by Ira Levin
Rosemary and Terry picked up their laundry at eight o’clock, and Terry came in with Rosemary to meet Guy and see the apartment. She blushed and was flustered by Guy, which spurred him to flowery compliments and the bringing of ashtrays and the striking of matches. Terry had never seen the apartment before; Mrs. Gardenia and the Castevets had had a falling-out shortly after her arrival, and soon afterwards Mrs. Gardenia had gone into the coma from which she had never emerged. “It’s a lovely apartment,” Terry said.
“It will be,” Rosemary said. “We’re not even halfway furnished yet.”
“I’ve got it!” Guy cried with a handclap. He pointed triumphantly at Terry. “Anna Maria Alberghetti!”
CHAPTER 4
A PACKAGE CAME from Bonniers, from Hutch; a tall teakwood ice bucket with a bright orange lining. Rosemary called him at once and thanked him. He had seen the apartment after the painters left but not since she and Guy had moved in; she explained about the chairs that were a week late and the sofa that wasn’t due for another month. “For God’s sake don’t even think yet about entertaining,” Hutch said. “Tell me how everything is.”
Rosemary told him, in happy detail. “And the neighbors certainly don’t seem abnormal,” she said. “Except normal abnormal like homosexuals; there are two of them, and across the hall from us there’s a nice old couple named Gould with a place in Pennsylvania where they breed Persian cats. We can have one any time we want.”
“They shed,” Hutch said.
“And there’s another couple that we haven’t actually met yet who took in this girl who was hooked on drugs, whom we have met, and they completely cured her and are putting her through secretarial school.”
“It sounds as if you’ve moved into Sunnybrook Farm,” Hutch said; “I’m delighted.”
“The basement is kind of creepy,” Rosemary said. “I curse you every time I go down there.”
“Why on earth me?”
“Your stories.”
“If you mean the ones I write, I curse me too; if you mean the ones I told you, you might with equal justification curse the fire alarm for the fire and the weather bureau for the typhoon.”
Rosemary, cowed, said, “It won’t be so bad from now on. That girl I mentioned is going down there with me.”
Hutch said, “It’s obvious you’ve exerted the healthy influence I predicted and the house is no longer a chamber of horrors. Have fun with the ice bucket and say hello to Guy.”
The Kapps in apartment 7D appeared; a stout couple in their middle thirties with an inquisitive two-year-old daughter named Lisa. “What’s your name?” Lisa asked, sitting in her stroller. “Did you eat your egg? Did you eat your Captain Crunch?”
“My name is Rosemary,” Rosemary said. “I ate my egg but I’ve never even heard of Captain Crunch. Who is he?”
On Friday night, September 17th, Rosemary and Guy went with two other couples to a preview of a play called Mrs. Dally and then to a party given by a photographer, Dee Bertillon, in his studio on West Forty-eighth Street. An argument developed between Guy and Bertillon over Actors Equity’s policy of blocking the employment of foreign actors—Guy thought it was right, Bertillon thought it was wrong—and though the others present buried the disagreement under a quick tide of jokes and gossip, Guy took Rosemary away soon after, at a few minutes past twelve-thirty.
The night was mild and balmy and they walked; and as they approached the Bramford’s blackened mass they saw on the sidewalk before it a group of twenty or so people gathered in a semicircle at the side of a parked car. Two police cars waited double-parked, their roof lights spinning red.
Rosemary and Guy walked faster, hand in hand, their senses sharpening. Cars on the avenue slowed questioningly; windows scraped open in the Bramford and heads looked out beside gargoyles’ heads. The night doorman Toby came from the house with a tan blanket that a policeman turned to take from him.
The roof of the car, a Volkswagen, was crumpled to the side; the windshield was crazed with a million fractures. “Dead,” someone said, and someone else said, “I look up and I think it’s some kind of a big bird zooming down, like an eagle or something.”
Rosemary and Guy stood on tiptoes, craned over people’s shoulders. “Get back now, will you?” a policeman at the center said. The shoulders separated, a sport-shirted back moved away. On the sidewalk Terry lay, watching the sky with one eye, half of her face gone to red pulp. Tan blanket flipped over her. Settling, it reddened in one place and then another.
