by Richard Bach
Do I need the running-lights on when I'm so alone'out here? Wastes energy, runs the batteries down.
Thirty-one feet of boat is just about right. Bigger, you want a crew. Glad I don't need a crew.
Alone alone alone. How much of our lives is single-handing. Leslie's right. I distance her, she says.
"I distance everybody, wook! It's not that it's you, it's that I don't let anyone get too close to me. I never want to get attached to anybody."
"Why?" There had been annoyance in her voice. It was happening more often now. Without warning, the talks we had would jump the tracks and she'd be mad at me for the smallest thing. "What is so terrible about getting attached to someone?"
Because I might make a huge investment of hope in one human being and then lose it all. I assume that I know who she is and then I find out that she's somebody else entirely and I have to go back to the drawingboard redesigning again and after a while I conclude there's no one I can fully know except myself and that's pretty iffy. The only thing I can trust anyone else to be is true to who they are and if they're going to explode into strange angers now and then the best thing to do is to stand back a bit so as not to get torn in the blast. Isn't that obvious, clear as yesterday?
"Because then I'm not quite so independent as I want to be," I said.
She had tilted her head and looked at me carefully. "Are you telling me the highest truth you know?"
There are moments, I thought, when having a mind-reader for a best-friend is uncomfortable, indeed. "Maybe it's time for me to get away for a little while."
"That's it," she said. "Run away! You might as well. You're gone even when you're here. I miss you. You're right here and I miss you!"
"Leslie, I don't know what to do about that. I think it's time to get away. I have to move the boat down to Key West, anyway. Go back, see how things are getting along in Florida."
She frowned. "You could never stay with one woman for more than three days, you said; you'd go mad with boredom. We stayed together months and cried when we had to part! Happier than we've ever been, both of us! What's happened, what's changed?"
Corvus strayed from its place on the mast; a spoke of the wheel to port brought it back. But if I kept it there all night, I thought, I'd be somewhere off Yucatan by dawn, instead of on course for Key West. Navigate by the same star, unwilling to change, and you find yourself not only off-course but lost.
Damn it, Corvus, are you taking her side? I have carefully worked out this excellent system, this first-rate perfect-woman scheme, and it was running just fine until Leslie started messing with it, asking questions I dare not think about, less answer. Of course I want to love you, lady, but how can I know what you'd do if I did?
What would it feel like, to fall overboard now? There I'd be, a green-phosphor splash in the ocean; there's the boat
huge above me one second and next second out of reach and next minute gone in the dark, the lights of her wake fading.
I'd swim for shore, that's what it would feel like. We're barely ten miles offshore, and if I can't swim ten miles in warm water I deserve to drown.
But what if I were a thousand miles offshore? What would it feel like then?
Someday, Richard, I thought, you are going to learn how to control your silly mind. It's like the boy said to the barnstormer landed in his hayfield:
"Mister, what would you do if the engine quit?" "Why, I'd just glide down and land, my friend! The
airplane's a good glider, doesn't need an engine to glide." "But what would you do if the wings fell off?" "If the wings fell off, I'd have to bail out, wouldn't I,
and use the parachute."
"Yeah, but what if the parachute didn't open?"
"Then I'd try to fall in a haystack."
"But what if it was just rocks everywhere?"
Bunch of vultures, kids are. Same as I was. Same as I still am-"But what if I were a thousand miles offshore?" I'm so curious, the kid in me wants to run and find what's on the other side of dying right now. There'll be a time for that before too long. My mission is pretty well done, with the books written, but there may still be a lesson or two to learn, this side of dying.
How to love a woman, for instance. Richard, remember when you quit barnstorming to find your truelove, your soulmate, your ultimate friend across a million lifetimes? Seems so long ago. What are the chances that everything
I've learned about love is wrong, that there is one woman in all the world?
The wind picked up, the boat tilted starboard. I let Cor-vus go and steered by compass for Key West.
Why is it that so many airplane pilots also sail boats? Airplanes have freedom in space, sailboats have freedom in time. It's not the hardware, we want, it's the unshackledness that the hardware represents. Not a big airplane we like, but the speed and power that come from controlling its flight. Not a gaff-rigged ketch, but the wind, the adventure, the working purity of life that the sea demands, the sky demands. Unlatched from outside constraint. Sail for years nonstop in a boat, if you want to.
