The Empty Chair (18 page)

I thanked him for loving me.

He bent down to lift me up. I was crying. We embraced and then he made tea. We drank it in silence; he'd learned how to make a perfect cup of English tea from his mum.

“Do you want to know why I haven't visited the Great Guru?”

His voice was deep, with sparkly, dancing notes. A cognac voice. Something inside him went still, beyond my reach. His mood and tone were elegiac.

“The reason I've not gone to visit the Great Guru in Bombay is—would you like to hear the truth? The reason I've not gone is . . .
because he is the only man I've ever been afraid of in my life.
The
instant
he lays eyes on me, he will
know.
It shall all be over! And where will that leave me, darling Queen? Where! And what then?”

So of
course
I got on that plane when he called—to Delhi. I'm afraid that's the best segue I can manage at the moment. It's hard getting back into it after a break.

Tell me, Bruce, how badly am I fucking up? Have I “come a cropper,” as Kura used to say? I probably
could
be telling the story much better. But you can change things around later, no? With the editing? You can sand down the rough edges . . . I'll pick up steam—you'll see. I'll try to be more articulate. You don't know how much I've been reading
[her old journals]
!
There's
so
much
freakin' material. You know what I
can
do? I actually
can
try to—I'll try to do a little more editing in my head. Edit the thoughts before they come out my mouth . . . O? You think that's a mistake? I don't mean
edit-
edit, I'm not too good at that. I just mean be a little more mindful.

Anyway, we'll see. We shall see, said the blind man. To the deaf girl . . .

The Roller arrived at 7:30 with yours truly toddling out half-an-hour later, just as the sage predicted. Following Kura's script, a chauffeur in full livery smoked a morning cigarette whilst leaning against that fleshy part between bonnet and withers. Once I came into view, he flicked his butt to the curb and snapped to attention. We barreled down 110th Street and the sheer movement coupled with the ineffable mystery of wholly unexpected adventure shot little sunbeams through the clouds of my depression. Travel has always been my drug. The stubborn gloominess shifted, like items in an overhead bin. In my experience, moroseness grows in direct correlation with the time spent gazing at one's own navel—and shrinks upon fixing one's gaze on another's. I was already thinking about Kura and our imminent reunion, which further brought me out of myself.

We drove straight onto the field. It was a big plane, maybe
too
big. (I know my doctors
and I know my jets.) Not gauche, but
gosh!
—pure Kura. Two pilots and a “hostess” waved from the top of the stairs. I felt like I was entering an old photograph of some starlet having her moment; I got butterflies climbing the airway.

I retired to my cocoon-ready cashmere bed straightaway, the cabin ringed with orchids. (I never did see that elusive doctor, until we landed.) She brought tea then left me alone. I nestled in to ruminate. Taking off, I thumbed the nubs of my two fingers and something about the whole situation made me laugh out loud . . . I never thought about the cause
or
effect of my mutilation anymore—I'd been running from those memories for 30 years.
The ruined hand of a cowardly witch.
I was closing in on my fiftieth year: twitchy, witchy, barren and bitchy, out of season and out of swords. I wondered how many flatfoots he put on my tail, anyway. They call that “intel,” don't they? “Show intel” . . .
show 'n' tell.
Well now I'm just getting silly. (I should cut back on the wine during these sessions.) Do you remember? That he said he knew something no one else did? That my heart had been broken by a woman? O Bruce, my heart has been breaking for 11 years! She thought I'd betrayed her—then vanished. But I
didn't
. Betray her. Not even for a minute. Though I
do
believe I know how she got that deadly idea . . . a horrible,
terrible
misunderstanding. If I can just tell her the
truth
of what happened, maybe all can be forgiven. I've been searching for her ever since.
5
I told you I was getting close. Every day, a little closer. I'm not on this bus for my health.
I
told
you what I'm doing, you
know
what I'm searching for. I'm searching for
her
—

To be honest, I thought he died a long time ago.

It was obvious that Kura had done well for himself though I doubted he was still in the drug trade. At his level, careers lasted about as long as a star athlete's. Someone younger, hungrier, crazier—someone luckier—always came along.

He was 62 now. The enormity of it—of
everything
—struck me like lightning as I hurtled toward him, an arrow shot through Time itself. Something he used to say popped into my head. “With your bow and my arrow, we could really go places.” I remember that I said that out loud and started to laugh. And before long I was bawling, keening, blubbering, exhorting the gods to do I don't know what. I didn't want the stewards to hear (there were three of them), even though I knew they'd been trained to ignore the random, spectacularly uncensored outbursts of the very rich and their hangerson. I didn't want that doctor rushing in with a hypo, either.

