“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 trip and fall disastrously. “I seem to have overfilled the glasses,” he said. “No, no, don’t get up. Please. Generally I pour these out as precisely as a bartender, don’t I, Minnie?”
Mrs. Castevet said, “Just watch the carpet.”
“But this evening,” Mr. Castevet continued, coming closer, “I made a little too much, and rather than leave the surplus in the blender, I’m afraid I thought I . . . There we are. Please, sit down. Mrs. Woodhouse?”
Rosemary took a glass, thanked him, and sat. Mrs. Castevet quickly put a paper cocktail napkin in her lap.
“Mr. Woodhouse? A Vodka Blush. Have you ever tasted one?”
“No,” Guy said, taking one and sitting.
“Minnie,” Mr. Castevet said.
“It looks delicious,” Rosemary said, smiling vividly as she wiped the base of her glass.
“They’re very popular in Australia,” Mr. Castevet said. He took the final glass and raised it to Rosemary and Guy. “To our guests,” he said. “Welcome to our home.” He drank and cocked his head critically, one eye partway closed, the tray at his side dripping on the carpet.
Mrs. Castevet coughed in mid-swallow. “The carpet!” she choked, pointing.
Mr. Castevet looked down. “Oh dear,” he said, and held the tray up uncertainly.
Mrs. Castevet thrust aside her drink, hurried to her knees, and laid a paper napkin carefully over the wetness. “Brand-new carpet,” she said. “Brand-new carpet. This man is so clumsy!”
The Vodka Blushes were tart and quite good.
“Do you come from Australia?” Rosemary asked, when the carpet had been blotted, the tray safely kitchened, and the Castevets seated in straight-backed chairs.
“Oh no,” Mr. Castevet said, “I’m from right here in New York City. I’ve been there though. I’ve been everywhere. Literally.” He sipped Vodka Blush, sitting with his legs crossed and a hand on his knee. He was wearing black loafers with tassels, gray slacks, a white blouse, and a blue-and-gold striped ascot. “Every continent, every country,” he said. “Every major city. You name a place and I’ve been there. Go ahead. Name a place.”
Guy said, “Fairbanks, Alaska.”
“I’ve been there,” Mr. Castevet said. “I’ve been all over Alaska: Fairbanks, Juneau, Anchorage, Nome, Seward; I spent four months there in 1938 and I’ve made a lot of one-day stop-overs in Fairbanks and Anchorage on my way to places in the Far East. I’ve been in small towns in Alaska too: Dillingham and Akulurak.”
“Where are you folks from?” Mrs. Castevet asked, fixing the folds at the bosom of her dress.
“I’m from Omaha,” Rosemary said, “and Guy is from Baltimore.”
“Omaha is a good city,” Mr. Castevet said. “Baltimore is too.”