LEVINE, Ira

Rosemary’s baby

…..
Heartened, Rosemary leaped from practicality. “Oh Guy, let’s take it! Please! Please! It’s such a wonderful apartment! She didn’t do anything with it, old Mrs. Gardenia! That living room could be—it could be beautiful, and warm, and—oh please, Guy, let’s take it, all right?”

“Well sure,” Guy said, smiling. “If we can get out of the other thing.”

Rosemary grabbed his elbow happily. “We will!” she said. “You’ll think of something, I know you will!”

Guy telephoned Mrs. Cortez from a glass-walled booth while Rosemary, outside, tried to lip-read. Mrs. Cortez said she would give them until three o’clock; if she hadn’t heard from them by then she would call the next party on the waiting list.

They went to the Russian Tea Room and ordered Bloody Mary’s and chicken salad sandwiches on black bread.

“You could tell them I’m sick and have to go into the hospital,” Rosemary said.

But that was neither convincing nor compelling. Instead Guy spun a story about a call to join a company of Come Blow Your Horn leaving for a four-month USO tour of Vietnam and the Far East. The actor playing Alan had broken his hip and unless he, Guy, who knew the part from stock, stepped in and replaced him, the tour would have to be postponed for at least two weeks. Which would be a damn shame, the way those kids over there were slugging away against the Commies. His wife would have to stay with her folks in Omaha…

…..