The Royal Family (46 page)

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Behold, I will feed them with wormwood, and give them poisoned water to drink.

 

J
EREMIAH
23.15

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Can I buy you a drink? the trick said, his face shady like Market Street with its glowing windows.

Sure, said Strawberry without looking at him. Misery loves company.

Which are you?

Excuse me?

Which are you—misery or company?

Oh, don’t play them games, mister, the whore said. If you’re that kind, you can just get lost. I’m tired.

Once when Strawberry was in jail she saw another girl eating candy, so she asked her for a piece but the other girl said: Get away! Go stand back
away
from me! and Strawberry felt angry and hurt but couldn’t show it because if she did then somebody would have preyed on her. But when she was negotiating with johns she could show whatever feelings flowed through her, or even make up feelings, because no one could hurt her in a public place and it was up to
her
whether or not to rent herself; she became the Queen.

Just then she saw the Mexican girl, and turned to her with relief, like a child who, losing the game of locked stares, pretends a physical need to blink. —Well, Beatrice! she cried. Where you been? All us girls been asking about you. And Maj, she—

I got an abscess on my titty, said Beatrice. They had to take me to the hospital to drain it. Mama knew all about it.

Well, she didn’t tell me.

Maybe you doan ask her, Beatrice thought to herself, but she only smiled and fanned herself with a piece of newspaper. —So what’s up with you? she said finally. You meet some nice friends? If you doan meet some nice friends soon maybe I can pray for you—

Oh, I need to make some money, Strawberry sighed. Domino owes me a rock and—

Me too! Me too! Because she gimme ten dollars but then—

The trick smiled shyly at her. —I like fat girls, he whispered.

She’s not
fat,
said Strawberry. She’s
heavily challenged.

Beatrice screamed with laughter. Where Beatrice came from, they painted barber poles on the walls of barber shops. Fat, big-breasted beautiful women in blue shirts were proud of their own flesh. Beatrice remained proud of herself.

Well, he obviously likes you better, so why don’t you date him, said Strawberry. I’m tired. I think I’ll go on home. See you,
guapa.

The trick moved two barstools closer. —Is she mad at me? he whispered.

I doan think so, Beatrice said. Doan worry about it, ’cause she has to go chase her nice friend. Where you from, baby? What’s your name?

I’m from Modesto and my name is, uh—

Oh, doan bother, said the fat whore. Why lie? I won’t complain. If you doan wanna
tell me, then doan tell me. Mother Maria, it’s not my business. Hey, Strawberry, darling, please you stick around one minute.

You know what? said the trick.

What?

I don’t think I like your attitude.

Then fuck off, said Beatrice. Go kiss your Mama’s ass. Strawberry, sister, let’s go.

You goin’ out, too? said the other whore.

Of course.

What about him?

The hell with him. He doan like my attitude.

Strawberry laughed drunkenly and said: You wanna try Seventeenth and Capp with me, an’ maybe we can double date? It’s safer that way.

No, sweetie, I gotta meet one of my regulars. Because I met two friends, the nicest two friends, and I tell one I go only with him. And the other I tell I go only with
him.
And one nice friend, he even want me to come back in the morning to his hotel, and he gimme twenty, and the other paid me twenty last night and the first one gimme twenty last night and when I show Mama, she so happy. But the other one want to take photos of me naked, so I say, Okay, you can take my pussy, but you doan take my face. And Mama say
why?
I say ’cause I’m ugly, Mama. You know that. And she say, no, Beatrice. You’re not ugly. Here’s some makeup. And now I—

Okay. Well, you be careful,
guapa
.

You too, said Beatrice.

She stood with her hands on her generous hips, watching the other woman strolling into the darkness.

Across the street, a police light flashed and amplified robot voices went
wrurr wrurr wrurr step out of the car.
STEP OUT OF THE CAR.
Turn around slowly and place your hands on the car.
It was nobody she knew. Strawberry should really be getting out of here, but she could still see her dawdling at the first corner with cracked bravado, shooting looks and waves against the cars which she hoped to prey on and crack open like mussel-shells to suck out the sweet money-meat inside. No cars slowed.
Place your hands on your head. Slowly. I said slowly.

Suddenly, Beatrice realized that the cops were busting Domino.

Weak and mechanical though such side-episodes may be, like the subplots in Shakespeare’s plays, the fact remains that reality does on occasion most slyly change the dials of our fate-settings, like Bernadette, who always liked to steal at least one thing from each of her tricks. So it had happened on that foggy twilight that when Domino was sitting in a station wagon with one of her regulars, a pasty-faced man whose name she’d long since forgotten and cared not to ask, and they were en route to the parking lot on Golden Gate where she always blew him, a black-and-white came up out of nowhere and pulled them over for expired plates. After that, things went from bad to worse. When the cop asked for the registration, the trick opened the glove compartment and a pistol fell out. Domino rolled her eyes and said: You
asshole!
—Both of you out of the car with your hands on your heads! said the cop. His partner started searching the car, and immediately found a bag of meth under the passenger seat. —It’s hers, the trick said
desperately. I never knew anything about it, I swear, officer. —Well? said the cop. Which of you wants to own up? —Yeah, sure, and it’s my gun and my car and my penis, too, sneered the blonde. Why don’t you dust it for prints? —Oh, so you want to tell me how to do my job, huh? said the cop. You think I feel like wasting my fingerprint dust on your shitty little life? Who are you, lady? Let’s see some I.D. —May I take one hand off my head to get it, officer, or are you going to reach into my pants and get it? —My, my, my, said the cop cheerfully. You just resisted an officer. I’m going to have to write that into the arrest report. What’s your name? —Domino, said Domino. —The world-famous Domino, said the officer with mock awe. Aren’t you the cat’s pajamas? Is there any man in San Francisco who hasn’t gotten lapdanced by Domino? But I’ll tell you something, sweetie. That was in the last century. You need a new titty job. —Remind me not to go to the same doctor who did your dick job, officer. I bet you couldn’t get it up if it were strapped to a telephone pole.

