| The Bridge 19 |
| 1 | NINETEEN I woke in the morning to sunlight filtered and goldened through her hair cascading across our pillows. I woke to her smile. "Good morning, wookie," she said, so close and warm I barely caught the words. "Did you sleep well?" "M!" I said. "My! Yes. Yes, thank you, slept very well! Had this dream all in glories, last night, that you were going to take me to the hotel? Couldn't help but give you a little kiss, and then . |
| 2 | . . what a beautiful dream!" For once, for blessed once the woman next to me in bed was not a stranger. For once in my life, this person belonged exactly where she was, and so did I. I touched her face. "It'll be just a minute, won't it, and you'll turn into air? Or the clock will go off or the telephone will ring and it will be you asking if I slept well. Don't call yet. I want to dream some more, please." " 'Ring . |
| 3 | . .'" she said in a tiny voice. She threw her covers back, held a light nothing-telephone to her ear. The sunlight on her smile, on her bare shoulders and breasts brought me very much awake. " 'Ring . . .' Hello, Richard? How did you sleep last night? Hm?" She changed herself that instant to innocent seductress, pure and wholesome-a star-bright mind in a sex-goddess body. I blinked at the intimacy of what she did with a move, a sentence, with a flicker in her eyes. |
| 4 | Life with an actress! I hadn't imagined-how many different Leslies can be stirring in this one, how many might there be to touch, to know, appearing in sudden spotlights on the stage of this one person? "You are ... so ... lovely!" I stumbled after words. "Why didn't you tell me you are this . . . beautiful?" The telephone vaporized from her hand, the innocent turned to me with a quizzical smile. "You never seemed interested." "This is going to surprise you, but you'd better get used to it because I am a wordsmith and I can't help but just blurt out poetry now and then, it's my nature and I can be no other way: / think you're terrific!" She nodded slowly, solemnly. |
| 5 | "That is very good, word-smith. Thank you. I think you are terrific, too." Split-second, a sultry different idea took her mind. "Now for practice, let's say the same thing without words." Shall I die of happiness now, I thought, or shall I linger for a while? Lingering seemed the better way. I floated on the edge of death-by-joy, nearly wordless, not quite. I could not have invented a woman so perfect for me, I thought, yet here's the real one alive, hidden in the acquaintance of Ms. |
| 6 | Leslie Parrish since years ago, masked within my business partner, my best friend. Just that fragment of wonderment surfaced, to be swept away by the sight of her in the sun. Light and touch, soft shadows and whispers, that morn-ing-turned-noon-turned-evening, with our way found to meet again after a lifetime apart. Cereal for dinner. And finally we could talk once more in words. How many words, how long does it take to say Who Are You? |
| 7 | How long to say why? Longer than we had before three in the morning, before sunrise again. The scenery of time vanished. It was light outside her house or it was not-light, it rained or it was dry, clocks pointed ten and we didn't know which ten of which day of which week it might happen to be. We woke in our mornings to stars over silent city dark; the midnights we held each other and dreamed were Los Angeles rush-hours and lunch-times. |
| 8 | A soulmate can not be possible, I had learned in the years since I turned the Fleet to money and built my walled empire. Not possible for people who run ten directions ten speeds at once, not possible for life-hogs. Could I have learned wrong? I walked back into her bedroom, one of our mornings around midnight, balancing a tray of apple-slices and cheeses and crackers. "Oh!" she said, sitting up, blinking her eyes awake, smoothing her hair so it fell only a little tousled over bare shoulders. |
| 9 | "You sweetie! Thoughtful as can be!" "I could have been thoughtfuller still, but your kitchen doesn't have the buttermilk or the potatoes for kartoffelkuchen." "Kartoffelkuchen!" she said, astonished. "When I was a little girl, my mother made kartoffelkuchen! I thought I was the only person left in the world who remembers! Can you make it?" "Recipe is safely locked within this extraordinary mind, handed down from Grandma Bach. |
| 10 | You're the only human being who's said that word back to me in fifteen years! We ought to list all the things we have in . . ."I fluffed some pillows, settled myself so that I could see her clearly. My, I thought, how I love the beauty of her! She saw me looking at her body, and deliberately she sat very straight in bed for a moment, to watch me catch my breath. Then she brought the sheets to her chin. |
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