The Royal Family

| 129 |

Sunflower died, and Beatrice said: You know those candle with the color? It’s better to buy them than to make them. Otherwise the dead people, they doan accept.

But Domino said: What should I buy that bitch a candle for? One time she begged me to show some heart and loan her ten to fix, so I did and then she never paid me back. She just pissed my kindness away.

The Queen, who until just now had been alone going through her spells like old Chinese women rapidly shuffling through an immense pile of purple eggplants, tossing them all aside, searching for the perfect vegetable, said: Domino, I want you to be quiet now an’ listen. Sunflower died for you. She laid herself down an’ took those bullets of pain that were comin’ for you, to which Domino replied in bored unwholesome fashion: Nobody died for me, not even Jesus, and the Queen said: Not Jesus, that’s exactly my point, Dom. You gotta find the other kind of happiness. I mean that Canaan brand… to which Domino replied: Oh, please! then said to Beatrice (just to get a rise out of her): You know why I call Sunflower a bitch?

She’s no bitch.

You know why? Because she was a dog. And now you know what she is? A dead dog. A dead, stinking dog!

That Henry Tyler’s comin’ here again, announced the tall man.

Domino brightened. — Henry, boy! she shouted. I know you have a relationship with your dick, but why don’t you zip up your fly?

All rightie now, the Queen chuckled. All right.

Why you doan care about Sunflower? whispered Beatrice. She was a nice, nice girl…

C’mere, Bea, said the Queen.

But Beatrice leaned against a concrete block, resting her big cheek on her fingers. When she closed her eyes she could see the white door of eternity, cracked through the whitewash, now gaping ajar, so that there was a darkness, with something rough and shaggy beside it; she could see Sunflower ascending the bare brown hill of death, drawing near that door around which beautiful little girls peered in dirt-streaked dresses, waiting to welcome Sunflower with their black hair and black eyes. She heard the death’s-head master of ceremonies whisper: Sweet as a pastry, hot as a candle, bright as the sun!

Since Beatrice was saying nothing, Domino thought to see in her what she had always perceived in Sunflower, namely, the shine of naked idiocy, so she said: You’re a dog, too, bitch! at which the Queen, sighing, got up and went out; but Beatrice replied, smiling bitterly: They say, doan hit that dog, but if you die, that dog will carry you across the black river.

I dunno what the fuck you’re talking about. You bitchy little bitch…

Come on, Bea, said Strawberry. Let’s go make some money.

Bye-bye, Henry, said Beatrice. Anytime you call me, I come running, running!

I get it, said Tyler with a laugh.

He stood there a little uncertainly, wondering whether he were supposed to follow the Queen.

Meanwhile, waggling their asses and smiling into the oncoming traffic, the two whores strolled backward down Sutter past Jones to the old Commodore Hotel outside which they waited for an hour or two, then shifted battle stations to O’Farrell and Jones by the Gazebo Smoke Shop with its zebras of tiles. It was hot and bright enough to make Strawberry squint, so they went and stood by the 501 Club where the shadow of something fraying on a wire trembled just above the orange cocktail glass on the sign. Down the gently sloping street, a building which many decades ago might have been called a skyscraper stood up-pointing like a stubby hypodermic needle with an American flag on it on that sweltering Sunday afternoon, no one going in or out of the locked gate of the Hong Kong Oriental Massage.

Fat sunny Beatrice, crossing her arms under her breasts, her treetrunk thighs spread wide apart as she leaned against a barfront, finally said: You sad about Sunflower?

Sure, baby. I know Maj will give her a nice funeral. You’ll see.

Who you like better, Sunflower or Domino?

Ain’t no comparison. Sunflower I love, but Domino’s just a sick, sadistic, unhealthy, unwholesome—

What’s the worst thing that make her so bad?

She has HIV, you know, and she’s still selling pussy. I call that selling murder.

They stood there all afternoon. Their feet got tired. The sun went behind a cloud, and then it got foggy and then it rained. Beatrice sighed, lifting one foot, then the other. The rain came down harder and harder.

A drunken panhandler lay down under his shopping cart. Rainwater washed his purple face.

Hey, said Strawberry, shaking him. Hey, mister. Don’t lie down there to sleep in the rain. You’ll get pneumonia and die.

The man vomited. Strawberry helped him to his feet. He puked all over her, then slowly wove down the sidewalk, leaving his cart behind.

Strawberry began to laugh. — You think I can still make money this way?

