I AM TRYING TO FIGURE OUT THE SECRET CODE and why you suggested A Very Long Engagement for me before you left. There are several possibilities:

Possibility #1: You lost your memory shortly after being shot in the hip by the "Jerry" Albatross during World War I. Now residing in a small, amber-tinted hospital covered in wild jasmine, lavender and hyssop in southern France, you have no way of contacting me since you no longer remember who I am. It is up to me to find you, and if I do, my pronounced limp, brought on by early onset polio, will not jog your memory as to who I am since you never met me in the first place.

Oh my darling, don't worry: I will find you. I will. Never forget: you are my peu lapin rosé magnifique!

Possibility #2: Do you remember when you suggested that I see A Patch of Blue when I told you that I wasn't really interested in seeing A Very Long Engagement? It took me longer to figure out why you suggested that, but I finally decoded your love for me.

You can no longer write me. You are now blind. While visiting your mother, who looks a little bit like Shelley Winters, you awoke with a start one night when your father came into the house unexpectedly on furlough from the US Navy only to find your Shelley-Winterish mother in flagrante delicto in their marital bed, with a total stranger. A bloody fight ensued, and your mother, who has small toxic liquids located near her bedside cleverly disguised in perfume containers, (you have to know this so it makes sense) anyway, your mother, who is a bad aim, took one of them, the small, terrifying toxic liquid perfume bottles, and threw it at your father and missed and it splashed into your face and blinded you permanently. Now, helpless and alone, you have no choice but to remain in a kind of dark prison-world of terror in a dingy apartment that doubles as a brothel, stringing beads for a living while living with your mother who is worse than ever, really really mean, and slapping you around all the time, and calling you names like movie star and whore and slut, and making you work like a dog cooking and cleaning all the time and having no friends because it's the only way that she can deal with the guilt, which is extreme.

Still, you think of me. You long for me. Your spirit remains unbroken. But you know in your heart it cannot be, for you are a blind blonde white woman and I am a strong handsome black man, and the world will never accept our kind, for our love was not made for this world. But still, in your broken, silent heart, you love me, as I do you, and always will, in a world that is too brutal and cold to understand such love.

And to think: even now, you cannot read these words that I write to you. And who could read them to you? I mean, not your mother. No way. It's no wonder I haven't heard from you.

Is that it? It makes sense, because you always said that you thought the people in France were stupid, so I can't imagine you being there, even during WWI. And if I recall correctly, your mother was kind of a whore and not very nice to me. But I have trouble with this one too because I hardly ever think of myself as a handsome man. And I never ever think of myself as a handsome black man. Do you know who was a handsome black man? Sidney Poitier. Man, he was one good-looking handsome black man. But he's just not me. My voice is a lot whinier. Once you even told me that. I remember distinctly when you said: "Your voice is a lot whinier than Sidney Poitier's." I couldn't help but laugh and agree with you. So where does that leave us?

Possibility #3: Now that I think back I remember you left the house for the last time muttering something about going to see Ramon, whoever he is, that you suggested I wait for you by having a look at The Love Bug with Dean Jones and Buddy Hackett and Michele Lee.

I just don't understand why. Sure, there were really cool hippies in the movie, and it was fun seeing Buddy Hackett talking about spiritual pilgrimages to Tibet and speaking a kind of Buddy-Chinese and wearing those neat medallions and the funny car helmets and David Tomlinson's mustache and the Lamborghinis and the Pacific Coast Highway and of course the precious little Volkswagen #53 urinating oil on the crisply pressed trousers of Mr. Thorndike, or in the fog trying to commit suicide by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge because he thought that Dean Jones no longer cared for him or her but instead for another, which was a Porsche, but even though it was about the best movie that I have ever seen, I just don't see the connection between it and us.

Unless you are reminding me that we will be happily married, like Dean Jones and Michele Lee at the end of the movie. Or that I am a really great driver, and you wished that you had told me that. Or that you think I am really spiritual and you admire that quality in me. Or you wonder if I am Chinese. Or maybe it's that you think I have the tenderness of Buddy Hackett, which is something you never had the chance to mention to me, and which he really had in that movie, but you never mentioned that specifically about Buddy Hackett, even though you did say once or twice that you thought Buddy Hackett was pretty fat and cross-eyed. Or maybe you would like to move to San Francisco and find a place there where you can take care of me. That sounds so much like you.

Or maybe—and I hate to even think this—you are worried that I would commit suicide because we can no longer be together. Is that it? Are you worried that I would go to San Francisco and jump off the Golden Gate Bridge like a depressed Volkswagen because our love was not made for this world? Oh my darling! Do not worry! Even if I did, or even if I tried, it could not be. Don't you remember? Dean Jones finds his Love Bug at the last moment, and drags him back to safety, far away from the deadly precipice. That they persevere through Irish Coffee in the gas tank and misplaced signs on the roadway and oil slicks on the race course, driving up and down trees, defying gravity and physics to know that their love for each other is eternal, the race is won, as we know it is for us. I know you my darling: You would never let me jump. You are my Dean Jones, aren't you? If you find this message, please tell me. You're Dean Jones, aren't you my darling? We're winning the race, aren't we? Gravity means nothing to us, my darling, does it? Nothing!


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