"Leslie?" I said, holding the door open for her as we left the building.
"Yes, Richard?" she said.
"Thank you."
"You're welcome, wookie," she said. "You're quite welcome!"
twenty-nine
"CAN YOU come over, wookie?" Her voice sounded weak, on the phone. "I'm afraid I need your help."
"I'm sorry, Leslie, I can't make it tonight."
Why was it so uncomfortable, to tell her? I know the rules. I made the rules. We couldn't have been friends without them. Still it was hard to say, even on the telephone.
"Wook, I'm feeling terrible," she said. "I'm dizzy and sick and I'd feel so much better if you were here. Won't you be my doctor, come heal me?"
The part of me that wished to rescue and heal I pushed into the closet and locked the door. "Can't make it. I have a date tonight. Tomorrow's fine, if you'd like."
"You have a date? You are going out with a date when I am sick and need you? Richard, I can't believe . . ."
Must I tell her again? Our friendship is nonpossessive, open, based on our mutual freedom to be away from each
other whenever we wish, for any reason or for no reason. Now I was frightened. It had been so long since I had seen any other woman in Los Angeles, I felt us slipping into a taken-for-granted marriage, felt us forgetting that we needed our apart-times as well as together-times.
The date had to stand. If I felt obligated to be with Leslie just because I was in Los Angeles, something was wrong with our friendship. If I had lost my freedom to be with whomever I chose, bur purpose together had ended. I prayed for her to understand.
"I can be with you till seven. ..." I said.
"Till seven? Richard, do
n't you hear me? I need you. I need some help from you, this time!"
Why was she pressuring me? The very best thing for her to say would be that she'd get along just fine and that she hoped I'd have a good time. To do otherwise, doesn't she know? That's a fatal mistake! I will not be pressured, I will not be possessed by anyone, anywhere, under any conditions!
"I'm sorry. Wish I'd known earlier. Now it's too late to cancel. That won't work for me, I don't want to do that."
"Does she matter so much to you," she said, "whoever she is? What's her name?"
Leslie was jealous!
"Deborah."
"Does Deborah matter so much to you that you can't call her and say that your friend Leslie is ill and is it all right to postpone your hot date till tomorrow or next week or next year sometime? Is she so important to you that you can't call her and say that?"
There was anguish in her voice. But she was asking for
something that I couldn't give without destroying my independence. And her sarcasm wasn't helping, either.
"No," I said. "She's not that important. It's the principle she stands for-that we're free to be with whomever we choose. ..."
She was crying. "Damn your freedom, Richard Bach! I work like hell to save your goddamn empire from being Swept completely away, I can't sleep for worry there's some way I haven't thought of, nobody's thought of ... to save you . . . because you matter so much . . . I'm so tired from it I can hardly stand up and you won't be with me when I need you because you have a date with some Deborah you've hardly seen, she stands for some goddamn principle?"
I spoke over walls a yard thick, solid steel. "That's right."
There was a long silence on the telephone.
Her voice changed. Jealousy gone, anguish gone, she was calm and quiet.