“No movies,” Rosemary said. “He was in two plays called Luther and Nobody Loves An Albatross and he does a lot of work in television and radio.”
They had the coffee and cake in the kitchen, Mrs. Castevet refusing to let Rosemary disturb the living room on her account. “Listen, Rosemary,” she said, swallowing cake and coffee at once, “I’ve got a two-inch-thick sirloin steak sitting defrosting right this minute, and half of it’s going to go to waste with just Roman and me there to eat it. Why don’t you and Guy come over and have supper with us tonight, what do you say?”
“Oh, no, we couldn’t,” Rosemary said.
“Sure you could; why not?”
“No, really, I’m sure you don’t want to-“
“It would be a big help to us if you would,” Mrs. Castevet said. She looked into her lap, then looked up at Rosemary with a hard-to-carry smile. “We had friends with us last night and Saturday,” she said, “but this’ll be the first night we’ll be alone since-the other night.”
Rosemary leaned forward feelingly. “If you’re sure it won’t be trouble for you,” she said.
“Honey, if it was trouble I wouldn’t ask you,” Mrs. Castevet said. “Believe me, I’m as selfish as the day is long.”
Rosemary smiled. “That isn’t what Terry told me,” she said. “Well,” Mrs. Castevet said with a pleased smile, “Terry didn’t know what she was talking about.”
“I’ll have to check with Guy,” Rosemary said, “but you go ahead and count on us.”
Mrs. Castevet said happily, “Listen! You tell him I won’t take no for an answer! I want to be able to tell folks I knew him when!”
They ate their cake and coffee, talking of the excitements and hazards of an acting career, the new season’s television shows and how bad they were, and the continuing newspaper strike.
“Will six-thirty be too early for you?” Mrs. Castevet asked at the door.
“It’ll be perfect,” Rosemary said.
“Roman don’t like to eat any later than that,” Mrs. Castevet said. “He has stomach trouble and if he eats too late he can’t get to sleep. You know where we are, don’t you? Seven A, at six-thirty. We’ll be looking forward. Oh, here’s your mail, dear; I’ll get it. Ads. Well, it’s better than getting nothing, isn’t it?”
Guy came home at two-thirty in a bad mood; he had learned from his agent that, as he had feared, the grotesquely named Donald Baumgart had won the part he had come within a hair of getting. Rosemary kissed him and installed him in his new easy chair with a melted cheese sandwich and a glass of beer. She had read the script of the play and not liked it; it would probably close out of town, she told Guy, and Donald Baumgart would never be heard of again.
“Even if it folds,” Guy said, “it’s the kind of part that gets noticed. You’ll see; he’ll get something else right after.” He opened the corner of his sandwich, looked in bitterly, closed it, and started eating.
“Mrs. Castevet was here this morning,” Rosemary said. “To thank me for telling them that Terry was grateful to them. I think she really just wanted to see the apartment. She’s absolutely the nosiest person I’ve ever seen. She actually asked the prices of things.”
“No kidding,” Guy said.
“She comes right out and admits she’s nosy, though, so it’s kind of funny and forgivable instead of annoying. She even looked into the medicine chest.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that. And guess what she was wearing.”
“A Pillsbury sack with three X’s on it.”
“No, toreador pants.”
“Toreador pants?”
“Lime-green ones.”
“Ye gods.”
Kneeling on the floor between the bay windows, Rosemary drew a line on brown paper with crayon and a yardstick and then measured the depth of the window seats. “She invited us to have dinner with them this eveping,” she said,
and looked at Guy. “I told her I’d have to check with you, but that it would probably be okay.”
“Ah, Jesus, Ro,” Guy said, “we don’t want to do that, do we?”
“I think they’re lonely,” Rosemary said. “Because of Terry.”
“Honey,” Guy said, “if we get friendly with an old couple like that we’re never going to get them off our necks. They’re right here on the same floor with us, they’ll be looking in six times a day. Especially if she’s nosy to begin with.”
“I told her she could count on us,” Rosemary said.
“I thought you told her you had to check first.”
“I did, but I told her she could count on us too.” Rosemary looked helplessly at Guy. “She was so anxious for us to come.”
“Well it’s not my night for being kind to Ma and Pa Kettle,” Guy said. “I’m sorry, honey, call her up and tell her we can’t make it.”
“All right, I will,” Rosemary said, and drew another line with the crayon and the yardstick.
Guy finished his sandwich. “You don’t have to sulk about it,” he said.
“I’m not sulking,” Rosemary said. “I see exactly what you mean about them being on the same floor. It’s a valid point and you’re absolutely right. I’m not sulking at all.”
“Oh hell,” Guy said, “we’ll go.”
“No, no, what for? We don’t have to. I shopped for dinner before she came, so that’s no problem.”
“We’ll go,” Guy said.
“We don’t have to if you don’t want to. That sounds so phony but I really mean it, really I do.”
“We’ll go. It’ll be my good deed for the day.”
“All right, but only if you want to. And we’ll make it very clear to them that it’s only this one time and not the beginning of anything. Right?”
“Right.”
Six
At a few minutes past six-thirty Rosemary and Guy left their apartment and walked through the branches of dark green hallway to the Castevets’ door. As Guy rang the doorbell the elevator behind them clanged open and Mr. Dubin or Mr. DeVore (they didn’t know which was which) came out carrying a suit swathed in cleaner’s plastic. He smiled and, unlocking the door of 7B next to them, said, “You’re in the wrong place, aren’t you?” Rosemary and Guy made friendly laughs and he let himself in, calling “Me!” and allowing them a glimpse of a black sideboard and red- and-gold wallpaper.
The Castevets’ door opened and Mrs. Castevet was there, powdered and rouged and smiling broadly in light green silk and a frilled pink apron. “Perfect timing!” she said. “Come on in! Roman’s making Vodka Blushes in the blender. My, I’m glad you could come, Guy! I’m fixing to tell people I knew you when! ‘Had dinner right off that plate, he did-Guy Woodhouse in person!’ I’m not going to wash it when you’re done; I’m going to leave it just as is!”
Guy and Rosemary laughed and exchanged glances; Your friend, his said, and hers said, What can I do?
There was a large foyer in which a rectangular table was set for four, with an embroidered white cloth, plates that didn’t all match, and bright ranks of ornate silver. To the left the foyer opened on a living room easily twice the size of Rosemary and Guy’s but otherwise much like it. It had one large bay window instead of two smaller ones, and a huge pink marble mantel sculptured with lavish scrollwork. The room was oddly furnished; at the fireplace end there were a settee and a lamp table and a few chairs, and at the opposite end an officelike clutter of file cabinets, bridge tables piled with newspapers, overfilled bookshelves, and a typewriter on a metal stand. Between the two ends of the room was a twenty-foot field of brown wall-to-wall carpet, deep and new-looking, marked with the trail of a vacuum cleaner. In the center of it, entirely alone, a small round table stood holding Life and Look and Scientific American.
Mrs. Castevet showed them across the brown carpet and seated them on the settee; and as they sat Mr. Castevet came in, holding in both hands a small tray on which four cocktail glasses ran over with clear pink liquid. Staring at the rims of the glasses he shuffled forward across the carpet, looking as if with every next step he would
