The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story (8 page)

The mediator turned out to be actress Leslie Par-rish, the woman who had shared the ride with me from the lobby to floor three.

Rage melted, talking with her. She was calm and reason-I trusted her at once.

Now Hollywood wanted to turn the latest book into a film. I swore I'd see the story burned before I'd let it be wrecked on screen. If it were to be made, would it best be made by my own company? Leslie was the one person I trusted in Hollywood, and I flew to Los Angeles to talk with her once more.

On the side-table in her office had been a chessboard.

Office chess-sets are most often designers' whims, fancy things with queens like bishops like pawns, pieces scattered in random wrong places. This set was a wooden tournament Staunton, three-and-a-half-inch king on a fourteen-inch board, white-corner square to the players' right, knights facing forward.

"Time for a quick game?" I had said when the meeting was finished. I was not the best chess-player in town; neither was I the worst. I've been playing the game since I was seven, and had a certain arrogant confidence at the board.

She had looked at her watch. "OK," she had said.

That she won the game startled me cold. The way she won, the pattern of her thought on the chessboard, charmed me warm again and then some.

The next meeting, we played for best two games out of three.

The next month we formed a corporation. She set to work to find a way to make the film with the lowest probability of disaster, and we played for best six games out of eleven.

After that there were no meetings required. I'd strap myself into my newest airplane, eight tons of ex-Air Force jet trainer, climb to 35,000 feet and fly from Florida out Jet Fifty to Los Angeles to spend a day at chess with Leslie.

Our games became less tournamental, words allowed, cookies and milk at table.

"Richard, you beast," she frowned over the pieces. Her side of the board was in real trouble.

"Yes," said I smugly. "I am a clever beast."

"But . . . check with the knight," she said, "and check with the bishop, and guard your queen! Isn't that a pretty move?"

Blood drained from my face. Check I had expected. Guard-your-queen was a surprise.

"Pretty indeed," I said, years of emergency-training forcing me casual. "My goodness . . . Hm . . . There's a move to be framed, it's so pretty. But I shall slip like a shadow away. Somehow like a shadow, Ms. Parrish, the Beast shall slip away. . . ."

Sometimes the beast twisted free, others he was herded into a corral and checkmated, only to be reborn half-a-cookie later, trying once more to catch her in his traps.

What strange alchemy between us! I assumed that she had a variety of men for her romances as I had women for mine. Assuming was enough; neither of us pried, each was infinitely respectful of the other's privacy.

Then once hi the middle of chess she said, "There's a movie tonight at the Academy that I ought to see. The director might be good for us to think about. Want to come along?"

"Love to," I said absently, tending my defense against her king-side attack.

I had never been inside the theater of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; I was glamour-struck driving past the building. But here was I inside, watching a new film with a crowd of movie-stars. How odd, I thought. My simple life of flying is all at once connected to the inside

of Hollywood by a book and a friend who beats me often as not at ray favorite game.

After the movie, as she drove us east on Santa Monica Boulevard through the twilight, I was struck by inspiration:

"Leslie, would you care to ..."

The silence was so tantalizing she said, "Would I care to what?"

"Leslie, would you care for a hot fudge sundae?"

She recoiled. "A what?"

"Hot . . . fudge . . . sundae. And a round of chess?"

"What a depraved thought!" she said. "The hot fudge, I mean. Haven't you noticed that I live on seeds and raw vegetables and yogurt and only rarely even a chess-cookie?"

"M. Noticed I have. That is why you need a hot fudge sundae. How long has it been? Honest, now. If it was last week you have to say last week."

"Last week? Last year! Do I look like I've been eating sundaes? Look at me!"

For the first time, I did. I sat back and blinked to discover what the dimmest male saw at once, that here was an extraordinarily attractive woman, that the thought that had built the exquisite face had also built a body to match.

In the months I had known her, she had been a charming bodyless sprite, a mind that was a dancing challenge, a reference-book of film production, classical music, politics, ballet.

"Well? Would you say I've been living on sundaes?"