Oh, shit, chucked Beatrice. Oh, shit. You doan smell so nice now, honey. Thank God for rain. Maybe this rain is gonna wash you clean.

Fuck that, said Strawberry. My feet hurt. Let’s go back.

You go, said Beatrice. I gotta get well now. I need it.

I got an extra dose of china white, said Strawberry. I’ll share with you if you promise to pay me back.

Okay, thank you, baby. Let’s go. I pay you back tomorrow. I promise. Where’s our Mama gonna stay tonight?

She said that place off Eddy Street, you know, that black hotel…

I know. That bad, bad place.

Don’t worry, Bea. Queen’s gonna be there.

I know. Oh, my back hurts. You have that china white on you?

No, you wait here. I got to go get my secret stash. I’ll be right back.

She ran off. After an hour, Beatrice, bitter and exhausted, was just about to give up when one of her regulars, a middle-aged widower whose paunch curved like an old Union Pacific roundhouse, pulled up and she ran to his car. They went to the Lonely Island Hotel.

Short time? said the Indian woman at the top of the stairs.

Beatrice nodded.

Fifteen dollars, said the Indian woman.

The john reached into his wallet and paid. The Indian woman led them to a room which overlooked the street. In the wastebasket lay a freshly used condom, oozing slime.

Beatrice took off all her clothes, eased herself down onto the mushy, unstable mattress, and immediately fell asleep. She was dreaming of Sunflower. The john, who was a good man, stood there for a while watching his fat and pretty whore lying on the bed snoring with her legs spread, ever so slightly moving her abscessed pelvis in and out. Then he put thirty dollars onto the nightstand and went out, softly closing the door behind him.

| 130 |

Beatrice dreamed of Sunflower.

| 131 |

Later that same night, while Mrs. Tyler was bathing Mugsy, and Dan Smooth sat on his porch reading in the Sacramento Bee that chemical castration had been approved after all for recidivist sex offenders, Tyler, coughing, sauntered through the Tenderloin and came into the Wonderbar, which the tall man had just entered with a stolen calculator, rolling his bloodshot eyes, croaking: Hey, you want this? It’s got a built-in briefcase. How can you be without it? until he got eighty-sixed by Heavyset and stamped out cursing, vengefully smearing on the sidewalk some stinking shoe-ooze which was yellow-green like the meat of a Mexican avocado. And of course it was at the Wonderbar that Tyler found Domino, who was not yet crack-paranoid but her face had already turned the color of weak tea in a glass in one of those Vietnamese soup restaurants on Jones Street, and she wore a mask of sweat.

He sat down beside her. — Where’s Maj?

Henry, you don’t know shit. She never comes in here. Not unless she really needs something.

So that’s why you’re here, huh? While the cat’s away the mice will play.

Oh, fuck off.

You don’t look too well.

I’m not.

Did you get that photo of you I left with Justin?

It looked like me, she said happily.

You remember when I took that?

No, I guess I was too fucked up…

Tyler coughed.

And what’s wrong with you? said the blonde.

Oh, just a light case of AIDS. The gift that keeps on giving, know what I mean?

What did you say? she cried in a rage. I can’t believe what you just said.

Oh, I’d never give you AIDS, Domino, he said, coughing.

She relaxed. — Have a lozenge, she said, opening a flat silver tin of pills.

Why, thank you, sweetheart.

What’ll you have, dear? said Loreena the barmaid.

Shot of tequila, he said.

Loreena poured the shot to the brim as always, brought the lime and said: Three hundred and fifty dollars. Tyler gave her four dollars and squeezed the lime in.

Here, he said to Domino. You want a sip before I mix my germs in?

All right, the blonde said, poising her twin straws over the glass like a blonde mosquito. — Hey, wait a second. Why’s it so cloudy? Did you put your dick in there?

Sweetheart, if I put my dick in it would be ruby red, he told her.

Oh, you’re so sick! she chuckled. Suddenly she hugged him. — That’s why I like you…

Another john sat down next to them and said to Tyler as if the blonde weren’t there: She’s beautiful, isn’t she?

Yes she is.

Buy you a drink?

All right. Thank you.

I grew up in this bar, the john said. I literally grew up right behind that pool table. I’m an alcoholic, and proud of it. My Daddy was an alcoholic, too. He popped off at forty-eight. I’ve been in this bar all my life, and I’ll never forget the night Domino first walked in.

Uh huh, said Tyler.

