"You are. But I like you anyway."
"I like you too," she said.
Late that afternoon, I was working on a television screenplay, rewriting the last few pages, knocking them out on Leslie's typewriter while she slipped into the garden to care for her flowers. Even there, so diflerent we were. Flowers are pretty little things, all right, but to put so much time into them, to have them depending on you to water them and feed them and wash them and whatever else flowers need . . . dependence is not for me. I'd never be a gardener, she'd never be otherwise.
There among the plants in her office were shelves of books reflecting mists of the rainbow that she was, there above her desk the quotes and ideas that mattered to her:
Our country right or wrong. WHEN RIGHT, TO BE KEPT RIGHT; WHEN WRONG, TO BE PUT RIGHT.
-Carl Schurz.
No smoking, here or anywhere. Hedonism is no fun. I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.
-Thomas Jefferson. Suppose they gave a war, and no one came?
The last was a quote from herself. She had it printed as a bumper-sticker, and then it had been picked up by the peace movement and spread fast as television around the world.
I studied those from time to time between paragraphs of my script, knowing her better with every spade-crunch, scis-sor-snip, rake-scratch from her garden, the muffled hiss of water through pipes and hose, gently slaking the thirst of her flower family. She knew and loved each separate blossom.
Different different different, I thought, finishing the last paragraph, but my, I admire that woman! Have I ever, for all our differences, had a friend like her?
I stood and stretched, walked through the kitchen and the side door into her garden. Her back was to me as she watered the flower-beds, the long hair pulled into a work-time ponytail. I walked quietly and stood a few feet behind her. She was singing softly to her cat.
"You are a pussycat, oh yes you are/my fluffalorium, my little star/and if you leave me, don't go far. ..."
Her cat clearly enjoyed the song, but it was too intimate a moment for me to be standing there unseen, so I spoke as if I had just arrived.
"How are your flowers doing?"
She whirled about, hose in hand, eyes blue-saucer fright that she wasn't alone in her private garden. The nozzle of the hose was pointed chest-high, but it was set to drench a cone several feet in diameter, from my mouth to my belt. Neither of us said a word, neither moved while the hose poured water into me as though I were a tall fire escaped.
She was stricken with fright, first from my sudden words, then from what the water was doing to my coat and shirt. I stood without moving, because I thought it unseemly to
scream and run, because I hoped that before long she might decide to turn the hose in some other direction than point-blank on my city-clothes.
As well she held a sandblaster, the scene is so clearly etched today ... the sunlight, the garden around us, her eyes enormous astonishment at this polar bear broken into her flower-patch, a hose her only defense. If you water a polar bear long enough, she must have been thinking, it will turn and dash away.
I didn't feel like a polar bear, except for the ice-water spraying over me, soaking in. I saw her horror, finally, at what she was doing to what was not a polar bear but a business-partner friend and guest in her home. Though she was still frozen aghast, she gained control of her hose-hand and slowly turned the water away.
"Leslie!" I said into a dripping silence, "it was only me. . . ."
Then she was crying with laughter, her eyes helpless merry blurred shock, imploring forgiveness. She fell laughing, sobbing, against my coat, which squished water from the pockets.
fifteen
"JILL CALLED today from Florida," said Leslie, moving her chesspeople to their places for another game. "Is she jealous?"
"Not possible," I said. "Jealousy is not part of my agreement with any woman."
I frowned to myself. After all these years, I still have to mutter "Queen-on-Her-Own-Color" to set my pieces right.
"She wanted to know if you have some special girlfriend out here, you've been coming to Los Angeles so much lately."
"Oh, come on," I said. "You're not serious."
"Honest."
"What did you tell her?"