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.”

“Did you travel for business reasons?” Rosemary asked him.

“Business and pleasure both,” he said. “I’m seventy-nine years old and I’ve been going one place or another since I was ten. You name it, I’ve been there.”

“What business were you in?” Guy asked.

“Just about every business,” Mr. Castevet said. “Wool, sugar, toys, machine parts, marine insurance, oil…”

A bell pinged in the kitchen. “Steak’s ready,” Mrs. Castevet said, standing up with her glass in her hand. “Don’t rush your drinks now; take them along to the table. Roman, take your pill.”

“It will end on October third,” Mr. Castevet said; “the day before the Pope gets here. No Pope ever visits a city where the newspapers are on strike.”

“I heard on TV that he’s going to postpone and wait till it’s over,” Mrs. Castevet said.

Guy smiled. “Well,” he said, “that’s show biz.”

Mr. and Mrs. Castevet laughed, and Guy along with them. Rosemary smiled and cut her steak. It was overdone and juiceless, flanked by peas and mashed potatoes under flour-laden gravy.

Still laughing, Mr. Castevet said, “It is, you know! That’s just what it is; show biz!”

“You can say that again,” Guy said.

“The costumes, the rituals,” Mr. Castevet said; “every religion, not only Catholicism. Pageants for the ignorant.”

Mrs. Castevet said, “I think we’re offending Rosemary.”

“No, no, not at all,” Rosemary said.

“You aren’t religious, my dear, are you?” Mr. Castevet asked.

“I was brought up to be,” Rosemary said, “but now I’m an agnostic. I wasn’t offended. Really I wasn’t.”

“And you, Guy?” Mr. Castevet asked. “Are you an agnostic too?”

“I guess so,” Guy said. “I don’t see how anyone can be anything else. I mean, there’s no absolute proof one way or the other, is there?”

“No, there isn’t,” Mr. Castevet said.

Mrs. Castevet, studying Rosemary, said, “You looked uncomfortable before, when we were laughing at Guy’s little joke about the Pope.”

“Well he is the Pope,” Rosemary said. “I guess I’ve been conditioned to have respect for him and I still do, even if I don’t think he’s holy any more.”

“If you don’t think he’s holy,” Mr. Castevet said, “you should have no respect for him at all, because he’s going around deceiving people and pretending he is holy.”

“Good point,” Guy said.

“When I think what they spend on robes and jewels,” Mrs. Castevet said.

“A good picture of the hypocrisy behind organized religion,” Mr. Castevet said, “was given, I thought, in Luther. Did you ever get to play the leading part, Guy?”

“Me? No,” Guy said.

“Weren’t you Albert Finney’s understudy?” Mr. Castevet asked.

“No,” Guy said, “the fellow who played Weinand was. I just covered two of the smaller parts.”

“That’s strange,” Mr. Castevet said; “I was quite certain that you were his understudy. I remember being struck by a gesture you made and checking in the program to see who you were; and I could swear you were listed as Finney’s understudy.”

“What gesture do you mean?” Guy asked.

“I’m not sure now; a movement of your—”

“I used to do a thing with my arms when Luther had the fit, a sort of involuntary reaching—”

“Exactly,” Mr. Castevet said. “That’s just what I meant. It had a wonderful authenticity to it. In contrast, may I say, to everything Mr. Finney was doing.”

“Oh, come on now,” Guy said.

“I thought his performance was considerably overrated,” Mr. Castevet said. “I’d be most curious to see what you would have done with the part.”

Laughing, Guy said, “That makes two of us,” and cast a bright-eyed glance at Rosemary. She smiled back, pleased that Guy was pleased; there would be no reproofs from him now for an evening wasted talking with Ma and Pa Settle. No, Kettle.

“My father was a theatrical producer,” Mr. Castevet said, “and my early years were spent in the company of such people as Mrs. Fiske and Forbes-Robertson, Otis Skinner and Modjeska. I tend, therefore, to look for something more than mere competence in actors. You have a most interesting inner quality, Guy. It appears in your television work too, and it should carry you very far indeed; provided, of course, that you get those initial ‘breaks’ upon which even the greatest actors are to some degree dependent. Are you preparing for a show now?”

“I’m up for a couple of parts,” Guy said.

“I can’t believe that you won’t get them,” Mr. Castevet said.

“I can,” Guy said.

Mr. Castevet stared at him. “Are you serious?” he asked.

Dessert was a homemade Boston cream pie that, though better than the steak and vegetables, had for Rosemary a peculiar and unpleasant sweetness. Guy, however, praised it heartily and ate a second helping. Perhaps he was only acting, Rosemary thought; repaying compliments with compliments.

After dinner Rosemary offered to help with the cleaning up. Mrs. Castevet accepted the offer instantly and the two women cleared the table while Guy and Mr. Castevet went into the living room.