The john drank down his beer as rapidly as a police car speeding the wrong way down Turk Murphy alley in Chinatown, and then he ordered another one, hushed and resigned connoisseur, unlike John and Celia, who were wine-tasting in Napa in a babble of words, driving from vineyard to vineyard so that stakes and inhumanly regular leaf-heights strobed by beneath the tree-swollen hills, Celia remarking on the lovely weather, John checking each winery off the map as they pulled up to the tasting room. But as soon as the two beers had passed into the john’s blood, he likewise brightened and found his strength, now feeling as able as John or Celia to kick up a little social dust, praise God, so he clapped his hand on Tyler’s shoulder and with a smile as ingenuous as a little boy’s asked him what sort of work he did.

As little as possible, said Tyler, unimpressed by his rejuvenation.

I’m a welder, the man rushed on, or I should say I was a welder. They just laid me off last week.

I’m sorry to hear that, Tyler said. In that case I’ll buy you the next round.

Well, so you and I have something in common, the john said.

You mean Domino, said Tyler wearily.

She’s a peach, ain’t she? the john said, glowing with enthusiasm.

Domino, are you a peach?

Oh, fuck off, Henry.

You already said that.

Well, fuck off again.

You know what she and I make together? the john cackled breathlessly.

Let me guess. Peaches and cream.

Oh, you’re so sick, chuckled Domino.

Tyler had sometimes seen this man going out to get pizza or soda or whatever Domino needed when she was too drunk and had to run into the ladies’ room to vomit and after that slowly let her head sag down onto the bar in that nightly sunset of hers. The john took care of her. He fed her as if she were a baby bird. His bald, ugly face shone with sacredness when he was helping her. He loved her. Even when she was terrible to him she was good to him, because she gave him something to love.

I took her to our Christmas party, the john confided with a blush, and everybody kept comin’ up to me and sayin’: Who’s that goodlookin’ broad?

How long did she stay with you? Tyler asked curiously.

Oh, all night, said the john. And she danced like — it was the finest sight in the world.

Domino smiled. — And it was. That’s how I dance. When I dance.

So she had a good time?

She said she did. I think she was happy.

Hey, Dennis! whined the blonde. When are you gonna take me home? I need some man to take me home. I’m feeling kind of fucked up…

Let me finish my drink first, said the john. Then I’ll take you wherever.

No! shouted the whore. I will not wait for you to finish your drink, you stupid old misogynist! Fuck you and go to hell! Go to hell! Go to… oh, I, I, I’m going to be sick…

Loreena, we’re going to need some napkins, said Tyler.

Well well well, said the barmaid. Domino’s puking on my bar, so it must be eleven-o’clock. You can practically set a clock by Domino’s… Oh, look at that. Oh, Jesus.

And after the dance she—

Take her home, Dennis, said the barmaid.

Domino? Domino, where you stayin’ at, sweetheart?

At my — at the — Maj… the girl croaked.

At your what?

I know where she wants to go, said Tyler. I’ll take her.

No! You don’t even like me! You just… Oh, what’s the point?

All right, fine, you can take her, the john said. But don’t be takin’ advantage of her when she’s messed up like that. It’s not a righteous thing to do.

Wipe your mouth off a little bit, Domino, said Tyler. Can you walk?

I lost one of my heels.

That’s all right, he said. The car’s right across the street.

I said, I lost my goddamned high heel.

So what do you want? he said wearily. I know. You want me to buy you new high heels.

That’ll work…

Fine. Now get in the car.

Thanks for being such a gentleman, the blonde muttered drunkenly.

Just lie down in the back seat. Don’t be afraid of me.

I’m not afraid. I love you, Henry. You’re the only one who’s nice to me.

Thank you, sweetie.

Dennis is just an asshole. And I hate Loreena’s guts.

I get it, said Tyler, blinking his eyes.

I said you’re the only goddamned one who’s ever been nice to me. The only one in the whole goddamned world. You want me to suck your dick?

Never mind.

I want to suck your dick. What’s the matter, cocksucker, you think just because you have a car and I don’t you’re any better than I am? Why, I don’t give a fuck about you and your car! I should kick all your goddamned windows out! I… Oh, Henry, please, I’m going to be sick… Please make it stop.

It’s all right, Domino. It’ll stop soon. You’ll feel better soon.

I’m sorry. Where are we? I lost my goddamned high heel but you promised me you’d buy me another one. I’m gonna hold you to it.

You want to go to the hospital?

Forget it.

Is it true what Loreena said, that you’re puking every day?

Go to hell.

