The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story (5 page)

"What's it like to zoom around upside-down? Do you give rides, or just show off?"

"Mostly show off. Not many rides. Sometimes. Once you trust you're not going to fall out, it's fun, zooming around."

"Would you give me a ride," she said, "if I asked in the right way?"

"For you I might, when the show's over." Never saw eyes so green. "What's the right way to ask?"

She smiled innocently. "Please?"

She was not far away the rest of the afternoon, disappeared in the crowd from time to time, then back again, the smile and a secret wave. When the sun was nearly set she was the last one left by the airplane. I helped her into the front cockpit of the little machine.

"Two safety belts, remember," I said. "One by itself will hold you in the airplane no matter what aerobatics we do, but we like to have two, anyway."

I told her how to use the parachute if we had to bail out, smoothed the padded shoulder harness snug over her shoulders, down to lock into the second safety belt. You have beautiful breasts, I nearly said, by way of compliment. Instead: "You want to make sure your harness is pulled as tight as you can get it. Soon as the airplane rolls upside-down, it will feel a whole lot looser than it does now!" She grinned up at me as though I had chosen the compliment.

From the sound of the engine to a sun tilted afire on the rim of the world, from hanging inverted above clouds to floating weightless mid-air to crushing three Gs in loops, she was a natural flyer, she adored the ride.

Landed in twilight, she was out of her cockpit by the time I had the engine stopped and before I knew it she threw her arms around my neck and kissed me.

"I LOVE IT!" she said.

"My goodness ..." I said. "Why, I don't mind that, myself."

"You're a grand pilot."

I tied the airplane to cables in the grass. "Flattery, Miss, will get you anywhere you want to go."

She insisted on taking me to dinner to pay for her ride; we talked for an hour. She was divorced, she told me, and worked as a hostess in a restaurant not far from the lake-house I had bought. Between her job and alimony, she had enough money to get along. Now she was thinking about going back to school to study physics.

"Physics! Tell me what happened to lead you into physics . . ." Such an arresting person-positive, direct, motivated.

She reached for her purse. "You don't mind if I smoke, do you?"

If her question startled, my answer flattened me numb.

"Not at all."

She lit her cigarette and began to talk physics, not noticing the shambles she had made of my mind. RICHARD! WHAT? WHAT DO YOU MEAN NOT AT ALL YOU DON'T MIND? The lady is lighting a CIGARETTE! Do you know what that is saying about her values and her future in your life? It says Road Closed, it says . . .

Shut up, I said to my principles. She's bright and different, smart as lightning with green eyes, fun to listen to, lovely, warm, exciting, and I'm so tired of thinking alone, sleeping with pretty aliens. Later, I'll talk to her about the smoking. Not tonight.

My principles disappeared so fast it frightened me.

". . . of course rich I won't be, but I'll afford it somehow," she was saying. "I'm going to have my own airplane even if it has to be old and used! Will I be sorry?"

The smoke curled, as any tobacco-smoke will, directly to me. I tugged down mental screens against it, thoughtforms in glass, got myself under control at once.

"You'll get the airplane first," I asked, watching her eyes, "then learn to fly it?"

"Yes. Then I only have to pay for an instructor instead of an instructor and renting an airplane, too. Isn't that cheaper in the long run? Doesn't that sound wise to you?"

We discussed it, and after a while I suggested she might fly with me from time to time in one or another of my airplanes. The new Lake amphibian, I thought, so sleek it looked as if it were built to move through futures and pasts as well as air and water, there's one she'd like.

Two hours later I was stretched out in bed, imagining what she would look like when I saw her next.

I didn't have long to wait. She would look delicious, a tanned curving body covered for a moment by terrycloth.

Then the towel fell away, she slipped under the covers, leaned to kiss me. Not I-know-who-you-are-and-I-love-you did that kiss say, but let's be lovers tonight and see what happens.

What pleasure it was just to enjoy, and not to wish for someone I couldn't find!

seven

"I

JL'D
  
JUST as soon you not smoke in the

house, Kathy."

She looked up surprised, lighter poised an inch from her cigarette. "You didn't mind last night."

