whatever dimension he’ll find himself occupying in two days. If not, he thinks, maybe he’d rather not go—as if he had a choice. It was sex and the lack of making love (or even the lack of opportunity to have raw sex with Sharon), that has all but destroyed his marriage.
And of everything in this life, he thinks he’ll miss sex the most.
The thought makes him chuckle and he considers writing something really steamy in the computer, just to show his future reader who he really is, the lusty Kip Dawson, a lover devoted to the female of the species who didn’t get much practice.
He poises his fingers over the keyboard, visualizing Diana Ross, wondering how tastefully yet graphically he could describe how he’d like a night with her to unfold, a menu of delights with her pleasure at the center while Conway Twitty sings “Slow Hand” in the background. “Bolero,” he thinks, was never his style.
Of course he could substitute any pretty female in such a narrative, but then it would be no more than mental masturbation. No, if he’s going to fantasize in writing, it should be Diana, whom he can see so clearly.
But then he feels a twinge of Puritanical alarm, as if even his demons will be straight-laced enough to be embarrassed at his prurient thoughts. But he needs a more practical reason to stay his hand, and he finds it in chivalrous concern for Diana. Even if his words weren’t found until she was a much older woman, such self- indulgent X-rated musings could embarrass her, and he would never want that.
He laughs again at how different the mental wiring is between male and female, and how abysmally unaware most women are of the simplicity of the male mind on the subject of sex.
He’s had no hope of getting that through to Sharon, or getting her to understand how destructive her disinterest in making love has been, and how it’s essentially doomed them.
So many things he should have changed. So many times he played it safe.
He can see a lot of things more clearly now, having chronicled his entire life and come to the conclusion that at best he would give it a C minus.
Then again, what sense does it make to spend the remaining hours whining and crying and carrying on? Nothing will change as a result, except that he’ll lose the chance to add to his narrative. Besides, death will be a new beginning. He believes that, doesn’t he?
Kip feels a shudder ripple through him, a primal fear of what’s on the other side of that one-way door he’s facing. He remembers the adage that there are no atheists in a foxhole, and there are certainly none in
Or not.
In any event, he’ll know in two days how right or wrong he was, but suddenly all those musings seem infantile and untrustworthy.
Kip closes his eyes and forces his mind back to his narrative. It’s safer there, like a warm and familiar room with four walls and window shades he can pull against reality.
He shakes his head. Johnson was talking about two weeks. He has two days.
But he also has the keyboard in front of him and a hard drive that doesn’t know the difference between the real life he’s been writing about and the life he wishes he’d had and all the things he should have done.
The idea begins to take hold, bringing a faint smile. It would be like taking control, having the power to determine his own destiny, rather than just being along for the ride. He can get just as crazy about it as he wants. He can replace his parents with a keystroke, have the brother he always wanted—maybe even an identical twin— and when it comes to girls, the possibilities are unlimited. The cutest gals in school will be his. The homecoming queen, the sexiest siren in town. Forget Lucy, he’ll marry a drop-dead gorgeous Ph.D. with a stand-up comedienne’s sense of humor and a Julia Child’s skill at cooking. Superwoman! Chef in the kitchen, lady in the parlor, and wild woman in the bedroom.
He lets the thoughts swirl, thinking about all he’s ever heard about someone creating his own reality by doing little more than what he’s contemplating. Just…
Suddenly he’s paging back through what has become a massive document, looking for the place where he first began to regret the way things were going.
No, he decides. Earlier. Age nine, before he noticed girls.
He finds the spot he was looking for around page forty and begins highlighting everything afterward, page after page of his life the way it was.
He opens the main hard drive and locates the file and deletes it, leaving the hundred twenty page document on the screen as the only remaining record.
His finger is over the delete button now as he thinks about all he’s written, two days of electronic scribbling for forty plus years of an unfinished, imperfect life. How many fellow humans have wished for a rewrite, he wonders. How many have wished for a chance to go back and do it all over again?
His index finger touches the delete key lightly, hovering there, waiting, knowing that if he presses it, all he’s highlighted will disappear. As if it never was. As if he’d never lived it, never married Lucy, let alone lost her, never been devastated by his son’s rejection because there will have been no son. One keystroke to do away with the lost years of obeying someone else’s flight plan of what life should be like, and suddenly the bile of resentment is rising in his throat, the recollection flooding back of the lifelong, aching feeling that something was missing from an equation that, by his dad’s book, was complete.
He pushes firmly, hearing the click, as over a hundred pages disappear into cyberspace.
Chapter 31
The limo headed for ABC’s local studios and the West Coast