The kitchen, opening off the foyer, was small, and made smaller still by the miniature greenhouse Terry had mentioned. Some three feet long, it stood on a large white table near the room’s one window. Goosenecked lamps leaned close around it, their bright bulbs reflecting in the glass and making it blinding white rather than transparent. In the remaining space the sink, stove, and refrigerator stood close together with cabinets jutting out above them on all sides. Rosemary wiped dishes at Mrs. Castevet’s elbow, working diligently and conscientiously in the pleasing knowledge that her own kitchen was larger and more graciously equipped. “Terry told me about that greenhouse,” she said.

“Oh yes,” Mrs. Castevet said. “It’s a nice hobby. You ought to do it too.”

“I’d like to have a spice garden some day,” Rosemary said. “Out of the city, of course. If Guy ever gets a movie offer we’re going to grab it and go live in Los Angeles. I’m a country girl at heart.”

“Do you come from a big family?” Mrs. Castevet asked.

“Yes,” Rosemary said. “I have three brothers and two sisters. I’m the baby.”

“Are your sisters married?”

“Yes, they are.”

Mrs. Castevet pushed a soapy sponge up and down inside a glass. “Do they have children?” she asked.

“One has two and the other has four,” Rosemary said. “At least that was the count the last I heard. It could be three and five by now.”

“Well that’s a good sign for you,” Mrs. Castevet said, still soaping the glass. She was a slow and thorough washer. “If your sisters have lots of children, chances are you will too. Things like that go in families.”

“Oh, we’re fertile, all right,” Rosemary said, waiting towel in hand for the glass. “My brother Eddie has eight already and he’s only twenty-six.”

“My goodness!” Mrs. Castevet said. She rinsed the glass and gave it to Rosemary.

“All told I’ve got twenty nieces and nephews,” Rosemary said. “I haven’t even seen half of them.”

“Don’t you go home every once in a while?” Mrs. Castevet asked.

“No, I don’t,” Rosemary said. “I’m not on the best of terms with my family, except one brother. They feel I’m the black sheep.”

“Oh? How is that?”

“Because Guy isn’t Catholic, and we didn’t have a church wedding.”

“Tsk,” Mrs. Castevet said. “Isn’t it something the way people fuss about religion? Well, it’s their loss, not yours; don’t you let it bother you any.”

“That’s more easily said than done,” Rosemary said, putting the glass on a shelf. “Would you like me to wash and you wipe for a while?”

“No, this is fine, dear,” Mrs. Castevet said.

Rosemary looked outside the door. She could see only the end of the living room that was bridge tables and file cabinets; Guy and Mr. Castevet were at the other end. A plane of blue cigarette smoke lay motionless in the air.

“Rosemary?”

She turned. Mrs. Castevet, smiling, held out a wet plate in a green rubber-gloved hand.

It took almost an hour to do the dishes and pans and silver, although Rosemary felt she could have done them alone in less than half that time. When she and Mrs. Castevet came out of the kitchen and into the living room, Guy and Mr. Castevet were sitting facing each other on the settee, Mr. Castevet driving home point after point with repeated strikings of his forefinger against his palm.

“Now Roman, you stop bending Guy’s ear with your Modjeska stories,” Mrs. Castevet said. “He’s only listening ’cause he’s polite.”

“No, it’s interesting, Mrs. Castevet,” Guy said.

“You see?” Mr. Castevet said.

“Minnie,” Mrs. Castevet told Guy. “I’m Minnie and he’s Roman; okay?” She looked mock-defiantly at Rosemary. “Okay?”

Guy laughed. “Okay, Minnie,” he said.

They talked about the Goulds and the Bruhns and Dubin-and-DeVore; about Terry’s sailor brother who had turned out to be in a civilian hospital in Saigon; and, because Mr. Castevet was reading a book critical of the Warren Report, about the Kennedy assassination. Rosemary, in one of the straight-backed chairs, felt oddly out of things, as if the Castevets were old friends of Guy’s to whom she had just been introduced. “Do you think it could have been a plot of some kind?” Mr. Castevet asked her, and she answered awkwardly, aware that a considerate host was drawing a left-out guest into conversation. She excused herself and followed Mrs. Castevet’s directions to the bathroom, where there were flowered paper towels inscribed For Our Guest and a book called Jokes for The John that wasn’t especially funny.

They left at ten-thirty, saying “Good-by, Roman” and “Thank you, Minnie” and shaking hands with an enthusiasm and an implied promise of more such evenings together that, on Rosemary’s part, was completely false. Rounding the first bend in the hallway and hearing the door close behind them, she blew out a relieved sigh and grinned happily at Guy when she saw him doing exactly the same.

