The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story (20 page)

"Now press down on the left side of the wheel." She did, as though she were performing an experiment in physics whose outcome was entirely unknown. The wings leveled, and she gave me a smile of delighted discovery.

"Now try pulling back, half an inch, on the wheel. . . ."

By the time the airport at San Diego rose on the horizon, she had finished her first flying lesson, pointed out airplanes the size of dust-particles, fifteen miles away. Her eyes were as sharp as they were beautiful; she was a pleasure to have alongside as we flew.

"You'll be a good pilot, if you ever want to take it up. You're gentle with the airplane. Most people first time, you say be gentle and they wind up clutching the controls way too tight and the poor plane starts bobbling and lurching ... if I were an airplane, I'd love for you to fly me."

She gave me a sidelong glance, went back to looking for other aircraft as we slanted down toward San Diego.

Home again in Los Angeles that evening, after a flight as smooth as the morning's, she collapsed in bed.

"Let me tell you a secret, wookie," she said.

"I will let you. What's the secret?"

"I am terrified of flying! TERRIFIED!! Light planes especially. Until today, if somebody came along and put a gun to my head and said either you get into this little airplane or I am going to pull the trigger, I would say, 'Pull the trigger!' I can't believe what I did today. I was scared to death, and I did it!"

What? I thought. "Terrified? Why didn't you tell me? We

could have driven the Bantha. ..." I couldn't believe. A woman I care about so much, she's afraid of airplanes?

"You would have hated me," she said.

"I wouldn't have hated you! I would have thought you were a silly goose, but I wouldn't have hated you. Lots of people don't enjoy flying."

"It's not that I don't enjoy it," she said, "I can't stand flying! Even a big airplane, a jet. I fly in the biggest airplane possible, only when I absolutely have to. I walk in, sit down and grab the armrests and try not to cry. And that's before they start the engines!"

I hugged her softly. "Poor little thing! And you didn't say a word. Far as you knew, those were the last few minutes of your life, getting into the Meyers, weren't they?"

She nodded in my shoulder. "What a brave, brave girl you are!"

More nodding.

"And now it's all over! All that fear flown away and everywhere we go from now on we'll fly and you'll learn to fly and get your own little airplane. . . ."

She had been nodding until "everywhere we go from now on," at which point she stopped, moved back from my hug to look at me in anguish, eyes huge, chin trembling as I went on. We both melted laughing.

"But Richard, really! I'm not kidding! I'm more scared of flying than anything in the world! Now you know how I feel about my friend Richard. . . ."

I led the way to the kitchen and opened the freezer, piled ice-cream and fudge on the counter.

"This calls for a celebration," I said, to-cover my confusion over what she had said: "Now you know how I feel about my friend Richard." To overcome such a fear of flying

would require a trust and affection as strong as love itself, and love is a passport to disaster.

Every time a woman said she loved me, we were on the road to the end of our friendship. Would my beautiful friend Leslie be lost to me in the firewind of jealous possession? She had never said that she loved me, and I'd never say that to her in a thousand years.

A hundred audiences I had warned: "Whenever somebody says they love you, look out!" No one had to take my word, anyone could see it in their own lives: parents battering children, shouting how they love them; wives and husbands who murder each other verbally, physically in knife-edge arguments, loving each other. The running put-downs, the eternal discounting of one person by another who claims to love. From such love, please, may the world be delivered. Why had such a promising word been crucified on the tree of obligation, thorned by duties, hanged by hypocrisy, smothered by custom? Next to "God," "love" is the word most mangled in every language. The highest form of regard between human beings is friendship, and when love enters, friendship dies.

I poured the hot fudge for her. Surely that is not what she meant. "Now you know how I feel" speaks of trust and respect, of those loftiest peaks that friends can climb. She couldn't have meant love. Please, no! How I would hate to lose her!

twenty-seven

THE STARS are always and constant friends, I thought. A hatful of constellations, learned when I was ten; those and the visible planets and a few stars, friends today as though not a night had passed since we met.

