleasant things about women. Tyler started hating him. He wanted to feel tolerance or even compassion for the man, because hatred on such grounds really constituted hatred for himself. Tyler might not actually be, as Domino had labeled him in her catholic hostility, a misogynist, but he confessed his grey and nasty edges. The encounter with John had left him in a state of anxious irritation; he was not himself. He had a friend in Noe Valley who’d embarked on a program of self-improvement through meditation. Tyler asked whether meditation would in and of itself induce serenity (he had in mind the feeling he experienced when he sat inside the Roxie movie theater with its smell of stale popcorn, waiting for the commencement of some comfortingly ancient print of a European film about other people’s problems, with subtitles which would tersely recapitulate dialogue of a picturesque langorousness and sadness). The friend was of two minds about that. If one’s aim was to reach a higher spiritual level, the end result might be increased coherence, and thus perhaps decreased strain on the soul; but to get to that point, one would surely be required to rearrange oneself, which necessitated disequilibrium. It was obvious to Tyler that his relations with John were moving toward some permanent conclusion of honest mutual exposure. But what if that change were actually, as any superficial observer would conclude, a regression such as driving down the hill to Gough Street where it was low and dark with many weak stale lights? For that matter, one might propose as an example that same Roxie Theater, where he had once taken Irene to see “Queen of Hearts,” in hopes of holding her hand in the darkness. The movie had not yet begun. Tyler was already feeling serenity (mixed, to be sure, with pleasurable anticipation; he was hoping that Irene’s delicious palm might sweat against his at all the thrilling parts); however, some noisy boys with yarn in their long hair were sitting in the row ahead; and Irene, shocked, said to him: I’m just looking at those four people in front of me and they’re drinking hard liquor! — She was a little prudish; she could not enjoy herself after that. — Tyler’s friend had proposed that a graphic representation of travel from one spiritual level to another might well require many more than two axes, so that one might simultaneously be rising on one plane and sinking on another. The Gospels said that a seed could not flower until it had fallen into the earth and died. Tyler could not remember exactly how the parable had gone. He wished to know more about Christ, even if only to struggle against Him and clarify his own allegiance, which, as Dan Smooth had jeeringly insisted, might well be to the Canaanite idols. If he was satanic or ungodly or merely unbrotherly, wasn’t it worse to fog over the fact, pretending that he was still trying to be good? Although he still felt wretched whenever he recalled that hot afternoon in his mother’s living room with the reddish-brown blinds drawn against the sun and his mother asking whether he and Irene had betrayed John, his anguish contained a tincture, however pale, of relief. He had not obfuscated. He had quite simply and bluntly refused to answer her charges. It’s too late for that, he had said. No matter what he might fear or yearn for, month by month his existence was clarifying itself. The issue of Irene, rather than dissolving with Irene’s dead flesh, continually took on a more evident and permanent materiality. Irene no longer lay but stood, no, towered, between himself and his mother, between himself and John. Well, let it be so. Irene was the seed of Christ. She had died, and now she rose up bearing leaves and fruit like the grand old tree in his mother’s front yard. Tyler had not and would not contest anything. He would let all aspersions be. He would wait, and live, until the change within him was complete; then he’d know what to do.

But he was afraid. And his was one of those natures which do not cower, but bristle at a threat. He scorned to reply to his mother or argue with John, but he could not help feeling an aching resentment which narrowed his eyes and ground tooth against tooth within his mouth. The sour man at the gift shop, who probably was unafflicted by awareness of Tyler’s very presence, was flipping through the catalogue now, calling Frida Kahlo a man-hater, a vagina-centered mediocrity, a once-a-month artist. To the sour man, it seemed, no woman had a brain, and Frida Kahlo’s paintbrush was one with the tongues of the ice-cream-licking girls in the bright bay window of Rory’s Twisted Scoop. And Tyler was incensed. The reason, of course, was that the whole world incensed him just then, but seeing that would have entailed seeing his own absurdity, so it merely seemed to him at that moment that any slighting nastiness directed toward femininity must insult Irene’s memory. He craved Irene. Closing his eyes, he saw her once again. She had lost a little weight since her marriage and her skin was stretched tight over her cheekbones so that she resembled a pale, debauched skull. Round and round, round and round. He had nowhere to go.

