by Ira Levin
Far below, a tiny horse toppled over on the gold-dusted park side of Central Park South, pulling its carriage over with it. Other horses and carriages lay in a row behind it. Cars and busses stood still, dark flecks and gold dust beside them.
She wept.
If she had come up here Wednesday night, when she had first heard Andy calling ... If she had not had her guilt to confuse her . . .
She shuddered.
Drew a breath. Wiped her cheeks with the heels of her hands. Stood tall and looked out, counted six windows with fires in the Fifth Avenue cliff. Flames now in Queens.
She heard him behind her. Get thee behind me, Satan. She said, “I’m staying with Andy.”
“And here I thought you were smart,” Andy said.
She turned to him.
They looked at each other.
“Go,” he said.
“How can I?” she asked him. “I don’t even deserve eternal old age. I don’t even deserve a day more of now.”
“Go,” he said. “Believe me, it’s what you should do. You’ll be okay.”
“Okay?” she said, her eyes tearing. “I’m going to be okay? With everybody in the world dead, and you dead, and me with him? You’re crazy from hunger! You’re insane!”
“Look at me,” he said.
She looked at him. Into his tiger eyes. He said, “Trust me on this one.”
She peered at him. Said, “Really?”
He smiled. “Would I lie?”
They smiled at each other.
She leaned to him, caressed his cheek. She tiptoed, he bent; they kissed lips, chastely.
Smiled at each other.
He stepped aside, raising a wrapped hand toward Joe/Satan, waiting by the open brass cylinder in his white tie and tails, holding his top hat.
She stood a moment and walked—crepe swaying, high heels clicking—across the slick black floor to him.
He ushered her into the red-and-brass cab. She turned—glimpsing Andy standing before the glitter and the clouds, a hand raised—as Joe/Satan got in close against her and the cab closed behind him.
They dropped.
He put his top hat on her head, tipped it back, fluffed some hair out from under. “Cute,” he said, smiling down at her.
She looked ahead at his white tie. Really tied, no clip-on. “How do we get through the gas?” she asked.
“Not to worry.”
She looked up at him smiling at her, red 10-9-8 flicking above his head, L-B-G1-G2 . . .
The cab dropped faster.
Grew hotter.
Starting to sweat, she stared ahead at his tie.
“I can’t wait to get out of this monkey suit,” he said. “The one inside, I mean. Three damn years now I been wearing it.” His hands clawed—clawed—at the tie and the shirt collar, ripped them apart, tore them away with parts of his neck from green-black scales; flung fabric and flesh on brass and red leather.
She stared up into furnace eyes, white horns arcing. “You said it wasn’t hellfire!”
“Rosemary, baby,” he croaked, tearing jacket, shirt, flesh from wet green-black scales, “I LIE! Don’t you know that by now!” He waggled a giant tongue in her face; she shut her eyes and screamed, his arms hugging her. “Ro! Ro!” he cried, holding her, hugging her, kissing her head. “You’re okay! You’re okay!”
She opened her eyes, gasping, panting. “You’re okay,” he said, hugging her, “you’re okay, you’re okay...” She clutched at her paisley pajama top, at a hank of her auburn hair, looked around, gasping, at the room in its early-morning light.
At the posters of Paris and Verona, the yellowing full-page ad for Luther with the red circle near the bottom.
She collapsed against his chest, gasping, sobbing, catching her breath. “Oh Guy!” she said. “It was awful! It went on and on, and I slept, and it started again, and went on and on...”
“Ah my poor baby,” he said, hugging her, kissing her head.
“It was so real!”
“That’s what you get for reading Dracula in bed...”
She leaned from his arms and looked down at the paperback on the floor. “Bram Stoker!” she cried. “Of course!” She caught her breath as he sat back beside her. “We got an apartment in this old house called the Bram,” she said, “the Bramford! First it was midtown, then it was on Central Park West, first it was black, then it was pink, it had gargoyles, it didn’t have gargoyles— basically it was the Dakota, only it was rent-controlled.”