It’s just not fair to bust me for her meth, inserted the trick. You see how she talks. It’s
her
meth, officer. Cut me some slack just this once, okay?

It went like that all the way to jail. But when the trick, sitting handcuffed in the back seat of the patrol car beside her, finally understood that his denials of methamphetamine possession would not change the stance of the arresting officers by a single iota, he turned toward Domino, who sat rigidly trembling and gazing out the window, and, clearing his throat with a noise as of a tired panhandler’s shuffle up a sidewalk, he whispered that he was sorry. Domino burst into tears and cried: I’m so
ashamed
of your life!

It used to be that when they busted Domino they merely cuffed her and maybe kicked her down onto her face once or twice if she’d given them lip or shown what they called “attitude”; then they took her to the Mission Street substation where after rephotographing her and adding a new entry to her sin sheets they drove her to Eight-Fifty Bryant, formally known as the Hall of Justice, where in a windowless little room which offered a sometimes-broken television and a sometimes-broken toilet she joined her sisters sitting on benches, all of them searched and half stripped, their high heels confiscated because not long ago in that room, so the story went (nobody Domino knew had actually witnessed it), one prostitute, angered by another, had killed her with a spike heel; and there Domino sat until they let her out. But this time she faced no mere misdemeanor charge of prostitution, which usually meant a quick release on her own recognizance, but felony drug and gun possession charges, as well as interwoven complications and disgraces—to wit, five thousand dollars bail for the weapons charge, ten thousand for the meth, ten thousand for being the principal in a narcotic sales case while knowing that another principal was armed, five hundred for resisting an officer in the performance of his duties, twenty thousand for a prior serious felony (she actually had two on her record but they’d luckily forgotten the other one), ten thousand for a prison prior when she’d been compelled to defend her honor against a woman who’d called her nigger-sucker, and so she stole a spoon from the cafeteria and slammed it into that bitch’s eye—all of which came to a fifty-five point five grand price of readmission to the luminous Tenderloin streets for something she hadn’t even done. Life is crappy, she said to herself.

And so she made landfall upon the grey squarish isle of the Hall of Justice, and they
took her upstairs to the jail, where they made her sign the white SFPD property release form. She didn’t want to check the box which emunerated her “TOTAL” cash because she was sure that she’d had much more money than that, but she lost that argument, as she had known she would, because they were stronger than she was and they didn’t care. —My shitty fuckin’ life, she muttered. She heard the public defender mumuring into a man’s ear: If they can make the actual
constructive
claim, then the misdemeanor goes to superior court trailing the felony and
then
 . . . —Ahead of her waited the judge who always said to her public defender just like a used car salesman: I’ll give you a
very
early pretrial tomorrow. —The public defender warned her: Sylvia, you gotta beat every count if you wanna escape the Three Strikes Law. —They said she could make one phone call. Domino wanted to telephone Dan Smooth, but they said that it had to be local. There was a rich doctor from Marin who sometimes dated her in his own house while his wife masturbated in the corner (the doctor’s pride: amyl nitrate sequences with Domino, the wife’s silver body moving back and forth), but his phone merely rang and rang. So Domino called Mr. Cortez the bail bondsman.

•

Excessive bail shall not be required.

 

U.S. Constitution, VIIIth Amendment (1792)

 

I tell you, that to every one who has more will be given; but to him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.

 

L
UKE
19.26

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The saving grace of our justice system is that remarkable axiom,
innocent until proven guilty.
Be that as it may, each accused must place his head in the lion’s mouth. For not every axiom is honored, not every proof is infallible—and not all defendants are innocent. What will the judgment be? Yesterday, a man pursued his good or evil life. Today he stands inscribed in the master calendar of felonies. And tomorrow’s destiny refuses to announce itself. The sign reads:
SILENCE: COURT IN SESSION
. Thus authority reduces us to things, and how could matters be otherwise? A greyhaired, slender defendant, sitting beside me as he awaits his turn, whirls insanely round in his chair as if something bit him. Granted, he keeps obediently silent; chewing his lip, he struggles to sit still, but only a moment goes by before his demon, premonition of the lion’s mouth, gnaws at him again, and he quivers. Meanwhile, a hulking, bandaged, cornrowed defendant approaches the bench with his hands locked behind his back. He’s been named; he’s Line Twenty-Four. Should he refuse to offer his head to the gaping mouth, then certain fellow citizens, armed and numerous, will force him. But by our axiom, Leo may not bite in advance of a guilty verdict. Fairness, then—to say nothing of kindness—advises that the defendant’s freedom be provisionally restored, on condition that he not run away from the lion. Hold his collateral, then. Should he flee, it will be forfeit. What if, fearing the verdict, he prefers freedom to property of which his sentence might in any event deprive him? No worry—raise the stakes! Then he’ll require help from those who love him, which produces the ingenious result of holding his companions hostage for his good behavior. Unless he’s a monster, instinct will be deterred by the knowledge that should he vanish, his sister will lose her house, while the lion in any case hunts him. And that is why the whirling man and the hulking, cornrowed man sat beside me in the courtroom, waiting for their names to be called. They were not wearing the orange livery of unfreedom; they came in their street clothes. They might as well come. —We get ninety-six percent of all skippers, a bail bondsman in Spokane once boasted to me, with a tight smile. And I suspect that Domino was all too familiar with that statistic.