The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story

Laughed sideways in the dark.

I laughed back

And thought:

Partway across the world Your sky

Is filled with this same Golden laughter, And hoped that you, Twinkling Blue Eyes, Saw and heard,

So that somehow we three Were joined in our gladness, Each in our own space, Together apart, Distance meaningless.

And I slept In a world Full of smiles.

I read it once, and again, and then once more, slowly.

"Little wookie," I called. "Who wrote the poem with the baby moon laughing sideways in the dark? In the file on your desk. Did you write that?"

She answered from her living room, where she had surrounded herself with mountains of investment-transaction forms, prairies of ledger-sheets, rivers of canceled checks; a settler in hostile country, circled by paper wagons.

She had managed to forestall the IRS seizure. Now she

was working topspeed to organize facts so negotiations could begin, two weeks from Thursday.

"Excuse me?" she said. "I did. Oh, DON'T READ IT, PLEASE!"

"Too late," I said, quiet enough for her not to hear.

We wonder sometimes if ever we can know our closest friend, what she thinks and feels in her heart. And then we find she's written her heart to a secret paper, clear as a mountain spring.

I read it again. It was dated the day I had left for Spain, and now the day after I returned I was learning how she had felt, telling no one but this paper. What a poet she was! Intimate on paper, gentle, unafraid. Writing moves me when it is intimate; flying does, film, talk, touches that seem accidental but aren't.

No one had I met but her, with whom I dared be as childish as sometimes I felt, as silly, as knowing, as sexual, as close and touching. If love wasn't a word twisted and mutilated by possession and hypocrisy, if it was a word that meant what I wanted it to mean, I might be on the edge of believing that I was in love with her.

I read her words again. "That's a beautiful poem, Leslie." Sounds so weak and condescending. Does she know I mean it?

Her voice was a silver chain, swung hard. "Damn it, Richard! I asked you not to read it! That is private! When I want you to read it I will let you know! Now will you come out of the office, please come out of there and help me?"

The poem shattered in my mind, a clay disk shot point-blank. Lightning fury. Who are you to shout at me, lady! NO ONE shouts at me and sees me again, ever! You don't

want me, you don't got me! Bye . . . Bye . . . BYE . . . BYE!

That two-second spike of rage, then hot anger at myself. I who most value privacy had read her private poem! I had broken into her private writing-how would I feel if she'd broken into mine? Unthinkable, to do that. She had every right to throw me out of her house forever, and I hated so to have it end because she was the closest person ever to touch . . .

I clamped my jaw tight, said not a word, walked to the living room.

"I'm very sorry," I said, "I deeply apologize. That was unforgivable and I will never do it again. I promise you that." Fury cooled, molten lead dumped into ice. The poem stayed broken dust.

-"Don't you care about this?" She was angry, desperate. "The lawyers can't do anything to help you until they have something to work with, and this . . . mess! ... is supposed to be your records!"

She shuffled papers, sorted one stack here, one there. "Do you have copies of your tax returns? Do you know where your tax returns are?"

I hadn't a clue. If I abhorred anything next after War, Organized Religion and Marriage, it might have been Financial Paperwork. To see a tax return was to meet Medusa head-on: instant stone blank.

"They must be here somewhere," I said lamely. "I'll give a look for them."

She checked a clipboard list on her lap, lifted her pencil.

"What was your income last year?"