Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin Read Free Book Online

Navy.”
    The policeman looked to the Castevets.
    “It’s news to me,” Mrs. Castevet said, and Mr. Castevet said, “To both of us.”
    The policeman asked Rosemary, “Do you know his rank or where he’s stationed?”
    “No, I don’t,” she said, and to the Castevets: “She mentioned him to me the other day, in the laundry room. I’m Rosemary Woodhouse.”
    Guy said, “We’re in seven E.”
    “I feel just the way you do, Mrs. Castevet,” Rosemary said. “She seemed so happy and full of—of good feelings about the future. She said wonderful things about you and your husband; how grateful she was to both of you for all the help you were giving her.”
    “Thank you,” Mrs. Castevet said, and Mr. Castevet said, “It’s nice of you to tell us that. It makes it a little easier.”
    The policeman said, “You don’t know anything else about this brother except that he’s in the Navy?”
    “That’s all,” Rosemary said. “I don’t think she liked him very much.”
    “It should be easy to find him,” Mr. Castevet said, “with an uncommon name like Gionoffrio.”
    Guy put his hand on Rosemary’s back again and they withdrew toward the house. “I’m so stunned and so sorry,” Rosemary said to the Castevets; and Guy said, “It’s such a pity. It’s—”
    Mrs. Castevet said, “Thank you,” and Mr. Castevet said something long and sibilant of which only the phrase “her last days” was understandable.
     
     
    They rode upstairs (“Oh, my!” the night elevator man Diego said; “Oh, my! Oh, my!”), looked ruefully at the now-haunted door of 7A, and walked through the branching hallway to their own apartment. Mr. Kellogg in 7G peered out from behind his chained door and asked what was going on downstairs. They told him.
    They sat on the edge of their bed for a few minutes, speculating about Terry’s reason for killing herself. Only if the Castevets told them some day what was in the note, they agreed, would they ever learn for certain what had driven her to the violent death they had nearly witnessed. And even knowing what was in the note, Guy pointed out, they might still not know the full answer, for part of it had probably been beyond Terry’s own understanding. Something had led her to drugs and something had led her to death; what that something was, it was too late now for anyone to know.
    “Remember what Hutch said?” Rosemary asked. “About there being more suicides here than in other buildings?”
    “Ah, Ro,” Guy said, “that’s crap, honey, that ