The Empty Chair (16 page)

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.

We were in the parking lot of the club and my man was drunk. When he got drunk, he got very, very quiet. Never a good thing when that happened, nuh uh. Supposedly, I was the first girlfriend he'd had in years that he didn't beat the living shit out of. The other gals who hung around the club—all older, 19 and up—they couldn't believe it. Couldn't believe I wanted to be with him
or
that it'd lasted so long. They just shook their heads. “He must really love you, Cassie.” (That was them being kind.) Mostly, they looked at me like I was psycho, which I was. I didn't care what he did to me. I actually started to goad him. There wasn't anything cute or courageous about it . . . it was ugly and degrading. He'd been in the penitentiary for murder, for like 10 years. He told me about two killings, contract killings he did while in
the joint. That's what they call the penitentiary—the joint. If you were a junkie you were a
hype
, and your needle was a
harpoon.
I picked up a whole new vocabulary. I learned about
rigs
and
works
and
wolf tickets
,
oh I learned a
lot.
Quite the sentimental education. I thought he was afraid of me! Which probably he was, a little bit anyway . . . We were in the parking lot, standing next to his car. I said some stuff I knew I shouldn't have. I was horrible, Bruce! I needed a shot—had a bad habit, an
expensive
one, and he wouldn't give it to me. All part of our little S and M game. I was out of my skin. I think I probably called him—no, I
did
,
I
remember
, I called him a fag. Nice, huh? Because he couldn't get it up a hundred percent of the time and I thought I was the Fuck Queen of the Western World. He actually
liked
when I got aggressive in bed, he was one of those guys who liked to be dominated but didn't want anyone to know it. So I called him all kinds of queer, loud enough for people to hear and then I said, “Why don't you just fucking kill me, faggot?” I was wired like that, I had kamikaze swagger. (I must have been blasted out of my skull too.) You know, you can get away with stuff for a long time. Luck's a big part of it.

That night, my luck ran out.

He grabbed me by the neck and I felt a sting. I remember it was freezing, a freezing wind like a knife itself. I wasn't wearing my coat . . . I was cold, then suddenly warm. I smiled at him. I don't know how or why but I knew it was the end. I was very calm . . . he smiled back. It was impossible to know what he was thinking, why
he
was smiling. In the slow-motion madness of it all I looked up and saw my namesake constellation. Really seemed to have the time to look—and it was upside-down. Did you know Cassiopeia is topsy-turvy half the year? She is, that was her punishment for sacrificing her daughter. It must have been like only 10° but I felt so warm, so sort of strangely . . .
groovy
. I thought he must have given me a hot-shot, spiked me somehow. And I kept having all of this time to stare at the sky . . . I was looking at one queen, he was watching another (me). Then I got
so cold
—talking about it now, it's so vivid! I can
feel
and remember
so much
. Everything but his name. And I hope to fuck I never do. I've tried to before but it's just
gone
, erased from the memory bank. One of those amazing tricks the mind's so good at. I don't
ever
want to remember it. Not ever—

My theory was that he had trouble in bed because he didn't fuck with his cock, he fucked with his
knife.
The thing that excited him most was holding a blade to my neck during the act. That was the only way he could orgasm. Like a bad B-movie, isn't it? Some deep Richard Widmark weirdness from the '40s. What was that flick where he pushes an old woman in a wheelchair down the stairs? He'd make cuts on my neck while we made love, little crosshatches. Boy, I'm glad I don't know you better or this would be too embarrassing! If I knew you any better, I don't think I'd ever even have opened my mouth! Obviously, that excited me too—the knife—Jesus,
what
a sick puppy. O! Check this! You'll like this detail: I wasn't
completely
crazy because I always held his wrist when he came. Because there was always that possibility in the back of my head that he'd get overexcited and give me a
slice
, not really meaning to, you know, one nip to the carotid would be all she wrote.
Finito.
Over and out. Though he probably wouldn't have stopped there . . . Hey, if you've gone that far, why not take the whole head! I could just picture his cronies (who weren't very fond of me anyway) hustling him to a safe house before shipping the sonofabitch off to Central America or wherever.

Okay, the parking lot: later, I heard a whole mob was out there, but right when it happened it felt like we were totally, spookily alone. Like the scene in
West Side Story
when Tony and Maria are at a dance and suddenly everything spins and goes dark? And everyone disappears except for them? He got down on the ground, on top of me. I'd fallen into shock, staring over his shoulder at the upside-down Queen. His hard-on felt like the handle of a whip. He was rubbing it against me. Nice, huh. I mean, kinda thoughtful—who
wouldn't
want a little
frottage
before dying? The familiar rhythm of his breath told me he was about a minute away from busting a nut. Sorry. That was crude. I'm getting drunk. Anyway, he was real quiet. Which, as I said, was
not good.
Didn't ask me to look in his eyes like he usually did when he was gonna come, he was too far into the kill. I was pretty much gone anyway. You know, starting to merge with the jet-black majesty of woozy sky. He was good at what he did. (With a knife.) The weight of him on me was a comfort . . . then I felt this
tug
, but its meaning failed to register . . . then another—pinpricky tugs that sent me farther into the upside-down Queen's palace.

In his trance, he'd taken two fingers. I didn't know this at the time—they told me a few days later.

