Authors: Ira Levin
S
HE BOUGHT
cotton balls and cotton swabs and talcum powder and baby lotion; engaged a diaper service and rearranged the baby’s clothing in the bureau drawers. She ordered the announcements—Guy would phone in the name and date later—and addressed and stamped a boxful of small ivory envelopes. She read a book called
Summerhill
that presented a seemingly irrefutable case for permissive child-rearing, and discussed it at Sardi’s East with Elise and Joan, their treat.
She began to feel contractions; one one day, one the next, then none, then two.
A postcard came from Paris, with a picture of the Arc de Triomphe and a neatly written message:
Thinking of you both. Lovely weather, excellent food. The flight over was perfect. Love, Minnie
.
The baby dropped low inside her, ready to be born.
Early in the afternoon of Friday, June 24th, at the stationery counter at Tiffany’s where she had gone for twenty-five more envelopes, Rosemary met Dominick Pozzo, who in the past had been Guy’s vocal coach. A short, swarthy, hump-backed man with a voice that was rasping and unpleasant, he seized Rosemary’s hand and congratulated her on her appearance and on Guy’s recent good fortune, for which he disavowed all credit. Rosemary told him of the play Guy was signing for and of the latest offer Warner Brothers had made. Dominick was delighted; now, he said, was when Guy could truly benefit from intensive coaching. He explained why, made Rosemary promise to have Guy call him, and, with final good wishes, turned toward the elevators. Rosemary caught his arm. “I never thanked you for the tickets to
The Fantasticks
,” she said. “I just loved it. It’s going to go on and on forever, like that Agatha Christie play in London.”
“
The Fantasticks?
” Dominick said.
“You gave Guy a pair of tickets. Oh, long ago. In the fall. I went with a friend. Guy had seen it already.”
“I never gave Guy tickets for
The Fantasticks
,” Dominick said.
“You did. Last fall.”
“No, my dear. I never gave
anybody
tickets to
The Fantasticks
; I never had any to give. You’re mistaken.”
“I’m sure he said he got them from you,” Rosemary said.
“Then
he
was mistaken,” Dominick said. “You’ll tell him to call me, yes?”
“Yes. Yes, I will.”
It was strange, Rosemary thought when she was waiting to cross Fifth Avenue. Guy
had
said that Dominick had given him the tickets, she was certain of it. She remembered wondering whether or not to send Dominick a thank-you note and deciding finally that it wasn’t necessary. She
couldn’t
be mistaken.
Walk
, the light said, and she crossed the avenue.
But
Guy
couldn’t have been mistaken either. He didn’t get free tickets every day of the week; he
must
have remembered who gave them to him. Had he deliberately lied to her? Perhaps he hadn’t been given the tickets at all, but had found and kept them. No, there might have been a scene at the theater; he wouldn’t have exposed her to that.
She walked west on Fifty-seventh Street, walked very slowly with the bigness of the baby hanging before her and her back aching from withstanding its forward-pulling weight. The day was hot and humid; ninety-two already and still rising. She walked very slowly.
Had he wanted to get her out of the apartment that night for some reason? Had he gone down and bought the tickets himself? To be free to study the scene he was working on? But there wouldn’t have been any need for trickery if that had been the case; more than once in the old one-room apartment he had asked her to go out for a couple of hours and she had gone gladly. Most of the time, though, he wanted her to stay, to be his line-feeder, his audience.
Was it a girl? One of his old flames for whom a couple of hours hadn’t been enough, and whose perfume he had been washing off in the shower when she got home? No, it was tannis root not perfume that the apartment had smelled of that night; she had had to wrap the charm in foil because of it. And Guy had been far too energetic and amorous to have spent the earlier part of the night with someone else. He had made unusually violent love to her, she remembered; later, while he slept, she had heard the flute and the chanting at Minnie and Roman’s.
No, not the flute. Dr. Shand’s recorder.
Was that how Guy knew about it? Had he been there that evening? At a sabbath…
She stopped and looked in Henri Bendel’s windows, because she didn’t want to think any more about witches and covens and baby’s blood and Guy being over there. Why had she met that stupid Dominick? She should never have gone out today at all. It was too hot and sticky.
