by Ira Levin
The door closed and was chained (Good!) and bolted (Good!). Rosemary watched and waited, and Guy sidled into the archway, smiling smugly, with both hands behind his back. “Who says there’s nothing to ESP?” he said, and coming toward the table brought forth his hands with two white custard cups sitting one on each palm. “Madame and Monsieur shall have ze dessairt after all,” he said, setting one cup by Rosemary’s wineglass and the other by his own. “Mousse au chocolat,” he said, “or ‘chocolate mouse,’ as Minnie calls it. Of course with her it could be chocolate mouse, so eat with care.”
Rosemary laughed happily. “That’s wonderful,” she said. “It’s what I was going to make.”
“See?” Guy said, sitting. “ESP.” He replaced his napkin and poured more wine.
“I was afraid she was going to come charging in and stay all evening,” Rosemary said, forking up carrots.
“No,” Guy said, “she just wanted us to try her chocolate mouse, seein’ as how it’s one of her speci-al-ities.”
“It looks good.”
“It does, doesn’t it.”
The cups were filled with peaked swirls of chocolate. Guy’s was topped with a sprinkling of chopped nuts, and Rosemary’s with a half walnut.
“It’s sweet of her, really,” Rosemary said. “We shouldn’t make fun of her.”
“You’re right,” Guy said, “you’re right.”
The mousse was excellent, but it had a chalky undertaste that reminded Rosemary of blackboards and grade school. Guy tried but could find no “undertaste” at all, chalky or otherwise. Rosemary put her spoon down after two swallows. Guy said, “Aren’t you going to finish it? That’s silly, honey; there’s no ‘undertaste.’”
Rosemary said there was.
“Come on,” Guy said, “the old bat slaved all day over a hot stove; eat it.”
“But I don’t like it,” Rosemary said.
“It’s delicious.”
“You can have mine.”
Guy scowled. “All right, don’t eat it,” he said; “you don’t wear the charm she gave you, you might as well not eat her dessert too.”
Confused, Rosemary said, “What does one thing have to do with the other?”
“They’re both examples of—well, unkindness, that’s all.” Guy said. “Two minutes ago you said we should stop making fun of her. That’s a form of making fun too, accepting something and then not using it.”
“Oh—” Rosemary picked up her spoon. “If it’s going to turn into a big scene—” She took a full spoonful of the mousse and thrust it into her mouth.
“It isn’t going to turn into a big scene,” Guy said. “Look, if you really can’t stand it, don’t eat it.”
“Delicious,” Rosemary said, full-mouthed and taking another spoonful, “no undertaste at all. Turn the records over.”
Guy got up and went to the record player. Rosemary doubled her napkin in her lap and plopped two spoonfuls of the mousse into it, and another half-spoonful for good measure. She folded the napkin closed and then showily scraped clean the inside of the cup and swallowed down the scrapings as Guy came back to the table. “There, Daddy,” she said, tilting the cup toward him. “Do I get a gold star on my chart?”
“Two of them,” he said. “I’m sorry if I was stuffy.”
“You were.”
“I’m sorry.” He smiled.
Rosemary melted. “You’re forgiven,” she said. “It’s nice that you’re considerate of old ladies. It means you’ll be considerate of me when I’m one.”
They had coffee and crème de menthe.
“Margaret called this afternoon,” Rosemary said.
“Margaret?”
“My sister.”
“Oh. Everything okay?”
“Yes. She was afraid something had happened to me. She had a feeling.”
“Oh?”
“We’re to stay home tonight.”
“Drat. And I made a reservation at Nedick’s. In the Orange Room.”
“You’ll have to cancel it.”
“How come you turned out sane when the rest of your family is nutty?”
The first wave of dizziness caught Rosemary at the kitchen sink as she scraped the uneaten mousse from her napkin into the drain. She swayed for a moment, then blinked and frowned. Guy, in the den, said, “He isn’t there yet. Christ, what a mob.” The Pope at Yankee Stadium.
“I’ll be in in a minute,” Rosemary said.
Shaking her head to clear it, she rolled the napkins up inside the tablecloth and put the bundle aside for the hamper. She put the stopper in the drain, turned on the hot water, squeezed in some Joy, and began loading in the dishes and pans. She would do them in the morning, let them soak overnight.
