I took a moment to people-watch as I stepped out of customs. A young woman I recognized from my flight walked just in front of me, her vibrant pink sweater matching the vivacity of her gait. A man in a knee-length wool peacoat snuck up behind her furtively, a bouquet of roses held behind his back. After briefly stalking his prey, he tapped the girl on the shoulder. She whirled around, looked up, and recognized her lover. With a high-pitched squeal, she thrust her arms around his neck and they locked in a swaying embrace. Elsewhere, a young Asian man approached a (presumably Belgian) family. The mother and father stood behind a small boy who held a sign reading “Toshi Masumara” accompanied by some characters. The young man reached down and shook the boy’s hand, followed by the parents’. To my surprise, they began conversing in French. After a short, highly animated conversation, the father motioned toward the exit sign, took charge of the young man’s suitcase, and began wheeling it in the indicated direction. I really enjoy the arrivals area. With the exception of business travelers methodically tending to their obligations, it’s a place filled with people taking delight in one another. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no hippie, but I do believe emotions and moods are contagious, and there’s a palpable sense of joy in meetings, reacquaintances, and homecomings.

At first glance, I saw nobody who could have passed for my Uncle. Shortly thereafter, however, I spotted a gentleman holding a sign bearing my last name. Perhaps in his early 30s, his taught skin would be considered a dark olive. In fact, darkness could be considered a motif for all of his features. His eyebrows were thick and unkempt, bearing a nearly sinister v-like pointiness. Above them was a scar tracing the left side of his supra-orbital ridge, below them were intensely shining eyes. His jet black, straight hair had seen plenty of product and was slicked back beneath a trademark chauffer’s cap. He wore an equally dark tailored suit with matching tie, contrasted with a white dress shirt and impeccably folded pocket kerchief. As I approached, he took note and flashed a smile that affected only the lower half of his countenance. His incisors and canines, I noticed, were almost unnaturally pointed. Apparently, my uncle had pawned off the responsibility of fetching me on a private service. He was either incredibly important, incredibly impersonal, or both.

“Chris Davis, that’s me,” I said, pointing to the sign.

“Ah, Chris, so nice to meet you.” He had flipped the r in my name as a function of his accent. I couldn’t immediately make out the origin.

“I am Steffen, Mr. Chartreuse’s attendant.” My uncle had a butler?

“Huh, ok. Where you from Steffen?”

“I come from Romania, but I work for Mr. Chartreuse six years now.” I could see Stefan’s English was slightly lacking as well, and flipping that r made my uncle sound like “Shah-tluce.” I couldn’t decide how I felt about it.

“I take your bag.” I relinquished the handle of my suitcase and followed him toward the panel of glass doors leading out. He stopped abruptly at the curb. “You wait, I go get the car.”

I stood as he walked briskly across the lanes of passing Peugeots and Citroens in the direction of the parking lot. My uncle had a butler. Was that customary for here? My mother also mentioned a chateau which, being a French word, implied wealth and prominence. However, lacking any real knowledge of Belgian culture, I had simply assumed this delineated a house rather than an apartment. Seeing Stefan in his expensive suit, however, made me rethink that assumption. And what came around the block roughly two minutes later would dash it forever.

I’m a car person. I subscribe to the magazines, I drool over mankind’s latest automotive excesses (take the Bugatti Veyron’s 987 horsepower, quadruple turbocharged 16-cylinder engine, for example), and I appreciate the stylistic intentions of some of the more classic designs. As I waited, a superbly restored white-on-black 1937 Jaguar SS100 approached, gleaming in the summer sun. As it grew closer, I could see Stefan at the helm, guiding its direction with his gloved hands at 10 and 2 on the wheel. The car came to a stop in front of me, and Steffen blasted the horn with a loud, trademark “AOOOGAH.” He exited and came round to the curb, oblivious to my flabbergasted expression. Saying nothing, he grabbed my bag and somehow found room for it in the car’s miniscule trunk. Finally, with an unsettling grin, he returned to the curb and opened the passenger’s side door to the 2-seat cockpit.

“Where did you get this car?” I asked finally.

“Boxing match.”

“Excuse me?”

“De scar. I get it in a boxing match.” He collected his thoughts. “How do you say it? You should see the other guy! Ah ah ah.” His laugh was everything I’d imagine from a Romanian, three stereotypical staccato bursts. I chuckled politely.

“No, the car, it’s a very nice car,” I tried again.

“No, it’s Jaguar. No NASCAR here, American!” It was hopeless.