There was a great raspberry crepe dress that looked like a Rudi Gernreich. After Tuesday, after she was her own real shape again, maybe she would go in and price it. And a pair of lemon-yellow hip-huggers and a raspberry blouse…
Eventually, though, she had to go on. Go on walking, go on thinking, with the baby squirming inside her.
The book (
which Guy had thrown away
) had told of initiation ceremonies, of covens inducting novice members with vows and baptism, with anointing and the infliction of a “witch mark.” Was it possible (the shower to wash away the smell of a tannis anointing) that Guy had joined the coven? That he (no, he couldn’t be!) was one of them, with a secret mark of membership somewhere on his body?
There had been a flesh-colored Band-Aid on his shoulder. It had been there in his dressing room in Philadelphia (“That damn pimple,” he had said when she had asked him) and it had been there a few months before (“Not the same one!” she had said). Was it still there now?
She didn’t know. He didn’t sleep naked any more. He had in the past, especially in hot weather. But not any more, not for months and months. Now he wore pajamas every night. When had she last seen him naked?
A car honked at her; she was crossing Sixth Avenue. “For God’s sake, lady,” a man behind her said.
But why,
why?
He was
Guy
, he wasn’t a crazy old man with nothing better to do, with no other way to find purpose and self-esteem! He had a
career
, a busy, exciting, every-day-getting-better career! What did he need with wands and witch knives and censers and—and
junk
; with the Weeses and the Gilmores and Minnie and Roman? What could they give him that he couldn’t get elsewhere?
She had known the answer before she asked herself the question. Formulating the question had been a way to put off facing the answer.
The blindness of Donald Baumgart.
If you believed.
But she didn’t. She didn’t.
Yet there Donald Baumgart was, blind, only a day or two after that Saturday. With Guy staying home to grab the phone every time it rang. Expecting the news.
The blindness of Donald Baumgart.
Out of which had come everything; the play, the reviews, the new play, the movie offer…Maybe Guy’s part in
Greenwich Village
, too, would have been Donald Baumgart’s if he hadn’t gone inexplicably blind a day or two after Guy had joined (maybe) a coven (maybe) of witches (maybe).
There were spells to take an enemy’s sight or hearing, the book had said.
All Of Them Witches
. (Not Guy!) The united mental force of the whole coven, a concentrated battery of malevolent wills, could blind, deafen, paralyze, and ultimately kill the chosen victim.
Paralyze and ultimately kill.
“Hutch?” she asked aloud, standing motionless in front of Carnegie Hall. A girl looked up at her, clinging to her mother’s hand.
He had been reading the book that night and had asked her to meet him the next morning. To tell her that Roman was Steven Marcato. And Guy knew of the appointment, and knowing, went out for—what, ice cream?—and rang Minnie and Roman’s bell. Was a hasty meeting called? The united mental force…But how had they known what Hutch would be telling her? She hadn’t known herself; only he had known.
Suppose, though, that “tannis root” wasn’t “tannis root” at all. Hutch hadn’t heard of it, had he? Suppose it was—that other stuff he underlined in the book, Devil’s Fungus or whatever it was. He had told Roman he was going to look into it; wouldn’t that have been enough to make Roman wary of him?
And right then and there Roman had taken one of Hutch’s gloves
, because the spells can’t be cast without one of the victim’s belongings! And then, when Guy told them about the appointment for the next morning, they took no chances and went to work.
But no, Roman couldn’t have taken Hutch’s glove; she had shown him in and shown him out, walking along with him both times.
Guy
had taken the glove. He had rushed home with his make-up still on—which he
never
did—and had gone by himself to the closet. Roman must have called him, must have said, “This man Hutch is getting suspicious about ‘tannis root’ go home and get one of his belongings, just in case!” And Guy had obeyed. To keep Donald Baumgart blind.
