THE FOLLOWING MORNING Rosemary called Minnie on the house phone and asked her not to bring the drink over at eleven o’clock; she was on her way out and wouldn’t be back until one or two.
“Why, that’s fine, dear,” Minnie said. “Don’t you worry about a thing. You don’t have to take it at no fixed time; just so you take it sometime, that’s all. You go on out. It’s a nice day and it’ll do you good to get some fresh air. Buzz me when you get back and I’ll bring the drink in then.”
It was indeed a nice day; sunny, cold, clear, and invigorating. Rosemary walked through it slowly, ready to smile, as if she weren’t carrying her pain inside her. Salvation Army Santa Clauses were on every corner, shaking their bells in their fool-nobody costumes. Stores all had their Christmas windows; Park Avenue had its center line of trees.
She reached the Seagram Building at a quarter of eleven and, because she was early and there was no sign yet of Hutch, sat for a while on the low wall at the side of the building’s forecourt, taking the sun on her face and listening with pleasure to busy footsteps and snatches of conversation, to cars and trucks and a helicopter’s racketing. The dress beneath her coat was—for the first satisfying time—snug over her stomach; maybe after lunch she would go to Bloomingdale’s and look at maternity dresses. She was glad Hutch had called her out this way (but what did he want to talk about?); pain, even constant pain, was no excuse for staying indoors as much as she had. She would fight it from now on, fight it with air and sunlight and activity, not succumb to it in Bramford gloom under the well-meant pamperings of Minnie and Guy and Roman. Pain, begone! she thought; I will have no more of thee! The pain stayed, immune to Positive Thinking.
At five of eleven she went and stood by the building’s glass doors, at the edge of their heavy flow of traffic. Hutch would probably be coming from inside, she thought, from an earlier appointment; or else why had he chosen here rather than someplace else for their meeting? She scouted the outcoming faces as best she could, saw him but was mistaken, then saw a man she had dated before she met Guy and was mistaken again. She kept looking, stretching now and then on tiptoes; not anxiously, for she knew that even if she failed to see him, Hutch would see her.
He hadn’t come by five after eleven, nor by ten after. At a quarter after she went inside to look at the building’s directory, thinking she might see a name there that he had mentioned at one time or another and to which she might make a call of inquiry. The directory proved to be far too large and many-named for careful reading, though; she skimmed over its crowded columns and, seeing nothing familiar, went outside again.
She went back to the low wall and sat where she had sat before, this time watching the front of the building and glancing over occasionally at the shallow steps leading up from the sidewalk. Men and women met other men and women, but there was no sign of Hutch, who was rarely if ever late for appointments.
At eleven-forty Rosemary went back into the building and was sent by a maintenance man down to the basement, where at the end of a white institutional corridor there was a pleasant lounge area with black modern chairs, an abstract mural, and a single stainless-steel phone booth. A Negro girl was in the booth, but she finished soon and came out with a friendly smile. Rosemary slipped in and dialed the number at the apartment. After five rings Service answered; there were no messages for Rosemary, and the one message for Guy was from a Rudy Horn, not a Mr. Hutchins. She had another dime and used it to call Hutch’s number, thinking that his service might know where he was or have a message from him. On the first ring a woman answered with a worried non-service “Yes?”
“Is this Edward Hutchins’ apartment?” Rosemary asked.
“Yes. Who is this, please?” She sounded like a woman neither young nor old—in her forties, perhaps.
Rosemary said, “My name is Rosemary Woodhouse. I had an eleven o’clock appointment with Mr. Hutchins and he hasn’t shown up yet. Do you have any idea whether he’s coming or not?”
There was silence, and more of it. “Hello?” Rosemary said.
“Hutch has told me about you, Rosemary,” the woman said. “My name is Grace Cardiff. I’m a friend of his. He was taken ill last night. Or early this morning, to be exact.”
Rosemary’s heart dropped. “Taken ill?” she said.
“Yes. He’s in a deep coma. The doctors haven’t been able to find out yet what’s causing it. He’s at St. Vincent’s Hospital.”