As we continued along Belgium’s systems of freeways, leaving the airport further and further behind, I became aware that my uncle lived quite far from the city proper. Unable to read Dutch or French, I couldn’t discern the direction we were heading. Come to think of it, unable to interpret metrics, I couldn’t discern how far we’d gone or how quickly. Kilometers and, of course, kilometers per hour were all useless measures without some sort of sense of scale. I didn’t know how 100 kph compared to highway speeds posted in the States, but it seemed to be Steffen’s preferred rate of speed. I completely ruled out calculating fuel efficiency. It would be presented in kilometers per liter, which I had no hope of converting into something meaningful.

Eventually, Stefan veered right and we left the freeway corridor in favor of service roads. We rumbled through undulating terrain as cottages and farmland transitioned from windshield to rear-view mirror. There was an unmistakable sense of antiquity. I’d wager some of the cottages had been around since the 1600s, and I wondered if their original builders rested in the shade of the same trees whizzing by my windowpane. After roughly a half-hour, we rounded a hard, blind curve. A steep cliff, perhaps 15 feet high, hugged the right-hand shoulder of the road, obscuring all scenery in that direction. We seemed to be headed around a mountain, or at least a very large hill. Steffen eased off the gas, eventually applying the brake as we decelerated. He cut a hard right into an asphalt entryway carved out of the rock face and came to a stop. It was large enough for a car, but practically invisible due to the severity of the curve. You’d simply have to know it was there to avoid missing it. In fact, it would appear to any car following you that you were turning directly into the rock wall. It was privacy by perspective, a very creative illusion. I liked it.

We were just inside the entrance of a man-made cave. The driveway (if that’s what it was) continued on through the rock, but was blocked by a black iron-wrought portcullis in the down position. Without lifting it, there was just enough space for the car’s rear bumper to sit flush with the cave’s exit. Steffen rolled down his window and typed a code into a numerical keypad embedded in the rock. As he pulled his hand away, a small LED indicator on the top of the keypad switched from red to green with a subtle beep. There came a whirring, the unmistakable sound of a mechanism drawing power and coming to life. The portcullis slowly rose, ascending into the cavern ceiling over a period of around twenty seconds. Steffen slowly inched the car past the portcullis, again coming to a stop just on the other side. He reached out his hand again and typed the code into a second keypad. With a rumble, the portcullis descended back to its original, secure position. I was too awed to carefully organize my thoughts before speaking.

“This…this is some serious shit you’ve got going on here.” He looked confused, but I wouldn’t bother explaining. I continued, “I mean what is it my uncle does? The cave is pretty sweet, I’ll admit, but who has that? Who needs that? Who in the world needs an effing portcullis? I’m a simple man, Stefan. Give me a cookie-cutter home in the suburbs with a white picket fence, a dog and a cat, a ford and a dodge, and 2.4 kids. I’ll make do. But this…this is...” I shook my head. My words were gone, leaving only awkward silence in their place.

“You like the garage door?” Stefan asked, motioning behind him with his thumb. I doubt he’d digested a word of what I’d just said, and it was probably better that way. I sighed.

“Yes, yes it’s very nice.” The lower half of his face smiled, again revealing those unsettling fangs. He gave the car a bit of gas and it rumbled, quite noisily thanks to the echo, further down the tunnel. Sunlight gave way to headlight as we descended further into the cave. After a couple minutes, the lights failed to reflect off the narrow walls, implying we were about to reach an open expanse. As we entered a large room, motion-activated halogen lights flickered on and bathed the area in an artificial but bright glow. It was a garage, a very large, underground garage. Concrete had been poured to form the floor and back wall of the room (which was actually 2 stories), but the rest remained unfinished. To my right, four cars were nuzzled up against the rock. Directly ahead of me, 5 more were parked side-by-side with their noses against a concrete outcropping. A staircase had been installed just to their left and, making a right when finished climbing, you could walk atop the outcropping to an elevator door. All of the cars were covered. The lower halves of the wheels were the only exposed area, and the only indication that what was underneath was real. I had a Keanu Reeves moment.

“Whoa…”

I’d have to have a little chat with my uncle about what all was underneath these sheets, and which of them I could drive. I’d had enough exposition though, I was ready to meet the man. Steffen pulled the jaguar to the left in front of the staircase. He opened the driver’s side door and walked back to the trunk, where we wrestled my suitcase from its depths. I too got out and, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, surveyed my surroundings. What a feat of construction. This must have cost an absolute fortune. I ran over to the steps and ascended them two at a time. Standing on the outcropping, I looked out over the room and faced the tunnel from which we’d entered. Steffen drug my bag up the steps one at a time. Finally reaching the landing, he wheeled it over to the elevator door and pressed the button. Fifteen seconds later, a capsule descended from the ceiling and we boarded. There was only one button on the elevator to serve two stops. The elevator was intelligent enough to reason that you wanted to be wherever you weren’t. The walls were entirely fogged glass, reducing the passenger’s view to a blurry visage. With a slight shudder, we rose off the ground and entered a vertical track cut through the rock. The surroundings were dark, but a pinpoint of light through the ceiling grew ever larger. The ride took in total less than a minute, and as the elevator reached its climax, the scene changed dramatically. The walls were bathed in light but the surroundings indiscernible. With a ding, the doors opened and the scene suddenly became clear. It was unbelievable. The lift rose directly into the center of an incredibly large, opulent living room. I’d taken an art history class that spring semester, and I knew enough to identify the décor as Rococo.

