The Royal Family (53 page)

Why not?

I don’t know, he said wearily. Can we talk about something else?

In other words, keep the fuck out of my business.

No, Maj. I’d never say that.

Well?

Irene’s so precious to me.

You see? You’re like some wolf that keeps lickin’ the razor-blade; he drinks his own blood an’ bleeds to death, ’cause he likes the taste. You an’ Strawberry, oh me oh my . . .

The screams had begun again. He sighed and said: Here’s a rose for you.

The Queen accepted the flower, stood up on tiptoe and kissed his face.

Did she touch you? Smooth wanted to know when he had recounted this much.

Yep.

No, Henry, I suspect your ignorant and envious ears mistook my meaning. I meant, did she
touch
you? I meant, did she leave marks?

That’s between her and me.

No it isn’t, Smooth replied with logic as tight as the pussy of the skeletal whore whose face had been destroyed in an automobile accident. You couldn’t have met her without me, boyo. What’s more, you —

Talk about envious ears, my God!

Come on down to the basement, said Smooth. I just got me a Hi-Standard twenty-two I wanted to break in. They say it takes five hundred rounds to loosen her up. Salesman I bought it from has one of his own; that’s how he sold me on it, you see. He said it was
fun.
Now, he did warn me that during the break-in period it jammed once or twice with every magazine, which didn’t turn me on. He got so he wanted to throw it against the ever-lovin’ wall, he said. But he’s had it for twenty years since then, and never a problem. Now he’s
addicted.

I’ve got to go.

No you don’t.

I don’t mind obeying
her.
But I kind of dislike it when
you
push me around . . .

Why so belligerent, Henry? Grin and bear it, now. Maybe you—

I get so bored and so tired sometimes—

Well, what’s your favorite subject? Irene? That’ll perk you right up. Henry, baby, you want to talk about
Irene?
I’m all attention.

Please cut it out, said Tyler, rubbing his chin.

No, that’s what I was going to say to
you.
I’m lonely, you see.

Well, I—

And maybe I can give you some advice about how to proceed with our Queen.

What do you mean, proceed?

Don’t you want to take it to the next level, Henry? Don’t you want to learn the secret of life? You can’t always predict what she’ll teach you, but whatever she imparts, well,
zowie!
Get that Mark of Cain working for you, son! Pull yourself up by your bootstraps and—

Cut the corny crap. I give up. So you’ve got a shooting range downstairs?

Well, you could call it that.

Smooth opened the basement door and clicked a switch connected to a wan bulb. They went down.

Not so many basements in Sacramento, Tyler said.

Flood plain. This house was built two big floods ago. There was no flood insurance requirement back then, and the state was having a drought, so nobody believed in floods. Just like you, Henry boy—you were getting discouraged about the Queen before you met me, hey? Well, that flood came, and the basement filled up, and the family that lived here moved out and sold it to me. Basement filled up again when the last flood came, and I guess it will do it when the next flood comes. I still don’t pay flood insurance. Why?

Why what?

Why did you ask?

I don’t care, to be honest. Just making conversation.

No. I won’t accept that. Meaningless conversation is not allowed in my house. What’s your point?

I’ve given up looking for points.

I’d given it up long before you were born, son. And you know what? We’re both liars. We both want all the answers. How old are you, anyway?

Forty-four, said Tyler.

Well, I was going to say that you were only twenty-four, but you’d lived a hard life. Another of my jokes, see.

Ha ha.

A train whistled, long and slow. The two men stood on a dark green carpet which smelled like disinfectant and cigarette smoke which drifted down, as limp as Domino on heroin at the Wonderbar with her head on the counter and her long hair trailing in her drink. A foam rubber mattress with three pillows on it lay in the corner beside an electrical outlet. On the walls were taped illustrations of Boy Scouts and other adventurous young males, scissored out of the pages of
Boy’s Life
and similar publications. In the face of Tyler’s silence, Smooth said: I may be jealous, son, but I’m still the ordained debriefer and father confessor. Do you trust me?

I do not, you pompous old shit.

I never asked if you liked me. I asked if you trusted me.

Why should I trust you? You just want to get under my skin. You sort of pry into my business and—

Oh, heavens. I’ve got more to do than that. Getting under your skin is just my little recreation. Think nothing of it. Now, do you
trust
me?

I can’t honestly say I do.

All right. Do you trust my devotion to the Queen?

Tyler hesitated. —Yes, he said.

All right. And what about yourself, buddy? Are you devoted, too?

I guess I’ve signed on.

So you trust our coincidence of interests?

What’s the difference, Smooth? I’m so tired of talking about this. Motives don’t count worth a damn anyway. Only actions are valid. I—

You’d like to pretend that was the case, wouldn’t you? But I’d bet a hundred dollars that whenever you fuck up, you excuse yourself for good intentions. In fact . . .

In fact
you
revel in the real or imaginary weaknesses of others, Tyler replied, raising his voice. You’re like a dog that loves to roll in shit! I admit that my shit stinks as much as yours, but I don’t go out of my way to smell it—

Interesting analogy! said Smooth brightly. Because to really serve the Queen, you know, you’ll need to develop an intimacy with many kinds of body products.

Dan, you used to disgust me, but now you just bore me.

Ah. Well, are you ready to shoot?

Right now I’m pissed off at you, so don’t put a gun in my hand.

Here you go. The famous Hi-Standard.

All right, asshole, Tyler said. My brother used to have one of those. What are we shooting at?

Hang your target on that clothesline there, over by the sandbags. You aren’t so incompetent you’ll miss the sandbags, are you?

