almost-drowning say it's not so bad; gets kind of peaceful after a while, they say. A lot of people have been near-dead and revived. Dying's the most beautiful moment in living, they tell us, and their fear of death is gone.
Do I need the running-lights on when I'm so alone'out here? Wastes energy, runs the batteries down.
Thirty-one feet of boat is just about right. Bigger, you want a crew. Glad I don't need a crew.
Alone alone alone. How much of our lives is single-handing. Leslie's right. I distance her, she says.
"I distance everybody, wook! It's not that it's you, it's that I don't let anyone get too close to me. I never want to get attached to anybody."
"Why?" There had been annoyance in her voice. It was happening more often now. Without warning, the talks we had would jump the tracks and she'd be mad at me for the smallest thing. "What is so terrible about getting attached to someone?"
Because I might make a huge investment of hope in one human being and then lose it all. I assume that I know who she is and then I find out that she's somebody else entirely and I have to go back to the drawingboard redesigning again and after a while I conclude there's no one I can fully know except myself and that's pretty iffy. The only thing I can trust anyone else to be is true to who they are and if they're going to explode into strange angers now and then the best thing to do is to stand back a bit so as not to get torn in the blast. Isn't that obvious, clear as yesterday?
"Because then I'm not quite so independent as I want to be," I said.
She had tilted her head and looked at me carefully. "Are you telling me the highest truth you know?"
There are moments, I thought, when having a mind-reader for a best-friend is uncomfortable, indeed. "Maybe it's time for me to get away for a little while."
"That's it," she said. "Run away! You might as well. You're gone even when you're here. I miss you. You're right here and I miss you!"
"Leslie, I don't know what to do about that. I think it's time to get away. I have to move the boat down to Key West, anyway. Go back, see how things are getting along in Florida."
She frowned. "You could never stay with one woman for more than three days, you said; you'd go mad with boredom. We stayed together months and cried when we had to part! Happier than we've ever been, both of us! What's happened, what's changed?"
Corvus strayed from its place on the mast; a spoke of the wheel to port brought it back. But if I kept it there all night, I thought, I'd be somewhere off Yucatan by dawn, instead of on course for Key West. Navigate by the same star, unwilling to change, and you find yourself not only off-course but lost.
Damn it, Corvus, are you taking her side? I have carefully worked out this excellent system, this first-rate perfect-woman scheme, and it was running just fine until Leslie started messing with it, asking questions I dare not think about, less answer. Of course I want to love you, lady, but how can I know what you'd do if I did?
What would it feel like, to fall overboard now? There I'd be, a green-phosphor splash in the ocean; there's the boat
huge above me one second and next second out of reach and next minute gone in the dark, the lights of her wake fading.
I'd swim for shore, that's what it would feel like. We're barely ten miles offshore, and if I can't swim ten miles in warm water I deserve to drown.
But what if I were a thousand miles offshore? What would it feel like then?
Someday, Richard, I thought, you are going to learn how to control your silly mind. It's like the boy said to the barnstormer landed in his hayfield:
"Mister, what would you do if the engine quit?" "Why, I'd just glide down and land, my friend! The
airplane's a good glider, doesn't need an engine to glide." "But what would you do if the wings fell off?" "If the wings fell off, I'd have to bail out, wouldn't I,
and use the parachute."
"Yeah, but what if the parachute didn't open?"
"Then I'd try to fall in a haystack."
"But what if it was just rocks everywhere?"
Bunch of vultures, kids are. Same as I was. Same as I still am-"But what if I were a thousand miles offshore?" I'm so curious, the kid in me wants to run and find what's on the other side of dying right now. There'll be a time for that before too long. My mission is pretty well done, with the books written, but there may still be a lesson or two to learn, this side of dying.
How to love a woman, for instance. Richard, remember when you quit barnstorming to find your truelove, your soulmate, your ultimate friend across a million lifetimes? Seems so long ago. What are the chances that everything
I've learned about love is wrong, that there is one woman in all the world?
The wind picked up, the boat tilted starboard. I let Cor-vus go and steered by compass for Key West.