Free The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story by Richard Bach

and had a certain arrogant confidence at the board.
    She had looked at her watch. "OK," she had said.
    That she won the game startled me cold. The way she won, the pattern of her thought on the chessboard, charmed me warm again and then some.
    The next meeting, we played for best two games out of three.
    The next month we formed a corporation. She set to work to find a way to make the film with the lowest probability of disaster, and we played for best six games out of eleven.
    After that there were no meetings required. I'd strap myself into my newest airplane, eight tons of ex-Air Force jet trainer, climb to 35,000 feet and fly from Florida out Jet Fifty to Los Angeles to spend a day at chess with Leslie.
    Our games became less tournamental, words allowed, cookies and milk at table.
    "Richard, you beast," she frowned over the pieces. Her side of the board was in real trouble.
    "Yes," said I smugly. "I am a clever beast."
    "But . . . check with the knight," she said, "and check with the bishop, and guard your queen! Isn't that a pretty move?"
    Blood drained from my face. Check I had expected. Guard-your-queen was a surprise.
    "Pretty indeed," I said, years of emergency-training forcing me casual. "My goodness . . . Hm . . . There's a move to be framed, it's so pretty. But I shall slip like a shadow away. Somehow like a shadow, Ms. Parrish, the Beast shall slip away. . . ."
    Sometimes the beast twisted free, others he was herded into a corral and checkmated, only to be reborn half-a-cookie later, trying once more to catch her in his traps.
    What strange alchemy between us! I assumed that she had a variety of men for her romances as I had women for mine. Assuming was enough; neither of us pried, each was infinitely respectful of the other's privacy.
    Then once hi the middle of chess she said, "There's a movie tonight at the Academy that I ought to see. The director might be good for us to think about. Want to come along?"
    "Love to," I said absently, tending my defense against her king-side attack.
    I had never been inside the theater of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; I was glamour-struck driving past the building. But here was I inside, watching a new film with a crowd of movie-stars. How odd, I thought. My simple life of flying is all at once connected to the inside
    of Hollywood by a book and a friend who beats me often as not at ray favorite game.
    After the movie, as she drove us east on Santa Monica Boulevard through the twilight, I was struck by inspiration:
    "Leslie, would you care to ..."
    The silence was so tantalizing she said, "Would I care to what?"
    "Leslie, would you care for a hot fudge sundae?"
    She recoiled. "A what?"
    "Hot . . . fudge . . . sundae. And a round of chess?"
    "What a depraved thought!" she said. "The hot fudge, I mean. Haven't you noticed that I live on seeds and raw vegetables and yogurt and only rarely even a chess-cookie?"
    "M. Noticed I have. That is why you need a hot fudge sundae. How long has it been? Honest, now. If it was last week you have to say last week."
    "Last week? Last year! Do I look like I've been eating sundaes? Look at me!"
    For the first time, I did. I sat back and blinked to discover what the dimmest male saw at once, that here was an extraordinarily attractive woman, that the thought that had built the exquisite face had also built a body to match.
    In the months I had known her, she had been a charming bodyless sprite, a mind that was a dancing challenge, a reference-book of film production, classical music, politics, ballet.
    "Well? Would you say I've been living on sundaes?"
    "Beautiful! That is, no! That is definitely NOT a hot fudge body! Let me say this for certain ..." I was blushing. What a stupid thing, I thought, for a grown man . . . Richard, change the subject fast!
    "One little sundae," I said swiftly, "it wouldn't be harm,
    it would be happiness. If you can make a turn there through traffic, we can get our hands on a pair of hot fudges,