The Royal Family (109 page)

Oh, forget it. After all, he’s my own brother.

They stood and waited.

You see, Henry, we both believe her. We both take her on faith.

Yeah.

She said tonight, so—

But I still don’t get quite what you’re doing here.

Maj wants you to try harder with me, Henry. Maj wants us to be
bosom buddies.

Yeah, well, go be bosom buddies with Domino. Sometimes you’re just so much work . . .

You mean when you’re depressed.

Yeah.

You mean when you’re horny for Coreen.

Irene.

Got your goat, didn’t I? Ha, ha! Works every time! You know there’s no
malice
in me, don’t you, Henry? You know I’m not all
evil
and
envious
like you.

Oh, leave me alone.

Nice million-dollar white man place you got here.

Don’t you ever do anything but play with people?

But this isn’t about playing, Henry. This is really quite serious, you see. This is about saving our Queen. Because if your brother can convince Brady to lay off, for Domino’s sake—

I told you it won’t work.

How do you know that?

Because I know John and I know Brady, all right?

Then let
me
try. Put me on the line when it rings. I mean, what the
heck.
You don’t care what
John
thinks, now, do you, Henry?

Tyler clenched his fists.

I’ve got you coming and going, don’t I? Just the same way Domino’s got your brother. I’ve got you by the
balls.
And you know what, Henry? I’m one of those perverts who sometimes likes to
squeeze . . .

Even Maj said it wouldn’t work.

No she did
not.
She said we could try if we liked. I think it makes her happy, that we’re trying to save her . . .

Good, said Tyler abruptly.

You mind if I get personal? Smooth whispered. You mind if I tell you about my niece?

You already told me.

I’ll tell you how it was.

You already told me how it was.

Since we have time to kill, I’ll tell you how it was, said Smooth. You know how those Asians love giving really nice fruit for presents? Go over to your Chinese friend’s house for dinner, and for dessert there’ll be lots of perfect pears—you know, high quality, the succulent kind.

Yeah, I know.

Well, of
course
you know, Henry. You were
with
an Asian girl. Your brother’s girl.

Oh, go to hell.

And sometimes they have these little tangerines. You peel the skin off, and then there are juicy little wedges—well, segments I suppose you’d call them. And this girl, when I pulled her little underpants down . . .

The phone rang.

So you’re dirtying this part of my life, too, said John. Tell me something. Have you fucked her?
Have you fucked her?

Who? sneered Tyler. Domino—or Irene?

Sitting near him on the kitchen floor, Dan Smooth contorted himself in a thousand silent grimaces of laughter, wriggling and twitching, shivering and twitching, rolling his eyes and bulging out his cheeks, so that Tyler, repulsed and terrified, was reminded once again that
he was Dan Smooth
with his illictness and his defiance. He was treating John the way that Smooth always treated him, the way he loathed to be treated.

I’m sorry, John, he said into the telephone. No, I never slept with Domino. And I won’t. I’m her friend, John, that’s all. And, you know, she’s to be pitied because—

How dare you say that to me?
shouted John.

I think she wants to be a part of your world. She wishes that she could be your kind of person, and dress like you, eat like you, live like you. I mean, I don’t know what your relationship is, but—

What do you want?

Has Domino ever told you about our little family down here?

Oh, so you finally found a family for yourself, did you? Old Hank got religion. As for your own—

Brady’s Boys are putting Domino at risk, John. And they’re threatening a very good woman who’s helped Domino a lot and who—

A
whore,
you mean, said John. A filthy whore.

That’s right.

Oh, I see it now. And you’re plugging this whore and you know better than to ask me for any favors, so you—

She’s been good to Domino, John.

She’s good to her. Does she fuck her? Is this some—

Do you really want to know?

Fine. So you want me to call up Brady and say exactly what?

(This is all so
dreary!
whispered Dan Smooth in delight. Tyler felt unspeakably nauseated.)

I don’t know what you should say. Brady’s pretty hard to appeal to, as I recall. But if you. . .

I could set Domino up. I’d be happy to give her a start. Anytime she wants to get out of that sleazy world of yours I can—

John, she
can’t.
She won’t. That’s what she is. That’s—

Don’t you dare tell me who she is.

She—

I said don’t you dare tell me who she is. Anyhow, continued John with his usual shrewdness, you don’t care about helping Domino, do you? You want to take the heat off that filthy whore you’re plugging.

Let me ask you something. How do you feel about a man who on the one hand hires you to write contracts for his whorehouse and on the other—

So you’re saying he’s a hypocrite. Well, what about you?
You
know what I mean, Hank. Jonas Brady is an amazing man. Jonas Brady is maybe even a great man, and I
will not
have you—

Seeing Smooth making frantic backpedalling signals there on the kitchen floor, Tyler swallowed his bile and said: Can I ask you to think about it? Talk to Domino—

Don’t tell us what to talk about.

Well, will you please at least think about it?

John hung up.

That was when Tyler called himself aside and explained to himself what his self admitted—namely, that Irene and John’s marriage had never been as hellish as he for his own convenience had pretended. He remembered one Fourth of July in San Francisco when housetops flickered in and out of fog as if on lightning-fire, and then the occasional green and blue flower of fireworks blossomed over the city, then cast down seeds and embers into the white darkness while Irene lay under a blanket on the sofa next to her husband, watching romantic thriller-videos which accompanied themselves with soft piano music, and she slowly got paler and sleepier until her eyes closed and her long pale fingers gripped the cushion while John frowned at the video, half-bored but unwilling to turn it off before he’d learned how the story turned out—and maybe, just maybe, he’d wished to avoid disturbing his dreaming wife. Fireworks pounded like Tyler’s heart.

