THE FOLLOWING EVENING after dinner Guy went over to the Castevets’. Rosemary straightened up the kitchen and was debating whether to work on the window-seat cushions or get into bed with Manchild in The Promised Land when the doorbell rang. It was Mrs. Castevet, and with her another woman, short, plump, and smiling, with a Buckley-for-Mayor button on the shoulder of a green dress.

“Hi, dear, we’re not bothering you, are we?” Mrs. Castevet said when Rosemary had opened the door. “This is my dear friend Laura-Louise McBurney, who lives up on twelve. Laura-Louise, this is Guy’s wife Rosemary.”

“Hello, Rosemary! Welcome to the Bram!”

“Laura-Louise just met Guy over to our place and she wanted to meet you too, so we came on over. Guy said you were staying in not doing anything. Can we come in?”

With resigned good grace Rosemary showed them into the living room.

“Oh, you’ve got new chairs,” Mrs. Castevet said. “Aren’t they beautiful!”

“They came this morning,” Rosemary said.

“Are you all right, dear? You look worn.”

“I’m fine,” Rosemary said and smiled. “It’s the first day of my period.”

“And you’re up and around?” Laura-Louise asked, sitting. “On my first days I experienced such pain that I couldn’t move or eat or anything. Dan had to give me gin through a straw to kill the pain and we were one-hundred-per-cent Temperance at the time, with that one exception.”

“Girls today take things more in their stride than we did,” Mrs. Castevet said, sitting too. “They’re healthier than we were, thanks to vitamins and better medical care.”

Both women had brought identical green sewing bags and, to Rosemary’s surprise, were opening them now and taking out crocheting (Laura-Louise) and darning (Mrs. Castevet); settling down for a long evening of needlework and conversation. “What’s that over there?” Mrs. Castevet asked. “Seat covers?”

“Cushions for the window seats,” Rosemary said, and thinking Oh all right, I will, went over and got the work and brought it back and joined them.

Laura-Louise said, “You’ve certainly made a tremendous change in the apartment, Rosemary.”

“Oh, before I forget,” Mrs. Castevet said, “this is for you. From Roman and me.” She put a small packet of pink tissue paper into Rosemary’s hand, with a hardness inside it.

“For me?” Rosemary asked. “I don’t understand.”

“It’s just a little present is all,” Mrs. Castevet said, dismissing Rosemary’s puzzlement with quick hand-waves. “For moving in.”

“But there’s no reason for you to…” Rosemary unfolded the leaves of used-before tissue paper. Within the pink was Terry’s silver filigree ball-charm and its clustered-together neckchain. The smell of the ball’s filling made Rosemary pull her head away.

“It’s real old,” Mrs. Castevet said. “Over three hundred years.”

“It’s lovely,” Rosemary said, examining the ball and wondering whether she should tell that Terry had shown it to her. The moment for doing so slipped by.

“The green inside is called tannis root,” Mrs. Castevet said. “It’s good luck.”

Not for Terry, Rosemary thought, and said, “It’s lovely, but I can’t accept such a—”

“You already have,” Mrs. Castevet said, darning a brown sock and not looking at Rosemary. “Put it on.”

Laura-Louise said, “You’ll get used to the smell before you know it.”

“Go on,” Mrs. Castevet said.

“Well, thank you,” Rosemary said; and uncertainly she put the chain over her head and tucked the ball into the collar of her dress. It dropped down between her breasts, cold for a moment and obtrusive. I’ll take it off when they go, she thought.

Laura-Louise said, “A friend of ours made the chain entirely by hand. He’s a retired dentist and his hobby is making jewelry out of silver and gold. You’ll meet him at Minnie and Roman’s on—on some night soon, I’m sure, because they entertain so much. You’ll probably meet all their friends, all our friends.”

Rosemary looked up from her work and saw Laura-Louise pink with an embarrassment that had hurried and confused her last words. Minnie was busy darning, unaware. Laura-Louise smiled and Rosemary smiled back.

“Do you make your own clothes?” Laura-Louise asked.

“No, I don’t,” Rosemary said, letting the subject be changed. “I try to every once in a while but nothing ever hangs right.”

It turned out to be a fairly pleasant evening. Minnie told some amusing stories about her girlhood in Oklahoma, and Laura-Louise showed Rosemary two useful sewing tricks and explained feelingly how Buckley, the Conservative mayoral candidate, could win the coming election despite the high odds against him.

Guy came back at eleven, quiet and oddly self-contained. He said hello to the women and, by Rosemary’s chair, bent and kissed her cheek. Minnie said, “Eleven? My land! Come on, Laura-Louise.” Laura-Louise said, “Come and visit me any time you want, Rosemary; I’m in twelve F.” The two women closed their sewing bags and went quickly away.

