The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story

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?"