Facing us, a man sat in a chaise lounge about ten feet away. He was of slender build and sported a charcoal grey suit. His face was narrow and oblong, his features so chiseled that the cracks forming across his forehead and around his eyes seemed inevitable byproducts. His hair had retained its color, and was fashioned neatly atop his head. His eyes beamed with kindness and were accentuated by a thick moustache that added a disarming element to his immediate charm. I’d place his age at around 60, but there was an energetic youthfulness about him that made it seem much lower. He sat upright in a majestic pose with his hands folded neatly in his lap, his left leg resting by the ankle atop his right. The elevator was 2 steps below the level of the room, and his superior positioning rendered him a quasi-deific figure looming above us. In one fluid motion, he uncrossed his legs and, leveraging his hands on the edge of the lounge, rose. He descended two marble steps with effortlessly confident strides and continued towards us. His lips curled outward in a beaming smile, and the gleaming whiteness of his teeth contrasted his dark features beautifully. Though slightly beyond his prime, the twilight of his years shone upon him flatteringly. He extended his hand while still a full three steps from me and, upon meeting my grip, grasped it firmly from behind with the other hand. He had me by 4 inches easily but bent over slightly to mirror my stature.

“Sinclair Chartreuse dear boy, delighted to meet you!” He returned to an upright position. Somehow his British accent had emphasized each of his name’s 4 syllables. I didn’t think that was possible.

“Hi, Chris Davis, nice to meet you,” I replied.

“Nice, indeed. He motioned in front of him to Stefan, who stood behind me. “I trust everything went swimmingly at the airport.” He surveyed both of us.

“We managed to stay afloat,” I answered.

He half snorted, half scoffed, half laughed. “What wit! Did you see that Steffen?!” Steffen nodded vehemently. I was certain he hadn’t understood, but Uncle Chartreuse seemed to believe he had. He wagged his finger at me. “You’ve got your mother’s sense of humor, that much is certain!” My mother had a sense of humor? Who knew? “Steffen will take your bag to your room, come into the kitchen and get yourself some food. I know those airlines’ concept of hospitality…I ate better in prison!”

“Uhm, you were in prison, Uncle Chartreuse?” He looked at me blankly.

“It’s just an expression, lad.” But that expression illustrated how pathetically little I knew about this man. He rotated on the balls of his feet and headed across the alabaster floors through a large archway. Apparently, we’d entered the kitchen. It was an open expanse centered around a serving island with an assortment of gleaming pots and pans hanging above it. It was accentuated by black granite countertops all around. Uncle Chartreuse rooted through the refrigerator, eventually removing a silver platter adorned with an assortment of cheese and crackers. “Oho! This should do nicely, Steffen’s finest work.” He motioned towards a polished wood table that sat by a large bank of floor-to-ceiling windows. It was a charming breakfast nook. He delicately placed the tray in the middle and sat down at one of the four chairs. He flicked a cloth napkin to remove it from its origami-like folding pattern and placed it in his lap. I sat in the chair directly across from him.

“So, how exactly are you related to my mother?” Uncle Chartreuse had just stuffed a large cracker in his mouth and indicated that he’d need a moment.

“Brilliant question,” he said finally. “Your mother’s mother, my mother, had two husbands. The first was a Frenchman, Victor Chartreuse, a struggling painter living in London. Your grandmother was a visiting student who stumbled into his gallery by chance and the rest, they say, is history. But their marriage was far from a pretty picture, I daresay it painted Victor in a very unflattering light.” He guffawed at his own wordplay. “Mother left him ten years later and moved back to the states, where she met your mother’s father, Richard Jeck.” That was my granddad, Jeck being my mother’s maiden name.

“Intriguing,” I said. “In a classically dysfunctional way, of course. So what happened then? How did you and my mother split up?”