“Wouldn’t that be loverly,” he said, lying back on the bed, yawning, scratching under the waistband of his paisley pajama bottoms.
She turned around and punched at his shoulder. “And you, you rat fink,” she said, “you lent me to a bunch of witches!”
“Never, never!” he said, catching her fist, laughing.
“And I had a baby by Satan!” she said.
“Uh-oh,” he said, pushing her down, climbing over her, “if this is turning into the baby conversation, I’m busy.”
He got off the bed and stepped into the bathroom, pulling the door half closed as she hitched on her knees to the gilt-framed mirror canted from the wall at the foot of the bed. “Oh God!” she said, clapping her chest, leaning close to the glass. She stroked her cheeks, grasped her hair, kissed it, eyed her eyes, fingered the skin around them, caressed her cheeks, her throat, her hands. “I was fifty-eight!” she said. “I didn’t look it but that’s what I was supposed to be! It was awful! I looked like my Aunt Peg!”
“Isn’t she the cute one?”
“Yeah, but still—fifty-eight?” She whistled. “Wow, what a relief to be young again! It was so real! The whole thing!” She sat back on her haunches, frowned. “It was 1999,” she said. “It was weird. My son and I, we were like . . . like Jesus and Mary . . . but very different...” She shook her head, kneeled and studied her cheeks again. Looked really close at them. Checked a teensy spot. “I’ve got to take better care of my skin,” she said.
“It’s good I’m up early. I’m going to go to that open call for Drat! The Cat!”
“It was a hit in 1999,” she said, checking around her left eye. “A revival.”
“I’ll tell them, they’ll be thrilled. I mean it, it’s a great line to come on with. ‘Gentlemen, I’m happy to announce you’ve got a hit! My wife is a psychic and she dreamed last night that there’s going to be a revival in 1999!”
“Since when am I a psychic?” she asked, looking in the mirror, folding her side hair up and under.
“Hey, this is show biz, remember?”
She said, “The skates had all four wheels in a line.”
“I won’t tell them that.”
She chuckled. “There was a big gold tower at Columbus Circle,” she said, looking at the other side of her head with the hair held shorter. “That’s where I lived in the part where I was old.”
“Where was I then?”
“Either dead or not famous,” she said.
“Same thing.”
She smiled at his little joke. Said, “I just may let Ernie cut my hair...” The phone rang; she turned, flopped down, found it on the floor on the second ring, picked up the black handset. “Hello?” she said.
“Hul-lo, my angel! Sorry if I woke you.”
“Hutch!” she cried, rolling over on her back, stretching the cord. “You can’t imagine how glad I am to hear you! I had the most awful dream, a coven of witches cast a spell on you!”
“It was prophetic, that’s exactly how I feel; I was out on a bender last night and I’m at the Racquet Club trying to steam away the aftereffects. Gerald Reynolds is here. Tell me, have you and Guy found new digs yet?”
“No,” she said, sitting up, “and we’re desperate. We have to be out by the end of the month; that’s when everything gets shut off.”
“You shall bless me, my child. Do you remember my telling you about Gerald’s apartment? With the jungle and the parrots? In the Dakota?”
“We were just talking about it!�
�� she said. “The Dakota, I mean! Not—the apartment...” She clasped a hank of hair, held the handset, looked ahead.
“He needs someone to sit it for at least a year, maybe more. He’s going home to work on a film with David Lean. He’s absolutely desperate for someone responsible to tend the flora and fauna. He’s supposed to leave the day after tomorrow; he had a cousin ready to move in but she was hit by a taxi yesterday and will be in hospital for at least six months.”
Guy leaned around the bathroom door, half his face bearded with lather. He mouthed, “An apartment?”
She nodded.
“Are you there?”
