| The Bridge 14 |
| 1 | fourteen "Get One Five Five X-ray," I said, holding the microphone button down, "is out of flight-level three five zero for two seven zero, requesting lower:" I looked down over my oxygen mask seven miles to the afternoon desert of southern California, checking the sky clear below with a long slow-roll. Technically, I was flying west to give a daylong talk at a Los Angeles university. I was glad, though, to be a few days early. |
| 2 | "Roger Five Five X," came back Los Angeles Center. "Cleared to two five zero, lower shortly." Going down 400 miles per hour wasn't fast enough. I wanted to get this thing on the ground and see Leslie swifter than any airplane could fly. "And Five Five X, you're cleared to one six thousand." I acknowledged that, trimmed the nose of the airplane lower still, and faster. The altimeter needle spun downward. |
| 3 | "Jet Five Five X-ray is through flight-level one eight zero," I said, "and canceling Item Fox." "Roger, Five X-ray, you are canceled at zero five. Squawk VFR, good day." The lines from the oxygen mask were still on my face when I knocked on the door of her house at the edge of Beverly Hills. A symphony orchestra boomed on the sound-system inside; the heavy door trembled. I rang the doorbell, the music went quiet. |
| 4 | And there she was, eyes of sea and sunshine, sparkling hello. No touch, not even a handshake, and neither of us thought it strange. "I have a surprise for you," she said, smiling to herself at the thought of it. "Leslie, I hate^surprises. Sorry I never told you this, but I totally and completely hate surprises, despise presents. Anything I want, I buy for myself. If I don't have it, I don't want it. |
| 5 | So by definition," I said, tying it up neatly and finally for her, "when you give me a present you are giving me something that I do not want. It's no problem, is it, to return it?" She walked into the kitchen, her hair splashing lights across her shoulders, down her back. Ambling to intercept came her old cat, convinced it was suppertime. "Not yet," she told it softly. "No dinner yet for the fluffalorium." "I'm surprised you haven't bought one for yourself," she said over her shoulder, with a smile to show that I hadn't hurt her feelings. |
| 6 | "You certainly should have one, but if you don't want it, you can throw it away. Here." The present was not wrapped. It was a large plain bowl from a dime-store, from a cheap dime-store, and there was a painting of a hog on the inside. "Leslie! Had I seen this I would have bought it! This is stunning! What is this nice . . . thing?" "I knew you'd like it! It's a hoggie-bowl. And ... a hoggie-spoon!" And there was a spoon in my hand, an eighty-eight-cent steel spoon with the likeness of some anonymous pig stamped upon the handle. |
| 7 | "And if you look in the refrigerator . . ." I swung the thick door open and there stood a two-gallon drum of ice cream and a quart container labeled FUDGE FOR HOT, each with red ribbon and bow. Cold mist gently wafted from frost on the drum, falling silent slow-motion to the floor. "Leslie!" "Yes, Hoggie?" "You ... I ... Do you think . . ." She laughed, as much at herself for the mad caprice of what she had done as for the sounds my mind made while its wheels spun on ice. |
| 8 | It was not the present that stumbled my words but the unpredictability, that she who ate only seeds and a sparing salad would order wild extravagant sweets into her freezer just to watch me trip and numb over them. I wrestled the tub of stuif from the refrigerator to the kitchen counter, pulled off the top. Full to the edges. Chocolate-chip ice cream. "I hope you got a spoon for you," I said severely, pushing my hog-spoon into the creamy snow. |
| 9 | "You have done an unthinkable act, but now it is done and there is nothing for us to do but get rid of the evidence. Come. Eat." She picked a miniature spoon from a drawer in the kitchen. "Don't you want your hot fudge? Don't you like hot fudge anymore?" "Crazy about it. But after today, neither you nor I will ever want to see the letters 'hot fudge' so long as we might live." No one does anything uncharacteristic of who they are, I thought, spooning the mass of fudge into a pan to heat. |
| 10 | Could it be that she is characteristically unpredictable? How foolish of me to begin to think that I knew her! I turned and she was looking at me, spoon in hand, smiling. "Can you really walk on water?" she said. "The way you did in the book with Donald Shimoda?" "Of course. So can you. I haven't done it yet on my own, in this spacetime. In this my present belief of spacetime. You see, it gets complicated. |
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