The Line Between

«I'm jealous," I said, and I actually was, a little. Millamant doesn't like a lot of people. «She stays the weekend? And it works out?»

He was a heavy sleeper, and you had to be really careful about wak–ing him, because he always came up fighting. I never knew why that was. Sam laughed then. «On top of everything, she's an insomniac. Only per–son I ever gave full permission to wake me up at any time. It works out.»

«Hoo–ha. So she'll be moving in?»

Sam didn't answer for a long time. We swung together in the dark–ness, with no sound but the slow creak of the chains. Finally he said, «I don't think so. I think maybe I lost my nerve with Marianne.» I started to say something, and then I didn't. Chains, owls, a few fireflies, the distant mumbling of the freeway. Sam said, «I couldn't go through that again. And it will happen again, Jake. Not for the same reasons, but it will.»

«You don't know that," I said. «It works out sometimes, living with somebody. Not for me—I mean, both my marriages were absolute train wrecks—but there were good times even so, and they really might have worked. If I'd been different, or Elly had, or Suzette had. Anyway, it was worth it, pretty much. I wouldn't have missed it, I don't think.»

«That," Sam said, pausing as precisely as our old hero Noel Coward would have done, «is the most inspirational tribute to the married state I've ever heard. You ought to crochet it into a sampler.» He dropped lightly off the swing, and we went on walking, angling back the way we had come. Neither of us spoke again until we were on the overpass, looking down at the lights plunging toward the East Bay hills. Sam said, «She's not moving in. Millamant doesn't like her that much. But I want you to meet her, next time you come to New York. This one I want you to meet.» I said I'd love to, and we walked on home.

At the airport, two nights later, we hugged each other, and I said, «Catch you next time, Jake.» I don't remember when we started doing that at goodbyes, trading names.

«Next time, Sam. I'll call when I get home.» He picked up his garment bag and started for the gate; then turned to flash me that fleeting grin out of childhood once more. «Keep a pedestal vacant in the Museum. You never know.» And he was gone.

Marianne had Millamant, as it turned out when I made my way from JFK to her East Side townhouse. The Abyssinian met me at the door and immediately sprang to my shoulder, as she had always done whenever I arrived. Arthritis had set its teeth in her right hind leg since we last met, and it took her three tries, equally painful for us both. I tried to remove her, but Millamant wasn't having any. She dug her claws in even deeper, making a curious shrill sound I'd never heard from her before, and con–stantly pushing her head against my face. Her eyes were wide and mad. «He's not with me," I said. «I'm sorry, cat. I don't know where he's gone.»

Marianne—still all flying red hair and opening night, down to her gilded toenails—informed me that Sam hadn't left a will, which sur–prised me. He was always far neater than I, not merely about the apart–ment or his dress, but about his life in general. Letters were answered as they came in; his filing cabinet held actual alphabetized files; he always knew where his book and magazine contracts were; and he had a regular doctor and a real lawyer as well, who doubled as his literary agent. But there was no will in the filing cabinet, no will to be found anywhere.

«We'd been talking about it," the lawyer said defensively. «He was going to come in. Anyway, I've spoken to the parents, and they want you to act as executor.»

I called Mike and Sarah from the lawyer's office. They were frail insect voices, clouded by age and distance and despair, static from deep space. Yes, they did wish me to be Sam's executor—yes, they would be grateful if I could clean out the apartment, sort his business affairs, and get the police to release his body, as soon as the coroner's report came in. Sarah asked after my mother and father.

The report said things like myocardial infarction and ventricular fibril–lation; death almost certainly instant. We buried Sam in an Astroturf cem–etery in Queens, within earshot of the Van Wyck Expressway. Mike and Sarah had managed to handle the funeral arrangements from Fort Lauderdale, which proved they remembered me well enough to know that I'd likely have wound up stashing their son in a Dumpster or a recy–cling tin. A limousine from the mortuary brought them to the funeral: they stepped out blinking against the sharp autumn sunlight, looking pale and small, for all the years in Florida. I went over to embrace them, and we had a moment to murmur incoherently together before two men in dark suits took them away to the grave site. I followed with Marianne, because there was no one else I knew.