Domino, I’m worried about you. And Dennis and Loreena care about you, too. And the Queen—

Oh, those fuckers…

He got onto the freeway at Ninth and Harrison, billboards looming white and yellow, proclamations of spurious choice against the foggy sky, the city in its real life not a choice at all, the grim-glowing girder-blades of the Bay Bridge squatting over him.

Henry? said Domino.

What is it, sweetheart?

Henry, I’m sorry I puked all over your car. And I’m sorry I was nasty to you.

Never mind, he said. No harm done.

Henry, would it be all right if I went to sleep now?

Sure it would.

Henry?

What?

I don’t want to go back to the Queen tonight. I hate the Queen.

I know.

Where are we going?

Oakland.

Where in Oakland?

To the Queen.

The car reeked of vomit. He thought of Luther’s strange doctrine that sin resides in the flesh, not in the conscience, because law has power only over flesh, not conscience. Her puke was corrupt, but not her, never her.

Henry, I’m sorry I lost my shoe.

All right, he said. Now let me drive.

By the time he reached the secret place among the derricks and cranes of West Oakland where the Queen was sleeping that night, Domino was stuporously snoring. The tall man came out of the shadows to claim her, laughing at the stench. — Lemme get this drunken bitch out of this faggoty car, he said. — He carried her off in his arms, then came back to Tyler and said: Queen wants me to tell you you been righteous. You one of the good kind.

Thanks, Justin, said Tyler.

You want to stay here, I’ll watch your car. Or if you don’t trust me you can sleep in your car.

Looking into the tall man’s eyes, he remembered strangely from his boyhood the old trestle bridge between East and West Sacramento where you could stand on the ties, look down between your feet and see the shimmering green-brown water. If you wanted to, you could jump and maybe just thrill yourself or maybe kill yourself. He liked but was sometimes afraid of the tall man.

Sure, he said. I trust you.

And so the tall man led him inside the old meatpacking plant with its eternal snowdrifts of broken glass and its piss-reeking recesses which locally overpowered the atmosphere of dust, moldy lard and bankruptcy as impure as Tyler’s motives used to be for accompanying Irene and John to some stupid John kind of movie; he’d go only in order to sit next to Irene, and somehow at the last minute John would end up between them. As his pupils expanded, he began to see a massive black woman whose steel earrings were almost as big as her head. He’d never met her before, and he’d never meet her again. He saw Beatrice (who was twitching in her sleep, dreaming of the cops), Chocolate, Strawberry, Martha, the crazy whore, Yellow Bird and the new girl, Bernadette. Why weren’t they out working? — Because their Queen, pitying them, had given them all magic medicine… He saw Lily, who was snoring sitting up, with drool running out of her mouth. He smelled Sunflower from a distance. (But Sunflower was dead, of course; it must have been someone else he smelled.) In the darkness loomed all the other whores ranked like the end-stacked white plastic chopsticks on Jones Street: skinny and quick, or fat and sullen, or vivaciously false like those ladies who lied with every word they said. All their faces were becoming now almost as familiar to him as the stench of urine on the streets of the Tenderloin.

This place always creeps me out, Strawberry was saying. Ever since I was a child…

Hush up, sweetie, said the Queen. Ain’t nothin’ gonna happen to you in here. You never been no child in here anyways…

Look what I found on Hyde Street, said Strawberry.

What? said Bernadette.

Well, this is a Royalbra. I wear a 42B.

I thought you was 38.

Well, not now. That was then. This is now.

So how’s it compare to them Sears an’ Roebuck bras?

I don’t like ’em any better than Sears. I don’t like that elastic strap.

Well, if you don’t like it I’ll take it. Does it have wires?

Yes it does.

Well, I hate bein’ wired. You keep it, Berry. Fuck them wires. I cut the wires, an’ they still dig in my ribs.

That’s why it takes so long to try on a bra.

Time’s what we got plenty of down here.

The tall man said: Henry Tyler.

The Queen said: Henry, I’m so glad. Henry, I’m gonna take care of you.

Evening, Maj, he said happily. But he couldn’t see her yet. It was too dark inside. She always sat back away from the door.

Back again! said Chocolate. Know why we’re not working tonight?

Lemme guess, said Tyler. Overdraft at the sperm bank.

You are disgusting! she laughed. No, it’s ’cause Sunflower—

The Queen was wearily silent.

Domino’s sick, he said to them all.

Remember in that other underground place I kept sayin’ there was somebody there? said Strawberry in that dreamy druggy voice. Like spirits or something? I miss the place, creeps and all.