“I had dual citizenship,” replied Uncle Chartreuse. “University in Britain was practically free compared to your American standards, so I returned there. I began work shortly thereafter in Europe. Relationships are like seeds, my boy, they require a specific set of circumstances to grow and flourish. An ocean’s worth of salt water washed ours away.” He looked out the window. “But then your mother met that Davis fellow and, I guess you could say she became deJECKted.” He snorted again and slapped his knee. I groaned.

“That was really horrible.”

“Don’t tell me you object to my sense of humour.”

“It’s facile. Puns are futile attempts at hilarity by the unintelligent”

“Allow me to reject your conjecture.”

I slapped my hands on the table. “So help me god, if you pun one more time…”

There was a long pause. He opened his mouth and sucked in some air, holding it in briefly.

“I’m just trying to inject some humor here,” he spit forth.

“OH GOD. Am I really stuck here with you for the next month?”

“Indeed.” He shoved another cracker in his mouth and chewed jovially. “And I’m afraid there’s no way to eject yourself from it.”

“Is that it? Done? Are you—“

“Do you know what that was, my boy?” He leaned in very closely. “An interjection.” I stared at him blankly and blinked my eyes.

“How delightful,” he continued. “I got through even more than I’d originally projected.” He grinned. I banged my forehead on the table.

“Exject, Extraject, superject, supraject, hydroject, exoject, endoject, lithoject…hyperject.” I paused. “Did I miss anything? I don’t want any more prefixes or suffixes serving as fodder for your god-awful witticisms.”

He scoffed. “Doesn’t every protagonist deserve antagonizing?”

“Excise the first syllable from that last word and you’ve adequately described what just happened.”

“And excise the first syllable from the word before that and you’ve adequately described what’s about to happen.”
At that moment, Steffen entered the nook bearing a silver service tray and his trademark smile. His black driving gloves had been replaced white cotton ones. On the tray were two beverages with celery stalks jutting out.

“Steffen’s favorite,” Uncle Chartreuse beamed. “The Bloody Mary. And he makes a damn fine one, too!”

“I bet he does,” I said, looking not at the drinks but at Steffen’s unusually shaped teeth. He set the drinks down in front of us. Uncle Chartreuse raised his glass and took a sip. The momentary silence allowed me to look around and bask in my surroundings. Rococo is stylistically overwhelming, and the fixtures, cornices, walls, and furnishings all reeked of opulence. The alabaster floors only amplified the effect. An impressionistic painting hung on the wall directly across from me. It depicted Uncle Chartreuse in large, very visible brushstrokes. A cigarette between his fingers, he was sporting what could have been the same suit he was currently wearing. An unseen light source shone dimly on his face, but failed in its effort to stave off the darkness surrounding him. The painting depicted him from the thighs up, but his figure faded into shapelessness at about elbow height.

“That’s an interesting way to depict yourself,” I said, pointing in front of me to the painting. Uncle Chartreuse spun around in his chair to have a look.

“Certainly that’s what he must have been thinking,” he replied.

“The artist, you mean?”

“Indeed.”

“Did you like it? When he was finished, of course.”

“Enough to buy it.”

“True. How old were you then?”

“Oh, I suppose that was nearly 30 years ago now.”
“Huh. Did you ask for it to be in an impressionistic style?”

Uncle Chartreuse looked puzzled. “I don’t think it comes any other way.” I didn’t quite understand. Maybe it had something to do with the artist.

“Well, who painted it?”

“Edvard Munch.” My head recoiled in shock.

“What? You had Edvard Munch paint you?” It was a sudden, horribly underthought question. Munch died before Uncle Chartreuse was born.

“I think he found himself a more apt model,” he chuckled. “It’s called Self Portrait with Burning Cigarette, an 1895 piece if I recall correctly.” I felt foolish, but the physical resemblance was absolute.

“Wow, you two look very similar. Is it original?”

“Of course not, artists have been doing portraits for thousands of years.”

“No, but I mean, is it a 1 of 1? Are there any duplicates?” Uncle Chartreuse shook his head.

“I normally loan it out to the National Gallery in Oslo, but I had a bit of a cigarette craving.” He smiled.

“Where did you get it? We were taught that Munch bequeathed all of his works to the city of Oslo when he died.” Uncle Chartreuse took a long sip of his Bloody Mary.

“Car boot sale.” I had no idea what that was, but didn’t bother to ask. I simply nodded slowly. A large question had been forming in my mind, an inappropriate question to be sure, but my curiosity rendered it a nuclear bomb in my throat. The launch sequence had been initiated, and I hoped what radiated from my mouth wouldn’t be so explosive as to create fission in our relationship.

“Alright, there’s no good way to ask this so I’m just going to throw it out there. Everything you have, everything about your lifestyle is dripping with wealth. You have to have a ton of money. Where did it all come from?”