I needed to get a grip . . .

I wasn't hungry.

I didn't feel like listening to music. That might make me cry even more. So I took a ferocious shit, crawled back to bed and swallowed a hundred milligrams of Seroquel.

Awaiting its effect, I tried to visualize what the contemporary Kura might look like. Softer, probably, like the best cotton gets. Maybe thirty pounds heavier. 20? 50? Twenty pounds
lighter
?
Thinned down from a rare blood cancer or some sort of nonsense . . .
Variations on a (Kura) Theme
floated past in the jiggly aspic of my mind—still
charismatic
, that would be without question, in the Savile Row suits that gave him a rakish, pioneeringly shabby look. Being the equal opportunity masochist that I am, I climbed into
his
fantasy of how
I
would look, before realizing he must have already
known.
I'd always been camera-shy but whomever he sent on my trail would have provided him with a portfolio of telephoto headshots, surreptitiously taken in the streets by hired men.
Not fair.
Yet none of that mattered, of course, not really, because any current or even not-so-current images would be overruled by the nubile iconography of my 16-year-old self tenderly entombed in his own private amber. The Darwinian default—oy!
Still, I prayed he wouldn't find me too repellant. A depressed, childless, perimenopausal woman, unlucky in love, with a shelf life of self-esteem long past its expiration date, I presumed I would throw off a medley of scents: a potpourri of moribund pheromones, burnt adrenals and brokenheartedness.

But what if—what if he was
attracted
?
What if when he saw me, what if we
both
—O!

And what if he'd already arranged a grand wedding in Jaipur at the Palace of the Winds?

Team Morpheus warmly invaded, with molecule-soldiers of Seroquel and that other (non-FDA-approved) drug called
love . . .
I pinched myself with a rhythmic
no no no
because I couldn't afford to carry over the feelings I had for
her
—even in paler disguise—to my dear Kura, whose devotions I was in the midst of rediscovering.
She
was my cold case, not Kura, and nothing in me wanted to solve
him.
My love for her was real; my love for
him
was as one might feel toward a childhood curio found against staggering odds, at a yard sale. Perhaps it best remain in memory . . . I needed to convince myself this latest fantasia involving Kura, whatever its form, this so-called “romantic”
(heavy quotes around that!) development was nothing more than the heart's and body's response to the fear, loneliness and isolation of depression—a trinity whose siren song banished all reason. I
mustn't
surrender,
because to decide to love another risked losing all I had left, the tattered, star-dusted remnants of that
real
love I still carried,
would
carry, forever—one I still fully expected—
expect
—still—to end in happy-ever-after.
Yes
it was fun to flirt with rekindling what Kura and I once had or at least some version of it. And
yes
, he'd lifted me up—saved me from myself—with the perfectly timed request to accompany him in the solving of an ancient riddle . . .
but so what?
Was I so weak that a call from a man I hadn't seen in decades was all it took to set off a chain of fantasies ending in marriage? I admit that when I allowed myself to go down that road there was something about becoming Kura's wife that was inexorable, almost too perfect. Another part of me knew, at least
hoped
,
that this old-fashioned foolishness of mine would end at first hug—in Delhi.

I remember thinking: “Well, it
better
.”

Still, I loved him.
God
it felt wonderful to love. And feel loved again!

I can't remember how long after Kura's confession it was—when he confided his fear that the Great Guru would peer into his cupboards and find them bare—or how long it was after he'd raged and scared the bejesus out of me—but one day we were in Barcelona when he announced, “We're going.”

“Going where?”

“To Bombay.”

I was thrilled.

Could not
wait.
See, I had a mission—to seduce the old
swami
and reveal him for the fraud he was.
[sings]
“He's just a man . . . and I've had so many men before, in
oh so many ways
 . . . he's just one more!” I was determined to
smash the false idol and destroy my lover's illusions once and for all. Thus, Kura would be forced to admit that
I
was the Great Guru,
I
was his teacher—and
nothing
could compete with what I had between my legs. O, I am telling you, Bruce, I was the most awful girl!

I'm
still
awful. At least, I
hope
I am!

The
hegira
began as a straight-ish shot but our course kept deviating, for reasons unrecalled and unknown. I think we came in through Karachi—don't ask. We arrived in Bombay about a month after leaving Spain. This was 1970. From the moment we landed, Kura was quite ill. I thought he'd acquired some legendary Indian malady but since we'd only been in the place a half-hour or so it wasn't too likely. I forgot to add an important detail: for the first time, we were traveling alone. That was how Kura wanted it and his posse reluctantly agreed. Not that they had a choice.