Outside, the tall man was on one haunch, with his legs crossed, the bill of his cap practically stabbing into Domino’s sleeping face as he sat watching Tyler’s car. He muttered: See, I don’t even rate around here.

| 132 |

Mostly the Queen’s world was as slow as the Mexico of Beatrice, where homeless men lay on rice sacks on the sidewalk, their arms above their heads, and couples chatted in the hot dust beside stop signs, where the same fire engine with a broken windshield might sleep for months under the wide-streeted blocks of trees, and old sofas and chairs sat out in near-rainless yards. Strawberry told Chocolate the same story for the fifth time. Chocolate, pretending to listen, lay on a strip of foam rubber trying to screw up her courage to beg the Queen for an extra rock of crack even though she’d just had her turn. Beatrice, to whom the story was not directed at all, sat listening with her mouth open. Beatrice loved stories more than almost anyone. She stared into Strawberry’s face, gradually wiggling closer and closer until Chocolate wrinkled her nose because Beatrice smelled bad; but Strawberry, seeing that she had an audience, felt happy and proud enough to revamp her tale with mythic grandeur so beautiful that she herself believed it, and because Chocolate was not listening and Domino was out futilely peddling pussy to early afternoon drivers, nobody could spitefully deflate the story which thus emerged wet and new from its cocoon of facts and probabilities, becoming ever more beautiful until it finally fluttered overhead to shine like a luna moth on the ceiling of the abandoned warehouse until even Strawberry grew tired and realized at last that Chocolate was tired and then only Beatrice sat gazing at Strawberry longing for more in just the same way as Chocolate gazed at the Queen who opened heavy-lidded eyes, sighed, and crooked her finger at Chocolate who squirmed forward to receive her Queen’s saliva in her mouth; this substance, as I believe I have attested, possessed a narcotic and almost psychotropic effect; five minutes later the black woman was lying on her back, slowly licking her lips as her eyes happily glazed. It might be thought that this drug, being both free and moderately addictive, would have replaced cocaine or heroin or even meth in the whores’ list of staples, and indeed they did all partake, even Domino, not without a certain revulsion at their dependence upon another human being, but all of them except Sapphire knew that however much their Queen loved them, and they her, to remain with her all the time would have been stagnation, even death; and, indeed, her very secretions discouraged it; drink three times a day, and you were in heaven; six times, and you began to feel nauseous; ten times, and you vomited. So the whores were compelled to do as is foreordained for all, and go out into the world to live and to prowl. Where their Queen was, there grew sanctuary for every outcast, and even a little more, but not much more. How could there be? Where could Lord Cain rest forever, except in the tomb? This is not to imply that they could not be at least as contented as Irene lying under a blanket on the sofa next to John, watching romantic thriller videos which oozed soft piano music while she slowly got paler and sleepier until her eyes closed and her pale long fingers gripped the cushion, John frowning, half bored but unwilling now to turn it off before he learned how the plot turned out. Chocolate felt good; Beatrice felt good… Beyond Sapphire’s writhing fingers on bare knees, Sapphire’s wriggling toes speaking like the upraised beaks of hungry baby birds, the Queen sat in darkness, her thoughts gone southwest toward Beatrice’s country with its nested ranges of beautiful grey or maybe someplace even farther past greyish black mountain in rows upon yellow sand so far away, where her regal spirit could look down the swells and bulges of gravel-mountains to the blue and yellow horizon, where she might walk upon a salt lake as smooth and hazy as a dream — Beatrice’s Mexico or the desert Africa of her own enslaved ancestors? It didn’t matter. She was beyond reach, like the crazy whore, who muttered: I kinda had this fever of kleptomania… She was who she was, beyond expediency or even consequences, like Domino whose menstrual period hadn’t come and who kept feeling queasy, like beautiful black Chocolate with her scabs and scars who wore no underpants under her miniskirt, and, sitting down on somebody’s steps on Capp Street to negotiate with a john, would often spread her legs so that he could see the fuzzy darkness; then she reached in to scratch-scratch-scratch, the implied warning of verminous contagion negating her little advertisement.

