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Then the canopy swung open and there she was, a smile on her mouth, looking shyly out to see what I might say. I kissed her smile. "Perfect flying, wook, perfect spins! How proud I am of you!"
The next day, she soloed.
What a delighted fascination it is, to stand aside and watch our dearest friend perform on stage without us! A different mind had stepped into her body and used it to destroy a fear-beast that had lurked and threatened for decades, and the mind showed now in her face. Within the seablue eyes were golden sparkles, electricity dancing in a powerplant. Power, she is, I thought. Richard, never you forget: this is no ordinary lady you are looking at, this is not a conventional human being and never you forget it!
I was not so s
uccessful with my tests as she was with hers.
From time to time, for no reason, I'd be cold to her, silent, push her away without knowing why.
Those times she was hurt and she said so. "You were rude to me today! You were talking to Jack when I landed and I ran over to join you and you turned your back on me, as if I weren't there! As if I were there and you wished I weren't!"
"Leslie, please! I didn't know you were there. We were talking. Must everything stop for you?"
I did know she was there, but didn't act, as though she were a leaf fallen, or a breeze passing by. Why was I annoyed when she minded?
It happened again, between the walks and musics and flying and candlelight-from habit, I built new walls, hid
cold behind them, used old shields against her. She was not so angry, then, as she was sad.
"Oh, Richard! Are you cursed with a demon that so hates love? You promised to lift barriers, not dump new ones between us!"
She left the trailer, walked back and forth, alone, the length of the glider-runway in the dark. Back and forth, for miles.
I'm not cursed with a demon, I thought. One thoughtless moment, and she says I'm cursed with a demon. Why must she overreact?
Unspeaking, deep in thought when she returned, she wrote for hours in her journal.
It was practice-week for the sailplane race we had entered; I was pilot and Leslie was ground-crew. Up at five A.M. to wash and polish and tape the plane before the morning temperature rose past a hundred degrees, push it to its place in line on the runway, fill the wings with water-ballast. She kept ice packed around my neck in towels till takeoff-time, while she stood in the sun.
After my takeoff, she stayed in contact on the truck radio as she went to town for groceries and water, ready to come collect me and the plane should we be forced to land a hundred miles away. She was there with cold root-beer when I landed, helped push the glider back to its tiedown for the night. Then transformed into Mary Moviestar, she served candlelight dinner and listened to my day's adventures.
She had told me once that she was sensitive to heat, but now she gave no sign of it. Like a sand-trooper she worked,
without letup, five days in a row. We were chalking up excellent times in our practice, and much of the credit was hers. She was as perfect a ground-crew as she was everything else she chose to be.
Why did I pick that time to distance her? Shortly after she met my landing, there were my walls again; I got to talking with some other pilots, didn't notice she was gone. I had to put the sailplane away by myself, no small job in the sun, but made easier by my anger at her walkout.
When I entered the trailer, she was lying on the floor, faking exhaustion.
"Hi," I said, tired from work. "Thanks a lot for the help."
No response.
"Just what I needed, after a really tough flight."
Nothing. She lay on the floor, refusing to say a word.
Probably noticed I was a little distant, reading my mind again, and got mad.
Silence-games are silly, I thought. If something's bothering her, if she doesn't like what I'm doing, why doesn't she just come out and say so? She won't talk, I won't talk.
I stepped over her body on the floor, turned on the air-conditioner. Then I stretched out on the couch, opened a soaring book and read, thinking that there is not much future for us if she insists on acting this way.
After a time she stirred. Still later she rose, infinite weariness, dragged herself to the bathroom. I heard the pumps running water. She was wasting the water because she knew I had to haul every drop of it from town, fill the trailer tanks myself. She wanted to make work for me.
The water stopped.
