combination study and greenhouse. Hundreds of small plants, dying and dead, stood on ferry-built shelves under spirals of unlighted fluorescent tubing; in their midst a rolltop desk spilled over with books and papers. A handsome desk it was, broad and gleaming with age. Rosemary left Guy and Mr. Micklas talking by the door and went to it, stepping over a shelf of withered brown fronds. Desks like this were displayed in antique-store windows; Rosemary wondered, touching it, if it was one of the things that could be had practically for the asking. Graceful blue penmanship on mauve paper said than merely the intriguing pastime I believed it to be. I can no longer associate myself-and she caught herself snooping and looked up at Mr. Micklas turning from Guy. “Is this desk one of the things Mrs. Gardenia’s son wants to sell?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Mr. Micklas said. “I could find out for you, though.”
“It’s a beauty,” Guy said.
Rosemary said “Isn’t it?” and smiling, looked about at walls and windows. The room would accommodate almost perfectly the nursery she had imagined. It was a bit dark-the windows faced on a narrow courtyard-but the white and-yellow wallpaper would brighten it tremendously. The bathroom was small but a bonus, and the closet, filled with potted seedlings that seemed to be doing quite well, was a good one.
They turned to the door, and Guy asked, “What are all these?”
“Herbs, mostly,” Rosemary said. “There’s mint and basil . . . I don’t know what these are.”
Farther along the hallway there was a guest closet on the left, and then, on the right, a wide archway opening onto the living room. Large bay windows stood opposite, two of them, with diamond panes and three-sided window seats. There was a small fireplace in the right-hand wall, with a scrolled white marble mantel, and there were high oak bookshelves on the left.
“Oh, Guy,” Rosemary said, finding his hand and squeezing it. Guy said “Mm” noncommittally but squeezed back; Mr. Micklas was beside him.
“The fireplace works, of course,” Mr. Micklas said.
The bedroom, behind them, was adequate-about twelve by eighteen, with its windows facing on the same narrow courtyard as those of the dining-room second-bedroom-nursery. The bathroom, beyond the living room, was big, and full of bulbous white brass-knobbed fixtures.
“It’s a marvelous apartment!” Rosemary said, back in the living room. She spun about with opened arms, as if to take and embrace it. “I love it!”
“What she’s trying to do,” Guy said, “is get you to lower the rent.”
Mr. Micklas smiled. “We would raise it if we were allowed,” he said. “Beyond the fifteen-per-cent increase, I mean. Apartments with this kind of charm and individuality are as rare as hen’s teeth today. The new-“ He stopped short, looking at a mahogany secretary at the head of the central hallway. “That’s odd,” he said. “There’s a closet behind that secretary. I’m sure there is. There are five: two in the bedroom, one in the second bedroom, and two in the hallway, there and there.” He went closer to the secretary.
Guy stood high on tiptoes and said, “You’re right. I can see the corners of the door.”
“She moved it,” Rosemary said. “The secretary; it used to be there.” She pointed to a peaked silhouette left ghostlike on the wall near the bedroom door, and the deep prints of four ball feet in the burgundy carpet. Faint scuff-trails curved and crossed from the four prints to the secretary’s feet where they stood now against the narrow adjacent wall.
“Give me a hand, will you?” Mr. Micklas said to Guy.
Between them they worked the secretary bit by bit back toward its original place. “I see why she went into a coma,” Guy said, pushing.
“She couldn’t have moved this by herself,” Mr. Micklas said; “she was eighty-nine.”
Rosemary looked doubtfully at the closet door they had uncovered. “Should we open it?” she asked. “Maybe her son should.”
The secretary lodged neatly in its four footprints. Mr. Micklas massaged his fingers-missing hands. “I’m authorized to show the apartment,” he said, and went to the door and opened it. The closet was nearly empty; a vacuum cleaner stood at one side of it and three or four wood boards at the other. The overhead shelf was stacked with blue and green bath towels.
“Whoever she locked in got out,” Guy said.
Mr. Micklas said, “She probably didn’t need five closets.”
“But why would she cover up her vacuum cleaner and her towels?” Rosemary asked.
Mr. Micklas shrugged. “I don’t suppose we’ll ever know. She may have been getting senile after all.” He smiled. “Is there anything else I can show you or tell you?”
“Yes,” Rosemary said. “What about the laundry facilities? Are there washing machines downstairs?”
They thanked Mr. Micklas, who saw them out onto the sidewalk, and then they walked slowly uptown along Seventh Avenue.
“It’s cheaper than the other,” Rosemary said, trying to sound as if practical considerations stood foremost in her mind.
“It’s one room less, honey,” Guy said.
Rosemary walked in silence for a moment, and then said, “It’s better located.”
“God, yes,” Guy said. “I could walk to all the theaters.”
Heartened, Rosemary leaped from practicality. “Oh Guy, let’s take it! Please! Please! It’s such a wonderful apartment! She didn’t do anything with it, old Mrs. Gardenia! That living room could be-it could be beautiful, and warm, and-oh please, Guy, let’s take it, all right?”
“Well sure,” Guy said, smiling. “If we can get out of the other thing.”
Rosemary grabbed his elbow happily. “We will!” she said. “You’ll think of something, I know you will!”
Guy telephoned Mrs. Cortez from a glass-walled booth while Rosemary, outside, tried to lip-read. Mrs. Cortez said she would give them until three o’clock; if she hadn’t heard from them by then she would call the next party on the waiting list.
They went to the Russian Tea Room and ordered Bloody Mary’s and chicken salad sandwiches on black bread.
“You could tell them I’m sick and have to go into the hospital,” Rosemary said.
But that was neither convincing nor compelling. Instead Guy spun a story about a call to join a company of Come Blow Your Horn leaving for a four month USO tour of Vietnam and the Far East. The actor playing Alan had broken his hip and unless he, Guy, who knew the part from stock, stepped in and replaced him, the tour would have to be postponed for at least two weeks. Which would be a damn shame, the way those kids over there were slugging away against the Commies. His wife would have to stay with her folks in Omaha . . .
He ran it twice and went to find the phone.
Rosemary sipped her drink, keeping her left hand all-fingers-crossed under the table. She thought about the First Avenue apartment she didn’t want and made a conscientious mental list of its good points: the shiny new kitchen, the dishwasher, the view of the East River, the central air conditioning . . .
The waitress brought the sandwiches.
A pregnant woman went by in a navy blue dress. Rosemary watched her. She must have been in her sixth or seventh month, talking back happily over her shoulder to an older woman with packages, probably her mother.
Someone waved from the opposite wall-the red-haired girl who had come into CBS a few weeks before Rosemary left. Rosemary waved back. The girl mouthed something and, when Rosemary didn’t understand, mouthed it again. A man facing the girl turned to look at Rosemary, a starved-looking waxen faced man.
And there came Guy, tall and handsome, biting back his grin, with yes glowing all over him.
“Yes?” Rosemary asked as he took his seat opposite her.
“Yes,” he said. “The lease is void; the deposit will be returned; I’m to keep an eye open for Lieutenant Hartman of the Signal Corps. Mrs. Cortez awaits us at two.”
“You called her?”
“I called her.”
The red-haired girl was suddenly with them, flushed and bright-eyed. “I said ‘Marriage certainly agrees with you, you look marvelous,”’ she said.
Rosemary, ransacking for the girl’s name, laughed and said, “Thank you! We’re celebrating. We just got an apartment in the Bramford!”
“The Bram?” the girl said. “I’m mad about it! If you ever want to sub-let, I’m first, and don’t you forget it! All
