«Jacob, I'm so sorry, I hate to be the one to tell you. Sam was found dead in his apartment last night. I'm so sorry.» It didn't mean anything. It bounced off me— it didn't mean anything. Marianne went on. «People at the magazine got worried when he didn't come in to work, didn't answer the phone for two days. They finally broke into the apartment.» The famous anonymous voice was trembling now. «Jacob, I'm so terribly … Jacob, I can't do this anymore, on a machine. Please call me.» She left her number and hung up.
I sat there. I put my drink down, but otherwise I didn't move. I sat very still where I was, and I thought, There's been a mistake. It's his turn to call me on Saturday, I called last week. Marianne's made a mistake. I thought, Oh, Christ, the cat, Millamant — who's feeding Millamant? Those two, back and forth, over and over.
I don't know how late it was when I finally got up and phoned Marianne, but I know I woke her. She said, «I called you last. I called his parents before I could make myself call you.»
«He was just here," I said. «In July, for God's sake. He was fine.» I had to heave the words up one at a time, like prying stones out of a wall. «We went for walks.»
«It was his heart.» Marianne's voice was so toneless and uninflected that she sounded like someone else. «He was in the bathroom — he must have just come home from Lincoln Center — "
«The Schonberg. He was going to review that concert Moses and Aron — "
«He was still wearing his gangster suit, the one he always wore to openings — "
I was with him when he bought that stupid, enviable suit. I said, «The Italian silk thing. I remember.»
Marianne said, «As far as they — the police — as far as anyone can figure, he came home, fed the cat, kicked off his shoes, went into the bathroom and — and died.»
She was crying now, in a hiccupy, totally unprofessional way. «Jacob, they think it was instant. I mean, they don't think he suffered at all.»
I heard myself say, «I never knew he had a heart condition. Secretive little fink, he never told me.»
Marianne managed a kind of laugh. «I don't think he ever told anyone. Even his mother and father didn't know.»
«The cigarettes," I said. «The goddamn cigarettes. He was here last summer, trying to cut down — he said his doctor had scared the hell out of him. I just thought, lung cancer, he's afraid of getting cancer. I never thought about his heart, I'm such an idiot. Oh, God, I have to call them, Mike and Sarah.»
«Not tonight, don't call them tonight.» She'd been getting the voice back under control, but now it went again. «They're in shock; I did it to them, don't you. Wait till morning. Call them in the morning.»
My mouth and throat were so dry they hurt, but I couldn't pick up my drink again. I said, «What's being done? You have to notify people, the police. I don't even know if he had a will. Where's the — where is he now?»
«The police have the body, and the apartment's closed. Sealed — it's what they do when somebody dies without a witness. I don't know what happens next. Jacob, can you please come?»
«Thursday," I said. «Day after tomorrow. I'll catch the redeye right after the last performance.»
«Come to my place. I've moved, there's a guest room.» She managed to give me an East Eighties address before the tears came again. «I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I've been fine all day. I guess it's just caught up with me now.»
«I'm not quite sure why," I said. I heard Marianne draw in her breath, and I went on, «Marianne, I'm sorry, I know how cold that sounds, but you and Sam haven't been an item for — what? — twelve years? Fifteen? I mean, this is me, Marianne. You can't be the grieving widow, it's just not your role.»
I've always said things to Marianne that I'd never say to anyone else — it's the only way to get her full attention. Besides, it made her indignant, which beat the hell out of maudlin. She said, «We always stayed friends, you know that. We'd go out for dinner, he took me to plays — he must have told you. We were always friends, Jacob.»
Sam cried over her. It was the only time that I ever saw Sam cry. «Thursday morning, then. It'll be good to see you.» Words, thanks, sniffles. We hung up.
I couldn't stay sitting. I got up and walked around the room. «Oh, you little bastard," I said aloud. «Kagan, you miserable, miserable twit, who said you could just leave?
We had plans, we were going to be old together, you forgot about that?» I was shouting, bumping into things. «We were going to be these terrible, totally irresponsible old men, so elegant and mannerly nobody would ever believe we just peed in the potted palm. We were going to learn karate, enter the Poker World Series, moon our fiftieth high school reunion, sit in the sun at spring–training baseball camps — we had stuff to do! What the hell were you thinking of, walking out in the middle of the movie? You think I'm about to do all that crap alone?»
I don't know how long I kept it up, but I know I was still yelling while I packed. I didn't have another show lined up after Iceman until the Rep's Christmas Carol went into rehearsal in two months, with Bob Cratchit paying my rent one more time. No pets to feed, no babies crying, no excuses to make to anyone … there's something to be said for being fifty–six, twice divorced and increasingly set in my ways. I'm a good actor, with a fairly wide range for someone who looks quite a bit like Mister Ed, but I've got no more ambition than I have star quality. Which may be a large part of the reason why Sam Kagan and I were so close for so long.
We met in high school, in a drama class. I already knew that I was going to be an actor — though of course it was Olivier back then, not Mister Ed. The teacher was choosing students at random to read various scenes, and we, sitting at neighboring desks, got picked for a dialogue from Major Barbara. I was Adolphus Cusins, Barbara's Salvation Army fiance; Sam played Undershaft, the arms manufacturer. He wasn't familiar with the play, but I was, and with Rex Harrison, who'd played Cusins in the movie, and whose every vocal mannerism I had down cold. Yet when we faced off over Barbara's ultimate allegiance and Sam proclaimed, in an outrageously fragrant British accent, Undershaft's gospel of «money and gunpowder — freedom and power — command of life and command of death," there wasn't an eye in that classroom resting anywhere but on him. I may have known the play better than he, but he knew that it was a play. It was the first real acting lesson I ever had.
I told him so in the hall after class. He looked honestly surprised. «Oh, good night, Undershaft's easy, he's all one thing — in that scene, anyway.» The astonishing accent was even riper than before. «Now Cusins is bloody tricky, Cusins is much harder to play.» He grinned at me — God, were the cigarettes already starting to stain his teeth then? — and added, «You do a great early Harrison, though. Did you ever see St. Martin's Lane? They're running it at the Thalia all next week.»
He was the first person I had ever met in my life who talked like me. What I mean by that is that both of us much preferred theatrical dialogue to ordinary Brooklyn conversation, theatrical structure and action to life as it had been laid out for us. It makes for an awkward childhood — I'm sure that's one reason I got into acting so young — and people like us learn about protective coloration earlier than most. And we tend to recognize each other.
Sam. He was short — notably shorter than I, and I'm not tall — with dark eyes and dark, wavy hair, the transparent skin and soft mouth of a child, and a perpetual look of being just about to laugh. Yet even that early on, he kept his deep places apart: when he did laugh or smile, it was always quick and mischievous and gone. The eyes were warm, but that child's mouth held fast — to what, I don't think I ever knew.