Boats, they own time. The longest an airplane's flown is a few hours; longer is a stunt. Someone ought to invent an airplane that has as much freedom in time as a boat.
I've got my freedom from all my other women-friends; why not from Leslie? They don't criticize me for being distant, for leaving when I want; why does she? Doesn't she know? Too long together, and even courtesy is gone . . . people are more courteous to strangers than they are to their own wives and husbands! Two people tied to each other like hungry dogs, fighting over every little scrap between them. Look at us, even us. You raised your voice to me! I didn't come into your life to make you angry. If you don't like me as I am, just say so and I'm gone! Together too long, and it's chains and duties and responsibilities, no delights no adventure no thank you!
Hours later through the night, the first faint glow of light on the horizon south. Not dawn but Key West street-light bouncing from mist way high in the sky.
Sailing is altogether too slow, I thought. You change your
mind, you don't want to be where you are, in an airplane you can do something about it; a short while takes you a long way. A sailboat, you change your mind, you can't even land the thing and get off! Can't glide if you're too high, climb if you're too low. Sailboat's always -at the same altitude. No change. Boring. Change is adventure, whether it's sailboats or women. What other adventure is there, than change?
Leslie and I agreed to certain rules of friendship: total equality, freedom, courtesy, respect, nobody takes anybody for granted, a nonexclusive pact. If the rules are no longer all right with her, she ought to tell me. This whole affair is getting too serious.
Sure enough she'll say, Is there no room in your life Richard Bach for something more than rules?
Wish I could just say no and walk away from her.
Wish I could talk with her about it now.
Wish sailboats were a lot faster, wish they could fly.
Sorry state of the world. We put people on the moon, but we can't build a sailboat that can fly.
twenty-eight
"ARE YOU READY TO go, wookie?" she said.
I'm spending too much time with her again, I thought, altogether too much time. She's as organized as a microchip . . . everything she touches runs in order, honest and clear. So beautiful she blinds me still, she's funny and warm and loving. But the rules say I'll destroy myself if I spend too much time with one woman, and I'm spending too much time with her.
"Are you ready to go?" she asked again. She was dressed in a brush-of-amber suit, golden silk at her throat; her hair combed and pinned back for a long business meeting.
"Sure," I said.
Curious. She's the one hauling me from the sticky shards of empire, she's doing the job of all my fired employees.
Stan, calm to the end, said as he left that he was sorry I
had lost so much money. That's the way it happens sometimes, he said, the market turns against you.
&nb
sp; Stan's tax lawyer apologized, sorry he had missed the IRS deadline, said he thought they weren't being fair ... he was only two weeks late, filing his appeal, and they'd refused to consider it. If it weren't for that, he said, he could have proven that I didn't owe them a cent.
Harry the business manager smiled, said the IRS problem was a shame; he didn't like it any more than I did, and he had done his best to keep it from me as long as he could. By the way, he'd appreciate it if I could come up with a month's severance pay.
If it weren't for Leslie, I'd have left for Antarctica or Botzwezoland, so disgusted was I with money, with taxes, with accounts and ledgers. Any paper with numbers on it, I wanted to shred.
" 'Bye," she said, as I got into the car.
" 'Bye?"
"You're gone again, Richard. 'Bye."
"Sorry," I said. "Think I ought to apply for Antarctican citizenship?"
"Not yet," she said. "After this meeting, maybe. Unless you can come up with a million dollars plus interest."
"I can't get over it! How could I owe that much in taxes?"
"Maybe you didn't," she said, "but the deadline was missed; it's too late to argue it now. Damn, that makes me mad! How I wish I could have been with you before it was too late. They could at least have told you!"
"I knew on other levels, wook," I said. "I think part of me wanted the whole thing wiped out. It wasn't working, it wasn't making me happy."
"I'm surprised that you know that."
Richard! I thought. You know nothing of the sort! Of course it was making you happy! Didn't you have all the airplanes . . . don't you still? And your perfect woman? Of course it made you happy!
