I shrugged.
Camille kissed me warmly. “You’re a knight in shining armor, Jim.”
I didn’t feel like a fucking knight, but with Camille kissing me, I didn’t feel like complaining.
After we kissed, I decided to have a talk that I was waiting to have with Camille for a while.
“Have you written to your Valentine?” I asked.
“You mean, Will?”
“Yeah.”
I saw that Camille’s eyes were unfocused as she thought about Kristen’s brother. It was obvious that she still had it bad for him.
“What’s the attraction?” I asked.
Camille looked at me sharply. “What do you mean?”
“Cammy,” I said, soothingly. “I love Will. He loves Kristen and he seems to love me as well. I have nothing against him. However, the moment the two of you laid eyes on one another, it was as if Kristen and I were just a minor inconvenience.”
“I feel… something… when I see him. I still feel it when I think about him.”
“What is it?”
Camille looked at me, wondering if she could trust me. She must have realized that she already entrusted quite a lot in me already. “I… can’t say, but I see something in his eyes. It’s mystical.”
This sounded like what Will told me. I didn’t laugh at her. Instead, I said, “He says I have a strange aura.”
“He doesn’t recognize yours, although he saw it in Debbie, and he now sees it a little bit in Kristen and me.”
“Debbie? Your sister?”
“Yeah,” Camille said. “Will met my sister, saw her aura, and ran away. He sees it around me, but differently.”
“This sounds so…”
“I know, Jim,” Camille said. “If you don’t see it, it’s difficult to understand it. Will actually sees it. What he describes is strange, but you have to admit that there is no explanation for your Lucky Tickets either, but they do exist. I’ve learned to accept some weird things. I can tell that Will is serious when he tells me about his auras, and I believe him. He has no reason to lie to me.”
“I sort of feel that way as well,” I admitted. “Will first told me about his auras when we were touring MIT. I felt it was a bit ironic, but I could tell he was serious.”
“Jim, when you see auras around people, you don’t always tell people about it. Will trusts you quite a lot to tell you. I think he’s only told Kristen, you, and me about them.”
“I know, but you didn’t answer my question. What’s the attraction between you and Will?”
“All right,” Camille said. “Will is bisexual. So am I.”
“And…” I said, prodding Camille.
“Jim, you sleep with me a few times a week, right?”
“Yes…”
“And you love Kristen, wholly and totally.”
Of course, I thought. “Uh, huh…”
“And I love her as well.”
“I’ll accept that.”
Camille raised her eyebrows. “Interesting way to put it, Jim.”
“Cammy, I have no way to know what’s going on in your mind. You say you are in love with Kristen, and you act that way. I’ll accept that.”
“You don’t go any further?” Camille asked.
“Will told me that as a bisexual, he loves everybody. It sounds wonderful, the way he puts it. At the same time, however, it sounds lonely. He’ll love anybody, which is not the same thing. He doesn’t discriminate, which may be considered something positive, but what if you don’t discriminate between a good person… such as Albert Schweitzer, and a bad person… such as Adolph Hitler?”
Camille considered my remarks. It was a measure of how much she valued my opinions, even when she disagreed with them.
“You point out an interesting trap, Jim.”
“I talked with Will for a while last Thanksgiving.”
Camille said, “What I was thinking is that Will fits a part of me that nobody else does. It’s a part of me that he fits perfectly. At the same time, Kristen fits a different part of me. I could be with both and there would be no overlap.”
“And how is that different when you are with Kristen and me?”
“You and Kristen fit, and Kristen and I fit,” Camille said. “It’s almost the same thing, but with her.”
“The way that you describe it, Camille, is that no two people can possibly love one another a hundred percent.”
“Huh?”
“You fit Kristen, I fit Kristen. That’s a hundred percent between three people. Will fits you, Kristen fits you. Another hundred percent between three people.”
“Yeah?” Camille looked confused.
“Up until you came into our bed, Camille, I would have sworn that Kristen fits me, one hundred percent. I thought I fit her the same way.”
“What changed?”
“Love isn’t either/or, Camille. I can love Kristen one hundred percent, and still love you. You and I don’t actively make love with each other in bed, but that’s because we both don’t know Kristen’s feelings on the matter. What if Kristen asked you to fuck me?”
“She won’t!” Camille said.
“You can predict Kristen like that? Congratulations, Cammy. I’ve yet to be that sure of her myself. She seems to have a terrible jealous streak in her, but at the same time, she already gave you and Patty permission when she came back from Austria last winter. Remember?”
Camille didn’t answer, but obviously remembered Kristen’s conversation with Patty and her.
I continued. “I don’t think there’s another guy that will love her like me, even her brother. She knows that. She accepts you because there’s no competition between us. However, that day when you told me about the tickets on Lake Shore Point, Kristen was angry and thought I might be thinking of you romantically.”
Camille looked shocked. “What?”
“It didn’t take much for me to reassure Kristen, but her jealousy is still there. Do you remember that terrible fight that Kristen and I had last autumn?”
“The one that Sherry helped you guys through?”
“Yeah,” I said. “This is private, because it’s between Kristen and me, but I thought you might want to know. Kristen sort of insinuated that she wanted me to sleep with somebody else… make love to another girl. I didn’t want to—the only girl for me was and is Kristen. There was more to that argument but that’s really personal. Anyway, she can be jealous on the one hand, and want me to have sex with another girl at the same time!”
There was silence as Camille thought about what I just said.
“Anyway,” I continued, “you love her differently. I can’t read your mind, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you loved her a hundred percent. I also love Kristen one hundred percent. You don’t add them together, Camille.”
Camille shook her head. “That can’t be. Anything I can do with Kristen, you can also do, physically.”
“Bullshit, Cammy! For a genius, you are sometimes obtuse. You connect with her emotionally. You, Cammy, rule your life by emotions: don’t tell me any different! You are almost like Patty that way!”
Camille didn’t have any answer for that.
“What if you had children, Cammy?”
“Huh?” Camille looked at me strangely.
“What if you had children? What if you gave birth to a girl and a boy?”
Camille looked confused. “What are you talking about?”
“Pretend you’re married and you have two or three children.”
Camille decided to play along. “All right.”
“You give birth to your first child. You love it, right?”
“Yeah.”
“You love it wholly and totally, because it’s your child.”