The Royal Family (75 page)

. . . And Tyler swam through the double ranks of costumed weirdos and never-nevers, entering the marble lobby that blended into the gullet tonsilled and tumored with slot machine banks down which everyone milled. This was just how Brady wanted it to be. At that intimate media lunch he’d confided: The name of the game in this part of Feminine Circus is to get a whole bunch of people to walk by a whole bunch of slot machines. Because this is the family area. Now, the adult area will go on line tomorrow; and the name of that game is of course to pack the booths, pack the booths, pack those goddamned simulation booths with real paying customers! Hey, boys and girls, we’re on an
upswing!
—But while Brady’s stated goal regarding the slot machines had now been reached, the coin-swallowing lips on many of those appliances remained masking-taped, they being freshly born; their equivalent of baby-birdcries was:
WAITING FOR PROGRAM DOWNLOAD.
Tomorrow morning it would be the same here as it always was now at the Luxor, where a girl said dully: I remember when I first started playing poker here I never liked it, and then she put another quarter in. Of course the Luxor literally did not bear scrutiny. Whenever Tyler (breaking the rule of all wise old private eyes, which was,
You can’t pull a real surveillance wthout three people
) stood in one place too long and took notes, a security guard would come to watch. Then, too, the Luxor’s walls so often rang hollow when he tapped them, whereas the MGM Grand was so grand that he couldn’t even
find
the walls; and here at Feminine Circus he was always lost even when he knew where he was. The crowd came pouring in for free food, congesting the rooms until the waitresses in white aprons who ferried silver trays of new food above their heads could barely get through.

Tyler could not shake off a certain respect, even pride (strange to say) in the vastness of this place! It was an
American
place, big and colorful and hollow; probably ninety percent of the people on earth would give anything to spend money in places like this. The reflection of a flashing star above a quarter slot (more favored by the “average gambler” than nickel, dime or dollar) beat within a forgotten glass of wine as if it were a heart. Two media blondes in short red skirts sat side by side at a Jackpot Jungle and a Home Run, drinking margaritas. —No, we’re not virtualettes, they kept telling everybody, we’re
real!

Tyler approached these ladies and said: Excuse me, but could you help me get Queen Zenobia’s autograph?

Sir, said the nearest blonde, I’m terribly sorry, but Queen Zenobia is terribly, terribly busy.

Well, I’ll be, said Tyler, open-mouthed.

You probably will, said the blonde.

The other blonde, pitying him, said: Never mind. She’s not the real Queen Zenobia. She’s just a stand-in. Mr. Brady is still trying to cast the real Queen.

Ah, said Tyler wisely. Well, thank you so much for your time. Let me just ask you one thing.

Mm hm? said the blonde.

Would Jesus demand that we reject all this?

The woman stared at him.

Cain would say it was up to us, said Tyler with a sinister chuckle. And he walked away.

He felt very hungry, but figures streamed so urgently between the weird cold rainbows in the niches of slot machines that for the moment he gave up the effort to fill his plate. A pharmacist was coming out of an unmarked door muttering: Norpramine, desapramine . . . —Tyler considered that a little strange. Somewhere beneath the triple-decker ledges of silk flowers which ascended to the starry ceiling, a man’s hands almost touched, one being wrapped in a twist of napkin, holding his plate, the other seizing a taco on the plate to bring it to his mouth; Tyler saw only this detail of him without the wholeness. A middle-aged woman stood at the center of an aisle between slot machines, throwing back her head and smiling. There was a lot of talk and happiness, and Tyler wondered if that was because so many machines were off. —They say it’s virtual, a woman said, and another woman said: They say he’s got the Queen. —People walked purposefully, stood speaking to one another, looked into each other’s eyes, and enjoyed the food, which was quite good; Tyler finally snagged a squishy handful of steak tartare. When he caught his breath, he found himself in a large bay in the wall-coast papered with what were in fact very beautiful butterflies and weeping willows (
those murals are actually handpainted on real canvas and then put up like wallpaper!
one of the guides imparted reverently.) A virtualette identified for Tyler by a change girl as Sweet Pickins’ writhed her six arms above a bank of dollar slots beneath a
LOVEBUCKS
kiosk whose red telltale of millions kept going up and up and up, by perhaps a dime a second, and from afar Tyler glimpsed friendly monsters passing.

