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"Not at all."
She lit her cigarette and began to talk physics, not noticing the shambles she had made of my mind. RICHARD! WHAT? WHAT DO YOU MEAN NOT AT ALL YOU DON'T MIND? The lady is lighting a CIGARETTE! Do you know what that is saying about her values and her future in your life? It says Road Closed, it says . . .
Shut up, I said to my principles. She's bright and different, smart as lightning with green eyes, fun to listen to, lovely, warm, exciting, and I'm so tired of thinking alone, sleeping with pretty aliens. Later, I'll talk to her about the smoking. Not tonight.
My principles disappeared so fast it frightened me.
". . . of course rich I won't be, but I'll afford it somehow," she was saying. "I'm going to have my own airplane even if it has to be old and used! Will I be sorry?"
The smoke curled, as any tobacco-smoke will, directly to me. I tugged down mental screens against it, thoughtforms in glass, got myself under control at once.
"You'll get the airplane first," I asked, watching her eyes, "then learn to fly it?"
"Yes. Then I only have to pay for an instructor instead of an instructor and renting an airplane, too. Isn't that cheaper in the long run? Doesn't that sound wise to you?"
We discussed it, and after a while I suggested she might fly with me from time to time in one or another of my airplanes. The new Lake amphibian, I thought, so sleek it looked as if it were built to move through futures and pasts as well as air and water, there's one she'd like.
Two hours later I was stretched out in bed, imagining what she would look like when I saw her next.
I didn't have long to wait. She would look delicious, a tanned curving body covered for a moment by terrycloth.
Then the towel fell away, she slipped under the covers, leaned to kiss me. Not I-know-who-you-are-and-I-love-you did that kiss say, but let's be lovers tonight and see what happens.
What pleasure it was just to enjoy, and not to wish for someone I couldn't find!
seven
"I
JL'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. 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. 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. 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. 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.