The second wave came as she was hanging up the dish towel. It lasted longer, and this time the room turned slowly around and her legs almost slued out from under her. She hung on to the edge of the sink.
When it was over she said “Oh boy,” and added up two Gibsons, two glasses of wine (or had it been three?), and one crème de menthe. No wonder.
She made it to the doorway of the den and kept her footing through the next wave by holding on to the knob with one hand and the jamb with the other.
“What is it?” Guy asked, standing up anxiously.
“Dizzy,” she said, and smiled.
He snapped off the TV and came to her, took her arm and held her surely around the waist. “No wonder,” he said. “All that booze. You probably had an empty stomach, too.”
He helped her toward the bedroom and, when her legs buckled, caught her up and carried her. He put her down on the bed and sat beside her, taking her hand and stroking her forehead sympathetically. She closed her eyes. The bed was a raft that floated on gentle ripples, tilting and swaying pleasantly. “Nice,” she said.
“Sleep is what you need,” Guy said, stroking her forehead. “A good night’s sleep.”
“We have to make a baby.”
“We will. Tomorrow. There’s plenty of time.”
“Missing the mass.”
“Sleep. Get a good night’s sleep. Go on…”
“Just a nap,” she said, and was sitting with a drink in her hand on President Kennedy’s yacht. It was sunny and breezy, a perfect day for a cruise. The President, studying a large map, gave terse and knowing instructions to a Negro mate.
Guy had taken off the top of her pajamas. “Why are you taking them off?” she asked.
“To make you more comfortable,” he said.
“I’m comfortable.”
“Sleep, Ro.”
He undid the snaps at her side and slowly drew off the bottoms. Thought she was asleep and didn’t know. Now she had nothing on at all except a red bikini, but the other women on the yacht—Jackie Kennedy, Pat Lawford, and Sarah Churchill—were wearing bikinis too, so it was all right, thank goodness. The President was in his Navy uniform. He had completely recovered from the assassination and looked better than ever. Hutch was standing on the dock with armloads of weather-forecasting equipment. “Isn’t Hutch coming with us?” Rosemary asked the President.
“Catholics only,” he said, smiling. “I wish we weren’t bound by these prejudices, but unfortunately we are.”
“But what about Sarah Churchill?” Rosemary asked. She turned to point, but Sarah Churchill was gone and the family was there in her place: Ma, Pa, and everybody, with the husbands, wives, and children. Margaret was pregnant, and so were Jean and Dodie and Ernestine.
Guy was taking off her wedding ring. She wondered why, but was too tired to ask. “Sleep,” she said, and slept.
It was the first time the Sistine Chapel had been opened to the public and she was inspecting the ceiling on a new elevator that carried the visitor through the chapel horizontally, making it possible to see the frescoes exactly as Michelangelo, painting them, had seen them. How glorious they were! She saw God extending his finger to Adam, giving him the divine spark of life; and the underside of a shelf partly covered with gingham contact paper as s
he was carried backward through the linen closet. “Easy,” Guy said, and another man said, “You’ve got her too high.”
“Typhoon!” Hutch shouted from the dock amid all his weather-forecasting equipment. “Typhoon! It killed fifty-five people in London and it’s heading this way!” And Rosemary knew he was right. She must warn the President. The ship was heading for disaster.
But the President was gone. Everyone was gone. The deck was infinite and bare, except for, far away, the Negro mate holding the wheel unremittingly on its course.
Rosemary went to him and saw at once that he hated all white people, hated her. “You’d better go down below, Miss,” he said, courteous but hating her, not even waiting to hear the warning she had brought.
Below was a huge ballroom where on one side a church burned fiercely and on the other a black-bearded man stood glaring at her. In the center was a bed. She went to it and lay down, and was suddenly surrounded by naked men and women, ten or a dozen, with Guy among them. They were elderly, the women grotesque and slack-breasted. Minnie and her friend Laura-Louise were there, and Roman in a black miter and a black silk robe. With a thin black wand he was drawing designs on her body, dipping the wand’s point in a cup of red held for him by a sun-browned man with a white moustache. The point moved back and forth across her stomach and down ticklingly to the insides of her thighs. The naked people were chanting—flat, unmusical, foreign-tongued syllables—and a flute or clarinet accompanied them. “She’s awake, she sees!” Guy whispered to Minnie. He was large-eyed, tense. “She don’t see,” Minnie said. “As long as she ate the mouse she can’t see nor hear. She’s like dead. Now sing.”