There was another kind of virtual reality, too, as the procession of tourists who went up Las Vegas Boulevard from the MGM Grand to the Luxor learned when they reached the corner trodden with soiled fliers, and at this corner a boy stood trying to pass the fliers out discreetly folded so that they didn’t look like what they were. A man accepted one, and as he bemusedly opened it, the silicone-pumped boobs leaped out and he, his wife and the children opened their mouths and then he strode back to the guy and said: Listen, buddy.
You,
take this back! I don’t want this crap.

This ad, which Tyler philanthropically retrieved from the unfazed herald of good times, described a young Guatemalan girl (later he forgot whether she was “beautiful,” “eager,” “sexy” or “submissive”)—and no agency, oh, by no means; so of course what he got was a blonde from Alberta in a red Jeep Wrangler; she said that the hundred and twenty-five an hour was just for the agency, and she wanted a tip. He made it four hundred and she sulked because she usually got eight hundred to a thousand, which at first he did not believe. But maybe it was true, because during the half-hour that she stayed and fidgeted, the agency called every ten minutes in amazement that she was still there.

Usually I’m in and out in five minutes, she explained. That way the guy doesn’t have time to get mad before I’m done.

What can you do in five minutes? Even a blow job takes longer than that!

Well, I give him a full body massage, but he has to use his own hand.

It took him a moment to calculate the sum of these convolutions. —You mean he pays you a thousand bucks to jerk off to you?

Yeah, she shrugged. I guess you could put it that way. I’m not really a sex girl.

What are you then?

Let’s just say when I’m through they usually don’t do it again! she said with the same valley girl smile of the digitized Queen of Diamonds whose lavender breasts got obscured every second by the
PLAY 5 COINS
sign. —But sometimes I do get repeat customers. It still amazes me. But in Vegas it’s different. This is the big money, man. You get high rollers and they don’t care what they spend.

I guess that means you’ve got to be going, huh? said Tyler.

Why are you like that? At least I’m not a Brady Girl—I’m
real,
I’m
me,
I’m—

Then can I touch you?

Nobody touches me, mister.

Oh. So you’re not real, either. Hey, listen, did you ever hear of the Queen of the Whores?

Wake up, mister, she said, rising. We live in a democracy. And by the way, I stayed an extra five minutes. Do I get a bonus?

Nope.

Shrugging, the blonde dialled the agency and said: OK, I’m leaving. He’s not going to give me any more.

It’s kind of different here in Vegas, he said in his best hayseed voice.

She lit a cigarette. —The other thing that’s different about Vegas is that in all these hotels, even the real fancy hotels, the windows never open.

Because the people who lose big money might . . . ?

Exactly. Same reason there are no long flights of stairs.

She was already putting her coat on and then she left him—rich, beautiful, contemptuous, and he felt only a little more empty than before.

Even divinities such as Jonas Brady need to procure business licenses, and although their articles of incorporation may list for their addresses such public-deflectors as John’s office address at Rapp and Singer (my client does not
want
to be contacted, John explained), still they need to get financing somewhere, and so for a snoop such as Henry Tyler of Tyler & Associates, Investigative Services, it’s but a fingersnap’s worth of effort to run a T.U. or a T.R. W. or any other number of credit checks, cognizant of the fact that Brady must have filled out a loan application or two in his time. No mention of cottonwood trees, but here on the blue computer screen crawled and quivered electronic proof of a pinball machine franchise, then a conspiracy to market office supplies, then the Sleep-O Hotel chain, each of them affixed in the credit bureau’s memory to a name, an address, a social security number. Back in San Francisco, Tyler had run a Uniform Commercial Code listing and learned that Brady was by definition a big shot: he owned a lot of secured collateral. —And it’s Union Bank, too, he muttered. That’s where John always
refers his clients. Okay, and what about the Dun and Brad?
LOOKING UP HOST,
it says. Oh, come
on.

COLLATERAL:   Inventory and proceeds
FILING NO.:     8714060005
TYPE:         Original
SEC. PARTY:     Union Bank of California, N.A.
DEBTOR:       
Feminine Circus Co., Inc.

The public record items contained in this report may have been paid, terminated, vacated or released prior to the date this report was printed.

BANKING 08/96

Borrowing account. Now owing medium six figures.

