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 detaiclass="underline" 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.