I needed an answer to that one. Part of my perfect woman at the moment included three comely friends, struggling to survive.
"You do what you think is right," she said. "But don't fool yourself that anybody's going to love you because you pay their rent or buy their groceries. One way to be sure
they will not love you is to let them depend on you for money. I know what I'm talking about!"
I nodded. How does she know? Does she have men out to get her money?
"It's not love," I said. "None of them love me. We enjoy each other. We're happy mutual parasites."
"Grf."
"Pardon?"
"Grf: expression of distaste. 'Happy mutual parasites' makes me see bugs."
"Sorry. I haven't solved the problem yet."
"Next time don't tell them you've got money," she said.
"Doesn't work. I'm a terrible deceiver. I reach for my notebook and these hundred-dollar bills tumble out on the table and she says, 'What the hey, you said you were on welfare!' What can I do?"
"Maybe you're stuck. But be careful. There's no town like this one to show you the many ways people crash who can't handle money." She pushed her door open at last. "Would you care for a salad, something healthy? Or will it be hot fudge for Hoggie?"
"Hoggie's off hot fudge. Could we split a salad, between us?"
Inside, she put a Beethoven sonata on low, made a huge vegetable-and-cheese salad, we fell to talking again. Missed sunset, missed a research-movie, played chess, and-our time together was gone.
"It must be early takeoff tomorrow that's on my mind," I said. "Does it seem to you that my play is up to form, losing three out of four like that? I don't know what's happened to my game. . . ."
"Your game is as good as ever," she said with a wink.
"But mine is improving. July eleventh you will remember as the day you won your last chess-game from Leslie Parrish!"
"Laugh while you can, mischievess. The next time you encounter this mind, it will have memorized Wicked Traps in Chess and every one of them will be waiting for you on the board." I sighed without knowing it. "I'd best be on my way. Will my Bantha-driver give me a ride to the hotel?"
"She will," she said, but she didn't move from the table.
To thank her for the day, I reached for her hand and held it, lightly, warmly. For a long time we looked at each other and no one talked, no one noticed time had stopped. The quiet itself said what we had never considered in words.
Then somehow we were holding each other, kissing softly, softly.
It didn't occur to me then, that by falling in love with Leslie Parrish I was destroying the only sister I'd ever have.
nineteen
I WOKE in the morning to sunlight filtered and goldened through her hair cascading across our pillows. I woke to her smile.
"Good morning, wookie," she said, so close and warm I barely caught the words. "Did you sleep well?"
"M!" I said. "My! Yes. Yes, thank you, slept very well! Had this dream all in glories, last night, that you were going to take me to the hotel? Couldn't help but give you a little kiss, and then . . . what a beautiful dream!"
For once, for blessed once the woman next to me in bed was not a stranger. For once in my life, this person belonged exactly where she was, and so did I.
I touched her face. "It'll be just a minute, won't it, and you'll turn into air? Or the clock will go off or the telephone will ring and it will be you asking if I slept well. Don't call yet. I want to dream some more, please."
" 'Ring . . .'" she said in a tiny voice. She threw her covers back, held a light nothing-telephone to her ear. The sunlight on her smile, on her bare shoulders and breasts brought me very much awake. " 'Ring . . .' Hello, Richard? How did you sleep last night? Hm?"
She changed herself that instant to innocent seductress, pure and wholesome-a star-bright mind in a sex-goddess body. I blinked at the intimacy of what she did with a move, a sentence, with a flicker in her eyes.
Life with an actress! I hadn't imagined-how many different Leslies can be stirring in this one, how many might there be to touch, to know, appearing in sudden spotlights on the stage of this one person?
"You are ... so ... lovely!" I stumbled after words. "Why didn't you tell me you are this . . . beautiful?"
The telephone vaporized from her hand, the innocent turned to me with a quizzical smile. "You never seemed interested."
"This is going to surprise you, but you'd better get used to it because I am a wordsmith and I can't help but just blurt out poetry now and then, it's my nature and I can be no other way: / think you're terrific!"