“Oh, that’s awful,” Rosemary said. “I spoke to him last night around ten-thirty and he sounded fine.”
“I spoke to him not much later than that,” Grace Cardiff said, “and he sounded fine to me too. But his cleaning woman came in this morning and found him unconscious on the bedroom floor.”
“And they don’t know what from?”
“Not yet. It’s early though, and I’m sure they’ll find out soon. And when they do, they’ll be able to treat him. At the moment he’s totally unresponsive.”
“How awful,” Rosemary said. “And he’s never had anything like this before?”
“Never,” Grace Cardiff said. “I’m going back to the hospital now, and if you’ll give me a number where I can reach you, I’ll let you know when there’s any change.”
“Oh, thank you,” Rosemary said. She gave the apartment number and then asked if there was anything she could do to help.
“Not really,” Grace Cardiff said. “I just finished calling his daughters, and that seems to be the sum total of what has to be done, at least until he comes to. If there should be anything else I’ll let you know.”
Rosemary came out of the Seagram Building and walked across the forecourt and down the steps and north to the corner of Fifty-third Street. She crossed Park Avenue and walked slowly toward Madison, wondering whether Hutch would live or die, and if he died, whether she (selfishness!) would ever again have anyone on whom she could so effortlessly and completely depend. She wondered too about Grace Cardiff, who sounded silver-gray and attractive; had she and Hutch been having a quiet middle-aged affair? She hoped so. Maybe this brush with death—that’s what it would be, a brush with death, not death itself; it couldn’t be—maybe this brush with death would nudge them both toward marriage, and turn out in the end to have been a disguised blessing. Maybe. Maybe.
She crossed Madison, and somewhere between Madison and Fifth found herself looking into a window in which a small crèche was spotlighted, with exquisite porcelain figures of Mary and the Infant and Joseph, the Magi and the shepherds and the animals of the stable. She smiled at the tender scene, laden with meaning and emotion that survived her agnosticism; and then saw in the window glass, like a veil hung before the Nativity, her own reflection smiling, with the skeletal cheeks and black-circled eyes that yesterday had alarmed Hutch and now alarmed her.
“Well this is what I call the long arm of coincidence!” Minnie exclaimed, and came smiling to her when Rosemary turned, in a white mock-leather coat and a red hat and her neckchained eyeglasses. “I said to myself, ‘As long as Rosemary’s out, I might as well go out, and do the last little bit of my Christmas shopping.’ And here you are and here I am! It looks like we’re just two of a kind that go the same places and do the same things! Why, what’s the matter, dear? You look so sad and downcast.”
“I just heard some bad news,” Rosemary said. “A friend of mine is very sick. In the hospital.”
“Oh, no,” Minnie said. “Who?”
“His name is Edward Hutchins,” Rosemary said.
“The one Roman met yesterday afternoon? Why, he was going on for an hour about what a nice intelligent man he was! Isn’t that a pity! What’s troubling him?”
Rosemary told her.
“My land,” Minnie said, “I hope it doesn’t turn out the way it did for poor Lily Gardenia! And the doctors don’t even know? Well at least they admit it; usually they cover up what they don’t know with a lot of high-flown Latin. If the money spent putting those astronauts up where they are was spent on medical research down here, we’d all be a lot better off, if you want my opinion. Do you feel all right, Rosemary?”
“The pain is a little worse,” Rosemary said.
“You poor thing. You know what I think? I think we ought to be going home now. What do you say?”
“No, no, you have to finish your Christmas shopping.”
“Oh shoot,” Minnie said, “there’s two whole weeks yet. Hold onto your ears.” She put her wrist to her mouth and blew stabbing shrillness from a whistle on a gold-chain bracelet. A taxi veered toward them. “How’s that for service?” she said. “A nice big Checker one too.”
Soon after, Rosemary was in the apartment again. She drank the cold sour drink from the blue-and-green-striped glass while Minnie looked on approvingly.