The Empty Chair

I had finished with my last customer just as the streetlights came on. A young developer from Moscow who wore his beard square and severe, as if the lower part of his face had been designed by an architect. He drank two espressos, refused the vodka, and spent the entire shave explaining artificial intelligence to me.

I let him. Young men need to explain the future to someone. Their fathers are tired of hearing it and their girlfriends already understand it better.

Afterward, I showed him the model running on three monitors in the back room. It watched currency spreads, translated messages, and compared the sale prices of gold coins.

“Artificial intelligence is like a twenty-year-old barber,” I told him. “It has seen ten million faces and has never touched a human head.”

He laughed. I charged him full price.

When he left, I locked the door and turned up the music. I prefer German techno when I close. There are no lyrics to disagree with. The bass traveled through the old Soviet tiles while I cleaned the chair, emptied the espresso machine, and returned the vodka to the freezer.

The shop contained newer things because I like newer things. The appointment software knew which customers arrived late and quietly lied to them about their times. A PlayStation occupied the waiting room because businessmen who pretended to control industries became honest when losing at Mortal Kombat. But I arranged my razors by hand. I dried the brushes bristle-down. I folded towels into thirds. Natalya folded them in half.

We had survived thirty-eight years of this disagreement.

My right thumb had begun moving again, rubbing against my forefinger, rolling something that was not there. When I reached for the brush, it settled. My neurologist had given the movement a name. I had given the neurologist a haircut. Neither man found the transaction useful.

In the inventory book, my first figures stood upright; the last crowded together until I could hardly read them. I tore out the page and dictated the numbers to the computer.

This was why technology had been invented.

Crossing back into the shop, my foot stopped at the threshold. The rest of me wished to proceed.

“We are going,” I told it.

Someone answered.

“Not yet.”

A man was sitting in my chair.

I placed my cup on the counter, turned down the music, and checked the door. The bolt remained thrown. On the security monitor, the chair was empty.

The man wore a dark wool coat without rain on it, although rain moved silver across the window. His hands rested openly on the armrests. He sat as if the appointment had been entered before I bought the building.

“We are closed.”

“I know.”

“Then you are either important or stupid.”

“Neither will help you.”

He said this pleasantly. A threat leans forward to see whether it has worked. This man simply waited.

I looked again at the monitor. I considered my medication, the long day, and the pistol beneath the register.

“A shave,” he said.

“Tomorrow.”

“Tonight.”

“You have an event?”

“You do.”

I disliked the answer, which meant it had been well made.

I ran hot water over the brush. I could have ordered him out. Instead, I wrapped a towel around his face and pressed it against his jaw.

Warm. Human warmth.

I found this reassuring for less than a second.

“Does anyone else see you?” I asked.

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

“Begin there.”

There are customers who speak this way after a management seminar. Usually I charge them extra.

I worked the lather in circles, lifting the hair. On the monitor, the brush traveled around an empty headrest.

“You know,” I said, “there is a perfectly ordinary explanation for this.”

“Yes.”

“You could be more concerned.”

“You are concerned enough.”

I selected my old straight razor. He inclined his head before I asked.

When I placed the blade beneath his ear, my hand was still.

“You see? The doctors worry too much.”

“You worry too little.”

“It produces the same bill.”

He almost smiled.

“When you were thirteen,” he said, “you hid beneath the stairs while they buried your father.”

I stopped the razor.

“You asked to be made useful. You said you would go wherever you were sent.”

“Children bargain cheaply.”

“You renewed the bargain.”

“When?”

“Your son’s operation.”

I wiped the blade.

“And when Natalya found the messages.”

Outside, a car passed through standing water. I could hear each tire enter it.

“Natalya told you?”

“No.”

“Then we should discuss your sources.”

“Would knowing them change what you said?”

I reapplied the lather.

Men had told me everything from this chair. Faces covered, eyes closed, a blade beneath the jaw. Affairs, debts, the names of children they had not acknowledged. At first, I helped. I knew a man with dollars, another with medicine, another who needed to leave the country. I put them together.

Later, I began charging for knowing.

Later still, I charged for not telling.

The shop paid its taxes. The back room paid for the shop.

