The Royal Family (106 page)

It kept me out of jail, kept me out of trouble, said a cute kid in a red uniform, peering sincerely into Celia’s face. He was a television manifestation. —No one’s encouraging me to accept chastity, he said. No one’s pressuring me. I’m just doing it because it’s the right thing to do. I just want to thank everybody.

A long cylinder of ash trembled at the end of Celia’s cigarette.

The phone rang.

Hello, I’d like to speak with Miss Celia Caro, said an uncertain girl, obviously a telephone solicitor just starting out. I’d like to tell you a little about our new—

I’m waiting for a really important phone call, Celia said. And I’m really tired of people trying to sell me things over the phone.

Is this Miss Celia Caro?

Yes, it is, said Celia, gritting her teeth.

Dope-sucking, home-poisoning, home-wrecking sex machines are being manufactured even as we speak,
the television said.

Well, Miss Caro, if I could, I’d like to just briefly tell you—

I said I’m really not interested, and I have a really important phone call that I’m waiting for.

Could I call back at another time?

Please don’t, Celia said. I mean, I hate to be rude, but I’m just really really tired of—

The solicitor hung up on her.

We have to increase visible security in the streets, the TV was saying. We need a security guard at every corner. And above all we need to teach those young girls the street smart techniques to avoid being targeted. We got the fire marshal on our side.

Well, thank you, Mr. Lovinson, replied the TV. We’ve just been speaking with Mr. Manuel Lovinson of the controversial new Network Against Public Vice, known to most of us as “Brady’s Boys.” And tonight we have Mr. Brady himself to answer a few questions.

The TV went on talking to itself. Celia grunted, got up, went to the kitchen, brought matches and the rest of the pack, just as she had known she would do. Then she reached for her little yellow pad and wrote:

mask face
complete taxes
med. shelf for kitchen $69
all things in boxes
adopt kitten?
cancel account

The phone rang. Celia was sure that it wasn’t John.

Hello, I’d like to speak with Miss Celia Caro, said the same uncertain telephone salesgirl, and this time Celia hung up on her.

She lit another cigarette.

The phone rang.

Hello? she said wearily.

Guess who? said John.

Hey, babe! cried Celia, trying to be happy.

You want me to come over?

Where are you?

I’ll be downstairs in ten minutes, he said, hanging up.

In eight minutes the buzzer rang. She muted the television.

He looked tired and harrassed. He took his coat off and she hung it up for him. She went to the kitchen and poured them each a glass of wine, then gave him his and sat down on the sofa. He came and sat beside her.

Smoking again, he said, looking at the ashtray.

Celia said nothing, but her lips tightened bitterly. Lonely or not, this was hardly what she took pleasure in, to wait half the evening for this half-stranger to come and nag her.

So, she said. How’s work?

Oh, Rapp’s being a sonofabitch, and Singer’s making retirement noises. I’m sick of both of them, he said, raising the glass to his lips. His hand trembled.

How about with you? he said.

I’ve got two projects that I’m working on, and Sunday I’ve got a corporate brunch, she said. Today I was really jammin’, like they say. On top of everything else I had to get some some last minut e-mail out to a client in Thailand, and then I went to see this woman whom I’m helping with data entry and when I got back home, just after I’d heated up a big plate of food, the data entry woman called and—

She saw that as usual he was not listening.

You want to go see that crime documentary tomorrow night? she said, clenching the glass.

What do I want to see that movie for? laughed John. That movie’s all about reality. It’s depressing. I’m more interested in trying to get away from reality.

Celia nodded miserably.

It’s like reading
The Diary of Anne Frank,
he went on, rubbing it in. It’s a really good book, they say, a great book. That’s just why I don’t want to read it. Not even the unexpurgated edition where she’s talking about her period or something.

Did your mother make you read it? asked Celia with sudden understanding.

Leave my mother out of this.

He gulped the rest of his wine.

She picked up the remote control and was just about to turn on the television with the volume up loud when he said in an almost terrified voice: Celia . . .

She looked at him. Her heart began to pound again.

Celia, he said, I need you, Celia.

With a sense of sad and cruel triumph, she understood that at this moment—and probably for this moment only—she had license to torment him as much as she pleased. Just as one can tell when men in neckties and shiny shoes stop in front of monuments and reach into shoulderbags that they will pull out cameras which operate with a quiet and elegant click, so Celia recognized John’s purpose, and the mechanisms of it, and the rules for operating those mechanisms. She was not a vindictive woman, but she had met more pleasant men than John in her life, and it infuriated her that through some chemical accident she loved him. She knew all too well that he did not love her and never would, that he could not love anyone (with the exception of his mother), that he had made Irene miserable—but, that being said, he was as well disposed toward her as he could be.

Smiling, she un-muted the television.

Celia, did you hear what I said?

She increased the volume by two iterations.

Celia, he said.

This is grotesque, she replied happily.

He drummed his fingers and muttered:
Klexter, klokan, kladd, kludd, kligrapp . . .

What’s that? said Celia.

Oh, I don’t know. Just a kind of jingle. A friend of mine—well, actually, one of my clients—is always saying it, and now it’s stuck in my head.

He had not lied. At that moment he’d truly needed Celia. Why? Because he’d come very close to being unfaithful to her with Joy. He was guilty, so he needed her to forgive him. Whenever he looked at Joy’s sad dog eyes after that, he thought about the Wonderbar.

The next time he went to the Wonderbar, he went without Joy. That was when he met Domino.