HISTORY 08/96

JONAS A. BRADY, PRESIDENT
DIRECTOR(S): THE OFFICER(S)

CORPORATE AND BUSINESS REGISTRATIONS REPORTED BY THE SECRETARY OF STATE OR OTHER OFFICIAL SOURCE AS OF 08/96.

Business started 1995 by Jonas A. Brady. 51% of capital stock is owned by Jonas A. Brady.

OPERATION 08/96

Entertainment.

ADDITIONAL TELEPHONE NUMBER(S)/CONTACT INFORMATION:

c/o John Tyler, Rapp & Singer, San Francisco.

TERMS:   Net 30 days.

TERRITORY:    Western United States.

EMPLOYEES:   7 which includes officer(s).

Full display complete.

And the upshot of this investigation?

Brady was Brady. Brady had committed no crimes. Brady was an upstanding citizen.

The next day more than sixty thousand people went between the outspread legs of the fallen angel of Feminine Circus, which from street level could be apprehended only as
an asymmetrical polygon, blue and green, with so many angles bulking, sprawling, stretching and towering, but it did have a feminine head (again, à la Sphinx, like a construction paper cutout); it possessed sapphire blue triangular eyes beneath which people streamed slowly in like H. G. Wells’s Eloi going down to be eaten by the Morlocks. That was the day Feminine Circus was officially open, so they’d turned the sky on over the Sea of Love, filling it with multiple rainbow sunsets. Yes, the heat was on, pipesmoke swirled around the phony trees, and the passionless attended with big change cups between their thighs, watching the whirling oranges and
BARs,
scarcely looking at whatever money came out, but not unhappy. One man bantered: I put a nickel in, but it’s her machine, so she gets the winnings! —The robot angel Valentina waved goodbye in her pink rocket, curtseyed, and ascended a cable, hung there between sun and moon until people forgot her, and crept inconspicuously back down to repeat the performance another billion times. Another crescent moon crossed the sky slowly, and stars came out. Slot machines sang all around.

Oh, that’s kinda neat, a girl said.

Tyler had made a mistake. He’d judged by the Thursday night crowd. They were not sleepwalkers after all; this was the weekend now and this hotel, this incredible jungle, was alive with gambling monkeys and tigers! He could not believe how many people were passing so quickly in so many directions, drinks and cigarettes in hand; at all times cleaning ladies swept that carpet of phosphorescent flowers, combing the litter into their mouths-on-sticks; one told him: I seen Robinson Crusoe’s and I seen the Sphinx and all them others, but this is the greatest! It’s the biggest, it’s the best, it’s so beautiful! —and Tyler looked around me and saw that it
was!
—especially after a few drinks. The waitresses in short black skirts wiping tables with one hand, holding round trays of drinks in the other, families marching down the glowing carpet toward the elevators, some with cocktail glasses in hand; the calm, happy heads of the resting gamblers sitting around tables, lights slopping and lushing around, were all so busy that they reminded Tyler of the brochure with Egyptian symbols on it at the Luxor which read:
Keno While You Sleep
—
Play More, Win More!
Meanwhile the girl on the loudspeaker was as happy and amazed as if she’d just given birth to Jesus, crying out: Mrs. R. D. Winkler, Mrs. R. D. Winkler, you have a
feminine
phone call! I have a
feminine
phone call for Mrs. R. D. Winkler! —for, just as the gorgeous black waitress who used to work at the Horseshoe downtown said: After being down there with all those gamblers, you get used to it. You have to perform. —No doubt that was what Mr. Slapper, the P.R. guy, had in mind when, escorting Mr. and Mrs. Rapp, Mr. and Mrs. Singer, John and Celia, Roland and Amanda into the very spacious and bright cafeteria (where an off-duty Greek goddess picked up a tray and stepped into line), he said (with a smile like the long crack between a cocktail waitress’s puffed-up breasts): First of all, we call all of our employees
ringleaders.
Feminine Circus was connected with the Big Top until 1969. When you’re onstage, always delivering, you put on your best performance. —Passing couples upturned their heads, looking at everything; nothing in any one part of Feminine Circus was quite the same; that was a triumph in which the little Cupid in the American Girl Lounge seemed to delight, for he moved and twisted in his chair, convulsed his hairy arms, threw back his head and laughed at the stars on the ceiling.