“Whatever you want, eat it,” he said. “I told you you’d get some strange cravings. I’ve had women eat paper. And stop worrying. I don’t keep things from my patients; it makes life too confusing. I’m telling you the truth. Okay?”
She nodded.
“Say hello to Minnie and Roman for me,” he said. “And Guy too.”
She began the second volume of The Decline and Fall, and began knitting a red-and-orange-striped muffler for Guy to wear to rehearsals. The threatened transit strike had come about but it affected them little since they were both at home most of the time. Late in the afternoon they watched from their bay windows the slow-moving crowds far below. “Walk, you peasants!” Guy said. “Walk! Home, home, and be quick about it!”
Not long after telling Dr. Sapirstein about the nearly raw meat, Rosemary found herself chewing on a raw and dripping chicken heart-in the kitchen one morning at four-fifteen. She looked at herself in the side of the toaster, where her moving reflection had caught her eye, and then looked at her hand, at the part of the heart she hadn’t yet eaten held in red-dripping fingers. After a moment she went over and put the heart in the garbage, and turned on the water and rinsed her hand. Then, with the water still running, she bent over the sink and began to vomit.
When she was finished she drank some water, washed her face and hands, and cleaned the inside of the sink with the spray attachment. She turned off the water and dried herself and stood for a while, thinking; and then she got a memo pad and a pencil from one of the drawers and went to the table and sat down and began to write.
Guy came in just before seven in his pajamas.
She had the Life Cookbook open on the table and was copying a recipe out of it. “What the hell are you doing?” he asked.
She looked at him. “Planning the menu,” she said. “For a party. We’re giving a party on January twenty-second. A week from next Saturday.” She looked among several slips of paper on the table and picked one up. “We’re inviting Elise Dunstan and her husband,” she said, “Joan and a date, Jimmy and Tiger, Allan and a date, Lou and Claudia, the Chens, the Wendells, Dee Bertillon and a date unless you don’t want him, Mike and Pedro, Bob and Thea Goodman, the Kapps”-she pointed in the Kapps’ direction-“and Doris and Axel Allen, if they’ll come. That’s Hutch’s daughter.”
“I know,” Guy said.
She put down the paper. “Minnie and Roman are not invited,” she said. “Neither is Laura-Louise. Neither are the Fountains and the Gilmores and the Weeses. Neither is Dr. Sapirstein. This is a very special party. You have to be under sixty to get in.”
“Whew,” Guy said. “For a minute there I didn’t think I was going to make it.
“Oh, you make it,” Rosemary said. “You’re the bartender.”
“Swell,” Guy said. “Do you really think this is such a great idea?”
“I think it’s the best idea I’ve had in months.”
“Don’t you think you ought to check with Sapirstein first?”
“Why? I’m just going to give a party; I’m not going to swim the English Channel or climb Annapurna.”
Guy went to the sink and turned on the water. He held a glass under it. “I’ll be in rehearsal then, you know,” he said. “We start on the seventeenth.”
“You won’t have to do a thing,” Rosemary said. “Just come home and be charming.”
“And tend bar.” He turned off the water and raised his glass and drank.
“We’ll hire a bartender,” Rosemary said. “The one Joan and Dick used to have. And when you’re ready to go to sleep I’ll chase everyone out.”
Guy turned around and looked at her.
“I want to see them,” she said. “Not Minnie and Roman. I’m tired of Minnie and Roman.”
He looked away from her, and then at the floor, and then at her eyes again. “What about the pain?” he asked.
She smiled drily. “Haven’t you heard?” she said. “It’s going to be gone in a day or two. Dr. Sapirstein told me so.”
Everyone could come except the Allerts, because of Hutch’s condition, and the Chens, who were going to be in London taking pictures of Charlie Chaplin. The bartender wasn’t available but knew another one who was. Rosemary took a loose brown velvet hostess gown to the cleaner, made an appointment to have her hair done, and ordered wine and liquor and ice cubes and the ingredients of a Chilean seafood casserole called chupe.
On the Thursday morning before the party, Minnie came with the drink while Rosemary was picking apart crabmeat and lobster tails. “That looks interesting,” Minnie said, glancing into the kitchen. “What is it?”
Rosemary told her, standing at the front door with the striped glass cold in her hand. “I’m going to freeze it and then bake it Saturday evening,” she said. “We’re having some people over.”
“Oh, you feel up to entertaining?” Minnie asked.
“Yes, I do,” Rosemary said. “These are old friends whom we haven’t seen in a long time. They don’t even know yet that I’m pregnant.”
“I’d be glad to give you a hand if you’d like,” Minnie said. “I could help you dish things out.”
“Thank you, that’s sweet of you,” Rosemary said, “but I really can manage by myself. It’s going to be buffet, and there’ll be very little to do.”
“I could help you take the coats.”
“No, really, Minnie, you do enough for me as it is. Really.”
Minnie said, “Well, let me know if you change your mind. Drink your drink now.”
Rosemary looked at the glass in her hand. “I’d rather not,” she said, and looked up at Minnie. “Not this minute. I’ll drink it in a little while and bring the glass back to you.”
Minnie said, “It doesn’t do to let it stand.”
“I won’t wait long,” Rosemary said. “Go on. You go back and I’ll bring the glass to you later on.”
“I’ll wait and save you the walk.”
“You’ll do no such thing,” Rosemary said. “I get very nervous if anyone watches me while I’m cooking. I’m going out later, so I’ll be passing right by your door.”
“Going out?”
“Shopping. Scoot now, go on. You’re too nice to me, really you are.”
Minnie backed away. “Don’t wait too long,” she said. “It’s going to lose its vitamins.”
Rosemary .closed the door. She went into the kitchen and stood for a moment with the glass in her hand, and then went to the sink and tipped out the drink in a pale green spire drilling straight down into the drain.
She finished the chupe, humming and feeling pleased with herself. When it was covered and stowed away in the freezer compartment she made her own drink out of milk, cream, an egg, sugar, and sherry. Shaken in a covered jar, it poured out tawny and delicious-looking. “Hang on, David-or-Amanda,” she said, and tasted it and found it great.
Five
For a little while around half past nine it looked as if no one was going to come. Guy put another chunk of cannel coal on the fire, then racked the tongs and brushed his hands with his handkerchief; Rosemary came from the kitchen and stood motionless in her pain and her just-right hair and her brown velvet; and the bartender, by the bedroom door, found things to do with lemon peel and napkins and glasses and bottles. He was a prosperous-looking Italian named Renato who gave the impression that he tended bar only as a pastime and would leave if he got more bored than he already was.
Then the Wendells came-Ted and Carole-and a minute later Elise Dunstan and her husband Hugh, who limped. And then Allan Stone, Guy’s agent, with a beautiful Negro model named Rain Morgan, and Jimmy and Tiger, and Lou and Claudia Comfort and Claudia’s brother Scott.
Guy put the coats on the bed; Renato mixed drinks quickly, looking less bored. Rosemary pointed and gave names: “Jimmy, Tiger, Rain, Allan, Elise, Hugh, Carole, Ted-Claudia and Lou and Scott.”