The Line Between

«I still dance.» For the first time since that long–ago lunch in the Automat, the voice was raw Brooklyn again, but much lower, a harsh mumble. «I take classes, I keep in shape.» He did turn to face me then, and now there was anger in his eyes. «And no, Jake, I don't wish a damn thing. I'm just grateful that I had the sense to know what to stop wishing for. I didn't quit, I let go. There's a difference.»

«Is there?»

What possessed me? What made me bait him, invade him so? The fail–ure of the play, premonitions about my Lady of the Follow Spots? I have no more idea now than I did then. I said, «I've envied you half my life, you know that? You were born to be a dancer— born—and I've had to work my butt off just to be the journeyman I am.» The words chewed their way out of me. «Sam, see, by now I know I'm never going to be anything more than pretty good. Professional, I'll settle for that. But you … you walked away from it, from your gift. I was so furious at you for doing that. I guess I still am. I really still am.»

«That's your business," Sam said. His voice had gotten very quiet. «My loss is my loss, you don't get to deal yourself in. Sorry.» He said it care–fully, word by word, each one a branding iron. «I have enough trouble with my own dreams without living yours.»

«What dreams?» I asked. He should have hit me then—not for the two words, but for the way I said them. I can still hear myself today, now, as I write this, and I am still ashamed.

But Sam smiled at me. Whatever else I manage to forget about my behavior that night, I'll always remember that he smiled. He said, «Anyway, you're a bloody good actor. You're much better than a journey–man.» And he handed me a bottle of beer, and suddenly we were talking about my career, about me again. We weren't to have another moment that intense, that intimate, for a very long time.

Over the years I came east more often than he came west, unless he had a Seattle Opera Ring to cover, or a Los Angeles symphony conduc–tor to interview. He published three books: one on a year spent with the musicians of the Lincoln Center orchestra, one on Lou Harrison, and one—my favorite—about Verdi's last four operas. They got fine reviews and neither sold nor stayed in print. But the studio apartment was rent–controlled, and Ceilidh flourished, to its own considerable sur–prise. Occasionally they were even able to send Sam abroad, to cover music festivals in England or Italy. He visited his parents—long retired in Fort Lauderdale—four times a year, had another floor–to–ceiling book–case installed, and got a cat.

About the cat. It was an Abyssinian female, almost maroon in color, and even as a kitten she had the slouchy preen of a high–fashion model. Sam named her Millamant, after Congreve's wicked heroine. Because both of the women I married had been cat–lovers, Sam appointed me his feline expert, and called me almost every day during the first weeks of Millamant's residency. «She just sits in her litter box and stares—is that normal?» «She keeps catching moths in The Dark Continent—should I make her stop?» «Jake, I took her for her shots, and now she's mad at me. How long do cats stay mad?» «Is it all right for her to eat pizza?» Millamant grew up to look like a miniature mountain lion, the reigning grande horizontale of the studio, and whenever I slept on the floor, she honored me with her favors. Usually at three in the morning.

As for myself, I peaked early. Right or wrong about Sam's talent, I was bang on the money about my own. I've never worked in New York again, unless you count summer stock in Utica, and there have been stretches when a voiceover, a tv cameo, or residuals from a soap–opera guest shot were all that kept a roof over my head. It's mostly theater, especially the Pacific Rep, that pays the bills; but the only long–running stage gig I have ever had was as a villain in a camp 1890s melodrama, which inexplica–bly ran for five years at a tiny San Francisco theater. It coincided almost exactly with my second marriage; they closed in the same week. That one's a director, and she's good. I think she's off doing Sweet Bird of Youth in China right now.

All the same, for good or ill, I'm still doing what I'm fit for and liv–ing as I always wanted to live—just not quite as well as I'd imagined—and Sam wasn't. That was a wider gap by far than the continent that separated us, but we never again talked about it. Everything else, yes, on weekends, when the rates were down—everything else from politics, literature, and the general nature of the universe to shortstops and whether Oscar Aleman could really have been as good a guitarist as Django. We went along like that until Marianne.