Tyler’s visits gave them something to gossip about. — Here comes Henry, they said. He does that surveillance stuff.

| 133 |

Domino, however, rarely gossiped. She preferred solitude when she could get it, distrusting everybody in the world except for — provisionally — her Queen, who had never done her anything but good and whose evil she meticulously awaited. (There’s something so depressing about Dom, said Strawberry. She’s just like unhappy and unhealthy. Makes me want to stay away. — But she reminded Tyler of a brilliant, beautiful, unhappy girl he’d once known who wrote to him in a letter: Tomorrow I will wash my hair in rosewater and wear a yellow dress. I want to talk to you, just to hear your voice in this room. Your voice makes me think of oranges and sandalwood. Another time she wrote him: My dreams are only of one thing, and oh! my heart aches with you. He had wanted to be her one thing but he was too low and evil.)

At four in the morning the blonde’s aching head awoke her. For a moment she could not understand where she was. The stench of her own vomit there in Tyler’s car made her desperately nauseous, and she wanted a drink of water, so she opened the door and stumbled out, waking Justin, who literally opened only one bloodshot eye. But then it seemed that she had only dreamed she’d been in Tyler’s car, for she woke up a second time on the floor of the meatpacking plant, lovingly swaddled by someone in rags and old newspapers. A spider crawled in her hair, and she squashed it. It was still dark. Her head ached worse than ever. The other girls were snoring. Lying among them reminded her of her latest stint in jail (thirty days, just because she’d forgotten to report to her probation officer one lousy time. — In felony cases they get super cautious, her public defender had said with a shrug.) Fifty-eight inmates had been caged in the dorm, some of them girls she knew, and some girls she didn’t. Disliking television, she’d slept during the daytime and stared at the ceiling at night, craving just one dose of pure white junk. The same sensations which induce salivation in others who pass by the restaurant windows of Chinatown, where roasted chickens, roasted red crackly pork strips, orange roast ducks and drumsticks dark and crunchy, hang down above silver reservoirs of steamed vegetables and sweet ricebeds, affected Domino when her mind turned toward pure coke, crack coke (also known as white girl or bump), China white, coal tar, speedball, crystal blue persuasion, quaaludes, poppers, red speed, black speed, valium, thorazine, codeine, morphine, greenbud, indica weed, brandy and beer. In Chinatown some chickens are even smoked blue-black, like old India rubber balls, and in Dominotown one could likewise find specialty items, but the staple, the regular boiled chicken, so to speak, was crack — delicious, mind-clearing, happy-making, ephemeral crack, white, white, white as the sails on the pale blue Bay on Sundays, not that crummy yellow stuff which cheapskates had cut with cornstarch… In the dorm Domino felt so lonely for crack that she almost screamed. She felt widowed, starved, suffocated. Sometimes she masturbated beneath the scratchy blanket, less because she felt horny than because giving herself orgasms was the one nice thing that she could make happen. If other jailgirls saw what she was doing, they kept quiet about it, probably because they were doing it, too. Every night she heard the moans. The guards let them do it. They knew they could only push the girls so far. Domino bit her lip and glared straight upward when she climaxed. Then she did it again and again, until she got bored and sore. She kept hoping that Justin or someone would bring her five dollars so that she could buy some shampoo, but no one ever came.

At dawn she got up to beg the Queen for a fix and saw Tyler sleeping on the concrete. Scarcely knowing what she was saying, she muttered: That man’s going to kill me. He’s going to kill me, kill me, kill me.

Oh, somebody’s awake, huh? said the Queen sleepily.

You know what I need, Maj.

Yeah, I know. C’mere. Come gimme a kiss…

Maj…

What?

Maj, I want you to fuck me.

All rightie, darling. Queen’s gonna… Oh, I’m so tired…

Sorry, Maj.

See, now you woke Sapphire. Give Sapphire a kiss, Dom. Give her a nice kiss. Okay. Now take her over an’ give her to Beatrice…

L-l-l-uh… trilled the idiot girl.

Sssh! said the Queen. Oh, now you done it. Now Strawberry’s awake, too. Come on upstairs with me, Dom. That’s where the rock is anyways. But you know you can’t keep shortin’ all the other girls on rock. You got to put back some of what you take.

Oh, bullshit, said the blonde angrily.

They went upstairs and the Queen yawned and said: Oh me oh my, am I tired. Okay, sweetie. Pull up your dress.

Maj?

What?

How do I know you really love me?

You don’t. Where’s my… all rightie, dear. Now bend over.

Maj?

You want to get laid or not? You sure got a lot of questions early in the morning.

I need a hit.

There you go.

Maj, it’s all bullshit, isn’t it? What you said about Sunflower.

I don’t bullshit, Domino.

You promise you won’t tell anybody?