She nodded slowly, solemnly. "That is very good, word-smith. Thank you. I think you are terrific, too." Split-second, a sultry different idea took her mind. "Now for practice, let's say the same thing without words."
Shall I die of happiness now, I thought, or shall I linger for a while?
Lingering seemed the better way. I floated on the edge of death-by-joy, nearly wordless, not quite.
I could not have invented a woman so perfect for me, I thought, yet here's the real one alive, hidden in the acquaintance of Ms. Leslie Parrish since years ago, masked within my business partner, my best friend. Just that fragment of wonderment surfaced, to be swept away by the sight of her in the sun.
Light and touch, soft shadows and whispers, that morn-ing-turned-noon-turned-evening, with our way found to meet again after a lifetime apart. Cereal for dinner. And finally we could talk once more in words.
How many words, how long does it take to say Who Are You? How long to say why? Longer than we had before three in the morning, before sunrise again. The scenery of time vanished. It was light outside her house or it was not-light, it rained or it was dry, clocks pointed ten and we didn't know which ten of which day of which week it might happen to be. We woke in our mornings to stars over silent city dark; the midnights we held each other and dreamed were Los Angeles rush-hours and lunch-times.
A soulmate can not be possible, I had learned in the years since I turned the Fleet to money and built my walled empire. Not possible for people who run ten directions ten speeds at once, not possible for life-hogs. Could I have learned wrong?
I walked back into her bedroom, one of our mornings around midnight, balancing a tray of apple-slices and cheeses and crackers.
"Oh!" she said, sitting up, blinking her eyes awake, smoothing her hair so it fell only a little tousled over bare shoulders. "You sweetie! Thoughtful as can be!"
"I could have been thoughtfuller still, but your kitchen doesn't have the buttermilk or the potatoes for kartof-felkuchen."
"Kartoffelkuchen!" she said, astonished. "When I was a
little girl, my mother made kartoffelkuchen! I thought I was the only person left in the world who remembers! Can you make it?"
"Recipe is safely locked within this extraordinary mind, handed down from Grandma Bach. You're the only human being who's said that word back to me in fifteen years! We ought to list all the things we have in . . ."I fluffed some pillows, settled myself so that I could see her clearly. My, I thought, how I love the beauty of her!
She saw me looking at her body, and deliberately she sat very straight in bed for a moment, to watch me catch my breath. Then she brought the sheets to her chin.
"Would you answer my ad?" she said, suddenly shy.
"Yes. What ad is that?"
"It's a classified ad." She placed a transparent slice of cheese on half a cracker. "Do you know what it says?"
"Tell me." My own cracker creaked under its cheeseweight, but I judged it structurally sound.
"Wanted: a one hundred percent man. Must be brilliant, creative, funny, capable of intense intimacy and joy. Want to share music, nature, peaceful quiet joyful life. No smoking no drinking no drugs. Must love learning and want to grow forever. Handsome, tall, slim, fine hands, sensitive, gentle, loving. Affectionate and sexy as can be."
"What an ad! Yes! I answer!"
"I'm not done yet,"
she said. "Must be emotionally stable, honest and trustworthy and a positive constructive person. Highly spiritual, but no organized religion. Must love cats."
"Why, that's me to the letter! I even love your cat, though I suspect the feeling isn't mutual."
"Give him time," she said. "He's going to be a little jealous for a while."
"Ah. You gave it away."
"Gave what?" she said, letting the sheet fall, leaning forward, adjusting the pillows.
The effect of that simple act, the effect of her leaning forward, was for me a push into ice and fire. As long as she was still, she was as sensual as I could stand. When she moved, the softs and curves and lights of her changing, every word in my mind jarred into happy wreckage.
"Hm. . . ?" I said, watching.
"You animal. I said, 'What did I just give away?' "
"If you stay very still, please, we can have a nice talk. But I must tell you that unless you are dressed, a small amount of that pillow-moving tends to run me off my rails."
