As I stare at the glassy surface of the lake, I hear muffled footsteps in the grass behind me.
“Did you see how great it…” I turn around expecting to see the genie, but find James standing beside me instead.
I cling to the railing for support.
“I never knew you could sing like that,” he says in an admiring tone.
“Before tonight, I think I didn’t know it myself,” I admit sincerely, pondering about telling him the part his nice fiancée played, but deciding against it since her little scheme already totally backfired on her.
“I didn’t know you had a boyfriend, either.”
Ah. There it is. He’s jealous.
“Up until a little while ago, I didn’t know you had a fiancée, either,” I can’t help but retort childishly. “And it’s not exactly like we kept in touch,” I say harshly, betraying my emotions. “If I remember correctly, last time we saw each other you left without even saying goodbye.”
“I’m sorry. I had an early morning the next day. I had to go,” he lies.
“Sure, you did,” I comment sarcastically.
A long, heavy silence follows.
“Ally, I…”
“Yes?”
He doesn’t reply; he simply stares at the ground as if scouring it for answers. He lifts his head and looks at me with an anguished expression, still mute, so I search his eyes to discover what it is that he’s not able to put in words.
Suddenly I find myself propelled in a different reality; I am seeing the world through James’s eyes as he’s talking on the phone in his apartment. I am inside one of James’s memories! I don’t know how long in the past this happened, but it couldn’t be so long ago as James doesn’t look much younger.
He’s holding an envelope in his hands while he’s speaking into the microphone of his white headphones. “…I’ve just received the invitation to the Fall Charity Ball,” he says in a casual tone. “I saw it’s only for one person. I was wondering if I could bring Ally along.”
“James, dear,” his mother replies, “I hoped you’d be my date. Otherwise I’ll have to go alone. Please spare me the embarrassment.”
He flips the invitation in his hands; I peek at the date printed on it and see that I’m in a memory from the October before we broke up.
“Mom, you are a widow. There’s nothing embarrassing about going to a ball on your own.”
I can feel his annoyance at the situation. The discussion continues for a while, until James’s home disappears in a vortex and I find myself in a majestic room dancing with… Vanessa!
Is that ball where they met? Did he cheat on me with her? I try to explore James’s sensations while he’s dancing with her, but he doesn’t seem particularly happy about it. Even better, he’s thinking she’s pathetic for throwing herself at him so openly after he’s already told her he has a girlfriend. Ah! Me!
The room swirls again, and I find myself standing in my office. What? The office is bursting with decorations, and hanging from the ceiling there is a huge banner saying “Merry Christmas”. Of course, we are at my office’s Christmas party. The one and only we attended together.
I see myself, a little tipsy, approaching and kissing me. I mean James. That was weird! He hugs me and ruffles my hair affectionately. I jokingly protest for him to stop, and after looking at me intensely for a couple of seconds, he kisses my forehead, whispering, “I love you.” And he does mean it with every cell of his body; I can sense it in him.
He then spots Vanessa talking with Kyle, and he decides to try to avoid her for the rest of the evening. In fact, he asks me right away if I am ready to leave, and when I say yes, the room starts spinning around once more.
I am now entering James’s Victorian family house; it’s clearly winter because the outside of the house is covered in a thick coat of dusty snow. The entrance hall looks familiar, except it appears a lot darker and gloomier than what I remembered it to be. It’s as if his brain has filtered its real appearance with a veil of bleakness, which is weird because as I close the door behind me, I mean as he does, he feels happy and excited. He moves a few steps inside and calls out for his mom.
“Here, in the dining room.” Her voice comes faint, almost spectral from the left. The atmosphere, if possible, becomes even grimmer.
“Hi, Mom. Happy New Year,” he says merrily, kissing her on the cheek.
His mother is sitting in a rigid posture at the head of an interminable mahogany dining table. “Hello, James.” She barely looks at him when she greets him. Her face is very pale, and she seems worried.
“Mom, I have some great news,” he announces, smiling, oblivious to his mother’s anguished state. “I want to propose to Ally.”
My heart stops. Propose to me? But this was only one or two days before he broke up with me! I was right; he wanted to bring our relationship to the next level, except he didn’t simply want me to move in… He wanted to ask me to marry him! My heart starts beating faster. Why didn’t he propose to me? What happened? I decide to try to concentrate on the rest of the conversation, as I’m pretty sure I will find my answers there.
“Didn’t you want to live with a person before marrying her?” his mother asks, taken aback. “Not that I am suggesting it as the right path.”
“Yeah, but with Ally, I just know. She’s the one,” he affirms convinced. “Mom, what’s wrong? Aren’t you happy?” he adds, finally noticing her stony expression.
“Oh James, I don’t think this is a good time to start a family,” she says in a shaking voice.
