The Empty Seat
A chauffeur’s night with a man who wasn’t alone.
I owe you a small apology for last week—only one story made it through. August turned out busier than I expected with family, and the wheel had to pause for a while. Starting next week, I’ll do my best to make it up to you with two stories each week. Thank you for riding along, even through the quieter stretches.
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Monaco at night never really sleeps, but it knows how to pretend.
The harbor lights stay on like a theater set long after the audience has gone home. The yachts, motionless, glitter with their own private constellations, and the hills are pricked with apartment windows that glow like scattered stars. The streets, though, belong to a smaller world—the hum of a motorbike cutting through an alley, the clink of a glass set down too hard on a terrace, a couple’s laughter dissolving into the sea air before it reaches me.
For a chauffeur, the night feels like a held breath. You wait for the phone to buzz, for a name and an address, and you drive into whatever silence or storm someone else carries.
That night, the air was heavy with the smell of salt and faint rain that hadn’t yet fallen. I parked near the Casino square, watching the revolving doors, the spill of guests in tuxedos and gowns, some flushed from gambling, others from champagne. My head was quiet in the way it gets after too many fares: not tired, not awake, just waiting.
When the call came through, it was short. A man. A hotel at the edge of the harbor. Nothing unusual.
I pulled up outside. He was already standing there, a shape in the half-light, his coat buttoned to the throat, a small suitcase by his side that he didn’t bother to bring in. He carried only himself, and even that seemed an effort.
He opened the back door slowly, as if expecting resistance. One hand lingered on the frame. Then he stepped in.
But he didn’t close the door. Not right away.
He stood there, half in, half out, staring at the empty seat beside him as though waiting for someone else to follow. Finally, he eased the door shut with a care that struck me more than any slammed goodbye could have.
I adjusted the mirror. He looked ordinary—mid-fifties perhaps, sharp profile, hair silvered at the edges, a tie loosened just enough to hint at fatigue. But there was a stillness about him, the kind you find in people who are listening to something nobody else can hear.
“Where to, sir?” I asked.
He didn’t answer me.
Instead, he turned slightly toward the seat beside him, the one that held nothing but shadows, and said, very softly:
“See? I told you he’d wait.”
I thought I’d misheard. Then he laughed, a small laugh, private and warm, directed at the air.
I kept my hands steady on the wheel. You learn, as a chauffeur, that people bring their ghosts with them. Some tuck them away. Some let them ride shotgun.
The man leaned back and continued in that same intimate tone.
“No, not too late. We can still go. Remember how you used to—” He broke off, smiling, shaking his head. “Yes, that. Always that.”
The words weren’t meant for me. They were a performance without audience, a conversation without partner.
I eased the car from the curb. The rain had begun, a mist that blurred the streetlamps and turned the road into ribboned glass. My wipers clicked in time with his murmurs.
He carried on. A fragment here, an unfinished phrase there.
“Not that way, you hated that street… Yes, I remember… Ah, but you always ordered the wrong wine…”