| The Bridge 7 |
| 1 | SEVEN "I'd just as soon you not smoke in the house, Kathy." She looked up surprised, lighter poised an inch from her cigarette. "You didn't mind last night." I set our plates hi the dishwasher, ran the sponge over the kitchen counter. It was already warm outside, just a few white puffs high in the morning; scattered clouds at six thousand feet, visibility fifteen miles in light haze. No wind. She was as attractive as she had been the day before; I wanted to know her better. |
| 2 | Were cigarettes going to drive away this woman I could touch and with whom I could talk for more than a minute? "Let me tell you what I think about cigarettes," I said. I took a long time and told her. "... so it's saying to everyone around you," I finished, "it's saying: 'You matter so little to me that I don't care if you can't breathe. Die if you want, I'm lighting up!' Not a courteous habit, smoking. |
| 3 | Not something to do around people you like." Instead of turning into thorns and stalking out the door, she nodded. "It's a terrible habit, I know. I've been thinking about quitting." She closed her purse on cigarettes and lighter. In time physics fell aside-it was modeling she wanted to try. Then singing. She had a pretty voice, haunting as a mermaid's from a misty sea. But somehow, when she moved past wishing into working toward a career, she lost her dedication and began another dream. |
| 4 | Finally it was up to me- why didn't I help her open a little boutique? Kathy was lighthearted, quick-witted; she loved the amphibian, she picked up flying at once and she was an incurable stranger. She was a foreign body in my system, lovely though she was, and the system moved often to reject her, as gently as it could. Soulmates we would never be. We were two boats met mid-ocean, each changing course to sail for a while in the same direction over an empty sea. |
| 5 | Different boats on our way to different ports, and we knew it. I had the curious sense that I was marking time, that I was waiting for something to happen before my life could pick up its strange charmed way, its purpose and direction. Were I a soulmate separated from my love, I thought, I'd expect her to do the best she could without me, till somehow we found each other. In the meantime, my dear undiscovered twin, do you expect the same of me? |
| 6 | How close do we allow warm strangers? A friendship with Kathy is pleasant for the time being, but it must not entangle, interfere, stand in the way of my love, whenever she might come along. It was sensual, ever-new, my search for the perfect woman. Why this oppressive sense of winter come early? No matter how fast time-the-river thundered over its rocks and depths, my raft was caught in snowy rapids. |
| 7 | It's not deadly to be stopped for a while, I hoped over the roar, I don't think it's deadly. But I've chosen this planet and this time to learn some transcendent lesson I don't know what, to meet a woman unlike any other. In spite of that hope, an inner voice warned that winter could turn me to ice unless I broke free and found her. |
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