Hey, you’re wastin’ that. Beatrice worked hard to earn that rock. Don’t let it…

The way you said she was like a saint and the best of us.

All right, bend over now, said the Queen, whose kiss was as delicate as the tiny droplets of mist on Tyler’s birdstreaked windshield as he sat on stakeout in the T.L. — And be quiet.

Please, Maj.

I promise I love you just as much as I ever loved Sunflower. Domino, I’m your Queen. I belong to you as long as you need me. I got to love you.

The others don’t like me, do they?

That’s your little cross to bear, ain’t it? Listen, Dom. Anytime you really want to, you can make friends. Inside that cussedness you’re such a good girl…

Maj, I — oh, I feel so sick.

That’s ’cause you’re pregnant, you silly silly girl. You got to go to the clinic an’ get aborted. You want me to tell Chocolate to take you?

Not that bitch. Who does she think she is? She always—

All rightie. I’ll tell Justin then.

Thank you, Maj. I appreciate it. But I have to tell you something about Chocolate. She—

Don’t be a tattletale, Dom.

Now I get it. I bet you’re really on her side. That’s how you’ve always been, Maj. But I’m not going to—

Lordy lordy day, the Queen muttered.

| 134 |

When the Queen and Domino came back downstairs, Henry Tyler was waiting. Domino brushed past him without a word and lay down again to sleep. Tyler knelt down and took the Queen’s hand.

What is it, Henry? she said, smiling in spite of herself.

Maj, he whispered in a low voice, what can I do to get over Irene?

Why do you want to do that?

Because it hurts so much.

Ah, said the Queen. You want to grab some of that happiness.

Yes,Ido…

She stroked his head. — You saw Sunflower. And I showed you Sunflower’s pain. I opened her up for you while she lay sleeping and showed it to you. And you still don’t understand.

| 135 |

Are you a lez? said Domino. I’m a lez.

No no no, said Beatrice.

Have you ever fantasized about being with a woman? said Domino. Have you been fucked? Have you ever been fucked?

The Queen says—

She’s trash, chuckled Domino, leaning her shiny teeth and shiny shiny eyes and shiny vinyl skirt over the cage. — It’s so boring, being Queen of the Whores. I’d rather be God.

I’m ’fraid, said Beatrice. I’m ’fraid of you.

But with the utmost tenderness, Domino lowered her pale, almost incorporeal face onto Beatrice’s; and out of habit and fear Beatrice submitted. Soon the two women were kissing each other, cheeks swallowed up in each other’s mouths, while behind them a big-breasted masturbator was screaming and kicking the cage.

I want you to keep your authority, Domino whispered to the heterosexual girl. But I want you to give me permission to… through your bra… let me touch your nipples very very softly.

And she kissed her. And she licked her mouth, licked her face.

You’re a sport! Domino laughed. You’ve earned my respect.

| 136 |

The Queen had picked up a new girl named Bernadette, a slender black lady who resembled a beautiful cat-devil. Domino felt attracted. She went to Bernadette and said: If somebody gave you a million dollars, what would you do?

What would I do? Shit! laughed the other woman lazily. Nobody gonna give me a mill. They’re all too cheap in this town.

Strawberry came running. — Hey, Domino, your date’s here!

Who is it?

That sixty-year-old bastard with the cuff links. That one you call the sonofabitch.

God, I hate him. I won’t go. I won’t go!

What’s he do?

He likes to stick his fist up me real violent-like and make me cry. For sixty bucks it’s not worth it. All right, tell him I’m coming. I hate that man. Goddamn him. Goddamn you. Goddamn all of you just sitting around on your asses waiting for a million dollar dick.

I tole you there ain’t no mill in this town, said Bernadette complacently. Hey, Domino, can I borrow your silver high heels tonight?

Oh, fuck off, said the blonde, grabbing her purse and running out.

| 137 |

Tyler called up his friend Jack Chin at the public defender’s office and asked him if he had ever heard about the Queen. — Sure, I’ve heard legends, laughed Chin. I mean, that stuff goes back — Christ, I mean, it predates DNA tests and rubber bullets. In fact, Henry, with all due respect, it’s probably an urban myth. Everybody loves to pin the rap on the Queen, but—

How about Sylvia Fine? Does that name mean anything to you?

You’re talkin’ about Domino, right? When she was in juvenile hall they used to call her Two Bits, I dunno why. Sure. Who works for the PD and doesn’t know Domino? That is one mean bitch, and I’m talkin’ about my client! Heh! If that bitch bought me a drink I’d check it out to make sure it wasn’t poisoned! Three pending cases, one involving stalking with a knife. I guess they’re just pals now. Oh, yeah. I got the acquittal…

And how about Brenda Wiley?

