“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 mintues 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-shined 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 sleet 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 sixtyeight 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-upped 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 pink-rimmed 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-someroot-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.”