was slated to, but dying in the electric chair, every muscle bending away from bone with the power of the current, every nerve burning out with the surge.
She focused her mind back on the chair, the leopard and bubinga chair, the cipher that bound. She might not have been an impresario of the erotic as Victor was, as he had proven to her he could be, but she hadn’t gotten as far as had, to one of the best law schools in the country goddammit, by being a slouch at research.
She pulled up a catalogue of images, 45,000 strong, with the keyword string “African + throne + leopard + skin.”
She knew nothing of the provenance of the chair, Victor hadn’t had any other plans for her than a history lesson. That it had been an African throne she could easily surmise from the craftsmanship and the motifs, as easily as she knew that the skin upon which her skin had rubbed had once belonged to a leopard.
By page 69 of the images she began to feel as though Morpheus had varnished her eyes, the endless variety of images radiating from the screen had the dulling effect of morphine. She still had 42,000 pictures to go, plus or minus a few hundred.
Will they ever fucking end?
There it was, bolt from the screen, the bottom row of page 69, thumbnail for a 740x1140 pixel image on the Sotheby’s website, the chair, archived, she revved up like an engine, her heart throttled forward, she clicked the image, and there it was:
Sold. Bubinga wood frame, leopard skin upholstery, engraved ivory paneling. c. 1898, Congo Free State. This throne, handcrafted by native artisans of local materials, was originally owned by King Miko Mbweeky III of the Bakuba people. He later bestowed it upon the emissaries of King Leopold III of Belgium as a token of the mutually beneficial trade relationship between the two kingdoms. Resembling the Voltaire chair popularized by the French writer, it serves as a fine example of the adaptation of European styles of craftsmanship to native African customs and techniques. A truly irreplaceable piece of African heritage and a worthy addition to a private collection of the finest taste.
She glossed over most of the names and facts—that sort of thing always engrossed Kyle more than it did her. God he could drone on about Cromwell as if he were the second coming of Christ. Part of her thought she had broken up with Kyle just to avoid having to listen to him say “Roundheads” one more time.
The mention of Voltaire shot to the forefront. Hadn’t the Judge, in only the first two Crim Law classes she’d taken, quoted from him as though his words were some kind of sacrament? She even remembered one of the quotes verbatim, she’d thought it out of place in a discussion about the Constitutional basis of presumption of innocence:
It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.
He had a bizarre, and to her very disturbing, theory that he had foisted upon the class, torturing people Socratically with it. Presumption of guilt—not presumption of innocence—would be more cost-effective for society as a whole because it would shift the economic burden of trials away from the government and onto the defendants. Now how fucked up is that?
The perversity of his little pet theory reminded her of another wise saying:
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and the poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
That was Anatole France, a guy she’d read at Vanderbilt in her Law and Literature class. The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard was one hell of a book, not as richly textured as Les Miserables maybe, but she thought of them, and had argued for them in a term paper, as two sides of one great literary coin.
Yes, the clue had to be Voltaire. She started to read an online bio. Now she was really making headway, because halfway into the bio she stumbled onto gold:
Approaching his fifth decade of life and third of fame—infamy in some quarters—Voltaire embarked on the
She focused her mind back on the chair, the leopard and bubinga chair, the cipher that bound. She might not have been an impresario of the erotic as Victor was, as he had proven to her he could be, but she hadn’t gotten as far as had, to one of the best law schools in the country goddammit, by being a slouch at research.
She pulled up a catalogue of images, 45,000 strong, with the keyword string “African + throne + leopard + skin.”
She knew nothing of the provenance of the chair, Victor hadn’t had any other plans for her than a history lesson. That it had been an African throne she could easily surmise from the craftsmanship and the motifs, as easily as she knew that the skin upon which her skin had rubbed had once belonged to a leopard.
By page 69 of the images she began to feel as though Morpheus had varnished her eyes, the endless variety of images radiating from the screen had the dulling effect of morphine. She still had 42,000 pictures to go, plus or minus a few hundred.
Will they ever fucking end?
There it was, bolt from the screen, the bottom row of page 69, thumbnail for a 740x1140 pixel image on the Sotheby’s website, the chair, archived, she revved up like an engine, her heart throttled forward, she clicked the image, and there it was:
Sold. Bubinga wood frame, leopard skin upholstery, engraved ivory paneling. c. 1898, Congo Free State. This throne, handcrafted by native artisans of local materials, was originally owned by King Miko Mbweeky III of the Bakuba people. He later bestowed it upon the emissaries of King Leopold III of Belgium as a token of the mutually beneficial trade relationship between the two kingdoms. Resembling the Voltaire chair popularized by the French writer, it serves as a fine example of the adaptation of European styles of craftsmanship to native African customs and techniques. A truly irreplaceable piece of African heritage and a worthy addition to a private collection of the finest taste.
She glossed over most of the names and facts—that sort of thing always engrossed Kyle more than it did her. God he could drone on about Cromwell as if he were the second coming of Christ. Part of her thought she had broken up with Kyle just to avoid having to listen to him say “Roundheads” one more time.
The mention of Voltaire shot to the forefront. Hadn’t the Judge, in only the first two Crim Law classes she’d taken, quoted from him as though his words were some kind of sacrament? She even remembered one of the quotes verbatim, she’d thought it out of place in a discussion about the Constitutional basis of presumption of innocence:
It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.
He had a bizarre, and to her very disturbing, theory that he had foisted upon the class, torturing people Socratically with it. Presumption of guilt—not presumption of innocence—would be more cost-effective for society as a whole because it would shift the economic burden of trials away from the government and onto the defendants. Now how fucked up is that?
The perversity of his little pet theory reminded her of another wise saying:
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and the poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
That was Anatole France, a guy she’d read at Vanderbilt in her Law and Literature class. The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard was one hell of a book, not as richly textured as Les Miserables maybe, but she thought of them, and had argued for them in a term paper, as two sides of one great literary coin.
Yes, the clue had to be Voltaire. She started to read an online bio. Now she was really making headway, because halfway into the bio she stumbled onto gold:
Approaching his fifth decade of life and third of fame—infamy in some quarters—Voltaire embarked on the
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