Luminous soft greens twisted and curled in the wake of the sailboat through midnight ink, tiny bright whirlpools and tornadoes glowing for an instant, fading away.

Sailing alone down the west coast of Florida, south from Sanibel to the Keys, I brought the boat a point starboard, to fit the constellation Corvus tight to the mast, a sail of stars. Too small a sail to add much speed.

Smooth black breeze, east-northeast.

Wonder if there are sharks in the water. Hate to fall overboard, I thought automatically, and then-would I really hate to fall overboard?

What's it like to drown? People who have been through

almost-drowning say it's not so bad; gets kind of peaceful after a while, they say. A lot of people have been near-dead and revived. Dying's the most beautiful moment in living, they tell us, and their fear of death is gone.

Do I need the running-lights on when I'm so alone'out here? Wastes energy, runs the batteries down.

Thirty-one feet of boat is just about right. Bigger, you want a crew. Glad I don't need a crew.

Alone alone alone. How much of our lives is single-handing. Leslie's right. I distance her, she says.

"I distance everybody, wook! It's not that it's you, it's that I don't let anyone get too close to me. I never want to get attached to anybody."

"Why?" There had been annoyance in her voice. It was happening more often now. Without warning, the talks we had would jump the tracks and she'd be mad at me for the smallest thing. "What is so terrible about getting attached to someone?"

Because I might make a huge investment of hope in one human being and then lose it all. I assume that I know who she is and then I find out that she's somebody else entirely and I have to go back to the drawingboard redesigning again and after a while I conclude there's no one I can fully know except myself and that's pretty iffy. The only thing I can trust anyone else to be is true to who they are and if they're going to explode into strange angers now and then the best thing to do is to stand back a bit so as not to get torn in the blast. Isn't that obvious, clear as yesterday?

"Because then I'm not quite so independent as I want to be," I said.

She had tilted her head and looked at me carefully. "Are you telling me the highest truth you know?"

There are moments, I thought, when having a mind-reader for a best-friend is uncomfortable, indeed. "Maybe it's time for me to get away for a little while."

"That's it," she said. "Run away! You might as well. You're gone even when you're here. I miss you. You're right here and I miss you!"

"Leslie, I don't know what to do about that. I think it's time to get away. I have to move the boat down to Key West, anyway. Go back, see how things are getting along in Florida."

She frowned. "You could never stay with one woman for more than three days, you said; you'd go mad with boredom. We stayed together months and cried when we had to part! Happier than we've ever been, both of us! What's happened, what's changed?"

Corvus strayed from its place on the mast; a spoke of the wheel to port brought it back. But if I kept it there all night, I thought, I'd be somewhere off Yucatan by dawn, instead of on course for Key West. Navigate by the same star, unwilling to change, and you find yourself not only off-course but lost.

Damn it, Corvus, are you taking her side? I have carefully worked out this excellent system, this first-rate perfect-woman scheme, and it was running just fine until Leslie started messing with it, asking questions I dare not think about, less answer. Of course I want to love you, lady, but how can I know what you'd do if I did?

What would it feel like, to fall overboard now? There I'd be, a green-phosphor splash in the ocean; there's the boat

huge above me one second and next second out of reach and next minute gone in the dark, the lights of her wake fading.

I'd swim for shore, that's what it would feel like. We're barely ten miles offshore, and if I can't swim ten miles in warm water I deserve to drown.

But what if I were a thousand miles offshore? What would it feel like then?

Someday, Richard, I thought, you are going to learn how to control your silly mind. It's like the boy said to the barnstormer landed in his hayfield:

"Mister, what would you do if the engine quit?" "Why, I'd just glide down and land, my friend! The

airplane's a good glider, doesn't need an engine to glide." "But what would you do if the wings fell off?" "If the wings fell off, I'd have to bail out, wouldn't I,

and use the parachute."

"Yeah, but what if the parachute didn't open?"

"Then I'd try to fall in a haystack."

"But what if it was just rocks everywhere?"

