(You can find the links to previous chapters below)
I strolled around and around the little plaza (my eighth lap) wondering if the chemist would ever show up. “Well, it’s a nice day, anyway,” I said to myself. And it really was nice. The neat rows of azalea bushes, which bordered the square, were in full bloom. Each cluster of color was a fluffy little puff of Prague’s springtime.
The imposing sculpture in the center of the plaza was weird, but it had a good vibe. An immense, empty bronze suit strode across a disc-like pedestal. A well dressed man straddled the empty suit’s shoulders, like a horse and rider. The man’s expression (his eyes and mouth couldn’t seem to agree) shifted depending on how the light and shadow struck him; now smirking; now forlorn; now seeking. He pointed an accusatory finger directly at me. I bent forward and read the name engraved upon the pedestal, “Franz Kafka.”
An icy hand clutched my shoulder and I leapt half out of my skin.
“Guilty conscience?” Addie Bundren asked.
“Being sent to a foreign land by a sleazy drug dealer makes me a little jumpy,” I said. “You scared the sh*t out of me.”
She had a piercing gaze and her close-cropped hair clung, disconcertingly, to her scalp.
“You must be the chemist,” I said.
“You must be the chaperone,” she said.
“Felix Hoenniker,” I stuck out my hand.
“I was informed I’d be traveling in the company of an esteemed physician.” She left my hand hanging in the warm spring breeze. “Forgive me, but…” Her eyes, each one a different color, roamed over my stubbly cheeks and rumpled clothes. She grimaced, as if something bitter filled her mouth and she’d no option but to swallow. “Well,” she sighed, “at least you have intelligent eyes.”
“What’s with giving me the runaround this morning?” My voice sounded more bitchy than I’d intended. I cleared my throat to banish the peevish tone. “If I knew I was getting a scenic tour of the old city, I’d have worn comfortable shoes.” We’d been scheduled to meet right after breakfast. She’d texted me five times, changing the time and location.
“I needed to make sure you weren’t being followed by Kurtz’s men,” Addie said. Her eyes narrowed and she asked, “Are you here of your own volition?”
I explained how Kurtz had sicced Tom Joad on Cady Compson.
“Ah, yes. Kurtz holds the sword of Damocles over my head as well.” Addie explained how Tom Joad was sticking to her daughter, D.D. (a college student at New York University) like sh*t to a shovel.
“So, Kurtz grabbed us both by the short hairs,” I observed. “Why did you run away from him?”
“Kurtz,” she scoffed. “That egotistical pissant. He imagines the world revolves around him. No, it’s not from him I was running. I fled something far more sinister: the voice.”
“Voice?” I asked.
“The voice in my head.” Addie shuddered. “The voice doesn’t compel me outright. But he can be quite persuasive.”
Well, I guess that’s why she needed me as a chaperone. She had a screw loose.
“I designed drugs for Kurtz because I needed funding. The pharmaceutical industry can be so… so… stodgy. I endeavored to fabricate a substance, which might snuff out the voice, once and for all.”
Judging by the frenetic cadence of her speech and the wild gleam of her eyes, she must’ve sampled one too many of her own creations.
“Where science failed,” Addie said. “Love succeeded.” She undid the top three buttons of her paisley blouse. “D.D. made this for me, with her own hands.” She displayed a delicate silver necklace, which glimmered against her buttery skin. “As soon as it contacted my flesh, that horrid voice was silenced.” The chain links were simple and unadorned, but elegant. “Please, check whether the clasp is secure.” She turned her back towards me and bent her long, slender neck. “I’m terrified of it becoming undone.”
At the intersection of her shoulder, back and neck was a tattoo: arcane symbols and letters from a long-forgotten tongue cast in twisting, intertwining, concentric circles...
I’ve seen that emblem before. But where?
The design sucked me towards a faraway world……
That’s where I’ve seen it! It’s carved into the door of my favorite bar, Azazel’s.
I spun slowly under a dark, starless sky, floating in a warm ocean………..
“Whoa!” I said and leapt half out of my skin.
Addie had stuck her icy hands under my shirt. Her palms ran up, down and around my torso. Before I knew it, she reached inside my shorts and (none too gently) groped around.
“Hey! You could at least buy a guy a drink first.”
“Excellent, excellent, no wires,” Addie said. “Now, give me your phone.”
