THE CHAIRMAN
Part 3: The Empty Chair
The man crossed the courtyard alone.
Under the courtyard lights, polished black shoes appeared first. Then a gray suit, broad shoulders, and a face that seemed to have little use for conversation.
He wasn’t the Chairman.
He was thirty-five, perhaps forty, thick through the neck and shoulders.
“Name.”
I gave it to him.
He studied my face and waited.
Apparently, he wanted an explanation. I had already mailed six pages of one. I had no intention of starting page seven in the driveway.
“Car keys.”
“Why?”
“You’ll get them back when you leave.”
I handed them over.
Without asking permission, he searched me quickly and efficiently. My pockets produced a wallet, two pens, a book of matches, and a crumpled movie ticket stub.
Nothing that could reasonably be called dangerous.
“This way.”
He turned toward the house, and I followed.
We passed the helicopter.
Up close, it looked even less civilian. Beneath the short wings were pairs of tube-shaped launchers, and under the nose sat something with several barrels. I had spent enough time around low-budget action movies to recognize what looked very much like an aircraft cannon.
I also knew enough not to ask for technical details.
“Is that legal?”
The man kept walking without answering.
So much for the promise I had made myself outside the gate: no unnecessary questions.
I was already breaking it.
“Question withdrawn.”
The entrance hall could have swallowed my first apartment whole. Marble floors reflected the light from a chandelier suspended two stories above us. Oil paintings of the desert lined the walls.
I knew nothing about art, but nothing in that house looked inexpensive enough to be fake.
Men in dark suits stood at intervals along the hallway.
None of them looked directly at me.
That was worse.
We stopped before a pair of massive carved wooden doors.
They opened.
The room beyond was surprisingly plain. Bookshelves. A stone fireplace. A worn leather sofa. A chessboard beside a wide window overlooking the courtyard.
Two chairs faced each other in the center of the room.
One was empty.
In the other sat an old man.
His white hair was combed straight back. He wore a black shirt without a tie. He was not physically imposing.
He didn’t need to be.
The room—and everyone in the house—seemed arranged around him.
Then I noticed the FedEx envelope on the table beside his chair.
Mine.
It had been opened.
All six pages of my letter were covered with underlining and handwritten notes.
The Chairman studied my face in silence.
“Thinner than I expected.”
“When movie financing disappears, food usually goes with it.”
He did not smile.
He pointed to the empty chair.
“Sit.”
I eased myself into it.
The men who had escorted me inside remained standing behind me. The Chairman gave them a slight motion of his chin.
The man in the gray suit stepped forward.
“Sir, we haven’t finished verifying him.”
“I have. Leave us.”
“With everything going on—”
The Chairman looked at him.
That was enough.
The men immediately filed out. Just before the doors closed, every one of them glanced back at me.
Then there were only two of us.
The air felt heavier.
Confidence, I told myself.
Be confident. Be sharp. Be funny when you need to be.
And above all, stop talking before you say something stupid.
The Chairman lifted the first page of my letter.
“Do you always write this much?”
“Only when I’m broke.”
“And when you have money?”
“I’ll make the movie instead.”
I thought it was a decent answer.
He didn’t laugh.
He looked back at the letter.
“You wrote that you need my money. Then you informed me that you would come Thursday evening and expected me to make time for you. You did not ask whether Thursday was convenient.”
“I thought asking might give you a chance to say no.”
“And if I had?”
“I would have come here to hear it in person.”
“What if I hadn’t opened the gate?”
“I would have kept ringing.”
“How long?”
“Until Friday.”
Somewhere in the back of my mind, an alarm began to sound.
I was losing control of the pace.
I had not come here to trade lines with the Chairman.
Unfortunately, my mouth had apparently not received that information.
“Are you afraid of anything?” he asked.
“Plenty.”
“Yet you came.”
“I’ve always thought courage was being terrified and paying for parking anyway.”
His eyes moved briefly toward the helicopter outside.
“We don’t charge for parking.”
“Then this meeting is already going better than most studio meetings.”
For a moment, he said nothing.
Up close, I could see dark circles beneath his eyes. He looked like a man who had not slept properly in a very long time.
He tapped my letter lightly against one knee.
Then he asked a question that had nothing to do with my movie.
“Is your father alive?”
“Yes.”
“Do you get along?”
“From a distance.”
“How much distance?”
“Nevada seems about right.”
For the first time, a faint smile touched his face.
Then it was gone.
He studied me again, this time as though he were comparing my face with someone he remembered.
“Have you ever hated him?”
“What man in his twenties hasn’t hated his father at least once?”
The Chairman gave the slightest nod.
A silver cigarette case rested on the table between us. Without opening it, he slowly ran his thumb across the lid.
One letter had been engraved in the corner.
D.
“How long does that hatred last?” he asked.
“Maybe until you prove your father wrong.”
“And after that?”
I hesitated.
“Maybe until you realize you’re becoming more like him than you ever meant to.”
His expression changed.
His eyes sharpened.
And somewhere inside my head, reason finally began shouting.
Enough.
Stop talking.
Now.
A telephone rang somewhere in the room.
Not a cell phone. A corded telephone on another table.
Once.
Before it could ring again, the doors flew open.
Several of the men who had left moments earlier came back in at once, handheld radios in their hands. Their faces had changed.
“Sir. You need to move.”
“Who is it?”
The men glanced at me.
The Chairman’s voice turned cold.
“We received a message. From Chicago.”
“What did they say?”
The man hesitated.
“They say they have David.”
The Chairman’s face hardened.
Outside, the helicopter engine came alive.
The mechanical whine rose quickly. The rotor began to turn, slowly at first, then faster, each blade sweeping past the window like a card being dealt across a table.
For a moment, I could almost smell again the cold chemical tang from the equipment outside—the odor I had taken for nitrogen at the gate.
The Chairman rose slowly from his chair.
He did not look frightened.
He did not look surprised.
But he was angry.
That much was unmistakable.
He glanced at me.
“I’m afraid our conversation will have to wait.”
“What do we do with him?” one of the men asked.
Two of them moved closer to my chair. One placed a hand on my shoulder.
His grip tightened.
A moment earlier, the meeting had been going surprisingly well.
Now I had no idea what was happening.
Whatever it was, I was fairly certain I had nothing to do with it.
That did not make the hand on my shoulder feel any better.
And then I heard the question again.
What do we do with him?
I had spent enough of my life around movies to know that characters who heard that sentence rarely enjoyed what came next.
The Chairman walked toward the open doors.
Then he stopped.
He did not turn around.
“If any part of his story is false, he stays.”
To be continued in The Chairman, Part 4.
© 2026. Gun Choi. All rights reserved. Unauthorized copying, design imitation, or concept reproduction is strictly prohibited.
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