"Beautiful! That is, no! That is definitely NOT a hot fudge body! Let me say this for certain ..." I was blushing. What a stupid thing, I thought, for a grown man . . . Richard, change the subject fast!

"One little sundae," I said swiftly, "it wouldn't be harm,

it would be happiness. If you can make a turn there through traffic, we can get our hands on a pair of hot fudges, small ones, right now. ..."

She looked at me, flashed a smile to assure me our friendship was safe; she knew that I had noticed her body for the first time, and she didn't mind. But her men-friends, I thought, would mind indeed, and that could bring problems.

Without discussion, without a word to her, I erased the idea of her body from my thought. For romance I had my perfect woman; for a friend and business-partner I needed to keep Leslie Parrish just the way she was.

thirteen

"IT'S NOT the end of the world," Stan said quietly, even before I had settled in the chair on the other side of his desk. "It's what we could call a bit of a reverse. The West Coast Commodity Exchange collapsed yesterday. They filed for bankruptcy. You've lost a little money."

My financial manager was always understated, which is why my jaw tightened at his words. "How little have we lost, Stan?"

"About six hundred thousand dollars," he said, "five hundred ninety-some thousand."

"Gone?"

"Oh, someday you might get a few cents on the dollar from the bankruptcy court," he said. "I'd consider it gone."

I swallowed. "Glad we're diversified. How go things at the Chicago Board of Trade?"

"You've had some setbacks there, too. Temporary, I'm

sure. You're having the longest string of losses I've ever charted. It can't go on like this forever, but for the time being it's not the best. You're down about eight hundred thousand dollars."

He was talking about more money than I had! How could I lose more than I had? On paper, he must mean. It's a paper loss. People cannot lose more money than they have.

If I could learn anything about money, maybe it would be well to pay closer attention to this business. But I would have to study for months, and money-handling is not like flying, it is suffocating dull stuff; even the pictures aren't easy to follow.

"It's not as bad as it sounds," he said. "A loss of a million dollars will cut your taxes to zero; you've lost more than that so you won't be paying a cent of income tax this year. But if I had a choice, I'd choose not to have lost it."

I felt no anger, no despair, as though I had stumbled into a situation comedy, as though by turning fast enough in my chair I'd find television cameras and a studio audience instead of Stan's office wall.

Unknown writer makes millions, loses them overnight. Isn't that some worn cliche? Is this really my life? While Stari explained the disasters, I wondered.

People with million-dollar incomes, they've always been somebody else. I, on the other hand, have always been me. I'm an airplane pilot, a barnstormer selling rides from hayfields. I'm a writer as rarely as possible, when forced by an idea too lovely to let die unwritten . . . what is the likes of me doing with a bank account of more than a hundred dollars which is all anyone could possibly need at one time anyway?

"Might as well tell you, while you're here," Stan went on

uietly. "The investment you made through Tamara, that high-interest, government-backed foreign development loan? Her client disappeared with the money. It was only fifty thousand dollars, but you ought to know."

I couldn't believe it. "He's her friend, Stan! She trusted him! And he's gone?"

"Left no forwarding address, as they say." He studied my face. "Do you trust Tamara?"

Oh, my. Please not that cliche^ Pretty woman takes rich fool for fifty grand?

"Stan, are you saying that Tamara had something to do. . . ?"

"Possible. It looks to me like her handwriting on the back of the check. Different name, same handwriting."

"You're not serious."

He unlocked a file drawer, brought out an envelope, handed me a canceled check. SeaKay Limited, it was endorsed, by Wendy Smythe. High sweeping capital letters, graceful descenders on the y's. Had I seen those on an envelope, I would have sworn it was a note from Tamara.

"That could be anybody's writing," I said, and handed it back across the desk.

Stan didn't say another word. He was convinced that she had the money. But Tamara was my department; there would be no investigating unless I asked for it. I'd never ask, never say a word about it to her. And I'd never trust her again.

"You do have some money left," he said. "And of course there's new income, every month. After a long streak of bad luck, the market has to turn. Now, you could put the remaining assets in foreign currency. I have a hunch the dollar

might fall against the Deutschmark any time now, so that you might earn your losses back, overnight."

