"Doing fine," I said. "Don't know what people are going to make of this book. They're going to say it's too long and too sexy for the likes of me to write. But I love it. And I found the title today!"
She pushed her cap up, touched her forehead with the back of a glove. "At last! What's the title?"
"It's already there, it's been there all along. If you find it, too, that's what we'll call the book, OK?"
"Time for me to read it now, the whole manuscript straight through?"
"Yep. Just one chapter to go, and it's done."
"One more chapter," she said. "Congratulations!"
I looked down the slope past the meadow, out over the water to the islands floating on the horizon. "This is a pretty place, isn't it?"
"Paradise! And you ought to see the house," she said. "The first of the photovoltaics went in, today. Hop aboard, I'll ride you up and show you!"
I stepped onto the bucket with the topsoil. She pressed the starter.
The engine roared to life, and for a moment, I could have sworn the sudden rumbling blast was the sound of my old biplane, started in the meadow.
If I half-closed my eyes, I could see ...
... a mirage, a ghost from years gone by, moving in the meadow. Richard the barnstormer, started the engine of the Fleet for the last time and settled down in his cockpit, touching the throttle, about to take off in search of his soulmate.
The biplane crept forward.
What would I do if I saw her now, he thought, if I saw her walking through the hay, telling me wait?
On silly impulse, he turned and looked.
There was a sunlight blur in the field. Through the hay to the airplane, long golden hair flashing behind her,
ran a woman, ran the most beautiful . . . Leslie Parrish! How did she. . . ?
He stopped the engine at once, dazzled to see her.
"Leslie! Is that you?"
"Richard!" she called, "Going up?" She stopped breathless at the edge of the cockpit. "Richard . . . would you have time to fly with me?"
"Would you . . ."he said, all at once out of breath himself, ". . . would you want to?"
I turned to my wife, as startled as the pilot by what I'd seen.
Dirt-streaked, glorious, she smiled at me, tear-bright radiance. "Richie, they're going to try for it!" she said. "Wish them love!"