The Royal Family (96 page)

Who’s that nigger? said the drunk.

Watch your mouth, a black man warned him. If you wasn’t such a lush I’d beat your whitebread ass.

Perhaps that sallow drunk should have taken the hint. But he needed to feel confident in his life. It was only when he drank that he felt he could be anything. He felt this precisely because his perceptions had grown so constricted that he could no longer be cognizant of his limitations, like those old people who when sight, hearing and memory slip away make unflattering remarks in loud voices about others who are still present but out of their dwindling sensory range. How amazed they’d be, if they understood that the nasty man who’d long since vanished from their apprehension like last Thursday’s television show had just now heard them denounce his nastiness! For they’d meant no harm! Backstab gossip doesn’t harm anybody, does it? It’s only steam-letting, social sport, wit, liveliness, self-comfort like complaining over an arthritic wrist.

The tall man, King for a day, extended his right arm to the crowd in a Roman salute. —How about if you just lie down right back here? a paramedic murmured, but the tall man angrily shrugged off his touch.

I know who he is! the drunk suddenly shouted, proud of his immense knowledge. He’s a boxer! He’s what’s-his-name! He fought Mike Tyson! But did he win?

The crowd started to snicker, and the drunk, pleased with the attention, went on: If they were both at their peak, then Tyson would win. But Tyson’s all fucked up. He’s dead and gone.

I’m all right, said Justin.

Oh, he thinks he’s all right, sneered the drunk. If he’s all right, then what’s with the men in the fucking white coats?

I’m all right, Justin repeated happily.

You think we were talking about you? shouted the drunk. We were talking about Mike Tyson. Who gives a rat’s ass about you? What kind of representative of the black people are you?

Blame it on the fucking black, man. Just blame everything, said the man who’d threatened to kick the drunk’s ass. He blindsided the drunk with an imensely powerful punch which sent the drunk whirling down like Lucifer into hell. His head struck the pavement with a cracking noise. Then he lay still.

You got room for one more? called a man to the ambulance crew, and the crowd laughed.

The black man kicked the drunk’s head again and again, shouting: You fucking white nigger!

Justin, doped up and cracked up, had witnessed none of this. He was sure that all the commotion had been applause. He could not remember when he had been so joyful. Last week when Maj had gone off on Domino and then with her face self-carved into an unfriendly mask commanded him to step across the street so that she could mutter more of her private things with that Henry Tyler, he’d felt insulted, almost cursed, and his rage at her, which was really jealousy, seeped upward into his chest, making him dread himself even through the scratched and smeary lenses of his fatalism, and that jealousy was actually grief because this Queen whom he’d so faithfully served treasured up no more love for him. He’d wanted to change and leave nothing of himself behind, not even his wrinkled skin. And now his glory grew as multi-hued as the bright clothes which hung at sidewalk sales on Mission Street; and his dignity ascended; words and glances licked him like incense-smoke, and he became theatrical to please the world. No
goddamned medic was going to stop him. He had never experienced any inability to understand why Domino set fires, why Strawberry robbed him and cheated on him and then sneered the fact in his ear with her ugly trashy goadings until he had to break her jaw; every wild beast roared sometimes, and now it was his turn, especially because roaring temporarily expelled the immense physical pain of his two broken legs as well as the spiritual pain of betrayal by the Queen, pain which clung to him like ice cold iron whose bitterness could be dismissed only at the cost of torn skin. And now, piquant sauce for his dish of plenty, Strawberry herself came running up Jones Street, screaming: Justin, Justin,
oh, my God, Justin!
She leaped into the back of the ambulance, whose pebblechromed bumper dazzled her with its silver perfection, asked the paramedics if he was all right, held his hand. —I’ll buy you a soda at the hospital, she whispered tearfully.

Justin felt grand.

But then they were hauling the unconscious drunk into a stretcher beside him, at which he became indignant and cried: This is
my
ambulance!

The crowd laughed:
Heh, heh, heh!

Tyler was in the Uptown Bar on that same rainy Friday night when a wordless girl laid a white rose on his table and swung out through the doorway, gone now in the yellow dripping light, so after a long time he finished his beer and walked the block to Sixteenth where another girl stood; as wordlessly as the first, he offered her the flower, and she said in tones of almost scalding ferocity: Get away from me, bitch! —He said: I’m not a bitch and neither are you. —Fuck you, said the girl. Stop following me. —I’m not following you. I’m walking back to the Uptown, which means you’re following me. —You fuckin’ longhair! Who do you think I am? —I think you’re beautiful, darling. —Fuck you, the girl said. —His toes were wet in his shoes.

Feeling depressed and humiliated, and defiantly revelling in these sensations because they signified the Mark by which he now knew himself, he drove slowly up Van Ness, engaged his clicking right turn signal, then swung into the Tenderloin’s darkness where on the groundlevel storeys of squat brickwork skyscrapers the delis, corner markets, bars and pornographic bookstores smoldered in waves of unsettled light, and he glimpsed Strawberry running between cars, bent forward with her arms folded at her breasts; she had just heard about the tall man’s accident, about which Tyler did not yet know, and then he saw a parking spot in front of the glaring portico tricked out with plastic letters spelling
VIDEO
and
3 FILMS
3 HOURS
XXX
at which moment Domino’s ex-pimp threw a rock against his right headlight and ran away crazily screeching and redeyed, but Tyler was wearing his gun that night, so he only grimaced nervously and got out of the car, checking that all four doors were safely locked before he slouched among the slouching silhouettes on the littered, greasy, grimy sidewalk of Turk Street whose main luminescence came, it seemed, from the dark-parka’d pimps’ white trousers and the whitish-yellow line in the middle of the street and then the sad streetlight spewing downs showers of already infected photons, so he didn’t look back and he didn’t look into anyone’s face on his entire way to the Wonderbar, where the man on the next barstool said to him: Hey.

