«No, he's not. And he's strong as a horse; he can lift his partners all day and not break a sweat. I can't do that.» All these years, and I can still see the absolute, unarguable shame in his face. «My upper body's never going to be strong enough to do what it has to do. And I look wrong onstage, Jake. My legs are stubby, they spoil the line. It is that bloody simple, and I'm very glad someone finally laid it out for me. Now all I have to do is figure out what exactly to do with the rest of my life.»
He stood up and walked out of the Automat, and by the time I got outside, he was gone. We didn't see each other for the rest of the summer, although we talked on the phone a couple of times. By then, thanks to sending out ninety–four sets of resumes,
I actually had a job waiting for me after graduation, building sets and doing walkons for a rep company in Seattle. Over the next five years I worked my way down to the Bay Area, by way of theaters in Eugene and Portland and stock jobs all over Northern California. I've been here in Avicenna ever since.
But we did stay in contact, Sam and I. I broke the ice, sending light postcards from the summer tours, and then a real letter from my first real address—South Parnell Street, that was. Two rooms and a ficus plant.
He didn't answer for some while, long enough that I began to believe he never would. But when it did come, the letter began with typical abruptness, asking whether I remembered The Body Snatcher, an old Val Lewton movie we'd loved and seen half a dozen times.
Remember that splendid, chilling moment when Karloff says through his teeth, «And I have done some things that I did not want to do…»? Me these last several years. I'll tell you the worst straight off, and leave the rest to your imagination. No, not the year spent teaching folk–dancing in Junior High School 80—much worse than that. I am become an Arts Cricket! Pray for me…
We'd been using Gully Jimson's term for a critic ever since reading The Horse's Mouth in high school. Sam's letter went on to say that he was writing regularly for a brand–new Manhattan arts magazine, now and then for a couple of upstate papers, and lately even filing occasional dis–patches to Japan:
I mostly review music, sometimes theater, sometimes movies, if the first–stringer's off at Sundance or Cannes. No, Jake, I don't ever cover dance. I don't dare write about dance, because I couldn't possibly be fair to people who are up there doing what I want to do more than I want anything in the world. Music, yes. I can manage music…
We wrote, and sometimes called, for another three years before we met again. I hope my letters weren't as full of myself as I'm sure they were: entirely concerned with what plays I'd auditioned for, what roles I should have gotten, what actors I scorned or admired; what celebrated direc–tor had seemed very impressed but never called back. Sam, on the other hand, recounted the astonishing success of Ceilidh, the new magazine, described every editor and photographer he worked with; detailed, with solemn hilarity, the kind of performance he was most often sent to cover. «Most of them are so far avant that they lap the field and become the derriere–garde. Try to imagine the Three Stooges on downers.»
But of his own feelings and dreams, of his world beyond work, of how he lived without dancing—nothing, not ever. And there we left it until I came to New York for a smallish part in a goodish play that survived barely a month. It was to be my Broadway break, that one—to be in it I turned down a tv movie, which later spun off into a syndicated series that's probably still running somewhere. I have an infallible gift for pick–ing the losing side.
I never regretted the gamble, though, for I stayed with Sam during our brief run. He had found a studio apartment in the West Seventies, half a block off Columbus: one huge, high room, a vestigial kitchen nook, a bathroom, a deep and sinister coat closet that Sam called «The Dark Continent," a solid wall of books, the two biggest stereo speakers I'd ever seen, and a mattress in a far corner. I slept on the floor by the stereo that month, in a tangle of quilts from his Brooklyn bedroom. It was the first time we'd ever spent together as adults, with jobs to go to instead of classes. We kept completely different hours, what with me being at the theater six nights and two afternoons a week, while Sam put in five full days at the magazine, and was likely to be off covering a performance in the evenings. Yet we bumbled along so comfortably that I can't recall a cross word between us—only an evening when something changed.
At the time I was skidding into my first marriage, a head–on collision, born of mutual misunderstandings, with the woman who was lighting the play. On the windy, rainy evening that the closing notice was posted, she and I had a fight about nothing, and I sulked my way back to Sam's place to find him practicing a Bach sarabande on his classical guitar. He wasn't very good, and he wouldn't ever be good, no matter how dutifully he worked at it, and to my shame I said so that night. «Give it up, Sam. You haven't made a dent in that poor Bach in all the time I've been here. Guitar's just not your instrument—it's like me and directing. I can't even get three people lined up properly for a photograph. It's not the end of the world.»
Sam didn't pay the least bit of attention to me. When the sarabande finally lurched to a close, he said, «Jake, I don't have any illusions about the way I play. But I don't think anyone should write about music who doesn't have at least some idea of what it takes to make your fingers pull one clear note out of an instrument. Out of yourself.»
«The guitar you keep hacking at. The thing you could do, you quit. Right.» I can still hear the pure damn meanness in my voice.
Sam put the guitar away and began rummaging in the refrigerator for a couple of beers. His back was to me when he said, «Yes, well, I did have some illusions about my dancing.» He hadn't used the word all during my visit. «But that's what they were, Jake, illusions, and I'm glad I understood that when I did. I haven't lost any sleep over them in … what? Years.»
«You were good," I said. «You were terrific.» Sam didn't turn or answer. Completely out of character, out of control, I kept pushing. «Ever wish you hadn't quit?»
«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.