I set our plates hi the dishwasher, ran the sponge over the kitchen counter. It was already warm outside, just a few white puffs high in the morning; scattered clouds at six thousand feet, visibility fifteen miles in light haze. No wind.

She was as attractive as she had been the day before; I wanted to know her better. Were cigarettes going to drive away this woman I could touch and with whom I could talk for more than a minute?

"Let me tell you what I think about cigarettes," I said.

I took a long time and told her.

"... so it's saying to everyone around you," I finished, "it's saying: 'You matter so little to me that I don't care if

you can't breathe. Die if you want, I'm lighting up!' Not a courteous habit, smoking. Not something to do around people you like."

Instead of turning into thorns and stalking out the door, she nodded. "It's a terrible habit, I know. I've been thinking about quitting." She closed her purse on cigarettes and lighter.

In time physics fell aside-it was modeling she wanted to try. Then singing. She had a pretty voice, haunting as a mermaid's from a misty sea. But somehow, when she moved past wishing into working toward a career, she lost her dedication and began another dream. Finally it was up to me- why didn't I help her open a little boutique?

Kathy was lighthearted, quick-witted; she loved the amphibian, she picked up flying at once and she was an incurable stranger. She was a foreign body in my system, lovely though she was, and the system moved often to reject her, as gently as it could.

Soulmates we would never be. We were two boats met mid-ocean, each changing course to sail for a while in the same direction over an empty sea. Different boats on our way to different ports, and we knew it.

I had the curious sense that I was marking time, that I was waiting for something to happen before my life could pick up its strange charmed way, its purpose and direction.

Were I a soulmate separated from my love, I thought, I'd expect her to do the best she could without me, till somehow we found each other. In the meantime, my dear undiscovered twin, do you expect the same of me? How close do we allow warm strangers?

A friendship with Kathy is pleasant for the time being, but it must not entangle, interfere, stand in the way of my love, whenever she might come along.

It was sensual, ever-new, my search for the perfect woman. Why this oppressive sense of winter come early? No matter how fast time-the-river thundered over its rocks and depths, my raft was caught in snowy rapids. It's not deadly to be stopped for a while, I hoped over the roar, I don't think it's deadly. But I've chosen this planet and this time to learn some transcendent lesson I don't know what, to meet a woman unlike any other.

In spite of that hope, an inner voice warned that winter could turn me to ice unless I broke free and found her.

eight

MT FELT the same as laying out flat on the kitchen table in an airplane two miles up, and then getting kicked out the door. One instant the plane was full-size, inches from my fingers ... I was falling, but I could grab and get back aboard if I desperately needed to.

The next instant was too late, the closest thing to grab was fifty feet above me, flying away a hundred feet per second. I fell alone, straight down. Now it was straight down, fast.

Oh, my, I thought. Am I sure I want to do this?

When you live for the moment, skydiving is a whale of a lot of run. It's when you start caring about the next moment that it tarnishes.

I fell down the wild vortex, watching the ground, how big it was, how hard and flat, feeling awfully little, myself. No cockpit, nothing to hang on to.

Not to worry, Richard, I thought. Right here on your chest is the ripcord handle, you can pull it any time you want and out comes the parachute. There's another ripcord on the reserve, if the main chute fails. You can pull it now, if you'd feel better, but then you'd be missing the fun of free-fall.

I glanced at the altimeter on my wrist. Eight thousand feet. Seven thousand five . . .

Way below on the ground was a white-gravel target upon which I aimed to stand in not too many seconds. But look at all that empty air between now and then! Oh, my . . . - Part of us is always the observer, and no matter what, it observes. It watches us. It does not care if we are happy or unhappy, if we are sick or well, if we live or die. Its only job is to sit there on our shoulder and pass judgment on whether we are worthwhile human beings.

Now perched the observer on my reserve harness, wearing his own little jumpsuit and parachute, taking notes on my behavior.

Much more nervous than ought to be at this stage. Eyes too wide; heart-rate too fast. Mixed in with exhilaration is one part too many fright. Grade so far on Jump #29: C-minus.

My observer grades hard.

Altitude five thousand two hundred . . . four thousand eight hundred.