What a lie. The empire was a shambles, money plastered around like wallpaper stuck up by amateurs, myself the worst. I had a taste of empire life, and it was fluff, whipped cream, with a spoon of sweet-arsenic neglect for flavor. Now the poison was at work.
"That's not the way it had to be," she said. "You would have done so much better not to have hired anybody. Just gone on and been your same old serf."
"I was my same old self. I had more toys, but I was still me. My same old self never could do bookkeeping."
"m," she said.
We settled around the desk of John Marquart, the attorney Leslie had hired when I was in Spain. Cups of hot chocolate were brought in, as though somebody knew it was going to be a long meeting. She opened her attache case, set out her lists of notes, but the lawyer spoke to me.
"You filed a capital loss against ordinary income," he said. "Is that the problem, in a nutshell?"
"I think the problem is I hired a financial wizard who knew less about money than I did, which is less than zero," I told him. "The money he was investing, it wasn't numbers on paper, it was real money and it-pouf-disintegrated in the market. The IRS doesn't have a square on the tax-form for pouf. I think that's it, in a nutshell. To be honest, I don't know what the guy filed. I was sort of hoping you'd tell me
answers instead of problems. It's me hiring you, after all, and this is supposed to be your specialty. ..."
Marquart looked at me odder and odder, reached for his coffee, peered over the cup as though he hoped it might protect him from a raving client.
Leslie stepped in then, and I heard her voice in my mind, asking me please to sit there and be quiet, if possibly I could.
"As I understand it," she said, "the damage is done. Richard's tax attorney-the tax attorney his financial manager got for him-didn't answer the IRS in time, so the government won a judgment by default. Now it wants a million dollars. Richard doesn't have a million dollars in cash to pay them at once. So the question is, can he arrange to make payments? Can he give them a lump-sum down payment, and promise the rest as he liquidates his assets? Will they give him time to do it?"
The attorney turned to her with evident relief. "I don't see why not. That's fairly common in these cases; it's called an Offer in Compromise. Did you bring the figures I wanted?"
I watched her, marveled that she'd be so much at home in a law office.
She set labeled lists on his desk. "Here's Cash Available Now, this one is Assets To Be Liquidated, and here's his Income Projection Over The Next Five Years," she said. "Between these and new income, the figures show he can pay the full amount in two years, three at the most."
While I was sailing, I thought, Leslie was researching tax-payment schemes! I'm being wiped out, not getting rich- why does she care so much?
Soon the two of them were analyzing my problems as though I weren't in the room. I wasn't. I felt like a mosquito
in a bank vault ... I could find no way to break through the utter heavy dullness of liens, assets, liquidations, payment schedules. The sun was shining outside. We could go for a walk, buy ch@colate-chip cookies. . . .
"I'd rather structure the payout over the next five years, instead of three," Marquart was saying, "in case his income isn't quite what you project. If he can pay it sooner, that's fine, but he'll have a heavy current-tax burden with this kind of income, and we want to be sure we aren't making new problems for him down the road."
Leslie nodded, and they talked on, the two of them working out details. A calculator clucked numbers on the desk between them; Leslie's notes marched in order down a blue-lined tablet.
"I can see it from their point of view," she said at the end. "They don't care about the people Richard hired, or whether he knew or didn't know what was going on. They want their money. Now they'll get it, with interest, if they'll just wait a little. Do you think they'll wait?"
"It's a good offer," the attorney said. "I feel sure they'll accept it."
By the time we left, the disaster had been tamed. Once, I had found a million dollars in my account with a single telephone call; to come up with such a modest sum over five whole years, that would be simple. Sell the house in Florida, sell the airplanes, all but one or two of them, get the film produced . . . simple.
And now I have Leslie and a professional Los Angeles tax attorney to keep order in my life, no slender twigs to break under pressure.
There had been a storm at sea; I had fallen in way over
my head. This woman had jumped into the waves and pulled me out, saved my financial life.
We left the lawyer's office full of hope.
"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.
"Goodbye, Richard. Enjoy your date."
While I was saying thank you for understanding how important . . . she hung up.
thirty
SHE DIDN'T answer her phone the next day or the next. The day after that, this letter:
Wednesday evening 12/21 Dearest Richard,
