One
The second in Bach’s “soulmate” books. In this one, he and Leslie fly in their little plane, far above what looks like a vast ocean, yet it is more like the space-time continuum. They can see bright paths in the water below interconnecting, breaking apart, standing alone. They choose to land here, land there … and then encounter themselves in many different identities and lifetimes.
They go back in time. Bach discovers that Attila the Hun, apparently, is a distant ancestor, and he is horrified. (lol) No matter where they land, no matter how different things look … they always encounter themselves, albeit in different forms. (It’s so self-centered.) This is Bach’s imaginary world (although I’m sure he felt it was real at the time), where he and Leslie float through the astral plane, far above the muck of humanity, and he is convinced they have known one another through multiple lifetimes. I would love to hear Leslie’s side of this story.
I don’t have an argument with his theory. I couldn’t prove it or disprove it if I tried. It’s a personal choice. I wasn’t crazy about One when I first read it. It was too disconnected from reality. One of the reasons I so responded to Bridge Across Forever was it was a “real” love story in the real world. (Also I was 19 years old and impressionable.) Bridge has moments of new agey floaty stuff, but it was all in service of the “real” story, which was Richard and Leslie finding each other.
One has NO reality.
The next (and final) book in the “Leslie” series is Running from Safety. It really affected me. I still really like Running from Safety. But One was boring. Everything was too NEAT. Oh, look at us – here we are as futuristic beings … here we are in an alternate universe with no war …. here we are as medieval Huns … I missed the mess of Bridge Across Forever. I missed the humanity. However, it is interesting to contemplate: If you could meet your younger self, what would you say? If you could give advice to your younger self … poised on the edge of making a decision … what would you say? Sometimes thinking about this is dangerous for me. All I see are regrets. But sometimes it’s an interesting mental exercise.
And then there are moments – strange moments – where it’s almost as though life is a literary conceit. If you made it up, you would be accused of being simplistic. For example, the first thing this man said to me was, “Are you waiting for someone?” He meant it in a matter-of-fact way. I was standing on a sidewalk, looking back and forth … and he asked if I was waiting for someone. In the context of what eventually happened between us, his initial question takes on huge meaning. We had never spoken before. Naturally, he saw me and just wanted to talk to me. It was his opening line. It’s weird, that’s all. It turns out I WAS waiting for someone, in a big picture way. I was waiting for HIM. (Unfortunately.) No word of a lie, I actually had a sense of that at the time. My impulse (I have the diary entry to prove it) was to respond to his question, jokingly, with “Yeah. You.”
Such things happen. I think in this first exchange we tapped briefly into the future. We got a glimpse.
Here’s an excerpt. Leslie and Richard, out for a normal flight, suddenly find themselves in an alternate universe.
Excerpt from One
We began the last turn and the sea tilted graceful slow-motion to meet us. We floated for a long minute, inches above the surface, reflections spangling our white hull.
The keel skimmed wavelets and the seaplane turned racing-boat, flying on a cloud of spray. The whisper of the engine faded into the rush of water as I pulled the throttle back and we slowed.
Then the water vanished, the airplane disappeared. Blurring around us were rooftops, streaks of red tiles and palm trees, the wall of some great windowed building dead ahead.
“LOOK OUT!”
The next second we were stopped inside that building, giddy but unscratched, standing together in a long hallway. I reached to my wife, held her.
“Are you all right?” we said together, breathless, the same second.
“Yes!” we said. “Not a scratch! Are you? Yes!”
There was no shattered glass in the windows at the end of the hall, no hole in the wall through which we had rocketed. Not a person in sight, not a sound in the building.
I burst in frustration. “What in hell is going on?”
“Richie,” she said quietly, eyes wide with wonder, “this place is familiar. We’ve been here before!”
I looked around. A many-doored hallway, brick-red carpet, elevator doors directly across from us, potted palms. The hall window overlooked sunny tile rooftops, low golden hills beyond, a hazy blue afternoon. “It’s … it looks like a hotel. I don’t remember any hotel …”
Came a soft chime, a green arrowhead glowed above the elevator doors.
We watched as the doors rumbled open. Inside stood a rangy angular man and a lovely woman dressed in faded work-shirt under a surplus Navy coat, bluejeans, a spice-color cap.
I heard my wife gasp at my side, felt her body tighten. From the elevator stepped the man and woman we had been sixteen years before, the two we were on the day we met.