I feel a grip of dread and worry clamping my throat. I’m not sure if I’m feeling it or James is, as his next question comes out choked.
“What do you mean?”
“James.” She pauses, shakes her head, and then drops it in her hands.
“Mom, what’s wrong?” he asks, concerned.
“James, we’re broke, or soon to be,” she says, raising her head and looking him straight in the eyes. “In less than a year all of this,” she waves her thin knotty hand around feebly, “will be gone. This house, the company…everything.”
“Mom, I know the West Lake Project has been a hit, but the company’s financials are solid. We can take the loss. I just have to dismiss some equipment leasing—”
“Your father,” she interrupts him, raising her hand.
“What about Dad?” he asks, with mounting anguish in his voice.
“The crisis…it hit us harder than he could ever imagine. You were still in college and were not involved in the company. To push through that year and the following one, your father had to take a loan, a substantial one…”
“Mom, the company has little debt—”
“James, please let me finish.” His constant interruptions and reassurances seem to be draining her of any remaining strength. “He didn’t want to scare the other investors away,” she continues, “as things were already bad as they were, so he took the loan using his personal assets as collateral without making it appear in the company’s books. That’s why this house is in it as well. He calculated that he could repay the loan completely in nine years if nothing else went wrong. The interest rate was absurdly high, as nobody was lending money at the time, but he had faith in the company so he decided to take it anyway. It was his only hope to avoid bankruptcy.”
“How bad it is?” This time James’s voice is harder.
“Bad. Without the West Lake Project income we can’t pay,” she whispers.
“Are you sure?” he asks, shocked. “In the company’s books there’s nothing about this.” Worry is mounting inside him. He pulls out a chair and sits beside his mother.
“Because your father hid it,” she repeats, close to tears.
“How?” James asks, serious.
“It’s complicated. I didn’t understand everything, but he made it look like he was renting equipment. Instead, he was repaying the debt to a shell company he created, but that has the actual debt with the bank. You should talk to Doug—he knows the mechanics. But James…those contracts you said you needed to dismiss? I don’t think you can.”
If I remember correctly, Doug was his father’s most trusted collaborator.
“Doug knew about this?”
“He’s the one who told me.”
“Mom, is this even legal?”
“I am not sure,” she admits. “Ask him.”
“Even if it was illegal, he had to do it so that we could remain strong in the eyes of our partners,” James reasons bitterly. “Otherwise they would have squeezed us out.”
There’s a long, pregnant pause.
“How long have you known?” James asks his mother.
“Almost a year.”
“And why didn’t you tell me right away?” he shouts angrily.
“Because until the last few months we were fine,” she says, shaking her head.
“You mean until West Lake was cancelled.”
“Yes.”
“How much do we still owe the bank? What bank is it?”
“The bank is P.C.N., and James, we owe them millions.”
“Damn!” He pushes his hands through his hair, anguished. He gets up and starts pacing frantically while thinking hard. “How much is the next payment?”
“James, I don’t know. I just know that we only have enough for the next one—at least, that’s what Doug told me.”
“But Mom.” He stops pacing suddenly. “What does all of this have to do with Ally and me? I’m sure it wouldn’t matter to her.”
No. It wouldn’t have!
“Ah James, you are a dreamer.”
You old hag! Where is she going with this? Is she calling me a gold digger?
“Don’t you dare tell me she’s with me just for the money,” James defends me, “because I can assure you—”
“Oh, I’m sure she’s not. She seems like a perfectly nice girl. But that’s beside the point.”
“Mom, I’m not following,” he says, exasperated.
Yeah, me neither. At this point, I’m as confused as he is. If she didn’t think I was with him just for the money, I would like to understand what the company’s imminent bankruptcy had to do with us. I’m finally convinced that this family crisis is somehow the reason why he broke up with me.
“Think, James, think. What kind of life could you offer her? If we go belly up, we will have to sell the company, this house, and every other asset we have to repay the debt. You will be penniless and jobless. Nobody is hiring in real estate now, and definitely not in managerial positions. What would you do?”
“Mom, I’m sure it would be hard at first, but I could find another job. Anyway, I’m not convinced that the company is beyond saving.”
“It is James, believe me. I know how Adam Van Horn does business in this city, and he doesn’t offer discounts to anyone.”
Vanessa’s dad?
“Van Horn? Why is the name familiar?” James asks.
“You met his daughter. Actually I think she has a pretty bad crush on you.”
Thu-thump. Thu-thump. Thu-thump. My heart is threatening to jump out of my chest.
“Who?” He pulls a puzzled face.
“The beautiful young lady you danced with at the Autumn Gala,” his mother explains.
“The one that works with Ally, you mean?”
“They work together? I didn’t know,” she says.
“And how do you know she likes me? We barely talked once! And why should I care?”
