Sam by Lonnie Coleman

Author:Lonnie Coleman
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-12-23T19:58:54+00:00

nine

HOW many times—going to sleep or waking, waiting for a street light to change, watching the second hand of a clock make its long way from one to twelve— had he dreamed this dream? He did not know.

And what emotions had the dream spawned? Satisfaction, self-derision, hopelessness, hope.

The dream was always basically the same, but with small and tantalizing variations. The one thing he had never expected was that it could be matched by reality. Yet it had been, and all the variations had merged, so that he believed this was the only way he had ever dreamed it.

"Miss Fairchild?"

"You are Walter Roland." She said it as if it were something special to be and to acknowledge that you were Walter Roland.

His "Yes" was simple, serious, proud, carried a world of meaning, a universe of promise. Had he ever said the word before and understood it? Had anyone, indeed, ever pronounced it more beautifully?

Everything was right and inevitable: her interested smile, the easy way she took his arm. Similarly easy, right, and inevitable were the promptness with which he got a taxi, the grace with which they entered it, the firm slam of the door, the direction, "Sardi's," the assurance of his question to her, "All right?" and the complacence of her answer "Perfect." No cigarette before had tasted like the one he smoked on the way from the television studio to the restaurant. Its aroma, mixed with the scent of her perfume, filled the taxi with a real glamour he had never known. All that had gone before was illusion.

What did they speak of? Of Eloise McKenzie, the play, casual theater gossip—but as if these were distant and faintly ridiculous things, because they in the taxi, just met, knew each other with an intimacy that nullified the past.

What did she look like? Was she fifty? Plain or fair? Walter smiled in the darkness of the taxi. It did not matter what she looked like; she was Eva Fairchild. He was Walter Roland, and—marvel that there was no marvel in it—they were equal and easy together. He felt quite comfortably that he had already done things he had only dreamed of doing. Sam's name came into his mind, but it had no meaning. It was the name of a person he had known so long ago that the name could not again evoke pleasure or pain.

"Eloise is naughty. I've wanted to meet you for so long, and she kept putting me off. I finally saw you on television last week. She still wouldn't agree. Said you were considering another offer."

"There are no other offers where there is a chance to play with Eva Fairchild."

He had gone too far, too fast. His mind, not entirely used yet to the richness of the living dream, jeered at the words he heard himself say. But her laughter, sweet, pleased, and self-assured, muffled the jeer and reminded him: Eva Fairchild.

It was the same when they entered the restaurant. He had not been inside Sardi's

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