Hey what? said Tyler.

Bet you can’t tell me what snowmen got that snowwomen don’t got.

Tyler thought for a moment. —Snowballs, he said, slightly pleased with himself.

Shit, you’re a comedian! My hat’s off to you! But you’ll never get this one: What makes a snowman smile?

I give up, said Tyler.

When them
snowblowers
come round!
Hoo!
Heh-heh-heh-heh . . .

Tyler laughed and shook his head.

You’re pathetic, said Domino, who’d materialized behind him. You hang around in sleazy bars and think that stupid misoyginistic jokes about snowmen are funny. You need to get a life.

You and me both, said Tyler. Speaking of sleazy bars, what’s it like looking out through the sleazy bars of your prison cell?

Asshole! shouted the blonde, and Tyler chuckled and narrowed the eyes in his grey, grey face . . .

He felt weak with dread when he considered his future, so he did not consider it. What might and probably would happen imminently seeped into the present, poisoning it, but he denied the poison. His relationship with the Queen, as his connection to John and to Irene had been, was doomed. But hadn’t John and Irene’s marriage been literally doomed? Where was the sense of everything? And suddenly he felt such anguish that ideas vanished and to save himself he thrust his tongue up the Queen’s anus. But that didn’t save him, because now he
believed;
he had faith—not merely in her herself; he’d long since gained, lost and regained that; but also in her onrushing end. She would go away, like one of the tired old secretaries high-clicking down the granite steps of the Hall of Justice on Friday night,
gone
like the man in the skullcap who drank and drank until the eyes rolled back inside his head. And in terror Tyler held his Queen tightly enough to bruise her ribs, and he cried: What am I going to
do?

Ah, said the Queen. You mean afterward, don’t you, baby?

Yeah.

They were inside a shed on Bryant Street whose outside read
AUTO GLASS
. Everybody else was out working that night, except for Sapphire, who made many strange faces each as white as the divider lines on pavement, her mincing movements striving to please the world, her long hair combed back by her Queen, plaited into a horse’s tail. Whenever Tyler gazed at her, he believed her to be expressing something terribly important which happened to be in an alien language. Buddha says that greed, anger and ignorance cause all human suffering. Sapphire possessed neither greed nor anger. As for her ignorance, that was either almost absolute or else entirely nonexistent. Perhaps she was Buddha. And upon Canaanites, as upon all others, Buddha has compassion. Was this what the retarded girl was expressing when, appearing between him and the Queen with the silent rapidity of one of those chrysanthemum spirits in snow-blue robes who rise from the central trapdoor of a Kabuki stage, she smiled on him, simultaneously shedding tears?

Allrightie, now, Sapphie, said the Queen. You’re a good girl. You’re our good girl. Now go over there an’ lie down. You got to dream now. You got to dream the dreams like I told you.

But Tyler could not cease gripping the Queen’s knees as he groaned over and over: What am I gonna do?

Well, I guess you just gonna have to deal, she replied a little drily.

Africa?

What? What is it now, child?

Can I go with you?

Where?

Wherever they’re going to put you, he stammered.

No.

You don’t want to talk about it. I’m sorry if I . . .

C’mere, baby. You not
ready
for this. You got some travelling ahead of you. Lots and lots. You really wanna know?

I guess not, he sobbed. Not yet—

Hi-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-!
the ladies screamed at his mother when he opened the door.

Well, well, said Mrs. Tyler. What a surprise. How dear of you all.

And John’s even put birthday flowers on your wheelchair, said Mrs. Simms. How darling.

I’m Henry, not John, said Tyler.

Oh, I’m sorry, Henry. Where can we put our coats?

I’ll take them.

Where’s John?

He’ll be here directly, said Tyler. He wandered into the kitchen and poured himself a water glass full of whiskey, thinking that no matter what he did he would be considered corrupted and attainted like a homeless man or an unwashed prostitute and he therefore longed with all his soul to be away from here forever and in the arms of the Queen for as long as she lasted. His fantasies were as green and white as the bok choy for sale right around the corner from City Lights.

Henry? came his mother’s weak voice. Where’s Henry?

Tyler sipped at his drink.

Somebody go see where Henry is.

Scowling, Tyler upended his part-drunk glass into the sink. Then he took the birthday cake out of the refrigerator. It was one-thirty. John had promised to arrive promptly at two, so Tyler needed to be out of the house by then.

Henry?

Oh, hello, Mrs. Myers. I’m just lighting the candles for Mom. Would you mind getting everybody ready to sing “Happy Birthday”?

You’re such a good son, Henry. You and John both. John especially. It seems as if I’m always seeing John running up here with something for your mother . . .

I wish I could just help her a little more, Tyler whispered.

Why, June, you look
ravishing
tonight, said Mrs. Myers.

Thank you,
my dear, Mrs. Tyler said.

She looks awful, said Mrs. Myers out of the side of her mouth.

Why, what’s wrong? said Tyler.

Can’t you
see?
Just look at her
face!

On the television, Brady was saying to an interviewer: In every province of our Invisible Empire there’s one Great Titan and seven Furies, and if you don’t even know that much . . .

Where’s Mrs. King today? said Tyler.

You mean you didn’t
hear?
said Mrs. Myers delightedly.

I just swear by that Miramar cream, Mrs. Simms was saying. It’s the newest thing. When you put it on your face, you can feel it burn. I guess it actually dissolves that top layer of skin.

No, I didn’t, said Tyler.

You didn’t what, dear?