Mr. Rapp, smiling piratically gold-toothed, licked his upper lip with an almost indescribably delicate motion of his tapering tongue.

Gibbon’s always good for one-liners, said Mr. Rapp. I read him every night before I
go to sleep. Gibbon’s been on my night-table for thirty years. I
love
that man. I’ve never finished his book, and I never will. John, how often do you read Gibbon?

Corruption is the most infallible symptom of constitutional liberty,
John quoted sourly. He added: I hate Gibbon.

Too good! shrieked Mr. Rapp in high glee. John can quote Gibbon. Do it again, John, please!

Does this have anything to do with my job, Mr. Rapp? If it doesn’t, I’d rather not quote Gibbon. The guy was an egghead. My mother force-fed him to me.

John, I’d like to ask you something, said Mr. Rapp, and this does have something to do with your job. John, are you listening?

I’m right here, Mr. Rapp.

John, the question I want to ask you is this:
Are you an egghead?

You asked me that once before.

And what did you say?

That I was your performing animal.

Oh yes. That was really quite naughty of you, John—almost cruel. Well, I’ll ask it in a different way. Are you yourself, in spite of all your boorish precautions, actually, deep down, a
soulful fellow?
Do you actually
know things?
Are you hiding your light under a bushel-basket, John?

Having a soul is not what you pay me for, Mr. Rapp. Excuse me, but I need to get back to that immigration brief.

Do you have a soul or not, John?

Mr. Rapp, you yourself know that this kind of talk is not appropriate in the workplace, even if it’s your workplace. Sure I have a soul. Sure I’m an egghead. Now may I please get back to work?

Singer! cried Mr. Rapp, ringing the other senior partner’s buzzer. John’s finally admitted that he’s an egghead!

Then lower his salary, said Mr. Singer’s bored voice. Or else raise it.

Mr. Rapp was looking at John with an expression which somehow reminded him of something which Irene had once been saying in a low, earnest plaintive voice, in it already the knowledge that she would not be able to convince John of whatever it was, her hand flittering sadly through the air. He couldn’t remember the details. Irene was looking at him. He gritted his teeth.

The bay was very calm and almost indigo that weekend, with the occasional steep white triangle of a sail between Coit Tower and the islands. John and Domino could see the Marin headlands more distinctly than usual; the water became milky near those far shores, ringing them with the haze of adulation.

You told me you know Hank, said John.

You mean Henry? That
sonofabitch!
chuckled Domino. So you and Henry really truly came out of the same hole? I mean, you have such class, and that scumbag—

John laughed delightedly, then was ashamed. He hated Hank, but still, Hank was his brother. It was fitting and good that Domino had derogated Hank—this time. But she shouldn’t do it too often. That privilege must be reserved for John.

He said: He tells me that the heat’s really on you down there.

Down where? drawled the blonde, widening her eyes with pretended innocence as she pulled John’s hand between her legs.

Look, he said. If there’s some friend you care about who’s being—

You mean Maj? Stinking old Maj? That’s Henry’s new hole. So
that’s
why he’s come crying to you. I’m saying it’s a dog eat dog world. (Oh, sorry, I forgot your wife was Korean. They eat dogs, don’t they?) Let Maj cut her own goddamned cake, you hear what I’m saying?

Fine. So you don’t care. Well, that makes it easy.

Domino was bitterly sad and ashamed of the words she had just uttered. But it felt so unnatural, so positively
dangerous,
for her to admit that she cared about any other human being! And she could not forget how Maj had georgia’d her right before the entire family, using that subhuman little dildo of hers, Sapphire—although she also had to admit that that had been the best orgasm she’d ever had. She didn’t hold a grudge, but . . . but Maj had
humiliated
her! Moreover, as soon as John had finished with her, she would be transformed back again into just another pale woman checking her makeup in the side mirror of somebody’s parked car, shivering, desperate to follow any stranger into excrement-smeared alleys. She scowled, and a tear rolled down her cheek.

What’s the problem now? said John, who hated crying women.

Nothing. Forget it, said the blonde, knowing that there was still time to step back across the moral divide, knowing likewise that she was incapable of so doing.

She knew that her omission was no crime against Maj. John had offered not to save everyone in the royal family, but only to protect Domino herself and perhaps Maj. She knew Maj well enough to be sure that she would never leave the others, for after all she had nowhere to be sent to; she already was and always would be saved. Maj was her mother, her only love, her dear—rotten old nigger Maj!

Let’s talk about you and me, baby, she said.

Have
we
the right to accuse Domino of failing her Queen? Peter denied Christ three times before cockcrow, and still got to be gatekeeper of Heaven. Canaanites, who must live incomparably harsher lives—for
His
self-sacrifice lasted only a few thirsty bloody hours, while theirs runs forever—surely ought to be exempt from moral crucifixion for similar acts. Moreover, she did
not
betray her Queen through any positive act, and she was no weaker in her heart than the tall man, say, or Chocolate, or Strawberry . . .