Brenda who?

Chocolate’s the street name. She—

There’s scores of Chocolates working in the Western Addition, I think I — anyway, what’s the point?

They both work with the Queen.

Look, Henry. This goes back to when the Tenderloin was boomin’. Street prostitution was — oh, man. And there was this vice cop who worked prostitution detail. He suddenly became kind of wealthy. In essence he was combin’ the Tenderloin to find the newbies, you know, the soft young chickies who’d just kinda fallen into the life. And he’d go up to them and say: I can protect you. I have a place. And he did, too! Had his own house, up in Pacific Heights, I think it was. Well, finally one of them turned on him. But the strange thing was, before it ever went to trial his heart just stopped even though he was a young guy in good shape. And all the girls kept talkin’ about the Queen, who’d waved her magic fuckin’ wand or whatever it was to punish him. Listen, Henry. It’s all bullshit.

| 138 |

Toward the end of that summer the police stepped up the vigor of their sweeps of Capp Street, which accordingly fell silent, and on those dark nights warmish like stale beer, the rattle of a trash can lid or the loom of a stuporous whore on somebody’s doorstep was a surprise, while a block away beneath the blonde streetlights of South Van Ness paced the girls in lavender leotards with clops like shoed horses. The Uptown Bar on Seventeenth and Capp had added new taps of microbrewed beers within the frosty nickel-plated organ pipes which readied themselves to play hymns upon that altar of alcohol. And just outside the Uptown, Bernadette was working.

Hey, the man said, have you seen Sunflower?

That’s funny that you should talk about Sunflower, because just the other day I was thinking about all the people who aren’t there, said Bernadette.

She smiled, and from one eye a tear so slowly came, and even more silently than the number fourteen bus whose white face shone like radium in the night as it eased past the Ritespot Cafe, that wetness traveled down her nose.

I used to date her, the man said. I was kind of looking for her.

What’s your name?

Bruce.

You want a date, honey? Maybe I can help you out?

Well, actually I was looking for Sunflower, he said. I feel something special for her.

You know, said Bernadette, Sunflower and I were good together.

Ah, said the man.

I actually feel very pretty today, said Bernadette.

So she’s not around? the man said.

I’m sorry, baby. You won’t see her around anymore.

What happened to her?

Overdose. I’d rather not talk about it.

Ah, the man said again.

So do you want a date or don’t you?

The man hesitated.

Come on, said Bernadette. I give really good head if that’s what you’re into.

How much?

Twenty.

Sunflower gave pretty good head for ten.

Well, honey, Sunflower’s dead so you gotta respect the living.

Slowly the man began to reach into his pocket. Bernadette’s heart now beat most gleefully, and according to her long since memorized stage directions she murmured: Listen, baby, if you pay me now and wait just five minutes while I go get well it’ll only cost you fifteen.

Oh, the man said. Well, all right.

He gave her a ten, four ones, and four quarters.

Bernadette ran so happily, vanishing so joyously into the night while the man sat against a wall. She looked back two blocks later and could dimly see him sitting. She laughed.

Justin, Justin, gimme a full dime bag! she commanded, thrusting the tenner into the tall man’s palm. He looked at her without joy or sorrow. Then he went around the corner and in a moment returned with the bag.

Hey, what’s this? This is no full bag.

Took the Queen’s commission, the tall man grunted. You know you owe her. And don’t get in my face about it. You lucky I was here. Look at you. Ran all the way back to lie down before that monkey hopped on your back. Looks like you just beat the monkey. Where is he now? He gnawin’ at your neck? You look like you’re gonna puke, so don’t you ever dare accuse me of gafflin’ you. Better go do your business, bitch.

You can take your commission but don’t call me bitch or I’ll tell the Queen.

He looked at her. — All right. I’m sorry, Bernadette, he said.

Somebody was asking about Sunflower, she said then.

Who?

I dunno. Some jerk.

Outside the Uptown the man sat, getting angrier and angrier. Bernadette was long gone, upstairs in her room with two fingers on her clit and a needle hanging from her ass.

| 139 |

Domino had done the same thing to Dan Smooth once. The next time she saw him, Smooth had only laughed and said: I don’t recognize your authority. — That was about the time he’d stopped sleeping with anybody over fifteen. Domino claimed that Smooth couldn’t get it up anyway…