I was sorry at once. She pulled the sheet to cover her breasts, held it there with her arms, and looked at me primly over her cracker.
"Oh. Well, yes," I said. "What you gave away by saying that your cat would be jealous for a while was that you think I meet the requirements of your advertisement."
"I meant to give it away," she said. "I'm glad to see you took it"
"Aren't you afraid that if I know that, I will take advantage of you?"
She let the sheet loose an inch, arched an eyebrow. "Would you like to take advantage of me?"
With enormous mental effort, I reached to her and moved the white linen upward.
"I noticed it was falling, there, ma'am, and in the interest of having a minute to talk with you I thought perhaps I'd best be sure that it doesn't come down too much farther."
"How good of you."
"Do^you believe," I asked her, "in guardian angels?"
756
"To protect and watch over us and help guide us? Sometimes, yes."
"Then tell me: why should a guardian angel care about our love-life? Why should they guide our romances?"
"Easy," she said. "To a guardian angel, loving is more important than anything else. To them, our love-life is more important than any other kind of life we have! What else should angels care about?"
Of course, I thought, she's right!
"Do you think it might be possible," I said, "for guardian angels to take human form for each other, to be lovers every few lifetimes?"
She took a bite from her cracker, thinking about it. "Yes." And in a moment, "Would a guardian angel answer my ad?"
"Yes. For certain. Every male guardian angel in the country would answer that ad, if they knew it was you, advertising."
"I just want one," she said, and after a moment, "Do you have an ad?"
I nodded, and surprised myself. "Been writing it for years: Wanted: a one hundred percent female guardian angel in human body, please. Independent, adventurous, extreme wisdom required. Prefer ability to initiate and respond creatively in many forms of communication. Must speak Horse-Latin. "
"Is that it?"
"No," I said. "Only angel with glorious eyes, stunning figure and long golden hair need apply. Require brilliant curiosity, hungry capacity for learning. Prefer professional in several creative and business fields, experience in top management positions. Fearless, willing to take all risks. Happiness guaranteed in long run."
She listened carefully. "The stunning-figure-long-golden-hair part. Isn't that too earthy for an angel?"
"Why not a guardian angel with stunning figure and long hair? Does that mean she's any less angelic, any less perfect for her mortal, any less capable at her job?"
Well, why can't guardian angels be that way? I thought, wishing for my notebook. Why not a planet of angels, lighting each other's lives with adventure and mystery? Why not a few, at least, who could find each other now and then?
"So we create whatever body our mortal finds most delicious?" she said. "When teacher is pretty, we pay attention?"
"Right!" I said. "Just one second . . ."
I found the notebook on the floor by the bed, wrote what she said, put a dash and an L-for-Leslie after it. "Do you ever notice, after you've known someone for a while, how their appearance changes?"
"He can be the handsomest man in the world," she said, "but he turns plain as popcorn when he has nothing to say. And the plainest man says what matters to him and why he cares and in two minutes he's so beautiful you want to hug him!"
I was curious. "Have you gone out with many plain men?"
"Not many."
"If they get beautiful to you, why not?"
"Because they see Mary Moviestar all spifflicated and pretty, on her marks for the camera, and they figure she only looks at Harry Handsome. They rarely ask to go out with me, Richard."
The poor fools, I thought. They rarely ask. Because we believe the surface, we forget that surfaces aren't who we
are. When we find an angel dazzling of mind, her face grows lovelier still. Then "Oh, by the way," she tells us, "I have this body ..."
I wrote it into the notebook.
"Someday," she said, moving the tray of breakfast to the nightstand, "I am going to ask you to read me more notes." In the act of moving, the sheet fell away again. She raised her arms, stretching luxuriously.
"I won't ask now," she said, moving closer. "No more quizzes today."
As I could no longer think, that was just as well.
twenty
JL T WASN'T music, it was saw-edge snag-metal discord. She had barely turned from her stereo controls, from fine-tuning the volume as loud as it could go, than I was a kettle of complaints.
