by Bruce Wagner
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“How about if I tell you something you dare not utter, not even to yourself anymore?”
“Go for it.”
“A woman broke your heart.”
The wit and wind went out of me.
And I won’t talk about any of that—not to you, or anyone. You just have to trust me when I tell you this is something no one could have known.
“Dear Queenie, I must tell you that ‘more die of heartbreak’ is a phrase which only applies to myth and storybook. You, precious girl, are a survivor.”
I always hated that word.
I masked my emotions best as I could and said, “Well, that’s comforting.”
Kura laughed again. His voice was a few registers lower since I’d last heard it, accompanied by an echo of phlegm that hovered just shy of unfriendly, blurring the border of good health. His accent seemed to have thickened too yet somehow had rendered his English simpler and more precise.
All at once I grew nervous about the motive behind the call.
“Queenie,” he said, “I don’t have too much time.”
Though I took it to mean “at this moment,” I absorbed the poignancy of the remark. Then his speech took on a certain brusque, still delicate formality, as it always did when he got down to “brass tacks.” (Kura had a weakness for archaic American idiom.)
“I wish to make you a proposal. Do you have time to listen?”
Another thing came rushing back: whenever Kura had something “heavy” to lay on me, as they used to say, he asked his wild child (who’d grown into a louche woman) if she had the time to listen. I did then—or fancied so—and I did now. Though I have to admit, “proposal” triggered an absurd millisecond fantasy he might ask for my hand.
“Tomorrow morning, at a little before 7:30 o’clock a.m., a Rolls-Royce Phantom will pull up to the kerb outside your building. A black Phantom, I may add.”
He sniggered over that small, deliberate touch; the black phantom’s black Phantom, whisking away a white wraith.
(He was actually more of a mocha phantom.)
“I know it’s a bit early for you, unless your sleeping habits have changed—I stopped my man short of delving further. If you agree to what I propose, I ask you to appear outside no later than eight. I grant you a half-hour’s grace!” Came the laugh, again; no need to rub my nose any further into the epic, pathological tardiness of years gone by. “When the driver catches sight of you—most likely, he’ll be having a morning smoke—he shall go briefly rigid in that timeless salutation of the servant class, then flick his fag to the street, gather up your things, and whisk you to Teterboro, depositing you on the tarmac beside a private plane. My plane, at least for this particular hajj.”
He pronounced the already sensual word as a lover would an intimate act, drawing it out like an exhalation of hasheesh—stratocumulus of perfumed smoke.
“It will be a long flight but I believe you’ll find it quite comfortable. I know how important superior comfort is to my Queenie!”
And by the way, I couldn’t remember the last time anyone called me that. I’d gone back to my birth name, Cassiopeia, in my mid-20s—she of the constellatory skies—and, as Kura once enlightened, the namesake of the legendary black queen that hailed from a region called Ethiopia.
“There shall be three pilots and two stewards looking after you, and a doctor onboard as well, though I’m certain he will remain well-hidden—unless of course you get lonesome and wish to chat him up, for he is at your service. The gentleman walks softly but carries a big syringe. Actually, he’s bringing me some medicine; a godawfully expensive courier. I strongly doubt that you’ll require his ministrations . . . not to worry! He’s very good at tending to that once in a blue moon in-flight heart attack. O, he’s absolutely keen on it. You might say it’s his specialty!” The honeyed laugh, then avuncular advice: “My Queen, if you accept your old friend’s mysterious invitation, I encourage you to pack a very small bag . . .” No need to rub my nose any further into the epic, pathological over-packing that was—still is—my predilection. Je ne regrette rien. “Anything you may possibly need shall be provided upon arrival. Bring nothing formal, as there shan’t be any galas or social fêtes on this end. Why don’t you come in your pj’s? Isn’t that a fine idea?”
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.
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) hustlin
g 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.