Waiting for the light at Fifty-fifth Street, she tucked her handbag and the envelopes under her arm, unhooked the chain at the back of her neck, drew the chain and the tannis-charm out of her dress and dropped them together down through the sewer grating.
So much for “tannis root.” Devil’s Fungus.
She was so frightened she wanted to cry.
Because she knew what Guy was giving them in exchange for his success.
The baby. To use in their rituals.
He had never
wanted
a baby until after Donald Baumgart was blind. He didn’t like to feel it moving; he didn’t like to talk about it; he kept himself as distant and busy as if it weren’t his baby at all.
Because he knew what they were planning to do to it as soon as he gave it to them.
In the apartment, in the blessedly-cool shaded apartment, she tried to tell herself that she was mad.
You’re going to have your baby in four days, Idiot Girl. Maybe even less. So you’re all tense and nutty and you’ve built up a whole lunatic persecution thing out of a bunch of completely unrelated coincidences. There are no real witches. There are no real spells. Hutch died a natural death, even if the doctors
couldn’t
give a name to it. Ditto for Donald Baumgart’s blindness. And how, pray tell, did Guy get one of Donald Baumgart’s belongings for the big spell-casting? See, Idiot Girl? It all falls apart when you pick at it
.
But why had he lied about the tickets?
She undressed and took a long cool shower, turned clumsily around and around and then pushed her face up into the spray, trying to think sensibly, rationally.
There
must
be another reason why he had lied. Maybe he’d spent the day hanging around Downey’s, yes, and had gotten the tickets from one of the gang there; wouldn’t he then have said Dominick had given them to him, so as not to let her know he’d been goofing off?
Of course he would have.
There, you see, Idiot Girl?
But why hadn’t he shown himself naked in so many months and months?
She was glad, anyway, that she had thrown away that damned charm. She should have done it long ago. She never should have taken it from Minnie in the first place. What a pleasure it was to be rid of its revolting smell! She dried herself and splashed on cologne, lots and lots of it.
He hadn’t shown himself naked because he had a little rash of some kind and was embarrassed about it. Actors are vain, aren’t they? Elementary.
But why had he thrown out the book? And spent so much time at Minnie and Roman’s? And waited for the news of Donald Baumgart’s blindness? And rushed home wearing his make-up just before Hutch missed his glove?
She brushed her hair and tied it, and put on a brassiere and panties. She went into the kitchen and drank two glasses of cold milk.
She didn’t know.
She went into the nursery, moved the bathinette away from the wall, and thumbtacked a sheet of plastic over the wallpaper to protect it when the baby splashed in its bath.
She didn’t know.
She didn’t know if she was going mad or going sane, if witches had only the longing for power or power that was real and strong, if Guy was her loving husband or the treacherous enemy of the baby and herself.
It was almost four. He would be home in an hour or so.
She called Actors Equity and got Donald Baumgart’s telephone number.
The phone was answered on the first ring with a quick impatient “Yeh?”
“Is this Donald Baumgart?”
“That’s right.”
“This is Rosemary Woodhouse,” she said. “Guy Woodhouse’s wife.”
“Oh?”
“I wanted—”
“My God,” he said, “you must be a happy little lady these days! I hear you’re living in baronial splendor in the ‘Bram,’ sipping vintage wine from crystal goblets, with scores of uniformed lackeys in attendance.”
She said, “I wanted to know how you are; if there’s been any improvement.”
He laughed. “Why bless your heart, Guy Woodhouse’s wife,” he said, “I’m fine! I’m splendid! There’s been enormous improvement! I only broke six glasses today, only fell down three flights of stairs, and only went tap-a-tap-tapping in front of two speeding fire engines! Every day in every way I’m getting better and better and better and better.”
Rosemary said, “Guy and I are both very unhappy that he got his break because of your misfortune.”
Donald Baumgart was silent for a moment, and then said, “Oh, what the hell. That’s the way it goes. Somebody’s up, somebody’s down. He would’ve made out all right anyway. To tell you the truth, after that second audition we did for
Two Hours of Solid Crap
, I was dead certain he was going to get the part. He was terrific.”