“Yes,” she said—switching hands on the phone as Guy sat beside her; he leaned to listen with her, holding his razor. “It’s rent free, my angel! Four rooms in the Dakota, overlooking the park! You’ll be in among the celebrities: Leonard Bernstein! Lauren Bacall! One of the Beatles is dickering for the apartment right next door!”
They looked at each other.
She looked ahead, grasping hair with her free hand.
“Do you want to discuss it with Guy? Though what there is to discuss, I can’t imagine. Seize the moment; there’s another chap here waiting to call someone about it. I’ll hold, I have a nickel, but I’m getting glared at. Oh, before I forget, Roast Mules? Exactly three minutes and twelve seconds by the clock.”
She lowered the handset a few inches.
They looked at each other.
“Ro,” he said, “you can’t possibly be thinking of letting a dream stand in the way. Nobody would! Rent free? The Dakota?”
She looked ahead.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’m grateful to Alan Ladd Jr. and Andrew Wald for getting me off the couch and over to the computer, and to the following people for advice, patience, and friendship, at least two out of three in each instance: Adam and Tara Levin-Delson, Jed and Suzanne Levin, Nicholas Levin, Phyllis Westberg, Michaela Hamilton, Howard Rosenstone, Wendy Schmalz, Patricia Powell, Herbert E. Kaplan, Peter L. Felcher, Julius Medwin, and Ellie and Joe Busman.
Roast Mules was laid upon me at a wedding seven years ago by a man I know only as the father of the actress Bebe Neuwirth. I cursed him for a long time—mildly, because of that daughter—but now I’m grateful to him too. The solution to the puzzle is honest and pleasing. Save your postage.
I.L.
New York
1997
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Acclaimed novelist and playwright Ira Levin (1929-2007) was a native New Yorker whose books include A Kiss Before Dying, Rosemary's Baby, This Perfect Day, The Stepford Wives, The Boys from Brazil, Sliver, and Son of Rosemary. His plays include No Time for Sergeants, Critic's Choice, and Deathtrap (the longest-running thriller in Broadway history). Levin also wrote the lyrics of the Streisand classic He Touched Me, and was the recipient of three Mystery Writers of America Edgar Allan Poe Awards. For more information, please visit www.iralevin.org.
A NOTE ON THE TYPE
The typeface used in this book is a version of Trump Medieval, originally designed in the 1950s by Georg Trump (1896-1985) for the Weber foundry in Stuttgart. Though not officially house designer, the prolific Trump over the years provided the foundry with much of its range of elegant types despite his busy teaching career and being called up in both world wars. Trump Medieval, his masterpiece, is an “old-style” face—that is, one based on Italian fonts of the Renaissance—its name notwithstanding. (Trump may have meant the shaping of its serifs to be reminiscent of gothic architecture.) One noteworthy feature is the relative shortness of the uppercase letters, favored by German designers because the many capitals used in their language interfere with readability if full height. Trump Medieval also has a modified sloped roman instead of a true italic, perhaps to maintain a visual relationship with the distinctive serifs of the roman.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Lyric excerpts from “Let’s Face The Music And Dance” by Irving Berlin © Copyright 1935, 1936 by Irving Berlin © Copyright Renewed. International Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved. Reprinted by Permission.
Lyric excerpts from “Change Partners” by Irving Berlin © Copyright 1937, 1938 by Irving Berlin © Copyright Renewed. International Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved. Reprinted by Permission.
Lyric excerpts from “Blue Skies” by Irving Berlin © Copyright 1926, 1927 by Irving Berlin © Copyright Renewed. International Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved. Reprinted by Permission.
Lyric excerpts from “Isn’t This A Lovely Day (To Be Caught In The Rain)?” by Irving Berlin © Copyright 1935 by Irving Berlin © Copyright Renewed. International Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved. Reprinted by Permission.
Lyric excerpts from “Cheek To Cheek” by Irving Berlin © Copyright 1935 by Irving Berlin © Copyright Renewed. International Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved. Reprinted by Permission.
copyright © 1997 by Ira Levin
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