“Naow Roman,” he said, working his eyebrows comically, “yew stop bendin’ Guy’s ee-yurs with them thar Mojesky sto-rees!”

Laughing, Rosemary cringed and hushed him, and they ran hand in hand on ultra-quiet tiptoes to their own door, which they unlocked, opened, slammed, locked, bolted, chained; and Guy nailed it over with imaginary beams, pushed up three imaginary boulders, hoisted an imaginary drawbridge, and mopped his brow and panted while Rosemary bent over double and laughed into both hands.

“About that steak,” Guy said.

“Oh my God!” Rosemary said. “The pie! How did you eat two pieces of it? It was weird!”

“Dear girl,” Guy said, “that was an act of superhuman courage and self-sacrifice. I said to myself, ‘Ye gods, I’ll bet nobody’s ever asked this old bat for seconds on anything in her entire life!’ So I did it.” He waved a hand grandly. “Now and again I get these noble urges.”

They went into the bedroom. “She raises herbs and spices,” Rosemary said, “and when they’re full-grown she throws them out the window.”

“Shh, the walls have ears,” Guy said. “Hey, how about that silverware?”

“Isn’t that funny?” Rosemary said, working her feet against the floor to unshoe them; “only three dinner plates that match, and they’ve got that beautiful, beautiful silver.”

“Let’s be nice; maybe they’ll will it to us.”

“Let’s be nasty and buy our own. Did you go to the bathroom?”

“There? No.”

“Guess what they’ve got in it.”

“A bidet.”

“No, Jokes for The John.”

“No.”

Rosemary shucked off her dress. “A book on a hook,” she said. “Right next to the toilet.”

Guy smiled and shook his head. He began taking out his cufflinks, standing beside the armoire. “Those stories of Roman’s, though,” he said, “were pretty damn interesting, actually. I’d never even heard of Forbes-Robertson before, but he was a very big star in his day.” He worked at the second link, having trouble with it. “I’m going to go over there again tomorrow night and hear some more,” he said.

Rosemary looked at him, disconcerted. “You are?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, “he asked me.” He held out his hand to her. “Can you get this off for me?”

She went to him and worked at the link, feeling suddenly lost and uncertain. “I thought we were going to do something with Jimmy and Tiger,” she said.

“Was that definite?” he asked. His eyes looked into hers. “I thought we were just going to call and see.”

“It wasn’t definite,” she said.

He shrugged. “We’ll see them Wednesday or Thursday.”

She got the link out and held it on her palm. He took it. “Thanks,” he said. “You don’t have to come along if you don’t want to; you can stay here.”

“I think I will,” she said. “Stay here.” She went to the bed and sat down.

“He knew Henry Irving too,” Guy said. “It’s really terrifically interesting.”

Rosemary unhooked her stockings. “Why did they take down the pictures,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“Their pictures; they took them down. In the living room and in the hallway leading back to the bathroom. There are hooks in the wall and clean places. And the one picture that is there, over the mantel, doesn’t fit. There are two inches of clean at both sides of it.”

Guy looked at her. “I didn’t notice,” he said.

“And why do they have all those files and things in the living room?” she asked.

“That he told me,” Guy said, taking off his shirt. “He puts out a newsletter for stamp collectors. All over the world. That’s why they get so much foreign mail.”

“Yes, but why in the living room?” Rosemary said. “They have three or four other rooms, all with the doors closed. Why doesn’t he use one of those?”

Guy went to her, shirt in hand, and pressed her nose with a firm fingertip. “You’re getting nosier than Minnie,” he said, kissed air at her, and went out to the bathroom.

Ten or fifteen minutes later, while in the kitchen putting on water for coffee, Rosemary got the sharp pain in her middle that was the night-before signal of her period. She relaxed with one hand against the corner of the stove, letting the pain have its brief way, and then she got out a Chemex paper and the can of coffee, feeling disappointed and forlorn.

She was twenty-four and they wanted three children two years apart; but Guy “wasn’t ready yet”—nor would he ever be ready, she feared, until he was as big as Marlon Brando and Richard Burton put together. Didn’t he know how handsome and talented he was, how sure to succeed? So her plan was to get pregnant by “accident” the pills gave her headaches, she said, and rubber gadgets were repulsive. Guy said that subconsciously she was still a good Catholic, and she protested enough to support the explanation. Indulgently he studied the calendar and avoided the “dangerous days,” and she said, “No, it’s safe today, darling; I’m sure it is.”

And again this month he had won and she had lost, in this undignified contest in which he didn’t even know they were engaged. “Damn!” she said, and banged the coffee can down on the stove. Guy, in the den, called, “What happened?”

“I bumped my elbow!” she called back.

At least she knew now why she had become depressed during the evening.