[points to a constellation, almost directly above]

See? Can you see her, Bruce? That's her throne. See? See it? Tonight, she's right-side up—all's well with the world. Back on her throne where she belongs. As am I . . .

Okay, back to the parking lot!

There was this
gust
out his mouth—a stench—then he started spewing waste like a broken pipe. I probably thought he
was
coming . . . in my hallucinatory state. He lifted himself. Floated above me then stood straight up but as if not by his own power. It was eerie, like a crazy puppet pulled by unseen strings, something superhuman, something
abominable
had plucked him off me. I can still see his mouth as the body was dragged off, that septic mouth, smiley face
crapmouth
unleashing a torrent of bright, brackish blood. And that, my friend, was that. His invisible predator retreated to the lot's far corner to fuss over its exsanguinated prey while someone wrapped something around my hand. That would be Kura. He used his
shirt as a tourniquet, leaving him bare-chested in the cold, a
very
Kura move, the swashbuckling touch! I'm sure he knew I wouldn't be able to appreciate the gesture but he did it anyway. (That, my friend, is
style.
) I know I smiled at him. I was smiling at everyone, especially Mama Cassiopeia—I was already pinned up
there
, clueless, to the topsy-turvy night.

Then upside-down
I
went, and fainted dead away.

I awakened in a too-bright room that smelled of ether and fast food.

Loud voices, laughter,
shushing
.
Kura hovered close to Coat and Shabby Tie, who gave a tidy running commentary on my needle tracks—I had an abscess on the inside of my elbow—and couldn't stop throwing up. Blood-soaked compress on hand and under rib . . . those
cigarettes
he was smoking—not Kura, but Coat and Shabby Tie—the ones that smell like weed and incense and cheap Egyptian perfume—
clove.
Oh, and Coat and Shabby was most assuredly a
doctor
because I knew my doctors. This one was pasty, late 40s, an abortionist-type out of Faulkner, with the missed-train look of one who'd burned his adrenals for a middling cause at too young an age. Or a tragic one—maybe on a balmy summer night, he'd backed out of the driveway and run over his kid.

Apparently the boyfriend's knife found a relatively safe spot under the ribs and I'll never know if the Nameless One missed the arteries and vital organs on purpose. Probably. He was a
precise
motherfucker, would've been a helluva surgeon in another life. I'll never know what the Abominable Puppeteer did to him either, surgical-wise, once he got him to the far side of the lot.

Coat and Shabby stitched what was left of my fingers and did a pretty good job of it if I do say so myself. I must have been in that weird little private ER for two days. They transferred me to a chic Old World clinic, an upgrade from the other place to be sure. When I got my wits back, I discovered it was the Drake—that's high-end hotel living for ya. The puncture seemed to take care of itself. The main concern was my hand, because bone infection is never a good thing.

I was there a couple of weeks. It was Christmastime. I had a 24-hour nurse. Every few days, a huge Samoan looked in on me. No way you couldn't feel safe around that man. All of the people around Kura had heart. I knew they'd take a bullet for him, and probably had—or worse. My minder never spoke, which made me feel like an utter fool. Five-hundred pounds, with a Cheshire grin. I had the feeling he was close to Kura,
and when in his presence I made sure I
behaved
. I even acted repentant, though for what I wasn't sure.

All I did in my perfect, stately cocoon was eat club sandwiches and listen to
The White Album.
Lots of room-service hot fudge sundaes, lots
of doodling and drawing,
lots
of journaling about my White (Mocha) Knight. I had become fairly obsessed. Because after all, I'd seen him just twice—once, when he stripped off his shirt to stop the bleeding and the other while being patched up by Coat and Shabby, which was kind of a dreamy corollary of the former, with more dope and less blood—so his messianic absence made a perfect breeding ground for my hormonal, father-starved, junkie-Rapunzel imagination to run wild. In my head, my mysterious savior was pure
Thanatos
, with a heavy dollop of Eros on top.

So there she was, Eloise with a social disease (gonorrhea, and cured, courtesy of Coat and Shabby). Fidgety, depressed, and packin' on the pounds . . . feeling deserted by all her witchy-woman powers. Like a doomed prisoner, awaiting reprieve—I
still
held out hope that he'd gallop up and swoop me onto his saddle. And now I remember one of the things that tortured me. They never bothered to station a guard at the door of the suite to prevent my escape, at least
I
never saw one. I didn't know which freaked me out more: that I could leave anytime I wanted, or if other people could
enter.
What if my ex's posse was hunting me down? (Not that anyone gave enough of a shit about my ex to avenge him—not to mention they would already have ascertained they were brutally outmatched.) In my worst moments, it boiled down to Kura not caring less. But now I know
exactly
why they—
he
—Kura—didn't feel the need. Because it had to have been so obvious I wasn't going anywhere, not as long as there was the slimmest chance of a rendezvous with the Big Boss. That was plain as the stumps on my hand . . . O, they must really have gotten a kick out of stringing me along! No, by the time I left, I was convinced I would just have to leave it all behind: my savior, the Samoan, the Norwegian nurse, the room service—ooh,
that
was going to hurt!—goodbye to all that. Everything but the mason jar of Darvons that Coat and Shabby had prescribed, to wean me from the heroin.