The blonde, studying John with as much attention as she usually paid to her crack pipe, saw a suit, a perfect necktie, a haircut and well-shined shoes. Through the avarice of courtship shining more brightly than the lemon-yellow socks of the Korean barmaid at Jonell’s she began to sense something familiar, yet displaced, like the upside-down reflections of bottles on a Tenderloin bar’s mirrored ceiling, glowing transparent multicolored stalactites. She sensed his brother Henry.

Don’t get me wrong, she said in a trembling voice. I have a legitimate job. I work nine to five downtown.

John, who until then had never thought otherwise, gazed at her in a surprise which also reflected amazement at his own presence in this place. What was he doing? He had so many obligations at the office, and then Celia . . .

You need lime in that, he said. Loreena! Bring Domino some lime.

Why, you’re a real gentleman, said the blonde.

My oh my, Loreena muttered. Aren’t we hoity-toity around here.

Shut the
fuck
up! screamed Domino, and John looked on in astonishment.

It made no sense, his being here. Since he was here, he might as well stay for another twenty minutes, but how was it all explicable? The blonde attracted him; he didn’t know why. Just as a lawyer’s briefcase is almost by definition too small for all his paperwork, so John’s narrow strip of active mentality could not contain more than a few of his longings. It would be better if after today he never returned to the Wonderbar. He sat grinning and relaxed, only his fingers unconsciously fooling with each other.

Are you married? she whispered.

My wife died.

Are you in a relationship?

Yes, John said.

You’re a hetaerist, aren’t you? said Domino. That’s one word I’ll never forget. You don’t know what that means, do you, scum? It means
one who thinks that women are common property.

Are you trying to impress me? People who recite words don’t impress me. Anyone can do that.

She slapped him hard on the cheek and, strangely, this stinging sensation felt delightful.

This is so strange, he muttered, entirely disoriented.

It was just some basic flatbacking as far as Domino was concerned. Within half an hour she’d lured him into a twelve-dollar trick pad on Ellis Street and had drawn him down on top of her crying: Come
on
, come
on! —
She was trying to figure out how to steal his wallet. He for his part was mesmerized by her scars and bruises like Coptic crosses, especially by the long white eye-shaped bullet scar. As he caressed the blonde’s long, stockinged body, he felt himself carried farther and farther away from everything familiar, like a little child lost at sundown. Instead of the smell of the Tenderloin, about him rose an incongruous movie theater smell of stale popcorn and breath; silhouettes, illuminated around the edges, ran into place during the previews, while a blood-red sun rose upon the big screen. It was all the blonde’s magic.

When you pay, it’s a whole different thing, she explained. The man fantasizes because he’s paying the money. He’s
paying
for the feeling that he’s getting power.

John gazed at her, fascinated. Perhaps there was an element of helplessness in his fascination, but it would not be too much to say that never before in his entire life had he felt so thrillingly engrossed and enmeshed, like a lost tourist, unable to speak Japanese, wandering through the swarming Shinjuku district of Tokyo. Of course work, hobbies and other licit and illicit love affairs had called forth his best harmonizing instinct; everything within a given contract, session, year or world which was supposed to match up, did, because John set out to make matters so, and the proceedings, calculations, and downright artistry which achieved that result filled him with pleasure, to be sure. But Domino was no model airplane whose thousand plastic parts he carefully and at times tediously sanded, glued and painted until she was all put together, accomplished; rather, she was something superior and exterior to himself, which seized hold of him and dragged him into a delicious blindness.

So pay me, she said, sliding her warm hand up his leg. Then you can come play inside my cage.

Domino seized him, her arms as remorseless as the huge white stripes horizontal and vertical of downtown skyscrapers in the rain when the pavement is as grey as rain. She closed her arms around him.

So you see, all of you have different experiences in this cage, Domino whispered, gaping her long thighs apart.

Oh, whatever, said John.

Are you paying attention to what I said, asshole? Because if you’re not I might just have to slap you again.

John shuddered with pleasure.

You need somebody like me, he said to her.

You’re pretty fuckin’ opinionated, said the blonde.

John Tyler is a unique animal, said John complacently. John Tyler likes to speak his mind.

Tyler?
Are you Henry Tyler’s brother?

Oh, this is
all
I need, said John, losing his erection. Has Hank been porking you, too?

Hell, no. He porks Maj.

Who’s that?

Just some skanky little nigger bitch. All right, John, now let’s cut to the chase, because I don’t have all night. You wanna fuck me or not?

Fine, said John. But first I want to know whether Hank—

He’s the kind who goes through the garbage, gets a handwritten scrap of paper with
someone’s phone number on it, calls up and say I’m a friend of so-and-so. He’s a real sleaze. We’ve already wasted enough brain cells on him. So. You gotta pay me a hundred dollars up front, she said, watching him with a menacingly greedy smile.

Silently, John removed a crisp hundred dollar bill from his wallet and gave it to her. Unable to believe in her luck, the blonde kept thinking: I’ve got to get into the sonofabitch’s pocket. I’ve got to. I’ve just go to.

Okay, John, you can get undressed, but you have to hurry up. You got a condom on you? Otherwise I’m gonna have to charge you five more dollars.

Grinning, John pulled a condom out of his wallet and slapped it down in the bed. Then he began to unbuckle his trousers.

You have to know this, Domino said steadily. If I hurt you, don’t ever hit me back.

John bit his lip and nodded.