Rosemary wheeled, eyes shut, right hand making an automatic cross. She kept her mouth tightly closed, afraid she might vomit.
Guy winced and drew air in under his teeth. “Oh, Jesus,” he said, and groaned. “Oh my God.”
A policeman said, “Get back, will you?”
“We know her,” Guy said.
Another policeman turned and said, “What’s her name?”
“Terry.”
“Terry what?” He was forty or so and sweating. His eyes were blue and beautiful, with thick black lashes.
Guy said, “Ro? What was her name? Terry what?”
Rosemary opened her eyes and swallowed. “I don’t remember,” she said. “Italian, with a G. A long name. She made a joke about spelling it. Not being able to.”
Guy said to the blue-eyed policeman, “She was staying with people named Castevet, in apartment seven A.”
“We’ve got that already,” the policeman said.
Another policeman came up, holding a sheet of pale yellow notepaper. Mr. Micklas was behind him, tight-mouthed, in a raincoat over striped pajamas. “Short and sweet,” the policeman said to the blue-eyed one, and handed him the yellow paper. “She stuck it to the window sill with a Band-Aid so it wouldn’t blow away.”
“Anybody there?”
The other shook his head.
The blue-eyed policeman read what was written on the sheet of paper, sucking thoughtfully at his front teeth. “Theresa Gionoffrio,” he said. He pronounced it as an Italian would. Rosemary nodded.
Guy said, “Wednesday night you wouldn’t have guessed she had a sad thought in her mind.”
“Nothing but sad thoughts,” the policeman said, opening his pad holder. He laid the paper inside it and closed the holder with a width of yellow sticking out.
“Did you know her?” Mr. Micklas asked Rosemary.
“Only slightly,” she said.
“Oh, of course,” Mr. Micklas said; “you’re on seven too.”
Guy said to Rosemary, “Come on, honey, let’s go upstairs.”
The policeman said, “Do you have any idea where we can find these people Castevet?”
“No, none at all,” Guy said. “We’ve never even met them.”
“They’re usually at home now,” Rosemary said. “We hear them through the wall. Our bedroom is next to theirs.”
Guy put his hand on Rosemary’s back. “Come on, hon,” he said. They nodded to the policeman and Mr. Micklas, and started toward the house.
“Here they come now,” Mr. Micklas said. Rosemary and Guy stopped and turned. Coming from downtown, as they themselves had come, were a tall, broad, white-haired woman and a tall, thin, shuffling man. “The Castevets?” Rosemary asked. Mr. Micklas nodded.
Mrs. Castevet was wrapped in light blue, with snow-white dabs of gloves, purse, shoes, and hat. Nurselike she supported her husband’s forearm. He was dazzling, in an every-color seersucker jacket, red slacks, a pink bow tie, and a gray fedora with a pink band. He was seventy-five or older; she was sixty-eight or-nine. They came closer with expressions of young alertness, with friendly quizzical smiles. The policeman stepped forward to meet them and their smiles faltered and fell away. Mrs. Castevet said something worryingly; Mr. Castevet frowned and shook his head. His wide, thin-lipped mouth was rosy-pink, as if lipsticked; his cheeks were chalky, his eyes small and bright in deep sockets. She was big-nosed, with a sullen fleshy underlip. She wore pinkrimmed eyeglasses on a neckchain that dipped down from behind plain
pearl earrings.
The policeman said, “Are you folks the Castevets on the seventh floor?”
“We are,” Mr. Castevet said in a dry voice that had to be listened for.
“You have a young woman named Theresa Gionoffrio living with you?”
“We do,” Mr. Castevet said. “What’s wrong? Has there been an accident?”
“You’d better brace yourselves for some bad news,” the policeman said. He waited, looking at each of them in turn, and then he said, “She’s dead. She killed herself.” He raised a hand, the thumb pointing back over his shoulder. “She jumped out of the window.”
They looked at him with no change of expression at all, as if he hadn’t spoken yet; then Mrs. Castevet leaned sideways, glanced beyond him at the red-stained blanket, and stood straight again and looked him in the eyes. “That’s not possible,” she said in her loud midwestern Roman-bring-me-some-root-beer voice. “It’s a mistake. Somebody else is under there.”
