He laughed. I saw nothing funny. I looked away to the horizon.
"You're really scared, aren't you?" he said. "But there's your answer. If you'd listen to what you know instead of what you fear ..."
"I don't believe you."
"Maybe you're right," he said. "I'm your most probable future, not your only one." He turned in his seat, reached back to the engine, pulled a mixture-enrichment lever. "But it's pretty likely, I think, that my wife Leslie is one day going to be yours. She's asleep, right now, in my time, as your friend Leslie is asleep in your time, a continent away from you. Each of your many women, what you 've learned from them, gives you the gift of this one woman, do you understand that? Do you want more answers?"
"If that's a taste," I said, "I'm not sure that I do. Give up my freedom? Mister, you have no idea who I am. Answers like that I can do without. Please!"
"Don't worry. You'll forget this flight; you won't remember till much later."
"Not me," I said. "Memory like a steel claw."
"Old friend," he said quietly. "I know you so well. Don't you ever get tired of being contrary?" . "Deathly tired. But if that's what it takes to live my life the way I want to live it, contrary shall I be."
He laughed, and let our flying machine slide off the
thermal-top. We coasted slowly cross-country, more balloon than aircraft. I didn't care for his answers, they threatened and frightened and angered me. But the details of the ultralight, the aluminum tube and fittings, the reflex curve of the wing, the attachment of stainless-steel cables, even the curious pterodactyl insignia painted on the canard I printed in memory, to build from nothing if I had to.
He found some sinking air and rode it down in circles as we had ridden the rising air upward. The meeting was not going to last much longer.
"OK," I said. "Hit me with some more answers."
"I don't think so," he said. "I wanted to warn you, but now I don't think so."
"Please. I'm sorry I was contrary. Remember who I am."
He waited a long moment, decided at last to talk.
"With Leslie, you'll be happier than you've ever been," he said. "Which is fortunate, Richard, because everything else is going straight to hell Together, the two of you will be hounded by the government for money your managers have lost. You will not be able to write, lest the Internal Revenue Service seize the very words you put on paper. You will be wiped out, bankrupt. You will lose your airplanes, every one; your house, your money, everything. You'll be stuck on the ground year after year. Best thing that ever happened to you. That will ever happen to you."
My mouth went dry, listening. "That's an answer?"
"No. Out of that will come an answer."
He broke off over a meadow on the crest of a hill,
looked down. Waiting at the edge of the grass was a woman. Watching us, waving at the sight of the airplane.
"Want to land it?" he said, offering the controls to me.
"Field's a little small for a first-time landing. You do it."
He stopped the engine dead, turned in a wide circle, gliding. As we crossed the last trees before the meadow, he plunged the nose down, dived to the grasstops, smoothly tilted the nose up again. Instead of climbing, the ultralight floated for a second, touched its wheels and rolled to a stop by a Leslie even more breathtaking than the one I had left in California.
"Hello, you two," she said. "I thought I'd find you here, with your airplane." She leaned to kiss the other Richard, ruffle his hair. "Are you telling him his fortune?"
"His loss of one, his gain of another," he said. "So lovely, sweet! He'll think you're a dream!"
Her hair was longer than I knew it, her face gentler. She was dressed in lemon-gossamer silk, a high-neck flowing blouse that would have been prim had the silk not been so sheer. A wide sunlight sash for a belt at her waist. Slacks of white sailcloth, seamless to the grass, covering all but the toes of her sandals. My heart nearly stopped, my walls nearly shattered right there. If I'm to spend my years on earth with one woman, I thought, let this be the one.
"Thank you," she said. "Got dressed for the occasion. Not often we get to meet our ancestors . . . not often in the middle of a lifetime." She put her arm around him as he stepped from the airplane, then turned to me and smiled. "How are you, Richard?"
"Deeply envious," I said.
"Envy not," she said. "The airplane will be yours."
"I don't envy your husband his airplane," I said. "I envy him his wife."
She blushed "You're the one who hates marriage, aren't you? Marriage is 'boredom, stagnation, inevitable loss of respect'!"