“Were his stories as interesting as last night?” Rosemary asked.

“Yes,” Guy said. “Did you have a nice time?”

“All right. I got some work done.”

“So I see.”

“I got a present too.”

She showed him the charm. “It was Terry’s,” she said. “They gave it to her; she showed it to me. The police must have—given it back.”

“She probably wasn’t even wearing it,” Guy said.

“I’ll bet she was. She was as proud of it as—as if it was the first gift anyone had ever given her.” Rosemary lifted the chain off over her head and held the chain and the charm on her palm, jiggling them and looking at them.

“Aren’t you going to wear it?” Guy asked.

“It smells,” she said. “There’s stuff in it called tannis root.” She held out her hand. “From the famous greenhouse.”

Guy smelled and shrugged. “It’s not bad,” he said.

Rosemary went into the bedroom and opened a drawer in the vanity where she had a tin Louis Sherry box full of odds and ends. “Tannis, anybody?” she asked herself in the mirror, and put the charm in the box, closed it, and closed the drawer.

Guy, in the doorway, said, “If you took it, you ought to wear it.”

That night Rosemary awoke and found Guy sitting beside her smoking in the dark. She asked him what was the matter. “Nothing,” he said. “A little insomnia, that’s all.”

Roman’s stories of old-time stars, Rosemary thought, might have depressed him by reminding him that his own career was lagging behind Henry Irving’s and Forbes-Whosit’s. His going back for more of the stories might have been a form of masochism.

She touched his arm and told him not to worry.

“About what?”

“About anything.”

“All right,” he said, “I won’t.”

“You’re the greatest,” she said. “You know? You are. And it’s all going to come out right. You’re going to have to learn karate to get rid of the photographers.”

He smiled in the glow of his cigarette.

“Any day now,” she said. “Something big. Something worthy of you.”

“I know,” he said. “Go to sleep, honey.”

“Okay. Watch the cigarette.”

“I will.”

“Wake me if you can’t sleep.”

“Sure.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, Ro.”

A day or two later Guy brought home a pair of tickets for the Saturday night performance of The Fantasticks, given to him, he explained, by Dominick, his vocal coach. Guy had seen the show years before when it first opened; Rosemary had always been meaning to see it. “Go with Hutch,” Guy said; “it’ll give me a chance to work on the Wait Until Dark scene.”

Hutch had seen it too, though, so Rosemary went with Joan Jellico, who confided during dinner at the Bijou that she and Dick were separating, no longer having anything in common except their address. The news upset Rosemary. For days Guy had been distant and preoccupied, wrapped in something he would neither put aside nor share. Had Joan and Dick’s estrangement begun in the same way? She grew angry at Joan, who was wearing too much make-up and applauding too loudly in the small theater. No wonder she and Dick could find nothing in common; she was loud and vulgar, he was reserved, sensitive; they should never have married in the first place.

When Rosemary came home Guy was coming out of the shower, more vivacious and there than he had been all week. Rosemary’s spirits leaped. The show had been even better than she expected, she told him, and bad news, Joan and Dick were separating. They really were birds of completely different feathers though, weren’t they? How had the Wait Until Dark scene gone? Great. He had it down cold.

“Damn that tannis root,” Rosemary said. The whole bedroom smelled of it. The bitter prickly odor had even found its way into the bathroom. She got a piece of aluminum foil from the kitchen and wound the charm in a tight triple wrapping, twisting the ends to seal them.

“It’ll probably lose its strength in a few days,” Guy said.

“It better,” Rosemary said, spraying the air with a deodorant bomb. “If it doesn’t, I’m going to throw it away and tell Minnie I lost it.”

They made love—Guy was wild and driving—and later, through the wall, Rosemary heard a party in progress at Minnie and Roman’s; the same flat unmusical singing she had heard the last time, almost like religious chanting, and the same flute or clarinet weaving in and around and underneath it.

Guy kept his keyed-up vivacity all through Sunday, building shelves and shoe racks in the bedroom closets and inviting a bunch of Luther people over for Moo Goo Gai Woodhouse; and on Monday he painted the shelves and shoe racks and stained a bench Rosemary had found in a thrift shop, canceling his session with Dominick and keeping his ear stretched for the phone, which he caught every time before the first ring was finished. At three in the afternoon it rang again, and Rosemary, trying out a different arrangement of the living room chairs, heard him say, “Oh God, no. Oh, the poor guy.”

She went to the bedroom door.

“Oh God,” Guy said.