“I do some charity work with her mother, who brought her up to be a very spoiled, but at the same time very insecure young lady. I think your polite denial of attention was enough to make you the object of her affection.”
“Mom, what does all of this have to do with anything?” he asks, impatient.
Yeah, I want to know as well, even if an unpleasant idea is taking shape in my mind.
“Nothing, nothing. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
Oh, but she did.
“Mom, what is it that you’re suggesting? That I dump Ally and marry Vanessa Van Horn instead, so that her daddy could bail us out?”
“No, James, of course that’s not what I meant. But I don’t know, you could try to talk to this girl. Maybe she could ask her father to help us.”
“And why would she do this?”
“Because she thinks she’s in love you.”
“Mom, there has to be another way. I would never…” He says not sure of what his mother is asking him to do.
She stays silent and keeps looking at the floor with a disparaged expression, successfully managing to make him feel guilty.
“I can’t do this Mom, not if I’m with Ally!” he insists.
“Then maybe you shouldn’t,” she replies in a whisper.
“You think I would let go of the woman I love? Never! I’d rather lose everything else.”
“And how do you think you’d feel ten years from now when you look back at this moment and she’s the reason why you lost everything?” she challenges him, rising from her chair. “James, I know you. If you were to lose the company, you would get bitter. And bitter is never a good ingredient in a marriage,” she adds somewhat more softly. “You love that company—it’s part of you, it’s in your blood. When you were a kid, instead of wanting to play video games you wanted to go with your dad to building sites. James, your father put everything he had in it, even his life, and I know you’re just the same. If you were to let it go to ruins, you’d never forgive yourself.”
This is a low blow, and it cuts a deep wound into James’s heart. I knew his father had a heart attack while working. James was the one who found him still struggling on the office floor, clasping a bad quarterly review in his hand, but until now James hadn’t realized how connected the two things were. He gapes at his mother, dumbstruck, opening his mouth to say something and then closing it again, unable to speak.
“James, life is made of hard choices. Love comes and goes, but family stays forever. You have a responsibility not only to this family and yourself, but also to the people who work for you. They have families as well.”
“Please, Mother, spare me the fake altruism. You only care about yourself,” he says bitterly, but inside him a heavy stone settles. She might not care about the workers’ families, but he does. And she just made sure he remembers that he’s responsible for them.
She doesn’t deny his accusation, and they face each other in silence for a long time.
“I will never go along with your little scheme!” he finally says, pointing his index finger on the table and glaring at her. “I’ll find another way.”
The scene whirls away again, only this time James’s brain leafs in quick succession through the next couple of days. At first he’s arguing animatedly with an older guy in his office. The man must be Doug. Afterwards, he’s in a bank office where he is speaking to a manager who’s shaking his head irrevocably. Then his mind quickly shuffles to the offices of at least ten other different banks, with as many managers all shaking their heads and saying they can’t help him.
Finally, I see him at home, searching for a solution he can’t find. He drinks a full bottle of vodka, caught in his own desperation, rummaging around random sheets of paper scattered all around his apartment’s floor like a mad person. His eyes are bloodshot, he has deep black-blue circles under them, and he’s crying, thinking about his father’s last words before he died. “I did all I could, son. Now you must be the man of the family.”
I feel his pain as he struggles to choose between his father’s ghost and me. Tears prick my eyes as I understand it was a battle I could have never won. I watch him wrestle with his emotions some more, cry, scream in frustration at no one in particular, and finally come to a decision.
Next, he’s standing drunk in front of my apartment, pushing my buzzer and asking me to come down to talk. He’s speaking in a hoarse, strained voice that I remember only too well; it chills me to the bone. I don’t want to relive what comes next. I can’t experience it twice, so I blink, pulling myself out of the vision and back to present.
“Is everything okay?” James asks me in a soft voice.
“Yeah, why?” I manage to stumble, my heart still racing. I feel like I was gone forever, but it must have taken me just a few seconds to surf across James’s flashbacks.
“You have your hand on your mouth—you look like something scared you to death,” James points out.
“No, I’m fine,” I lie, forcing my hand away.
“Ally, I…” he repeats.
“Yes?” I ask again, knowing everything he wants to tell me this time. I witness his internal struggle once more from the movements of his forehead, which creases deeper and deeper with every passing second.
“Nothing. I just wanted to say you were great tonight.” He lowers his head in a gesture of final defeat. I can perceive his shame at his own cowardice.
I want to say something, but I am at a loss for words, and the silence between us becomes unbearable.
“I thought you might have been cold out here.” The genie’s deep voice makes me jolt. “I have brought you a jacket.”
“Thank you,” I say to him. Turning to James, I add, “We should get back inside. Good night, James.”
“Good night, Ally,” he replies, strangled.
We leave him alone on the deck and head back toward the hotel in silence.