“You have been useful,” the man said.

“I have.”

“You promised more.”

I shaved beneath his jaw. I had shaved violent men, policemen, politicians. I had never cut anyone by accident.

“What do you want?”

“Close the shop tonight. Tomorrow, leave Russia. Go to Canada.”

I lowered the razor.

“Canada.”

“Yes.”

“This is not an instruction. This is a continent with good advertising.”

“It is sufficient for tonight.”

“Why?”

He waited while I finished the second pass.

“A master gave his servant a sealed jar. He told him to carry it to the upper field, place it beneath a dead tree, and return without opening it.”

“Was the servant paid?”

“He shook the jar. He heard nothing. He opened it and found it empty. So he remained at the house.”

“A practical man.”

“The next morning, the master asked where he had placed the jar.”

“And he said?”

“That there had been nothing to carry.”

I rinsed the blade.

“He was correct.”

“About the jar.”

The man met my eyes in the mirror.

“Why does a master need an empty jar in a field?”

“He did not.”

“Then why send anyone?”

“The servant had said he would go wherever he was sent.”

“So this is a test.”

“It was an answer.”

I reached for the cold towel.

“A master who knows his servants already has the answer.”

“Yes,” he said. “The servant does not.”

There was no satisfaction in his voice. He was not winning an argument. He had time to let me finish losing it.

“My wife?”

“Tell her. Ask her to come.”

“Ask?”

“The instruction was given to you.”

“She will say I am ill.”

“You are.”

I stood with the towel in my hands.

For weeks everyone had approached that word from the side. Tired. Overworked. A difficult adjustment. Even the doctor had spoken of management, as if my body were another business I had neglected to supervise.

“The shop?” I asked.

“You have people who can run it.”

“They steal.”

“You know how much.”

This was true.

“And the men in the back room?”

He looked toward the door behind me.

I thought of the ledger on my desk. Not the one the accountant saw. The names, the amounts, the things I had learned when men could not look me in the face.

“Must I give everything away?”

“You must leave.”

“How long do I have?”

“Enough to do what you have been told.”

“Will I return?”

“No.”

I pressed the cold towel against his cheeks. His eyes closed. I dried his face, applied the aftershave, and ran my fingertips beneath his jaw to check for anything missed.

There was a pulse.

I remember this because I looked for it.

When I turned back from rinsing the razor, the chair was empty.

The door remained bolted.

On the recording I moved alone around the chair, raising the brush, lifting another man’s chin in my palm.

I watched it twice.

Then I telephoned Natalya.

***

She arrived in twenty minutes, wearing her coat over her nightdress. She had brought my medication and a bag of groceries.

Even an emergency, in Natalya’s opinion, should accomplish more than one thing.

“Have you eaten?”

“An angel came.”

“So no.”

She set the groceries down and took my hands. One at a time. She looked into my face.

“Did you fall?”

“No.”

“Did you take an extra tablet?”

“No.”

“Any vodka?”

“Not enough to explain Canada.”

She closed her eyes.

I told her.

She listened without interrupting. This frightened me more than anything the man had said. Natalya interrupted television advertisements.

When I finished, she asked to see the recording.

We stood together at the monitor. There I was, talking, listening, making room for someone who was not there.

“Turn it off,” she said.

“There is more.”

“I can see.”

“You can see a recording.”

“Misha.”

“The camera does not show him. That is what I am telling you.”

She took out her phone.

“Who are you calling?”

“Our daughter.”

“She’s asleep.”

“Then she will wake up.”

I took the phone from her hand. Not roughly. There are degrees of foolishness, and I was still capable of distinguishing them.

“Talk to me first.”

“I am talking to you. You want me to talk to him.”

“He’s gone.”

“I know.”

She said it so gently that I put the phone down.

Natalya went to the sink. She washed my cup, found a plate, and began cutting bread.

“He knew about the stairs,” I said.

“You have told me about the stairs.”

“I have never told you what I said under them.”

She continued cutting.

“I believe you saw someone.”

“No. You believe I believe it.”

“What would you like me to say?”

“That you don’t know.”

The knife stopped.

After a while she said, “I don’t know.”