Bunch of vultures, kids are. Same as I was. Same as I still am-"But what if I were a thousand miles offshore?" I'm so curious, the kid in me wants to run and find what's on the other side of dying right now. There'll be a time for that before too long. My mission is pretty well done, with the books written, but there may still be a lesson or two to learn, this side of dying.

How to love a woman, for instance. Richard, remember when you quit barnstorming to find your truelove, your soulmate, your ultimate friend across a million lifetimes? Seems so long ago. What are the chances that everything

I've learned about love is wrong, that there is one woman in all the world?

The wind picked up, the boat tilted starboard. I let Cor-vus go and steered by compass for Key West.

Why is it that so many airplane pilots also sail boats? Airplanes have freedom in space, sailboats have freedom in time. It's not the hardware, we want, it's the unshackledness that the hardware represents. Not a big airplane we like, but the speed and power that come from controlling its flight. Not a gaff-rigged ketch, but the wind, the adventure, the working purity of life that the sea demands, the sky demands. Unlatched from outside constraint. Sail for years nonstop in a boat, if you want to.

Boats, they own time. The longest an airplane's flown is a few hours; longer is a stunt. Someone ought to invent an airplane that has as much freedom in time as a boat.

I've got my freedom from all my other women-friends; why not from Leslie? They don't criticize me for being distant, for leaving when I want; why does she? Doesn't she know? Too long together, and even courtesy is gone . . . people are more courteous to strangers than they are to their own wives and husbands! Two people tied to each other like hungry dogs, fighting over every little scrap between them. Look at us, even us. You raised your voice to me! I didn't come into your life to make you angry. If you don't like me as I am, just say so and I'm gone! Together too long, and it's chains and duties and responsibilities, no delights no adventure no thank you!

Hours later through the night, the first faint glow of light on the horizon south. Not dawn but Key West street-light bouncing from mist way high in the sky.

Sailing is altogether too slow, I thought. You change your

mind, you don't want to be where you are, in an airplane you can do something about it; a short while takes you a long way. A sailboat, you change your mind, you can't even land the thing and get off! Can't glide if you're too high, climb if you're too low. Sailboat's always -at the same altitude. No change. Boring. Change is adventure, whether it's sailboats or women. What other adventure is there, than change?

Leslie and I agreed to certain rules of friendship: total equality, freedom, courtesy, respect, nobody takes anybody for granted, a nonexclusive pact. If the rules are no longer all right with her, she ought to tell me. This whole affair is getting too serious.

Sure enough she'll say, Is there no room in your life Richard Bach for something more than rules?

Wish I could just say no and walk away from her.

Wish I could talk with her about it now.

Wish sailboats were a lot faster, wish they could fly.

Sorry state of the world. We put people on the moon, but we can't build a sailboat that can fly.

twenty-eight

"ARE YOU READY TO go, wookie?" she said.

I'm spending too much time with her again, I thought, altogether too much time. She's as organized as a microchip . . . everything she touches runs in order, honest and clear. So beautiful she blinds me still, she's funny and warm and loving. But the rules say I'll destroy myself if I spend too much time with one woman, and I'm spending too much time with her.

"Are you ready to go?" she asked again. She was dressed in a brush-of-amber suit, golden silk at her throat; her hair combed and pinned back for a long business meeting.

"Sure," I said.

Curious. She's the one hauling me from the sticky shards of empire, she's doing the job of all my fired employees.

Stan, calm to the end, said as he left that he was sorry I

had lost so much money. That's the way it happens sometimes, he said, the market turns against you.

Stan's tax lawyer apologized, sorry he had missed the IRS deadline, said he thought they weren't being fair ... he was only two weeks late, filing his appeal, and they'd refused to consider it. If it weren't for that, he said, he could have proven that I didn't owe them a cent.

Harry the business manager smiled, said the IRS problem was a shame; he didn't like it any more than I did, and he had done his best to keep it from me as long as he could. By the way, he'd appreciate it if I could come up with a month's severance pay.