Jackie Kennedy came into the ballroom in an exquisite gown of ivory satin embroidered with pearls. “I’m so sorry to hear you aren’t feeling well,” she said, hurrying to Rosemary’s side.
Rosemary explained about the mouse-bite, minimizing it so Jackie wouldn’t worry.
“You’d better have your legs tied down,” Jackie said, “in case of convulsions.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” Rosemary said. “There’s always a chance it was rabid.” She watched with interest as white-smocked interns tied her legs, and her arms too, to the four bedposts.
“If the music bothers you,” Jackie said, “let me know and I’ll have it stopped.”
“Oh, no,” Rosemary said. “Please don’t change the program on my account. It doesn’t bother me at all, really it doesn’t.”
Jackie smiled warmly at her. “Try to sleep,” she said. “We’ll be waiting up on deck.” She withdrew, her satin gown whispering.
Rosemary slept a while, and then Guy came in and began making love to her. He stroked her with both hands—a long, relishing stroke that began at her bound wrists, slid down over her arms, breasts, and loins, and became a voluptuous tickling between her legs. He repeated the exciting stroke again and again, his hands hot and sharp-nailed, and then, when she was ready-ready-more-than-ready, he slipped a hand in under her buttocks, raised them, lodged his hardness against her, and pushed it powerfully in. Bigger he was than always; painfully, wonderfully big. He lay forward upon her, his other arm sliding under her back to hold her, his broad chest crushing her breasts. (He was wearing, because it was to be a costume party, a suit of coarse leathery armor.) Brutally, rhythmically, he drove his new hugeness. She opened her eyes and looked into yellow furnace-eyes, smelled sulphur and tannis root, felt wet breath on her mouth, heard lust-grunts and the breathing of onlookers.
This is no dream, she thought. This is real, this is happening. Protest woke in her eyes and throat, but something covered her face, smothering her in a sweet stench.
The hugeness kept driving in her, the leathery body banging itself against her again and again and again.
The Pope came in with a suitcase in his hand and a coat over his arm. “Jackie tells me you’ve been bitten by a mouse,” he said.
“Yes,” Rosemary said. “That’s why I didn’t come see you.” She spoke sadly, so he wouldn’t suspect she had just had an orgasm.
“That’s all right,” he said. “We wouldn’t want you to jeopardize your health.”
“Am I forgiven, Father?” she asked.
“Absolutely,” he said. He held out his hand for her to kiss the ring. Its stone was a silver filigree ball less than an inch in diameter; inside it, very tiny, Anna Maria Alberghetti sat waiting.
Rosemary kissed it and the Pope hurried out to catch his plane.
CHAPTER 9
“HEY, IT’S AFTER NINE,” Guy said, shaking her shoulder.
She pushed his hand away and turned over onto her stomach. “Five minutes,” she said, deep in the pillow.
“No,” he said, and yanked her hair. “I’ve got to be at Dominick’s at ten.”
“Eat out.”
“The hell I will.” He slapped her behind through the blanket.
Everything came back: the dreams, the drinks, Minnie’s chocolate mousse, the Pope, that awful moment of not-dreaming. She turned back over and raised herself on her arms, looking at Guy. He was lighting a cigarette, sleep-rumpled, needing a shave. He had pajamas on. She was nude.
“What time is it?” she asked.
“Ten after nine.”
“What time did I go to sleep?” She sat up.
“About eight-thirty,” he said. “And you didn’t go to sleep, honey; you passed out. From now on you get cocktails or wine, not cocktails and wine.”
“The dreams I had,” she said, rubbing her forehead and closing her eyes. “President Kennedy, the Pope, Minnie and Roman…” She opened her eyes and saw scratches on her left breast; two parallel hairlines of red running down into the nipple. Her thighs stung; she pushed the blanket from them and saw more scratches, seven or eight going this way and that.
