Bruce Wagner - The Empty Chair

I’ve lived too long not to know the human animal’s universal default is a humbling insecurity. Fearless and resolute as he was by nature, Kura was unaccustomed to initiating a game whose results were uncertain. Ringing me up as he did after so many years was a risk outside of his comfort zone. He was wily enough to know that to presume I would say “yes” was an excellent way to court major disappointment. There were just too many variables. He could Sherlock around all he wanted but to suddenly be face-to-face — voice-to-voice — with the flesh and blood of a thing— me —fudged any predictable conclusions. I imagined that in weaker moments, parsing the rainbow of potential responses before he called (or even while we spoke), he must have shrugged his shoulders, conceding that the only leverage he had was la nostalgie.

He had reached out in desperation (and not a little madness, knowing what I now know) and leapt into the void. Though a good part of him must have been certain that he had me, as the dreaded phrase goes, “from hello,” I still felt him take my temperature during his pitch; but perhaps the tremulous bravado, the quaver in his voice, was indicative of ill health. I was in the dark in that regard, having in that moment no idea what the man had endured in the decades we’d been apart — what transformations had occurred on the physical, psychic and spiritual planes. When I didn’t push back, he was palpably relieved that his fall had been arrested.

“Throw a talisman in your Goyard duffle, Queenie! Something for luck — a mysterious truffle —we’ll need it. Yes, we shall need a bit of luck. And, ah! I should add that there will be no danger in our errand.”

He was being courtly, for he must have known he was the single person on Earth that I trusted most. Maybe courtly is the wrong word — our bond had been forged under the most savage, nearly fatal circumstances.

“I wouldn’t want you to be dissuaded for fear an old flame might catch you on fire.”

“I could think of worse ways to go.”

In my mind, I was already on the tarmac. It gave me great pleasure to know that in just a few moments, he would hear my assent to flight. I was suffused by the overwhelming feeling that so much had been hard for Kura of late and dearly wanted him — wanted us both — to believe that with this one call, everything would now go his way. He’d saved me once — maybe now, I could return the favor.

We could all use a little Hormone Replacement Therapy, no?

“Do you mind if I ask where this plane is landing?”

I didn’t care. But like a teenager with a crush, I suddenly wanted to keep him on the phone. Besides, there was nothing to lose by asking a few questions; we were officially going steady again.

“Of course, I don’t mind. That much you deserve! But first you must say yes. It is important— energetically. ”

I Molly Bloom’d a breathless “Yes I said yes I will Yes” and the most glorious thunderclap of a laugh shook the Heavens, and my heart.

“You’ll be arriving in Delhi , late afternoon. But we shall only be there overnight. The next morning, we leave for points north — the second leg of your journey.”

“How many legs are there?”

“As many as a scarab’s.”

“How many is that?”

“For this, you must tell the computer to Ask Jeeves .”

“And you won’t say anything more until we meet. Correct?”

A dead quiet: it sounded like we lost our connection. In the split seconds that followed, I panicked, wondering if he’d call back… and if not, whether the velocity of madness would return with speedier vengeance. Might it begin with a rumor the call was a black phantom of my imagination? No doubt the result of striking my head against the roof of that underground grave…

Perhaps when I opened my eyes I’d be balancing atop a ledge watched over by my beloved gargoyles, a crowd of people below urging me on—

I heard him inhale.

He said, “I’ve found him.”

“Found who?”

“The American, Queenie! I found the American .”

Kura means “guide” in Swahili, and my friend was aptly named.

His parents were Muslim— Kura is close to Qur’an , no? — but he renounced Islam, just as he renounced most things. His father was a diplomat, a Francophile who uprooted his family from a small African country (an act not without controversy in its day) to settle in a working class Parisian neighborhood. After the move, Kura was inexplicably given a ludicrous new name: Pierre. “Lucky Pierre” is what they called him. By the time we met, in 1968, he was Kura again, the alias and its sobriquet long since relegated to the bits-and-bobs bin of dislocated childhood. (I should add that it was oddly retained as an occasional nickname, but mercy to those who added Lucky , because he thought that a jinx.) In truth, he was never comfortable with either appellation. At heart he was a refugee, a traveler in the shadowlands. The classic man without a country.

He was beautiful. O! He looked like a pharaoh. High cheekbones, aquiline nose, regal bearing. If he’d been raised in America, he was one of those men who would have been called “Duke.” Thin, light-skinned, light on his feet… green, piercing eyes — sad, delighted eyes. He inherited them from his mom, a Brit. She was a brilliant woman but on the cool side. Emotionally distant. I think he’d have preferred she had a little “white mischief” in her blood.

We met at a club in Chicago. I just turned 16; he was at least twice my age. I can’t remember why he was in the States but it would had to have been some monster dope deal. French Connection— sized. It was a terrible, self-destructive time for me. I wanted to leave the iron grip of my family’s wealth and dysfunction but didn’t stand a chance. I was in a vise.

I haven’t showed you this, have I? It’s probably time… [Her right hand slowly emerged from its brocaded silk sleeve, a night- blooming flower in search of lunar light. She held it out for inspection. I looked closely, with curiosity, as if it were an exotic pet — and got the feeling the hand was looking back. The index and middle finger were stumps; those that remained, bejeweled in priceless stones. The skin was covered by graceful, black henna tattoos, extending to the crook in her arm] I’m a southpaw, so it really hasn’t been too much of an impediment. I don’t parade it around, though I’m not particularly hyper-vigilant about concealing it either. I guess I favor it just a little. I’m as vain as the next girl but not so much about my hand, funnily enough. Anyway, my stock explanation is — or was, back in the day — that I was night-snorkeling along the Costa Smeralda and the propeller of our motorboat chopped them off. I’m going to tell you what really happened. [The hand retracted] So , back to Chicago, when Kura and I first met… I was in my wild-child phase. I walked around in a not-so-famous blue raincoat, a kid in a woman’s body. It was a rough club, oh boy, I don’t think it even had a name. No number on the building — a crazy hellish place. But exciting . I was a sick puppy! The only men I was attracted to were gangsters. (If you think that may have had a little something to do with my father, you better believe it did.) And I don’t mean gang-bangers, I mean gangsters. My Puerto Rican boyfriend was quick with a knife and I had a death wish— not a good combo. But aside from all that, I really wanted to bond with a killer. I had these warpy Caril Ann Fugate fantasies — remember Badlands ? — they based that movie on her and her boyfriend — I wanted to meet someone who’d murder my parents without having to be asked! I wanted to ride off into the sunset with a soul mate sociopath.