I see you’re actually buying that catalogue, the sour man said to him.

I’m a misogynist, Tyler said. I’m just buying it to jerk off to.

The sour man, uncertain whether Tyler was on his side or instead a sarcastic enemy, remained silent. The sour man’s friend, more astute, glared.

The salesgirl took the catalogue out of Tyler’s hand to scan it through the red laser eye-beam beside the register and said: I heard what you said.

I’m evil, Tyler replied. But I do have enough money to pay for that. Yep, I’m a paying customer. I’m an American.

I think you’re disgusting.

Tyler could hear the sniggers of the two diabolical men beside him. He had struck a blow against feminism. He had come out on the side of Satan. They were sure that he was one of them now.

He turned around and said to them: I bear the Mark of Cain.

Then again they fell into a baffled silence.

You’re sick, said the salesgirl.

It was a clammy summer’s night in the Marina, lights frozen at the bases of harbor-masts. He went up Buchanan Street, and across from the Safeway met a bright window offering row upon row of massage chairs in an empty room. Near a dessert shop — yes, almost within reach of the fragrance of chocolate and steamed milk — he spied another parking garage, now closed, and peered down a long curvy greasy tunnel of light which passed beneath a round mirror, different only in scale from what the dentist always put in his mouth; then a right turn put an end to his seeing. The Queen could be there now; she could be anywhere. But no — why would she be here? This place was too far from the humid commerce she fed on. He sighed and trudged on, a little cold. Farther up the street, at Bay, a store of telescopes on tripods and binoculars in narrow glass shelves on the wall caught his attention; it had probably been closed for a good four or five hours now. Did John ever shop here? Tyler turned onto Bay and stood beneath the greenish foggy sky, on his left white flowers so bright and lovely and uncruel.

| 126 |

Oh, what a lovely catalogue! his mother said. Thank you, Henry. It looks as if it does full justice to the original. The colors are beautiful. What do you think of Frida Kahlo’s work?

I think it’s pretty good, but not as good as Diego Rivera’s, he said. I respect her.

It’s really quite moving, don’t you think?

Yes, I do, he said.

That was really thoughtful of you, his mother said. What a treasure.

Well, I’m glad you like it. How are you feeling?

A little weak, but not so… Henry, where’s John? I was under the impression that you were coming up with John…

| 127 |

And meanwhile John worked late at the office, beneath and among those great plaid and pulsing mirrors called skyscrapers. One time Chocolate, high on crystal meth, got chased out of the Tenderloin by the police, and when she came into the financial district it was rush hour with summer’s blue and gold peach-fuzz light on the skyscrapers, and a businessman in a multitude of businessmen marched crushingly toward her; Chocolate’s eyes could not let go of his face. — That man’s a skyscraper! she thought crazily. — He’s so tall and wide and rectangular! He’s shouting something about smoking cigars with his friends… — And indeed at that hour all the skyscrapers were moving like chessmen, so it seemed to her. Twenty-one storeys above her, chessmaster John moved his queen’s knight’s pawn on the tobacco brief, while in Pacific Heights lonely Celia sat smoking cigarettes, waiting for him to telephone.

| 128 |

Do say something clever for us, John, said Mr. Rapp.

I don’t feel like it.

You’re not going to disappoint us, now, are you, John? Because that just wouldn’t be good enough.

I am afraid that we are going to find pleasures in some cases opposite to pleasures, John snarled. — Plato, Philebus, 13a.

Well said! cried Mr. Rapp, clapping his hands. But is that perhaps a comment on the present proceedings? You see, everybody, how clever our new full partner is? Roland, could you top that? And, by the way, what’s your impression of Plato, John? I dip into the Laws from time to time…

Just another egghead, Mr. Rapp, said John. There are too many eggheads in the world.

Now, John. I need to ask you something. With your legal bent, and your gift for recitation, aren’t you yourself, perhaps (dare I say it), an egghead?

No, Mr. Rapp. I’m a performing animal. I perform under duress, or for a reward.

Ouch, John, that was cruel! It may be true, but sometimes it’s better not to say those things.