Breathing fast, feeling the excitement course through him, he raised his left leg and stretched it out over emptiness. Then he lowered it, lowered it until his foot passed beneath the level of the ground on which he stood. As his right leg started to tremble, he stepped back. At the same time the tension in her fingers eased.
“That was a foolish thing to do, Frank.”
He shrugged, inordinately pleased with himself. “We’re a foolish people. Besides, if you don’t do something a little crazy once in a while, life gets pretty damn stale. How many people can say they’ve stepped over the edge of the world? Wonder what Columbus’s boys would’ve made of this. Maybe some of those old sailors were right all along.”
She shook her head but couldn’t keep herself from smiling. “Haven’t you done enough crazy things recently to last you a lifetime?”
“Those weren’t by choice. This was. You got to be in control to enjoy the craziness. Like in business.” He looked behind him. The void was still there, threatening and infinite as before, however briefly conquered. “Call it juvenile if you want, but that felt pretty good.”
“It was foolish. It was also a very brave thing for an ordinary man to try.”
He was feeling slightly giddy and not a little wild. “Maybe I ain’t as ordinary as you think. Wasn’t I the one who stopped to pick you up?”
“That’s so. Perhaps more than coincidence was at work.”
He chuckled. “Don’t get heavy on me. I’m just babbling. You ain’t one of those folks who believes that everything’s predetermined, are you? That we have no free will?”
“I believe,” she replied evenly, “that certain deliberate confluences of people and places are possible.” She’d moved closer to him. So near, her eyes were larger even than the void behind them. She smelled of faraway places and exotic ephemera.
There was something he couldn’t define. He recalled her impossible claim of age. Certainly she was older than she looked. Five, maybe ten years. Not centuries. Not millennia. He didn’t feel he was in the presence of an old woman. Quite the contrary.
Good God, she’s beautiful, he found himself thinking. Not in the fashion of the aspiring actresses he sometimes encountered in Los Angeles, nor in the classic sense of the portraits that hung on art museum walls. Like her silken dress, a kind of timeless elegance clung to her.
He discovered he was more nervous than he’d been when he’d suspended his leg over the edge of the world. He was more afraid of falling now, though it was an entirely different kind of falling that endangered him.
“Could you quit staring at me like that?”
Her gaze did not shift. “Why? Do I make you uneasy?”
“Uneasy, hell. You’re driving me nuts, and you know it. This is crazy. I mean, I probably am just an ordinary guy like you said. The top of my head already reflects too much light, I’m twenty pounds overweight, and the only special talent or ability I’ve got is for making money, which is no big deal where I come from.”
“There is more than that,” she whispered huskily, “even if you refuse to recognize it yourself. You are kind. You have a stubbornness in you that translates into bravery. You are full of love for your family and your fellow man.”
“Maybe so, except for Oshmans,” he said, naming his major competitor.
His attempt to make light of her deadly serious comments had no effect on her. She put her arms around his waist. “It’s easy to be brave when one is young and strong, much more difficult when one is not. Therein lies real courage.”
“I told you, I’m not brave. I just like to do crazy stuff once in a while.”
The evening chill had deserted them. It was downright hot there by the pond at the edge of the world. Despite all her denials she seemed to have considerable strength in those slim arms. Enough to pull him down toward her. Or maybe he bent. He was never sure.
The heat that seared him as they kissed awoke feelings and sensations dormant for twenty years. He found himself kissing back, unwilling to break the contact even though another part of him screamed for him to stop. She wouldn’t let him back away and, he had to admit, he didn’t struggle very hard.
When she finally pulled away, his whole body was on fire. She still wore that strange enigmatic smile as her hands slid away from his neck and the back of his head.
“Look,” he told her, having to fight to find his voice, “I’ve never cheated on Alicia. Well, once, but that was a long time ago.”
“Life is short,” she whispered.
“Not according to you it ain’t. Of course, that was just a gag. Nothing lives that long. Maybe stars and sequoias and stuff. But not people.” The fire was beginning to fade. He wanted it to linger and to leave. It had been much more than a natural kiss, much more. The brief, complete merging of two disparate individuals, a physical excuse for contact on a much deeper level.
“What did you do to me?”
“I kissed you.”
“No. You did something else, something more.”
“Only a kiss. Anything else you felt lay within you all the time. All I did was help you to unlock yourself. I am a key. I knew it would be worth it.
“The beautiful, the handsome people who bestride your world in awe of their own genetic good fortune are often dull and passionless, while those who do not match the artificial cultural ideal, who may be heavy or short, thin or dark, too light or too tall or too something, may have all manner of wondrous feelings bottled up inside them. Often they refuse to acknowledge their own potential. They are unable to recognize their true selves.”
He was shaking his head. “That couldn’t have been my true self. Not good ol’ Frank Percival Sonderberg.”
“Why do you deny yourself? Why do you think you’ve been so successful at what you’ve tried?” She was chiding him the way she would a child. “You have achieved great things. There is greatness in all accomplishment. It’s not necessary to write great music or draw beautiful pictures, to discover new medicines or plumb ocean depths to achieve, to accomplish. You have overcome your own limitations and have excelled. Only the direction you’ve chosen is different. That does not reduce you in stature. Visibility and popularity are not signs of greatness as often as they are of simply being loud. They are more often the signature of vulgarity rather than achievement. It is what we do with ourselves that makes us great, not the value others place on those doings.
“You possess hidden resources, Frank. Most people do, but yours run deeper than most. I had to find out what kind of man you are.”
“And did I pass the test, teacher?” Despite his flippancy he was intensely interested in her reply.
She hesitated, thinking. Then the most marvelous expression came over her face, as though her entire body was smiling. It lit up the night and spilled over into the great abyss.
“You’ll do.”
He swallowed, then stepped past her, suddenly wanting to be away from the edge of the world. When he stopped and turned, the void had disappeared. There was only the moonlight shafting down between the trees and the distant shadowy ramparts of the mountains. He wondered if the void would reappear if he retraced his steps.
“I don’t know what I’ll do for,” he said apologetically, “but while a lot of me screams to do otherwise, I’m afraid I won’t do for you. See, I love Alicia. She’s not as pretty as some and she’s not as bright as some and she’s probably not several other things as much as some, but then neither am I. So we make a pretty good match. We’re comfortable with each other.
“You talked about merging. Maybe it’s not the same kind of merging we just did, but Alicia and I merge on a lot of other levels. Pretty tight. So I’m sorry. If it’s comfort you’re looking for, why don’t you try Burnfingers Begay? I’m sure he’d be happy to oblige.”
