THE EMPEROR OF AISLE FOUR

More about THE EMPEROR OF AISLE FOUR

The night before it happened, I dreamed of a tarot card I’d never seen—The Emperor, painted in deep ochres and mountain shadow. He was bald and heavy-shouldered, sitting on a stone throne carved with lions. In the dream his scepter looked oddly like a grocery-store broom handle. He stared at me with an expression that felt less symbolic than personal, as if he were evaluating me for a task I had already agreed to in some earlier life. I woke with that look still pressing on me, like a hand left on my shoulder.

I told my wife about the dream as we drove to the supermarket. She laughed and said, “Maybe you’re becoming one of your own characters.” I didn’t argue. Dreams leak into daylight if you let them, and this one had left a faint hum in me, almost like static.

Inside the store the fluorescent lights gave everything that pale, unreal buzz. I was in the vegetable aisle reaching for zucchinis when I felt the air shift—nothing dramatic, just a subtle change in texture, as if something had stepped through an unseen membrane.

Then he appeared.

A huge man walked straight toward me, built exactly like the Emperor from my dream—same shaved skull, same thick neck, same immovable presence. Without hesitation he launched into rapid Russian, speaking with the certainty of someone who believes utterly that you understand him. My brain panicked. I rummaged for any Russian word I might know. Nothing. Not even a clumsy greeting.

His younger companion hurried over and said, “He thinks you’re Russian.”

I laughed and said, “Maybe it’s the bald head,” rubbing my scalp and nodding at his own shining skull. But he didn’t laugh. He kept his gaze locked on mine, speaking nonstop, as though delivering a message I had forgotten how to receive. The longer he looked at me, the stronger that vibration from the dream returned—like a tuning fork struck inside my ribs.

Later, at home and still unsettled, I wrote to a Russian acquaintance:

“Я был в супермаркете с женой, спокойно выбирал овощи, как вдруг ко мне подходит огромный мужчина и начинает говорить по-русски так, будто мы знакомы много лет. Я отчаянно пытаюсь вспомнить хоть какое-нибудь русское слово. Смотрю на его молодого спутника, и тот наконец говорит: ‘Он думает, что вы русский.’ Я смеюсь и отвечаю: ‘Наверное, из-за лысой головы,’ — потираю свой череп и киваю на его собственный бритый затылок. Но он продолжал пристально смотреть мне в глаза и без остановки говорить по-русски. Скажите… это были вы?”

After sending it, I noticed the Emperor card on my desk—the same image I had dreamed, the same face I had met. The painted eyes seemed to follow me. I couldn’t shake the feeling that the encounter wasn’t accidental, but a reminder—or a summons, or a test.

Some moments feel random. Some feel scripted. And some—like this one—make me wonder whether the Emperor stepped out of the deck and into aisle four just long enough to see if I was finally paying attention.