Push my hands ahead of me in the storm of wind and I'd fall feet-down; hands back and I'd dive headfirst toward the ground. This is the way I thought flying without an airplane might be, except for the forlorn wish that I could go up as fast as down. Even a third as fast up would be fine.

Wool-gathering during free-fall. Mind wanders aimlessly. Revised grade: D-plus.

Altitude three thousand seven hundred feet. Still high, but my hand came in for the ripcord, hooked it on the right thumb, pulled hard. The cable slid free; I heard a rattling at my back, which would be the pilot-chute opening.

Pulled early. Too eager to get under canopy. D.

The rattling continued. By now I should have had the falling-into-featherpile shock of the main canopy opening. Instead, I fell unchecked. For no reason, my body started to spin.

Something . . . , I thought, is something wrong?

I looked over my shoulder into the rattling. The pilot-chute thrashed and blurred, caught on a harness-strap. Where the main canopy should have been was a great knot of tangled nylon, reds and blues and yellows roaring in the vortex.

Sixteen seconds-fifteen-to fix it before I'd hit the ground. It looked to me, spinning, as though I were going to hit just shy of the orange grove. Maybe in the trees, but more likely not.

Cut away, I had learned in practice. I'm supposed to cut away from the main canopy now and deploy the reserve from my chest-pack. Is this fair, a parachute failure on my twenty-ninth jump? I don't think this is fair!

Mind uncontrolled. No discipline. D-minus.

It was just my luck, then, that time slowed down. A second took a minute to pass.

Yet why is it so hard to get my hands up to the release-latches and cut away from the wreck of the canopy?

My hands weighed tons, and I inched them slow-motion to the latches at my shoulders, an enormous effort.

Is this worth the stram? They didn't tell me it would be so hard to reach the latches! In savage fury at my instructors, I grabbed the last half-inch to the releases and ripped them open.

Slow, slow. Way too slow.

I stopped spinning, rolled over on my back to deploy the reserve, and to my dumb surprise saw the tangled nylon still with me! I was a. Roman candle in reverse, tied to a bright cloth flame falling, a rocket fired down from the sky.

"Students, listen," the instructor had said. "This will probably never happen to you, but don't forget: Never deploy your reserve into a fouled main because the reserve will fail, too. It'll barber-pole up the streamer and it won't even slow you down! ALWAYS CUT AWAY!"

But I did cut away, and there's the main tangled, still jammed in the harness!

My observer snorted in disgust, over his clipboard.

Loses rationality under pressure: F is for Failed.

I felt the ground falling up behind me. The grass would hit the back of my neck at about 125 mph. Certainly a swift way to die. Why aren't I seeing my life flash in front of my eyes, why aren't I leaving my body before I hit, the way it says in books? PULL THE RESERVE!

Acts too late. Asks irrelevant questions. Basically poor human being.

I jerked the emergency ripcord, and instantly the reserve burst by my face, up from its pack like a silk snow-shell, cannon-fired into the sky. It streamed alongside the rag of the main; sure enough, I was tied to two Roman candles streaking down.

Then a slamwhite gunshot and the thing was open, full open, and I jerked to a halt in the air four hundred feet above the orange grove, a broken puppet dangling, rescued last-second on its strings.

Time jammed back into high gear, trees whipped by, I hit the ground on my boots and fell in the grass not dead but breathing hard.

Had I already smashed in upside-down killed, I thought, then got myself dragged backwards two seconds in time by a mercy-chute and saved?

Plummeting death was an alternate future I had barely managed not to choose, and as it veered away from me I wanted to wave it goodbye. Wave sadly, almost. In that future, already an alternate past, I had sudden answers to my long curiosity about dying.

Survived the jump. Bungled through with luck and brilliant action from guardian angels. Guardian angels: A. Richard: F.

I gathered up the reserve, hugged it lovingly into a cool foamy pile alongside the failed main. Then I sat on the ground by the trees, lived the last minutes again, wrote into my pocket notebook what had happened and what I had seen and thought, what the mean little observer had said, the sad farewell to death, everything I could remember. My hands didn't shake, writing. Either I felt no shock from the jump, or I was suppressing it with a vengeance.