He was sitting on the bed, the phone in one hand and a can of Red Devil paint remover in the other. He didn’t look at her. “And they don’t have any idea what’s causing it?” he said. “My God, that’s awful, just awful.” He listened, and straightened as he sat. “Yes, I am,” he said. And then, “Yes, I would. I’d hate to get it this way, but I—” He listened again. “Well, you’d have to speak to Allan about that end of it,” he said—Allan Stone, his agent—“but I’m sure there won’t be any problem, Mr. Weiss, not as far as we’re concerned.”

He had it. The Something Big. Rosemary held her breath, waiting.

“Thank you, Mr. Weiss,” Guy said. “And will you let me know if there’s any news? Thanks.”

He hung up and shut his eyes. He sat motionless, his hand staying on the phone. He was pale and dummylike, a Pop Art wax statue with real clothes and props, real phone, real can of paint remover.

“Guy?” Rosemary said.

He opened his eyes and looked at her.

“What is it?” she asked.

He blinked and came alive. “Donald Baumgart,” he said. “He’s gone blind. He woke up yesterday and—he can’t see.”

“Oh no,” Rosemary said.

“He tried to hang himself this morning. He’s in Bellevue now, under sedation.”

They looked painfully at each other.

“I’ve got the part,” Guy said. “It’s a hell of a way to get it.” He looked at the paint remover in his hand and put it on the night table. “Listen,” he said, “I’ve got to get out and walk around.” He stood up. “I’m sorry. I’ve got to get outside and absorb this.”

“I understand, go ahead,” Rosemary said, standing back from the doorway.

He went as he was, down the hall and out the door, letting it swing closed after him with its own soft slam.

She went into the living room, thinking of poor Donald Baumgart and lucky Guy; lucky she-and-Guy, with the good part that would get attention even if the show folded, would lead to other parts, to movies maybe, to a house in Los Angeles, a spice garden, three children two years apart. Poor Donald Baumgart with his clumsy name that he didn’t change. He must have been good, to have won out over Guy, and there he was in Bellevue, blind and wanting to kill himself, under sedation.

Kneeling on a window seat, Rosemary looked out the side of its bay and watched the house’s entrance far below, waiting to see Guy come out. When would rehearsals begin? she wondered. She would go out of town with him, of course; what fun it would be! Boston? Philadelphia? Washington would be exciting. She had never been there. While Guy was rehearsing afternoons, she could sightsee; and evenings, after the performance, everyone would meet in a restaurant or club to gossip and exchange rumors…

She waited and watched but he didn’t come out. He must have used the Fifty-fifth Street door.

Now, when he should have been happy, he was dour and troubled, sitting with nothing moving except his cigarette hand and his eyes. His eyes followed her around the apartment; tensely, as if she were dangerous. “What’s wrong?” she asked a dozen times.

“Nothing,” he said. “Don’t you have your sculpture class today?”

“I haven’t gone in two months.”

“Why don’t you go?”

She went; tore away old plasticine, reset the armature, and began anew, doing a new model among new students. “Where’ve you been?” the instructor asked. He had eyeglasses and an Adam’s apple and made miniatures of her torso without watching his hands.

“In Zanzibar,” she said.

“Zanzibar is no more,” he said, smiling nervously. “It’s Tanzania.”

One afternoon she went down to Macy’s and Gimbels, and when she came home there were roses in the kitchen, roses in the living room, and Guy coming out of the bedroom with one rose and a forgive-me smile, like a reading he had once done for her of Chance Wayne in Sweet Bird.

“I’ve been a living turd,” he said. “It’s from sitting around hoping that Baumgart won’t regain his sight, which is what I’ve been doing, rat that I am.”

“That’s natural,” she said. “You’re bound to feel two ways about—”

“Listen,” he said, pushing the rose to her nose, “even if this thing falls through, even if I’m Charley Cresta Blanca for the rest of my days, I’m going to stop giving you the short end of the stick.”

“You haven’t—”

“Yes I have. I’ve been so busy tearing my hair out over my career that I haven’t given Thought One to yours. Let’s have a baby, okay? Let’s have three, one at a time.”

She looked at him.

“A baby,” he said. “You know. Goo, goo? Diapers? Waa, waa?”

“Do you mean it?” she asked.

“Sure I mean it,” he said. “I even figured out the right time to start. Next Monday and Tuesday. Red circles on the calendar, please.”

“You really mean it, Guy?” she asked, tears in her eyes.

“No, I’m kidding,” he said. “Sure I mean it. Look, Rosemary, for God’s sake don’t cry, all right? Please. It’s going to upset me very much if you cry, so stop right now, all right?”

“All right,” she said. “I won’t cry.”

“I really went rose-nutty, didn’t I?” he said, looking around brightly. “There’s a bunch in the bedroom too.”