I handed it over.
She tossed it into an azalea bush.
“Hey!”
“I don’t fancy Siri’s eavesdropping,” she explained. “Listen closely: Kurtz is threatening my dear D.D.. Needless to say, he’s on my naughty list now. We have very little time to devise a plan.”
###
A pair of Kurtz’s goons were waiting for Addie and me when we landed at Newark Airport. They whisked us off: long black limousine to forty-foot boat at the mouth of the Passaic River. Addie tossed crumbs and laughed; starving seagulls squawked and battled each other for a bite to eat. In the crisp sunlight, her hair (which hugged her scalp in tight curls) glistened like a dewy field. When she caught me staring, her expression grew haughty.
The river twisted and turned; deeper and deeper into the heart of New Jersey. We chugged along; afternoon gave way to evening and the fat, red sun sunk low over the Watchung Mountains.
We disembarked in a rural county, surrounded by rolling hills and horse farms. A winding path snaked from the muddy banks of the Passaic towards a ghostly-white Greek Revival mansion. Along the path, hidden speakers piped orchestral arrangements of seventies disco tunes. “The elevator music from hell,” I observed.
“Kurtz! That rascal knows this melody melts my heart,” Addie said. “Yes, yes, he’s quite the charmer. But I’ve seen behind the curtain.” She shook her head, as if to banish the Siren’s song. She repeated to herself, “Stick to the plan, stick to the plan, stick to the plan…”
I shushed her when Kurtz came into view. He stood before a built-in grill in the center of the vast stone patio. He wore a pristine white apron, which protected his bespoke blue blazer and butt-hugging khakis. He bobbed his globular head and hummed along with the softly playing tunes. When he spotted us he said, “Ah, you must be famished.” He speared a steak (generously marbled with fat) with a two-tined fork. “Wagyu.”
He tenderly spread the meat over the dancing flames.
The tantalizing aroma (oh, so good) soon had my mouth dripping.
“It will take more than a choice cut of beef to get yourself back onto my nice list,” Addie said. “Where’s my daughter?”
“All in good time, my dear,” Kurtz said. “All in good time.”
“I demand—“
“We both know, Addie, that you’re in no more a position to make demands than the good doctor. You’ll see D.D. and Felix will be reunited with his paramour… after you concoct a potion to disentangle me from that cretin, Joad.”
Rage bubbled under Addie’s skin. She breathed deeply and battled against herself for a long moment. The boiling settled down to a simmer. “The voyage has been long,” she said, wearily.
“Travel is a curse,” he replied. “Why don’t you toodle up to your room.” He waved a shooing hand. “Freshen up a bit and change into something more comfortable.”
###
Figuring this was likely my last meal, I wolfed down a couple of pounds of the best steak I’d ever eaten (like butter in my mouth); all the better for having been masterfully paired with a garnet-red, earthy Malbec. I was so stuffed I barely found the gastric capacity for dessert: golden sponge cake soaked in honey, which had been harvested from a beehive on Kurtz’s property. “Kurtz,” I said. “If you weren’t a sleazy drug dealer, you’d be far and away the coolest dude I know.”
Kurtz only had eyes for Addie, “Don’t pretend you didn’t miss me a little, my dear.”
Addie’s unfocused eyes told me the fine wine had gone to her head. “You wouldn’t have harmed her?”
“D.D.?” Kurtz smiled and spread his arms wide. “Perish the thought. You know she’s like a daughter to me.”
“Don’t sharks eat their young?” I said.
Kurtz didn’t find my jibes as amusing as the first time we’d met. Stirring estrogen into the mix usually has that effect.
A woodwind and string arrangement of The Bee Gees song, More than a Woman, filled the night air. An enchanted smile played on Addie’s lips. She reached a slender arm out to Kurtz, “Shall we?”
Kurtz extended his hand and pulled Addie to her feet. She was clad in Lululemon athleisure wear and spiked high heels. With those stilettos on her feet, she gazed slightly downwards into his eyes. They spun across the patio as gracefully as John Travolta and Karen Gorney in Saturday Night Fever. Kurtz wrapped a beefy paw around Addie’s narrow waist and drew her in, close and tight. She lay her head on his shoulder.
She winked at me. She held up five fingers on her right hand and three on her left.
I nodded.
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