Emilia's face was still so pale that the color on her cheekbones stood out like tribal scars. I don't know what I looked like, but I couldn't make a sound. Emilia took a step forward, her hands out, but Millamant imme–diately backed away. «Talk to me. Please, talk to me. Tell me why we're all here, tell me anything. Please.»
So we sat in the kitchen, Emilia and I, talking to an old cat as we would have talked to our dear lost friend, solemnly telling her our com–monplace news of work and family, of small travels and travails, of his parents in Fort Lauderdale, of how it had been for us in the last two years. Our voices stumbled over each other, often crumbling into tears of still–untrusted joy, then immediately skidding off into broken giggles to hear ourselves earnestly assuring Millamant, «It's been a miserable cou–ple of theater seasons—absolutely nothing you'd have liked.» Millamant looked from one to the other of us, her eyes fiercely attentive, sometimes nodding like a marionette. Emilia clutched my hand painfully tightly, but she was smiling. I have never seen a smile like that one of Emilia's ever again.
She was saying, «And Jake and I have been writing and writing to each other, talking on the phone, telling each other everything we remember—things we didn't know we remembered. Things you maybe wouldn't remember. Sam, we missed you so. I missed you.» When she reached out again, Millamant avoided her touch for a moment; then suddenly yielded and let herself rest between Emilia's hands. The arid, rasping voice said, «Behind the ears. Finally, a body I can dance in, but I can't figure out about scratching.»
Nobody said anything for a while. Emilia was totally involved in caress–ing Millamant, and I was feeling more and more like the most flagrant voyeur. I didn't have to look at Emilia's face, or listen to Millamant's purr–ing; merely to watch those yearning hands at work in the thin, patchy fur was to spy on an altogether private matter. I make jokes when I'm edgy. I said to Emilia, «Be careful—he could be a dybbuk. It'd be just like him.» Emilia, not knowing the Yiddish word, looked puzzled; but Millamant let out a brief, contemptuous yowl, a feline equivalent of Sam's old Oh, good night! snort of disdain. «Of course, I'm not a bloody dybbuk!
Don't you read Singer? A dybbuks a wandering soul, demons chasing it all around the universe—it needs a body, a place to hide. Not me—nobody's chasing me.» The voice hesitated slightly for a second time. «Except maybe you two.»
I looked at Emilia, expecting her to say something. When she didn't, I finally mumbled—just as lamely as it reads — «We needed to talk about you. We didn't have anyone else to talk to.»
«If not for Jake," Emilia said. «Sam, if it weren't for Jake, if he hadn't known me at your funeral — " she caught her breath only momentarily on the word " — Sam, I would have disappeared. I'd have gone right on, like always, like everybody else, but I would have disappeared.»
Millamant hardly seemed to be listening. She said thoughtfully, «I'll be damned. I'm hungry.»
«I'll make you a quesadilla," I said, eager to be doing something prac–tical. «Cheese and scallions and Ortega diced chilies—I've still got a can from the last time you were here. Take me ten minutes.»
The look both Millamant and Emilia gave me was pure cat. I said, «Oh. Right. Wet or dry?»
Nothing in life—nothing even in Shakespeare—adequately prepares you for the experience of opening a can of Whiskas with Bits O' Beef for your closest friend, who's been dead for two years. Millamant ambled over to the battered stoneware dish that Emilia had brought with her from New York, sniffed once, then dug in with a voracity I'd never seen in either Sam or her. She went through that red–brown glop like a snow–plow, and looked around for more.
Scraping the rest into her dish, I couldn't help asking, «How can you be hungry, anyway? Are you the one actually tasting this stuff, or is it all Millamant?»
«Interesting point.» The Abyssinian had Whiskas on her nose. «It's Millamant who needs to eat—it's Millamant getting the nourishment—but I think I'm beginning to see why she likes it. Very odd. Sort of the phantom of a memory of taste. A touch of nutmeg would help.»
She dived back into her dinner, obliviously, leaving Emilia and me staring at each other in confusion so identical that there was no need to speak, possibly ever again. Emilia finally managed to ask, «What do we do now?» and I answered, «Like a divorce. We work out who gets cus–tody, and who gets visiting rights.»
Emilia said, «She doesn't belong to us. She was Sam's cat, and he's … returned.»
«To take possession, as you might say. Right. We can't even be certain that she's exactly a cat anymore, what with Sam in residence.» I realized that I was just this side of hysterical, and closing fast. «Emilia, you'd better take him—her—them—home with you. I'm an actor, I pretend for a living, and this is altogether too much reality for me. You take Millamant home—what I'll do, I'll just call on the weekends, the way we used to do. Sam and I.»
I don't know what Emilia would have said—her eyes were definitely voting for scooping up Millamant that very moment and heading for the airport—but the cat herself looked up from an empty dish at that moment to remark, in the mechanical tone I was already coming to accept as Sam, «Calm down, Jake. You're overplaying again.»
It happens to be one of my strengths as an actor that I never overplay. The man saw me act exactly three times after high school, and that makes him an expert on my style. I was still spluttering as Millamant sat down in the kitchen doorway, curling her tail around her hind legs.
«Well," the voice said. «I'm back. Where I'm back from — " and it fal–tered momentarily, while Millamant's old eyes seemed to lose all defi–nition between iris and pupil " — where I'm back from doesn't go into words. I don't know what it really is, or where—or when. I don't know whether I'm a ghost, or a zombie, or just some kind of seriously per–turbed spirit. If I were a dybbuk, at least I'd know I was a dybbuk, that would be something.» Millamant licked the bit of Whiskas off her nose. «But here I am anyway, ready or not. I can talk, I can dance—my God, I can dance —and I'm reunited with the only two people in the world who could have summoned me. Or whatever it was you did.»
Abruptly she began washing her face, making such a deliberate job of it that I was about to say something pointed about extended dramatic pauses, when Sam spoke again. «But for how long? I could be gone any minute, or I could last as long as Millamant lasts—and she could go any minute herself. What happens then? Do I go off to kitty heaven with her—or do I find myself in Jake's blender? One of Emilia's angelfish? What happens then?»
Nobody answered. Millamant sat up higher on her haunches, until she looked like the classic Egyptian statue of Bastet, the cat goddess. Out of her mouth Sam said very quietly, «We don't know. We have no idea. I cer–tainly wish somebody had read the instruction manual.»
«There wasn't any manual," I said. «We didn't know we were sum–moning you—we didn't know we were doing anything except missing you, and trying to comfort ourselves the best we could.» I was calm–ing down, and paradoxically irritable with it. «Not everybody has people wishing for him so hard that they snatch him right back from death. I'm sorry if we woke you.»
«Oh, I was awake.» The cold voice was still soft and faraway. «Or maybe not truly awake, but you can't quite get to sleep, either. Jake … Emilia … I can't tell you what it's like. I'm not even sure whether it's death—or maybe that's it, that's just it, that's really the way death is. I can't tell you.»