“No, this is fine, dear,” Mrs. Castevet said.
Rosemary looked outside the door. She could see only the end of the living room that was bridge tables and file cabinets; Guy and Mr. Castevet were at the other end. A plane of blue cigarette smoke lay motionless in the air.
“Rosemary?”
She turned. Mrs. Castevet, smiling, held out a wet plate in a green rubbergloved land.
It took almost an hour to do the dishes and pans and silver, although Rosemary felt she could have done them alone in less than half that time. When she and Mrs. Castevet came out of the kitchen and into the living room, Guy and Mr. Castevet were sitting facing each other on the settee, Mr. Castevet driving home point after point with repeated strikings of his forefinger against his palm.
“Now Roman, you stop bending Guy’s ear with your Modjeska stories,” Mrs. Castevet said. “He’s only listening ‘cause he’s polite.”
“No, it’s interesting, Mrs. Castevet,” Guy said.
“You see?” Mr. Castevet said.
“Minnie,” Mrs. Castevet told Guy. “I’m Minnie and he’s Roman; okay?” She looked mock-defiantly at Rosemary. “Okay?”
Guy laughed. “Okay, Minnie,” he said.
They talked about the Goulds and the Bruhns and Dubin-and-DeVore, about Terry’s sailor brother who had turned out to be in a civilian hospital in Saigon; and, because Mr. Castevet was reading a book critical of the Warren Report, about the Kennedy assassination. Rosemary, in one of the straightbacked chairs, felt oddly out of things, as if the Castevets were old friends of Guy’s to whom she had just been introduced. “Do you think it could have been a plot of some kind?” Mr. Castevet asked her, and she answered awkwardly, aware that a considerate host was drawing a left-out guest into conversation. She excused herself and followed Mrs. Castevet’s directions to the bathroom, where there were flowered paper towels inscribed For Our Guest and a book called Jokes for The John that wasn’t especially funny.
They left at ten-thirty, saying “Good-by, Roman” and “Thank you, Minnie” and shaking hands with an enthusiasm and an implied promise of more such evenings together that, on Rosemary’s part, was completely false. Rounding the first bend in the hallway and hearing the door close behind them, she blew out a relieved sigh and grinned happily at Guy when she saw him doing exactly the same.
“Naow Roman,” he said, working his eyebrows comically, “yew stop bendin’ Guy’s ee-yurs with them that Mojesky sto-tees!”
Laughing, Rosemary cringed and hushed him, and they ran hand in hand on ultra-quiet tiptoes to their own door, which they unlocked, opened, slammed, locked, bolted, chained; and Guy nailed it over with imaginary beams, pushed up three imaginary boulders, hoisted an imaginary drawbridge, and mopped his brow and panted while Rosemary bent over double and laughed into both hands.
“About that steak,” Guy said.
“Oh my God!” Rosemary said. “The pie! How did you eat two pieces of it? It was weird!”
“Dear girl,” Guy said, “that was an act of superhuman courage and selfsacrifice. I said to myself, ‘Ye gods, I’ll bet nobody’s ever asked this old bat for seconds on anything in her entire life! So I did it.” He waved a hand grandly. “Now and again I get these noble urges.”
They went into the bedroom. “She raises herbs and spices,” Rosemary said, “and when they’re full-grown she throws them out the window.”
“Shh, the walls have ears,” Guy said. “Hey, how about that silverware?”
“Isn’t that funny?” Rosemary said, working her feet against the floor to unshoe them; “only three dinner plates that match, and they’ve got that beautiful, beautiful silver.”
“Let’s be nice; maybe they’ll will it to us.”
“Let’s be nasty and buy our own. Did you go to the bathroom?”
“There? No.”
“Guess what they’ve got in it.”
“A bidet.”
“No, Jokes for The John. “
“No.
Rosemary shucked off her dress. “A book on a hook,” she said. “Right next to the toilet.”
Guy smiled and shook his head. He began taking out his cufflinks, standing beside the armoire. “Those stories of Roman’s, though,” he said, “were pretty damn interesting, actually. I’d never even heard of Forties-Robertson before, but he was a very big star in his day.” He worked at the second link, having trouble with it. “I’m going to go over there again tomorrow night and hear some more,” he said.
Rosemary looked at him, disconcerted. “You are?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said, “he asked me.” He held out his hand to her. “Can you get this off for me?”
She went to him and worked at the link, feeling suddenly lost and uncertain. “I thought we were going to do something with Jimmy and Tiger,” she said.
“Was that definite?” he asked. His eyes looked into hers. “I thought we were just going to call and see.”
“It wasn’t definite,” she said.
He shrugged. “We’ll see them Wednesday or Thursday.”
She got the link out and held it on her palm. He took it. “Thanks,” he said. “You don’t have to come along if you don’t want to; you can stay here.”
“I think I will,” she said. “Stay here.” She went to the bed and sat down.
“He knew Henry Irving too,” Guy said. “It’s really terrifically interesting.”
Rosemary unhooked her stockings. “Why did they take down the pictures?” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“Their pictures; they took them down. In the living room and in the hallway leading back to the bathroom. There are hooks in the wall and clean places. And the one picture that is there, over the mantel, doesn’t fit. There are two inches of clean at both sides of it.”
Guy looked at her. “I didn’t notice,” he said.
“And why do they have all those files and things in the living room?” she asked.
“That he told me,” Guy said, taking off his shirt. “He puts out a newsletter for stamp collectors. All over the world. That’s why they get so much foreign mail.”
“Yes, but why in the living room?” Rosemary said. “They have three or four other rooms, all with the doors closed. Why doesn’t he use one of those?”
Guy went to her, shirt in hand, and pressed her nose with a firm fingertip. “You’re getting nosier than Minnie,” he said, kissed air at her, and went out to the bathroom.
Ten or fifteen minutes later, while in the kitchen putting on water for coffee, Rosemary got the sharp pain in her middle that was the night-before signal of her period. She relaxed with one hand against the corner of the stove, letting the pain have its brief way, and then she got out a Chemex paper and the can of coffee, feeling disappointed and forlorn.
She was twenty-four and they wanted three children two years apart; but Guy “wasn’t ready yet”-nor would he ever be ready, she feared, until he was as big as Marlon Brando and Richard Burton put together. Didn’t he know how handsome and talented he was, how sure to succeed? So her plan was to get pregnant by “accident”; the pills gave her headaches, she said, and rubber gadgets were repulsive. Guy said that subconsciously she was still a good Catholic, and she protested enough to support the explanation. Indulgently he studied the calendar and avoided the “dangerous days,” and she said, “No, it’s safe today, darling; I’m sure it is.”
And again this month he had won and she had lost, in this undignified contest in which he didn’t even know they were engaged. “Damn!” she said, and banged the coffee can down on the stove. Guy, in the den, called, “What happened?
“I bumped my elbow!” she called back.
At least she knew now why she had become depressed during the evening.