"Maybe not inevitable."
"That's encouraging," she said. "Think you'll change your mind about marriage, someday?"
"If I'm to believe your husband, I will. I don't see how, except when I look at you."
"No fair looking, after today," said the future Richard. "You'll forget this meeting, too. You've got to learn your own way, for better or for worse."
She looked up at him. "For richer or for poorer."
He smiled the trace of a smile at her. "Till death brings us closer still together." They mocked me gently with their words, and I loved them both.
Then, to me, he said, "Our time's up. There's the answer for you to forget. Fly the airplane, if you want. We have to run along back to the land of the waking, in a year so far from yours, so close to yours. I'm in the midst of writing the new book and if I'm lucky I'll reach out first thing I wake and get this dream on paper."
He reached his hand slow-motion toward her face, as though to touch her, and disappeared.
The woman sighed, sad the time was gone. "He's awake, and I will be, too, in a minute."
She floated a step toward me and, to my astonishment, kissed me softly.
"It won't be easy for you, poor Richard," she said.
"Won't be easy for her, either, the Leslie I was. Hard times ahead! Fear not. If you want magic, let go of your armor. Magic is so much stronger than steel!"
Eyes like the twilight sky. She knew, so much!
In the midst of her smile she vanished. I was left alone in the meadow with the ultralight. I didn't fly it again. I stood in the grass remembering everything that had happened, burning it into my mind-her face, her words-until the scene melted.
When I woke, the window was black, speckled with raindrops and a curved line of house-lights on the far side of the lake. I unfolded my legs and sat in the dark, trying to remember. By the chair was a notepad and pen.
Flying dream. Prehistoric flying beast, colored feathers, and it brought me to land face to face with the most beautiful woman I've ever seen. One word, she said: "Magic." The most beautiful face . . .
Magic. There was more, I knew, but I couldn't remember. The feeling that stayed in me was love love love. She was no dream. That was a real woman I had touched! Dressed in sunlight. A living woman, and I can't find her!
Where are you?
I burst in frustration, threw the notepad against the window. It bounced, fluttered, pages flying, crashed to a stop against my instrument-landing charts for southern California.
"Now, damn it! Where are you NOW?"
twenty-four
M. WAS in Madrid when it happened, faltering gamely through a publicity tour for the Spanish edition of the book, giving interviews in that language which made the television hosts, the news reporters smile. Why not? Wasn't I charmed when a Spanish visitor to America, or a German or French or Japanese or Russian, spurned translators, did her or his own interviews in English? So the syntax is a little odd, the words chosen not quite the way a native would choose them, but how nice to watch these people bravely balanced on tightropes, trying to talk to us!
"The events and ideas of which you write, Sefior Bach, believe you them, work they for you?" The camera had the faintest hum, waiting, while I translated the question for my mind.
"Not there is a writer in all the world," I said slowly at my top speed, "that she or he can
to write a book of ideas in
which she or he not to believe. We can to write truly only it that we believe truly. Not I am so good in the ... how itself it says proving in Spanish? . . . living of the ideas as I desire, but I am more and more good every day!"
Languages are fluffy big pillows stuffed between nations- what others say is muffled and nearly lost in them, and when we speak their grammar we get feathers in our mouth. It's worth it. What pleasure to phrase an idea, even in child's words, slowly, and sail it across the gulf in another language, to a different-speaking human being!
The hotel phone rang late at night, and before I could think of the Spanish, I said hello.
A faint little voice on long long distance. "Hello wookie, it's me."
"What a wonderful surprise! Aren't you a sweetie to call!"
"I'm afraid we have some terrible problems here, and I had to call."
"What problems?" I could not imagine problems that would be so important for Leslie to telephone Madrid at midnight.
"Your accountant is trying to reach you," she said. "Do you know about the IRS? Has anyone told you? Did your business manager say anything?"
The long line crackled and hissed.
"No. Nothing. What I.R.F.? What's going on?"
"The Internal Revenue Service. They want you to pay them a million dollars by Monday or they're going to seize everything you have!"
