The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story

"No." He was as calm as a college dean, explaining. "These are commodities futures. We promise to sell later at this price, knowing that before the future comes, when we have to do the selling, we will have bought plywood-or sugar, or copper, or corn-at a much lower price."

"Oh."

"Then we reinvest. And diversify. Off-shore investments. An off-shore corporation might be a good idea, as a matter of fact. But CBT will be the place to start, maybe a seat on the West Coast Commodity Exchange. We'll see. Buy a seat on the Exchange, your broker fees go to nothing. Later, diversification; controlling interest in a little company on its way up could be wise. I'll be doing research. But with the amount of money we have to work with, and a conservative strategy for the markets, it'll be pretty hard to go wrong."

I came away convinced. What a relief! In no way can my financial future get tangled, parachute-like.

I'd never be able to handle money the way Stan did. Not patient enough, wise enough, and I don't have charts that shoot moonward.

Yet wise enough am I to know my own weakness, to find a trusted old friend, and give him control of my money.

77

ten

LAY in the sun on the deck, Donna and me, the two of us on my becalmed sailboat, drifting with the current thirty miles north of Key West. "No woman in my life owns me," I told her quietly, patiently, "and I own not one of them. That's terribly important to me. I promise: never will I be possessive 'of you, never jealous."

"That's a nice change," she said. Her hair was short and black, her brown eyes closed against the sun. She was tanned the color of oiled teak from years of summer since a divorce far northward. "Most men can't understand. I'm living the way I want to. I'll be with them if I want to be with them, I'll be gone if I don't. That doesn't frighten you?" She moved the straps of her bikini, to keep the tan unstreaked.

"Frighten? It delights me! No chains or ropes or knots, no arguments, no boredoms. A present from the heart: I'm here

not because I'm supposed to be here, or because I'm trapped here, but because I'd rather be with you than anywhere in the world."

The water lapped gently. Instead of shadows, bright lights sparkled up on the sail.

"You will find me the safest friend you have," I said.

"Safest?"

"Because I cherish my own freedom, I cherish yours, too. I am extremely sensitive. If ever I touch you, do anything you'd rather no.t, you need whisper the gentlest 'No.' I despise intruders and crashers-into-privacy. You ever hint I'm one myself, you'll find me gone before you finish the hint."

She rolled on her side, head on her arm, and opened her eyes. "That does not sound like a proposal of marriage, Richard."

"It isn't."

"Thank you."

"Do you get a lot of those?" I asked.

"A few is too many," she said. "One marriage was enough. In my case, one marriage more than I should have had. Some people are better off married; I'm not."

I told her a little about the marriage I had ended, happy years gone hard and grim. I had learned exactly the lessons she had.

I checked the soft glass table of the Gulf for wind-ruffles. The sea was smooth as warm ice.

"What a shame, Donna, we can't disagree on something."

We drifted for another hour before wind caught the sails and the boat surged ahead. By the time we set foot on land once more we were good acquaintances, hugging farewell, promising to see each other again someday.

As it was with Donna, so with every other woman in my

79

life. Respect for sovereignty, for privacy, for total independence. Gentle alliances against loneliness, they were, cool rational love-affairs without the love.

Some of my women-friends had never married, but most were divorced. A few were survivors of unhappy affairs, beaten by violent men, terrified, warped by massive stress into endless depressions. Love, for them, was a tragic misunderstanding; love was an empty word left after meaning had been battered away by spouse-as-owner, lover-become-jailer.

Had I gone looking way far back in my thought, I might have found a puzzle: Love between man and woman isn't a word that works anymore. But Richard, is it a meaning?