"It's beyond me," I said- "Do what you think's best, Stan."

For all the warning-lights flashing and danger-bells clanging, my empire could have been a nuclear powerplant three minutes to melt-down.

At last I stood, picked my flying-jacket from the arm of the couch.

"Someday we'll look back on this as our low point," I told him. "From here on things can only get better, can't they?"

As if he hadn't heard, he said, "One more thing I've been meaning to tell you. It's not easy. Do you know that saying: Tower corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely'? Well, it does. I think that might be true for me, too."

I didn't know what he meant, and I was afraid to ask. His face was impassive. Stan, corrupted? Not possible. I had looked up to him for years, I couldn't question his honesty. "That might be true for me" could only mean that on an expense account, one time, he might have overcharged a little, by mistake. And corrected it, of course, but felt guilty nevertheless, duty-bound to tell me. And clearly if he were telling me now, he intends no such mistakes again.

"That's OK, Stan. What matters is where we go from here."

"Right," he said.

I put the incident out of my mind. What money remained was being handled by Stan, and by people he knew and trusted, people we paid well for their services. Would people like that let all these complicated money-things drop, a bag

of springs off the roof? Of course they wouldn't, especially not now with so much going wrong. Reverses come to all, but my managers are swift of mind, I thought, and will find solutions many and soon.

fourteen

"GET ONE Five Five X-ray," I said, holding

the microphone button down, "is out of flight-level three five zero for two seven zero, requesting lower:"

I looked down over my oxygen mask seven miles to the afternoon desert of southern California, checking the sky clear below with a long slow-roll.

Technically, I was flying west to give a daylong talk at a Los Angeles university. I was glad, though, to be a few days early.

"Roger Five Five X," came back Los Angeles Center. "Cleared to two five zero, lower shortly."

Going down 400 miles per hour wasn't fast enough. I wanted to get this thing on the ground and see Leslie swifter than any airplane could fly.

"And Five Five X, you're cleared to one six thousand."

700

I acknowledged that, trimmed the nose of the airplane lower still, and faster. The altimeter needle spun downward.

"Jet Five Five X-ray is through flight-level one eight zero," I said, "and canceling Item Fox."

"Roger, Five X-ray, you are canceled at zero five. Squawk VFR, good day."

The lines from the oxygen mask were still on my face when I knocked on the door of her house at the edge of Beverly Hills. A symphony orchestra boomed on the sound-system inside; the heavy door trembled. I rang the doorbell, the music went quiet. And there she was, eyes of sea and sunshine, sparkling hello. No touch, not even a handshake, and neither of us thought it strange.

"I have a surprise for you," she said, smiling to herself at the thought of it.

"Leslie, I hate^surprises. Sorry I never told you this, but I totally and completely hate surprises, despise presents. Anything I want, I buy for myself. If I don't have it, I don't want it. So by definition," I said, tying it up neatly and finally for her, "when you give me a present you are giving me something that I do not want. It's no problem, is it, to return it?"

She walked into the kitchen, her hair splashing lights across her shoulders, down her back. Ambling to intercept came her old cat, convinced it was suppertime. "Not yet," she told it softly. "No dinner yet for the fluffalorium."

"I'm surprised you haven't bought one for yourself," she said over her shoulder, with a smile to show that I hadn't hurt her feelings. "You certainly should have one, but if you don't want it, you can throw it away. Here."

The present was not wrapped. It was a large plain bowl from a dime-store, from a cheap dime-store, and there was a painting of a hog on the inside.

"Leslie! Had I seen this I would have bought it! This is stunning! What is this nice . . . thing?"

"I knew you'd like it! It's a hoggie-bowl. And ... a hoggie-spoon!" And there was a spoon in my hand, an eighty-eight-cent steel spoon with the likeness of some anonymous pig stamped upon the handle. "And if you look in the refrigerator . . ."

I swung the thick door open and there stood a two-gallon drum of ice cream and a quart container labeled FUDGE FOR HOT, each with red ribbon and bow. Cold mist gently wafted from frost on the drum, falling silent slow-motion to the floor.