"That's not music!"
"PARDON ME?" she said, lost in sound.
"I SAID THAT'S NOT MUSIC!"
"BART6K!"
"WHAT?" I said.
"BELA BART6K!"
"COULD YOU TURN IT DOWN, LESLIE?"
"CONCERTO *FOR ORCHESTRA!"
"COULD YOU TURN THE VOLUME DOWN JUST A LITTLE BIT OR A LOT? COULD YOU TURN THE VOLUME DOWN A LOT?"
She didn't catch the words, but she got the idea and turned it down.
"Thank you," I said. "Wookie, is that ... do you honestly consider-that-to be music?"
Had I watched carefully, beyond the delicious figure in the flowered bathrobe, hair tied and covered in a towel-turban to dry, I would have seen disappointment in her eyes.
"You don't like it?" she said.
"You love music, you have studied music all your life. How can you call that inharmony we're hearing, that rat sort of discord, how can you call that music?"
"Poor Richard," she said. "Lucky Richard! You have so much to learn about music! So many beautiful symphonies, sonatas, concertos that you get to hear for the first time!" She stopped the tape, rewound it and took it from the machine.
"Maybe it's a little soon for Bartok. But I promise you. The day will come when you will listen to what you have just heard and you will call it glorious."
She looked over her collection of tapes, chose one and put it into the machine where the Bartok had been. "How would you like to hear some Bach . . . would you like to hear your great-grandaddy's music?"
"You are probably going to throw me out of your house inverted for saying this," I told her, "but I can only listen to him for half an hour, then I get lost and a little bored."
"Bored? Listening to Bach? Then you don't know how to listen; you've never learned to listen to him!" She pressed a rocker-switch and the tape began; Grandaddy on some monster organ, it was clear. "First you have to sit right. Here. Come sit here, between the speakers. This is where we sit when we want to hear all the music."
It felt like musical kindergarten, but I loved being with her, sitting very close to her.
"The complexity of it alone should make it irresistible for you. Now, most people listen to music horizontally, following along with the melody. But you can listen struc
turally, too; have you ever done that?"
"Structurally?" I said. "No."
"Early music was all linear,'Vshe said over a landslide of organ-notes, "simple melodies strung out one at a time, primitive themes. But your grandaddy took complex themes, with tricky little rhythms, and spun them out together at odd intervals so they created intricate structures and made vertical sense as well-harmony! Some Bach harmonies are as dissonant as Bartok, and Bach was getting away with them a hundred years before anyone even thought of dissonance."
She stopped the tape, slid onto the piano-bench, and without a blink of her eye there was the last chord from the speakers in her hand on the keyboard.
"There." It sounded clearer on the piano than it had on the speakers. "See? Here's one motif . . ." She played. "And here's another . . . and another. Now watch how he builds this. We start with the A theme in the right hand. Now A enters again four bars later in the left hand; do you hear it? They go on together until . . . here comes B. And A is subordinate to it just now. Here's A entering again in the right. And now . . . C!"
She set out themes, one by one, then put them together. Slowly at first, then faster. I barely followed. What was Simple Addition for her was Advanced Calculus to me; by closing my eyes and squashing my forehead together with my hands I could nearly understand.
She started again, explaining every step. As she played, a light began to glow through an inner symphony-hall that had been dark all my life.
She was right! There were themes among themes, dancing together, as if Johann Sebastian had locked secrets into his music for the private pleasure of those who learned to see beneath surfaces.
"Aren't you a joy!" I said, excited to understand what she was saying. "I hear it! It's really there!"
She was as glad as I, and forgot to get dressed or brush her hair. She moved sheet-music from the back of the music-shelf on the piano to the front. Johann Sebastian Bach, it said, and then a thunderstorm of notes and sweeps and dots and sharps and flats and ties and trills and sudden commands in Italian. Right at the beginning, before the pianist could get her wheels up and fly into that storrn, she was hit with a con brio, which I figured meant she had to play either with brightness, with coldness, or with cheese.