Book of Days_ A Novel - James L. Rubart [127]
Another shift. Ann sitting at a dinner table with two beautiful girls who looked like her and the fourth spot at the table empty. Then the phone rang and Ann answered saying she understood, pain in her eyes as she hung up the phone, her back to the girls, then turning and forcing out a smile.
Cameron again, hair gray and thinning, sitting in a dim room alone watching television, a slight shaft of daylight piercing into the shuttered living room. Piles of books. A dusty coffee table. Bloodshot eyes.
So the future would be as bleak as the past. He wouldn't end up with Ann. With anyone. Sad. Her future looked better than his, but he couldn't shake the image of the empty chair at dinner. Was it him missing? Or the man he'd seen with Ann in the New York restaurant?
It was okay. It was his destiny to be alone.
Cameron squatted down, his head slumped forward, and a soft moan seeped from his lips. He sank deeper into himself to the quiet place where he couldn't lie to himself.
He loved Ann. And he couldn't stop loving her.
If she would have him, diseased mind and all, he would go to her and pour his heart out to her for the rest of his life.
He looked up. Taylor's eyes were riveted on the water. "Look."
Cameron turned.
The lake boiled for a moment, then cleared. Scenes of Ann and Cameron flashed across the surface.
She and Cameron stood on a ledge overlooking a tropical valley, an azure sea beyond that. "I think I like Costa Rica," she whispered. Her head was wrapped in small golden and crimson flowers, her turquoise dress was whipped by a strong wind, and Cameron held a diamond ring between his fingers.
A Christmas scene with Ann and him skiing the Swiss Alps with two other couples. The following summer they would rent a houseboat on Ross Lake, and Cameron would get so sore water-skiing he would slather BenGay over his entire body.
A child was born: a boy. Then another boy and a year later a daughter.
Now Cameron was speaking to a packed house at UCLA film school. Ann sat in the front row, her hair up, face radiant.
"What did you do?" Taylor grabbed Cameron's arm.
His lips slowly separated as he turned and stared at Taylor. What had he done? He'd changed his mind, surrendered to the longing inside and dreamed of building a life with her.
"I didn't do . . . I decided if she'll have me, I'm going to love Ann the rest of my life."
Speaking it out loud made him shiver. He shouldn't have said it. That made it real and real was too frightening.
Cameron closed his eyes and shut down the feeling, then shut down the choice to move forward. No. He couldn't do that to her. Even if she chose to be with him . . . So much better for her to find someone whole.
"It's changing back again," Taylor said.
Cameron opened his eyes and stared at the lake.
The scene had changed back to the one with Ann in New York with a smile and sad eyes. The man at the table opened a Tiffany's box and she nodded.
Cameron standing on the top of El Capitán alone.
Ann dropping off the girls for a weekend with their father.
Cameron old and flipping through channels on a television screen that covered his entire wall.
The water shifted and there was nothing to see except the placid still waters. Cameron watched and waited for five minutes but no other scenes came.
Cameron stared at Taylor as both men let what they'd just witnessed sink in.
"I saw myself years into the future, still alive. I was doing things you have to have a memory to do. Does that mean I'm going to be okay?"
"I don't know, my friend."
"Have I been cured?"
Taylor shook his head. "I don't know."
"I need to know."
"I don't think you can."
Cameron rubbed his face and stared at the surface of the water. "Tell me," he said to it, even though he knew there would be no answer.
Jessie. She was right. It was his choice to live or not to live.
Cameron gazed at the mountains, the trees, and finally the