It cost her something. I had asked for so many things over the years that I recognized, belatedly, the sound of one being paid for.

She put the bread before me.

“Eat.”

***

In the back room, the markets continued without our assistance.

Three messages from Dubai. An auction ending in forty-one seconds. A buyer demanding an answer before morning.

Ordinarily, I would bid with four seconds remaining.

At two, I reached for the mouse.

At one, I placed my hand flat on the desk.

The auction closed.

Behind me, Natalya said, “Canada?”

“Yes.”

“Where in Canada?”

“He was not a travel agent.”

“Pavel is there.”

“I know.”

“You have his invitation.”

“In the drawer.”

She looked at the drawer, then at me.

Of course. There was the country, already suggested. The money to leave, already available. A damaged brain had only to arrange the pieces and put a coat on them.

“You think I invented permission,” I said.

“I think you have always been very good at obtaining it.”

There was no useful answer to this.

I opened the drawer. My passport lay beneath the invitation. Beside it was a photograph of Natalya holding our daughter outside the shop. She was laughing at something beyond the frame.

I could not remember what.

“Come with me,” I said.

“To Canada.”

“Yes.”

“For how long?”

“I don’t know.”

“And if I say no?”

I rubbed my thumb against my forefinger.

The man had been very precise about this.

“Then I go.”

She pulled out the other chair.

For years we had discussed leaving. Always after something. After a payment cleared, after the shop could manage without me, after the currency recovered, after our daughter stopped asking.

Now I had offered her an empty jar.

She sat down.

“What happens to all this?”

“The front room can run.”

“And the back?”

On the desk was a message from a man whose son owed money. I had been considering what the father would pay not to learn where.

I closed it.

“I close the back.”

“You can close a door and keep everything behind it.”

“Yes.”

She waited.

I brought out the second ledger.

Natalya did not look surprised. This was one of the difficult things about being married a long time. Very little remained that you could reveal dramatically.

“The money that belongs to other people,” she said.

“We return it.”

“We?”

“I return it.”

She opened the book.

***

At three in the morning, we were still there.

There was more to return than I had expected. Some money had remained in my possession so long that I had begun remembering it as mine. Natalya corrected me.

The angel had asked fewer questions.

My daughter called. Her mother had sent her a message.

“Yes, I am sitting down,” I told her. “Yes, I have eaten. No, I am not driving.”

I listened.

“I know what the doctor said.”

Natalya reached for the phone.

“Your father saw someone,” she told her.

I watched her face.

“No. I didn’t.”

Another pause.

“We’re going to get him checked before we travel.”

We.

I looked down at the ledger before she could see what the word had done.

***

At four, I went to turn off the security system.

The recording was still open.

I had stopped watching earlier when I began to look ridiculous. Now I let it run to the end.

On the screen, I turned toward the sink.

The empty chair settled.

Not much. A small movement, the leather seat rising as though relieved of weight.

I leaned closer.

Then the chair turned toward me.

I watched again.

The hydraulic mechanism was old. I had intended to replace it. The floor was uneven. A draft might have moved something.

I put my hand against the chair.

Its wheels were locked.

“Natalya.”

She came from the back room carrying our coats.

I played the last few seconds.

We watched the empty chair turn.

Neither of us spoke.

I played it once more.

“The chair,” I said.

“I see.”

“Then—”

“I see the chair.”

She put my coat over the counter.

We stood there looking at a man on a screen rinsing a razor. He had no idea what was happening behind him. I disliked him a little. He had been given every chance to turn around.

“We should send this to someone,” I said.

“Who?”

I had no answer.

She reached past me and stopped the recording.

“Did he tell you to prove he was here?”

“No.”

“What did he tell you?”

I looked toward the back room. The ledger lay open beneath the lamp. Beside it were two passports.

For the first time that night I wanted a different instruction. Something impressive. Something that could be verified by experts and discussed by people who had never met me.

Natalya held out my coat.

At the threshold, my foot stopped.

She waited. She had learned not to pull.

I looked back once.

The towel on the headrest was folded into thirds. The shop was clean. There was no one in the chair.

“We are going,” I said.

This time, I was speaking to my wife.