Oh, I wouldn’t exactly say that.

Good. But aren’t you carrying today?

No, Dan. I don’t need a pistol to visit my mother.

But you’re visiting
me.

They loaded up and shot for an hour or two, the sounds of the shots muffled and sad through their ear protectors like hammer-blows in some mineshaft far away. —You’re a pretty good shot, said Tyler with surprise and respect. —But the Hi-Standard jammed every five or six shots. Smooth said that the old manufacturing dies had nearly worn out, which was why a used Hi-Standard from the 1950s sold for as much as a new one from 1995. Tyler listened glumly, holding the gun with the muzzle safely sandbag-pointed. In truth, it was not so much Smooth who repulsed him, as his own life, whose fundamental meaninglessness he confessed in a series of skull-muffled shouts. How could he retain any faith in the Queen, when she squatted like a spider in the darkness while the tall man beat Strawberry? What was she even good for? Maybe he should humble himself, apologize to John and ask for another loan. He’d go to night school. He’d become a . . .

But he could not think what he desired to become.

As a matter of fact, I used to shoot competition, the pedophile was saying. Here lay his vanity, Tyler thought. And he did his best not to smile as Smooth babbled on: Gave that up about ten years ago now, when some fellows who’d heard about me started calling me names right there on the firing line. But I still get out to the range from time to time.

You’re a good shot, Tyler repeated weakly, longing for a drink.

Oh, not very. I could blow your head off at fifty yards. But if I could shoot through your left eyeball eight out of ten times at fifty yards, now,
that
would be good shooting.

I guess that’s a compliment. That’s what my eyeball guesses.

Oh, I don’t shoot my three fifty-seven much. I usually go out with my Ruger, which I load way under specs for target. But this Hi-Standard is . . . Well. I guess you’re driving back before long?

Yeah.

And Irene is still on your mind?

Yeah.

What time is it?

Going on three.

You fixing to see Maj tonight?

You need to report back to her?

Maybe.

On me?

Sure.

All right. What hoops do I have to jump through now?

All of ’em, Henry. I wouldn’t take less.

And what does she say about me?

She might be able to get some good use out of you before you crack.

I know she gets good use out of you.

Now, Henry, there’s your
envy
speaking again.

But what’s it all
about?
Tyler almost shouted.

Nothing, brother. Everything’s about nothing. You know that, but you prefer to pretend otherwise. We both do.

You know, Smooth, I kind of figure your job isn’t really to get information on me. I’d also say the Queen tends to make up her own mind no matter what you tell her . . .

Correct. Now, Henry, do you love her?

I beg your pardon?

Do you love our Queen?

How about you? Tyler said, swallowing nervously.

I’d die for her.

All right, fine. I love her. I don’t know whether I’d die for her or not.

But you’re not actually
about
love in this case, are you? You’re like one of those lepers in a medieval morality play crying out:
Heal me!
That’s what you want the Queen for. And you’re still holding a torch for Whatchamahoosis. Christine.

Irene.

Got your goat, didn’t I? You simple sonofabitch! You know, if you wear your heart on your sleeve, other people can see it and spit on it.

People such as you, Dan.

I expect so. Ha! Now you’re mad, aren’t you? You’re so cute when you’re mad.

I’ll see you around, Dan.

You know what? said Smooth.

What? said Tyler, gritting his teeth.

I think you never cared all that much for your sister-in-law. I think you only cared about losing her. It’s
loss
you’re in love with. That’s why you hang onto it. I’ll bet that before that Irene came along you were whining about someone else. Oh, I remember now. You grew up without a father, didn’t you? That explains it. Ain’t I clever? And now you want the Queen because you don’t believe it’ll work out with her. And if it does, maybe you’ll wreck it yourself just so you can mourn her. Aren’t I right, Henry? Just swallow hard and tell me I’m right. Aren’t you one of the most pitifully self-destructive, selfish bipeds that ever walked the streets? Well, aren’t you?

I don’t need any deathbed regrets when I’m around you, said Tyler with a trembling laugh.

There you go with your regrets again. And Irene—

You want me to betray Irene’s memory, and I’ll never do that! It feels like betraying her just allowing you to spit her name out of your sneering lips . . . I’m leaving. You got what you wanted. You pissed me off. You can tell your Queen I failed the test.

Sleep on it, Henry, said Smooth with a lazy smile.

Tyler went out and drove all the way west until he was looking down from the freeway to the pavement and dead grass, plastic bags and long low barracks-like docks where San Francisco began, with Coit Tower ahead on its green and white hill, commanding the clouds. —I failed the test, he said aloud, with a jeering despairing smile. Soon it began to rain, and he came to the Tenderloin streets, passing glistening raincoats, loud laughs, fingers pointing at heaven and hell, with rain running down the camo-green crown of a rain-man’s head. He parked and locked, walking around a black man in a soaked wool sweater, a black woman in a black wool cap, swinging her arms, a couple huddled under a scaffold whose ribs were almost glorious with water, tourists with umbrellas like walking mushrooms, until at last he found the tall man.

How’s business, Justin? he said.

You might as well paint your car flaming pink. It makes me sick to see such a faggotty car.

I was wanting to see her if she’s around.

She ain’t, said the tall man.

When
will
she be around?

I’ll pass it on that you stopped by, the tall man said, darting a glance behind him at a brawny lap-dancer the length of whose blonde hair was somewhere between that of convict-fuzz and pooltable-felt. She was helping the manager put up brand new photos of semi-nude unionized girls on the outer wall. The tall man glared into her eyes, but she pretended not to see.