The policeman, not turning from her, said, “Artie, would you let these people take a look, please?”
Mrs. Castevet marched past him, her jaw set.
Mr. Castevet stayed where he was. “I knew this would happen,” he said. “She got deeply depressed every three weeks or so. I noticed it and told my wife, but she pooh-poohed me. She’s an optimist who refuses to admit that everything doesn’t always turn out the way she wants it to.”
Mrs. Castevet came back. “That doesn’t mean that she killed herself,” she said. “She was a very happy girl with no reason for self-destruction. It must have been an accident. She must have been cleaning the windows and lost her hold. She was always surprising us by cleaning things and doing things for us.”
“She wasn’t cleaning windows at midnight,” Mr. Castevet said.
“Why not?” Mrs. Castevet said angrily. “Maybe she was!”
The policeman held out the pale yellow paper, having taken it from his pad holder.
Mrs. Castevet hesitated, then took it and turned it around and read it. Mr. Castevet tipped his head in over her arm and read it too, his thin vivid lips moving.
“Is that her handwriting?” the policeman asked.
Mrs. Castevet nodded. Mr. Castevet said, “Definitely. Absolutely.”
The policeman held out his hand and Mrs. Castevet gave him the paper. He said, “Thank you. I’ll see you get it back when we’re done with it.”
She took off her glasses, dropped them on their neckchain, and covered both her eyes with white-gloved fingertips. “I don’t believe it,” she said. “I just don’t believe it. She was so happy. All her troubles were in the past.” Mr. Castevet put his hand on her shoulder and looked at the ground and shook his head.
“Do you know the name of her next-of-kin?” the policeman asked.
“She didn’t have any,” Mrs. Castevet said. “She was all alone. She didn’t have anyone, only us.”
“Didn’t she have a brother?” Rosemary asked.
Mrs. Castevet put on her glasses and looked at her. Mr. Castevet looked up from the ground, his deep-socketed eyes glinting under his hat brim.
“Did she?” the policeman asked.
“She said she did,” Rosemary said. “In the Navy.”
The policeman looked to the Castevets.
“It’s news to me,” Mrs. Castevet said, and Mr. Castevet said, “To both of us.”
The policeman asked Rosemary, “Do you know his rank or where he’s stationed?”
“No, I don’t,” she said, and to the Castevets: “She mentioned him to me the other day, in the laundry room. I’m Rosemary Woodhouse.”
Guy said, “We’re in seven E.”
“I feel just the way you do, Mrs. Castevet,” Rosemary said. “She seemed so happy and full of—of good feelings about the future. She said wonderful things about you and your husband; how grateful she was to both of you for all the help you were giving her.”
“Thank you,” Mrs. Castevet said, and Mr. Castevet said, “It’s nice of you to tell us that. It makes it a little easier.”
The policeman said, “You don’t know anything else about this brother except that he’s in the Navy?”
“That’s all,” Rosemary said. “I don’t think she liked him very much.”
“It should be easy to find him,” Mr. Castevet said, “with an uncommon name like Gionoffrio.”
Guy put his hand on Rosemary’s back again and they withdrew toward the house. “I’m so stunned and so sorry,” Rosemary said to the Castevets; and Guy said, “It’s such a pity. It’s—”
Mrs. Castevet said, “Thank you,” and Mr. Castevet said something long and sibilant of which only the phrase “her last days” was understandable.
They rode upstairs (“Oh, my!” the night elevator man Diego said; “Oh, my! Oh, my!”), looked ruefully at the now-haunted door of 7A, and walked through the branching hallway to their own apartment. Mr. Kellogg in 7G peered out from behind his chained door and asked what was going on downstairs. They told him.
They sat on the edge of their bed for a few minutes, speculating about Terry’s reason for killing herself. Only if the Castevets told them some day what was in the note, they agreed, would they ever learn for certain what had driven her to the violent death they had nearly witnessed. And even knowing what was in the note, Guy pointed out, they might still not know the full answer, for part of it had probably been beyond Terry’s own understanding. Something had led her to drugs and something had led her to death; what that something was, it was too late now for anyone to know.