It was a threat so huge that it couldn't possibly be true.
"Seize everything?" I said. "By Monday? Why Monday?"
"They sent a certified notice three months ago. Your business manager didn't tell you. He says you don't like bad news. . . ."
She said it so sadly I knew she wasn't kidding. What did I have a business manager for, a financial manager . . . why did I hire these professionals? Surely I didn't need to hire experts for anything so simple as getting my property seized by the IRS. I could have done that by myself.
"Can I help you, Richard?" she said.
"I don't know." What a strange feeling it will be, to see locks hanging on the airplanes, on the house.
"I'll do anything you want," she said. "I've got to be able to do something. I think I should see a lawyer."
"Good idea. Call my lawyer in Los Angeles, see if he's got anybody in his office who knows taxes. And don't worry. It's got to be a mistake. Can you imagine, a million dollars in TAXES? What's happened is I've lost a million dollars and there will be no taxes. A wire got crossed. I'll talk to the IRS when I get back and see what's going on, and we'll straighten the whole thing out."
"OK," she said, doubtfully. "I'll call your lawyer and go from there. Hurry home, please, soon as you can." She sounded tense and scared.
"I have to stay two more days. Don't you worry. We'll get this settled and I'll see you soon!"
"Don't you worry, either," she said. "I'm sure I can do something. . . ."
How strange, I thought, back under my covers in Madrid. She's taking it so seriously! As if it matters to her, as if she cares!
I thought of the managers I had hired. If this were true,
every one of them had failed. I'll bet that woman has more business sense in her hair-ribbon than the rest of us tied together in a knot.
What do you know-I hadn't bought trustworthiness with trust. Or with big salaries or with titles or with responsibilities or with expense accounts. And when hired hands fail, I suddenly realized, it's not them but me who gets vaporized!
Ay, Richard, que tontol Estoy un burro, estoy un burro estupido!
Interesting, I thought. Less than two weeks in Spain, and already I'm thinking in the language!
twenty-five
JL T WAS in a file marked Richard on her desk, and assuming it for me, I opened the file and read.
Dawn's peaceful, luminous blue
Intensified with the day
As did happiness,
Blue . . . bluer . . . bluest,
White puffs of delight,
Joy overflowing,
Until sunset
Wrapped us in tender pink And we fused in a Passionate magenta goodbye, Earth-soul and Cosmic-soul Bursting with beauty.
When night came,
A baby moon
Laughed sideways in the dark.
I laughed back
And thought:
Partway across the world Your sky
Is filled with this same Golden laughter, And hoped that you, Twinkling Blue Eyes, Saw and heard,
So that somehow we three Were joined in our gladness, Each in our own space, Together apart, Distance meaningless.
And I slept In a world Full of smiles.
I read it once, and again, and then once more, slowly.
"Little wookie," I called. "Who wrote the poem with the baby moon laughing sideways in the dark? In the file on your desk. Did you write that?"
She answered from her living room, where she had surrounded herself with mountains of investment-transaction forms, prairies of ledger-sheets, rivers of canceled checks; a settler in hostile country, circled by paper wagons.
She had managed to forestall the IRS seizure. Now she
was working topspeed to organize facts so negotiations could begin, two weeks from Thursday.
"Excuse me?" she said. "I did. Oh, DON'T READ IT, PLEASE!"
"Too late," I said, quiet enough for her not to hear.
We wonder sometimes if ever we can know our closest friend, what she thinks and feels in her heart. And then we find she's written her heart to a secret paper, clear as a mountain spring.
I read it again. It was dated the day I had left for Spain, and now the day after I returned I was learning how she had felt, telling no one but this paper. What a poet she was! Intimate on paper, gentle, unafraid. Writing moves me when it is intimate; flying does, film, talk, touches that seem accidental but aren't.
No one had I met but her, with whom I dared be as childish as sometimes I felt, as silly, as knowing, as sexual, as close and touching. If love wasn't a word twisted and mutilated by possession and hypocrisy, if it was a word that meant what I wanted it to mean, I might be on the edge of believing that I was in love with her.
