The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story

She's wrong. Of course she's wrong. The woman doesn't understand who I am or how I think.

Too bad, I thought.

Then I crumpled her letter and threw it away.

thirty-one

AN HOUR later, nothing had changed outside the window.

Why do I lie to myself? I thought. She's right and I know she's right even if I never admit it, never think of her again.

Her story of the symphony, and of chess . . . why didn't I see those? I've always been so goddamned intelligent, except about taxes, so much more insightful than anybody who ever lived, how can she see these things when I can't? Am I not as bright as she? Yet if she's so smart, where's her system, her shield to keep her from pain? I've got my Perf . . .

DAMN your Perfect Woman! It's a half-ton peacock you've invented, flounced

out weird colors fake feathers that will never fly! Your peacock might run around and flap its wings and screech instead of sing, but never never will it get

off the ground. You, terrified of marriage, do you know you've married that?

The picture of it, a little me in a wedding photo with a twenty-foot peacock, it was true! I was married to an idea that was wrong.

But the restriction of my freedom! If I stay with Leslie, I'll get bored!

About that moment I split into two different people: the me who had run things for so long, and a newcomer out to destroy him.

Boredom is the least of your worries, you son-of-a-bitch, said the newcomer. Can't you see she's smarter than you are, she knows worlds you're afraid to touch with a stick? Go ahead, stuff my mouth full of cotton and wall me away like you do every other part of you that dares say your almighty theories are wrong! You're free to do that, Richard. And you're free to spend the rest of your life in superficial how-do-you-do's with women as scared of intimacy as you are. Like attracts like, bucko. Unless you've got a goddamn ounce of sense, which you do not stand a prayer of finding this lifetime, you belong with your gutless scared Perfect Woman fiction till you die of loneliness.

You're cruel as ice. You belong with your ice-cruel chessboard and your ice-cruel sky; you wrecked a glorious opportunity with that asinine empire of yours; now the whole thing's a bunch of splinters with a government-with of all things a government lien on it!

Leslie Parrish was an opportunity a thousand times more glorious than any empire, but you're scared to death of her because she's smarter than you will ever be so you're going to dump her, too. Or has she dumped you? It won't hurt her, pal, because she ain't a loser. She will feel sad and she

will cry for a little while because she's not afraid to cry when something that might have been beautiful dies, but she'll get over it, she'll lift right on above it.

You'll get over it too, in about a minute and a half. Just pull your goddamn steel doors down shut, slam 'em tight and never think of her again. Instead of rising above, you'll go straight to the bottom, and before too long you'll be a brilliant success at your subliminal suicide-tries and wake up miserable that you were handed a fire-and-silver, a laser-diamond lifetime and you took your greasy damn hammer and smashed it to lard. You are looking at the biggest choice of your life and you know it. She's decided not to put up with your savage stupid fear, and she's happy this minute to be free of the dead weight of you.

Go ahead, do what you always do: run away. Run out to the airport, fire up the airplane and take off into the night. Fly, fly! Go find a nice girl with a cigarette in one hand and a rum-glass in the other and watch her use you for a step-pingstone to the something better that you're going to run away from tonight. Run, you stupid coward. Run to shut me up. Next time you see me is the day you die and then you can tell me how it felt after you burned the only bridge. . .

I slammed the doors down over the noise, and the room went still as calm at sea.

"My," I said aloud, "aren't we emotional!"

I retrieved the letter, started to read it again, let it fall back into the wastebasket.

If she doesn't like who I am, it's kind of her to say so. What a pity ... if only she were different, we could have stayed friends. But I can't abide jealousy! Does she think I'm her personal property; does she decide who I spend my

time with, and when? I told her clearly who I am and what I think and how she can trust me to live, even if that is not the I-love-you fakery she wants from me. No I-love-you's from me, Ms. Parrish. I will be true to myself, even though it costs me the joy-overflowing of every happy time we had together.

One thing I never did, dear Leslie-I never lied or cheated or deceived you; I lived what I believe exactly as I told you I would. If that now turns out to be unacceptable to you, that's the way it goes; I'm sorry and I wish you would have let me know a little sooner and saved us both the trouble.

I'll be off tomorrow sunrise, I thought. Throw my things in the plane and take off for someplace I've never been. Wyoming, maybe, Montana. Leave the plane for the IRS, if they can find it, and disappear. Borrow a biplane somewhere, vanish.

Change my name. Winnie-the-Pooh lived under the name of Sanders, so can I. That'll be fun. James Sanders. They can have the bank accounts and the airplanes and the whatever else it is they want. Nobody will ever know what happened to Richard Bach, and that will be a blessed relief.

Whatever I have to write again, if anything, I'll write with the new name. I can do that if I want. Drop everything. Maybe James Sanders will wander up to Canada, out to Australia. Maybe old Jim could knock around backwoods Alberta, or go way south to Sunbury, or Whittlesea, flying a Tiger Moth. He could learn Australian, hop a few passengers, enough to get along.

Then . . .

Then . . .