“Remember what Hutch said?” Rosemary asked. “About there being more suicides here than in other buildings?”
“Ah, Ro,” Guy said, “that’s crap, honey, that ‘danger zone’ business.”
“Hutch believes it.”
“Well, it’s still crap.”
“I can imagine what he’s going to say when he hears about this.”
“Don’t tell him,” Guy said. “He sure as hell won’t read about it in the papers.” A strike against the New York newspapers had begun that morning, and there were rumors that it might continue a month or longer.
They undressed, showered, resumed a stopped game of Scrabble, stopped it, made love, and found milk and a dish of cold spaghetti in the refrigerator. Just before they put the lights out at two-thirty, Guy remembered to check the answering service and found that he had got a part in a radio commercial for Cresta Blanca wines.
Soon he was asleep, but Rosemary lay awake beside him, seeing Terry’s pulped face and her one eye watching the sky. After a while, though, she was at Our Lady. Sister Agnes was shaking her fist at her, ousting her from leadership of the second-floor monitors. “Sometimes I wonder how come you’re the leader of anything!” she said. A bump on the other side of the wall woke Rosemary, and Mrs. Castevet said, “And please don’t tell me what Laura-Louise said because I’m not interested!” Rosemary turned over and burrowed into her pillow.
Sister Agnes was furious. Her piggy-eyes were squeezed to slits and her nostrils were bubbling the way they always did at such moments. Thanks to Rosemary it had been necessary to brick up all the windows, and now Our Lady had been taken out of the beautiful-school competition being run by the World-Herald. “If you’d listened to me, we wouldn’t have had to do it!” Sister Agnes cried in a hoarse midwestern bray. “We’d have been all set to go now instead of starting all over from scratch!” Uncle Mike tried to hush her. He was the principal of Our Lady, which was connected by passageways to his body shop in South Omaha. “I told you not to tell her anything in advance,” Sister Agnes continued lower, piggy-eyes glinting hatefully at Rosemary. “I told you she wouldn’t be open-minded. Time enough later to let her in on it.” (Rosemary had told Sister Veronica about the windows being bricked up and Sister Veronica had withdrawn the school from the competition; otherwise no one would have noticed and they would have won. It had been right to tell, though, Sister Agnes notwithstanding. A Catholic school shouldn’t win by trickery.) �
��Anybody! Anybody!” Sister Agnes said. “All she has to be is young, healthy, and not a virgin. She doesn’t have to be a no-good drug-addict whore out of the gutter. Didn’t I say that in the beginning? Anybody. As long as she’s young and healthy and not a virgin.” Which didn’t make sense at all, not even to Uncle Mike; so Rosemary turned over and it was Saturday afternoon, and she and Brian and Eddie and Jean were at the candy counter in the Orpheum, going in to see Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal in The Fountainhead, only it was live, not a movie.
CHAPTER 5
ON THE FOLLOWING MONDAY MORNING Rosemary was putting away the last of a double armload of groceries when the doorbell rang; and the peephole showed Mrs. Castevet, white hair in curlers under a blue-and-white kerchief, looking solemnly straight ahead as if waiting for the click of a passport photographer’s camera.
Rosemary opened the door and said, “Hello. How are you?”
Mrs. Castevet smiled bleakly. “Fine,” she said. “May I come in for a minute?”
“Yes, of course; please do.” Rosemary stood back against the wall and held the door wide open. A faint bitter smell brushed across her as Mrs. Castevet came in, the smell of Terry’s silver good luck charm filled with spongy greenish-brown. Mrs. Castevet was wearing toreador pants and shouldn’t have been; her hips and thighs were massive, slabbed with wide hands of fat. The pants were lime green under a blue blouse; the blade of a screwdriver poked from her hip pocket. Stopping between the doorways of the den and kitchen, she turned and put on her neckchained glasses and smiled at Rosemary. A dream Rosemary had had a night or two earlier sparked in her mind—something about Sister Agnes bawling her out for bricking up windows—and she shook it away and smiled attentively, ready to hear what Mrs. Castevet was about to say.