I read her words again. "That's a beautiful poem, Leslie." Sounds so weak and condescending. Does she know I mean it?
Her voice was a silver chain, swung hard. "Damn it, Richard! I asked you not to read it! That is private! When I want you to read it I will let you know! Now will you come out of the office, please come out of there and help me?"
The poem shattered in my mind, a clay disk shot point-blank. Lightning fury. Who are you to shout at me, lady! NO ONE shouts at me and sees me again, ever! You don't
want me, you don't got me! Bye . . . Bye . . . BYE . . . BYE!
That two-second spike of rage, then hot anger at myself. I who most value privacy had read her private poem! I had broken into her private writing-how would I feel if she'd broken into mine? Unthinkable, to do that. She had every right to throw me out of her house forever, and I hated so to have it end because she was the closest person ever to touch . . .
I clamped my jaw tight, said not a word, walked to the living room.
"I'm very sorry," I said, "I deeply apologize. That was unforgivable and I will never do it again. I promise you that." Fury cooled, molten lead dumped into ice. The poem stayed broken dust.
-"Don't you care about this?" She was angry, desperate. "The lawyers can't do anything to help you until they have something to work with, and this . . . mess! ... is supposed to be your records!"
She shuffled papers, sorted one stack here, one there. "Do you have copies of your tax returns? Do you know where your tax returns are?"
I hadn't a clue. If I abhorred anything next after War, Organized Religion and Marriage, it might have been Financial Paperwork. To see a tax return was to meet Medusa head-on: instant stone blank.
"They must be here somewhere," I said lamely. "I'll give a look for them."
She checked a clipboard list on her lap, lifted her pencil.
"What was your income last year?"
"I don't know."
"Approximately. Plus or minus ten thousand dollars."
"I don't know."
"Richard! Come on! Plus or minus fifty thousand, a hundred thousand dollars?"
"Honest, Leslie, I really truly don't know!"
She put the pencil down, looked at me as though I were some biology sample brought in from arctic mud. "Within a million dollars," she said, very slowly and clearly. "If you earned less than a million dollars last year, say, 'Less than a million dollars.' If you earned more than a million dollars, say, 'More than a million dollars.'" Patiently, as though talking to a stupid child.
"Maybe more than a million," I said, "but maybe less and maybe two."
Her patience snapped. "Richard! Please! This isn't a game! Can't you see I'm trying to help?"
"CAN'T YOU SEE I DON'T KNOW? I DON'T HAVE THE FAINTEST IDEA HOW MUCH MONEY I EARNED, I DON'T CARE HOW MUCH MONEY I EARNED! I HAVE ... I HAD PEOPLE I TRUSTED TO KNOW ALL THAT STUFF, I HATE KEEPING TRACK OF IT, / DON'T KNOW HOW!" It sounded like a scene from a script. "I don't know."
She touched the eraser to the corner of her mouth, looked at me, and after a long silence, she said, "You really don't know, do you?"
"No." I felt sullen, misunderstood and alone.
"I believe you," she said gently. "How can you not know within a million dollars?"
She saw my face and waved her hand to take back what she had said. "OK, OK! You don't know."
I pawed through boxes for a while, hating it. Papers, look
at all these papers. Numbers in unknown handwritings, from different typewriters, yet they were supposed to have something to do with me. Investments, commodities, brokers, taxes, bank accounts . . . "Here's taxes!" I said. "A whole folder of taxes!"
"Good boy!" she said, as though I were a cocker spaniel dug up a lost bracelet.
"Bark," I said. She didn't reply, scanning the titles of the returns, checking the entries there,
It was quiet while she read, and I yawned without opening my mouth, a trick I had learned in high school English. Hating paperwork so, was this to be required learning for me now, more deadly than grammar? Why? I hadn't ignored the paperwork, I had hired people to do it! After hiring them and paying them, why is it me stirring this mess, looking for tax-forms; why is it Leslie catching the load dropped by six high-paid employees? It's not fair!