He thinks it was at Alice Tully Hall. Anyway, Lincoln Center. They were at the first of a series of five Sunday afternoon concerts of the complete quartets and Grosse Fugue of Beethoven. It was May or June, they were both done teaching and he was back living with her in their apartment in New York. They sat high up in the balcony, which was all they could afford. He was looking around before the concert began and saw someone he knew. “What do you know,” he said, “Adam Nadelwitz — the bearded guy there,” pointing to a man two rows down and about ten seats over to the right. “He handled my work for a couple of years. First-rate rep as an agent and a really nice guy. So nice, that he didn’t have the heart to tell me my work was unsalable — afraid, if you can believe someone thought this of me, of hurting my feelings — so I had to ask for it back myself. I want you to meet him.” They went over to him at intermission — Adam stayed in his seat, was reading the program — and he said “Adam, hi; Marty Samuels,” and Adam said “Why hello there,” and they shook hands. “My wife Gwendolyn Liederman,” and Adam said “Nice to meet you, Gwendolyn,” and they shook hands. “So how are you? How’s Ellie?” and he said to Gwen “His wife represented my one Y.A. novel and also had no luck in selling it. Well, not much to sell. I went to some great parties they gave at their apartment for their writers — Adam handled the adult fiction and Ellie the juvenile.” Adam said “You’ll have to forgive me, Martin, I thought you knew. I don’t know why I assumed all my former clients did. But my dear wife died a little more than a year ago,” and gave the date in March. Then he seemed about to cry, said “Excuse me,” and covered his eyes with his program and then wiped them with a handkerchief. “I’m so sorry, Adam,” he said, and Adam said “As am I for making you uncomfortable by springing the news. I thought I was finished with falling apart and making a terrible scene when I meet someone who knew Ellie but didn’t know she had died. It was of something rare to do with one of her organs, if you were about to ask. Very quick. I won’t go into it. Please excuse me, you two. I have to go to the restroom. If I don’t see you after the concert, Martin, we should get together someday, although I know it’s difficult for you to, living down South. You see, I’ve kept up with you.” “We still keep our apartment here. Gwen hasn’t moved down yet but will in August, when we’ll be waiting out the birth of our first child.” “I thought so,” Adam said to Gwen, “not that you’re showing much. This is wonderful, just wonderful. Good luck to you both,” and he went up the steps to the exit. “Damnit,” he said when they got back to their seats, “I wish I had known about Ellie before I so smilingly approached him. And I called myself ‘Marty.’ I don’t know why; I never do. Was there a memorial for her and I wasn’t told? I would’ve gone, if I were in New York. They were very close, personally and professionally. Had no children. He was very open about it. Said they’d tried for years and she wanted to adopt and he didn’t. So it must have been a combination of you being visibly pregnant and that we seemed so obviously happy, that upset him so much.” And she said “I’m sure his reaction to seeing you for the first time since she died would have been the same, especially when he had to tell you she was dead. I can’t imagine such a loss,” and he said “Neither can I, and I don’t want to.” Adam didn’t come back to his seat. They looked for him at the next concert and the one after that. “It’s possible he only had a ticket for the first concert,” she said, “or is sitting downstairs,” and he said “Maybe, but I bet he bought for all five. And like us, the same seat, which was empty the last time till someone, probably from higher up in the balcony, took it during intermission, and all the seats in that row are taken today, which could mean he gave his ticket away. Nah, when we weren’t talking about why publishers weren’t taking my work, we talked about music. He was as much a lover of it as I, and Beethoven was his favorite.”