“Don’t yell,” Guy said. “I already filed them down.” He showed short smooth fingernails.
Rosemary looked at him uncomprehendingly.
“I didn’t want to miss Baby Night,” he said.
“You mean you—”
“And a couple of my nails were ragged.”
“While I was—out?”
He nodded and grinned. “It was kind of fun,” he said, “in a necrophile sort of way.”
She looked away, her hands pulling the blanket back over her thighs. “I dreamed someone was—raping me,” she said. “I don’t know who. Someone—unhuman.”
“Thanks a lot,” Guy said.
“You were there, and Minnie and Roman, other people…It was some kind of ceremony.”
“I tried to wake you,” he said, “but you were out like a light.”
She turned further away and swung her legs out on the other side of the bed.
“What’s the matter?” Guy asked.
“Nothing,” she said, sitting there, not looking around at him. “I guess I feel funny about your doing it that way, with me unconscious.”
“I didn’t want to miss the night,” he said.
“We could have done it this morning or tonight. Last night wasn’t the only split second in the whole month. And even if it had been…”
“I thought you would have wanted me to,” he said, and ran a finger up her back.
She squirmed away from it. “It’s supposed to be shared, not one awake and one asleep,” she said. Then: “Oh, I guess I’m being silly.” She got up and went to the closet for her housecoat.
“I’m sorry I scratched you,” Guy said. “I was a wee bit loaded myself.”
She made breakfast and, when Guy had gone, did the sinkful of dishes and put the kitchen to rights. She opened windows in the living room and bedroom—the smell of last night’s fire still lingered in the apartment—made the bed, and took a shower; a long one, first hot and then cold. She stood capless and immobile under the downpour, waiting for her head to clear and her thoughts to find an order and conclusion.
Had last night really been, as Guy had put it, Baby Night? Was she now, at this moment, actually pregnant? Oddly enough, she didn�
��t care. She was unhappy—whether or not it was silly to be so. Guy had taken her without her knowledge, had made love to her as a mindless body (“kind of fun in a necrophile sort of way”) rather than as the complete mind-and-body person she was; and had done so, moreover, with a savage gusto that had produced scratches, aching soreness, and a nightmare so real and intense that she could almost see on her stomach the designs Roman had drawn with his red-dipped wand. She scrubbed soap on herself vigorously, resentfully. True, he had done it for the best motive in the world, to make a baby, and true too he had drunk as much as she had; but she wished that no motive and no number of drinks could have enabled him to take her that way, taking only her body without her soul or self or she-ness—whatever it was he presumably loved. Now, looking back over the past weeks and months, she felt a disturbing presence of overlooked signals just beyond memory, signals of a shortcoming in his love for her, of a disparity between what he said and what he felt. He was an actor; could anyone know when an actor was true and not acting?
It would take more than a shower to wash away these thoughts. She turned the water off and, between both hands, pressed out her streaming hair.
On the way out to shop she rang the Castevets’ doorbell and returned the cups from the mousse. “Did you like it, dear?” Minnie asked. “I think I put a little too much cream de cocoa in it.”
“It was delicious,” Rosemary said. “You’ll have to give me the recipe.”
“I’d love to. You going marketing? Would you do me a teeny favor? Six eggs and a small Instant Sanka; I’ll pay you later. I hate going out for just one or two things, don’t you?”
There was distance now between her and Guy, but he seemed not to be aware of it. His play was going into rehearsal November first—Don’t I Know You From Somewhere? was the name of it—and he spent a great deal of time studying his part, practicing the use of the crutches and leg-braces it called for, and visiting the Highbridge section of the Bronx, the play’s locale. They had dinner with friends more evenings than not; when they didn’t, they made natural-sounding conversation about furniture and the ending-any-day-now newspaper strike and the World Series. They went to a preview of a new musical and a screening of a new movie, to parties and the opening of a friend’s exhibit of metal constructions. Guy seemed never to be looking at her, always at a script or TV or at someone else. He was in bed and asleep before she was. One evening he went to the Castevets’ to hear more of Roman’s theater stories, and she stayed in the apartment and watched Funny Face on TV.
