The Line Between

I hadn't been back since the time we celebrated his being down to two cigarettes a day. I ordered the ropa vieja again. I don't remember what Emilia had. We talked about Sam, and about her work for the Bergen County newspaper—she'd recently won a state journalism award for a series on day–care facilities—and I went into serious detail regarding the technical and social inadequacies of the Pacific Rep's new artistic direc–tor. We didn't discuss Millamant at all.

The evening was warm, and there was one of those glossy, perfect half–moons that seem too brilliant for their size. We walked home the long way, so that I could show Emilia the little park where Sam had told me about her. We sat on the swings, as I'd done with Sam, and she told me then, «He lied about his age, you know. I didn't realize it until you told me you were two months younger. He'd been taking seven years off all the time I knew him. As though it would have mattered to me.»

I'd had a second margarita with dinner. I said, «He was two months and eleven days older than I am. We were both born just after three in the morning, did he ever tell you that? I was about an ounce and a half heavier.» And whoosh, I was crying. I didn't start to cry—I was crying, and I was always going to be crying. Emilia held me without a word, as I'd once held Sam when he wept just as hopelessly, just as endlessly. I have no idea how long it went on. When it stopped, we walked the rest of the way in silence, but Emilia tucked her arm through mine.

Back home, we settled in the kitchen (which is bigger and more com–fortable than my living room) with a couple of cappuccinos. The direc–tor ex–wife took the piano, but I hung on to the espresso machine. Emilia said, «I was thinking on the flight—you and I have already known each other longer than I knew Sam. We had such a short time.»

«You learned things about him I never bothered to find out in forty years. I thought we had forever.»

Emilia was silent for a while, sipping her coffee. Then she said, very softly, not looking at me, «You see, I never thought that. Some way, I always understood that there wasn't going to be a happy ending for us. I never said it to myself, but I knew.» She did look straight at me then, her eyes clear and unmisted, but her mouth too straight, too determinedly under control. «I think he did, too.»

I couldn't think of an answer to that. We chatted a little while longer, and then Emilia went to bed. I stayed up late, reading Heartbreak House one more time—no one's ever likely to ask me to play Captain Shotover, but the readiness is all—had one last futile look–around for Millamant, and turned in myself. I slept deeply and contentedly for what seemed like a good fifteen minutes before Emilia shook me out of one of the rare dreams where I know my lines, whispering frantically, «Jake—Jake come and see, hurry, you have to see! Jake, hurry, it's her!»

The half–moon was shining so brightly on the kitchen table that I could see the little sticky rings where our coffee cups had been. I remem–ber that, just as I remember the shuddery hum of the refrigerator and the bloop of the leaky faucet, and a faint scratching sound that I couldn't place right away. Just as I remember Millamant dancing.

It's a large table, older than I am, and it lurches if you lean on it, let alone dance. I don't know how Millamant even climbed up, arthritic back leg and all, but there she floated, there she spun, tumbling this way, sail–ing that, one minute a kitten, the next a kite; moving so lightly, and with such precision, that the table never rocked once, but seemed to be the one moving impossibly fast, while Millamant drifted over it as slowly as she chose, hanging in the air for exactly as long as she chose. She was so old that her back claws no longer retracted entirely—that was the scratch–ing noise—but she danced the way human beings have always dreamed of dancing, and never have, not the best of them. No one has ever danced like Millamant.

Neither of us could look away, but Emilia leaned close and whispered, «I've seen her three times. I couldn't talk about it on the phone.» Her face was absolutely without color.

Millamant stopped so suddenly that both Emilia and I leaned toward her, as though it had been the planet that halted. Millamant dropped down onto all fours, paced to the edge of the table and stood looking at us out of once–golden eyes gone almost tea–brown with age. She was breath–ing rapidly, and trembling all over. She said, «Emilia. Jake.»

How can I say what it was like? To hear a cat speak—to hear a cat speak our names—to hear a cat speak them in a voice that was unmis–takably Sam's voice, and yet not Sam's, not a voice at all. Her mouth remained slightly open, but her jaws did not move: the words were com–ing through her, not out of her, without inflection, without any sort of cadence, without any trace of a homemade English accent. Millamant said, «Jake. Clean your glasses.»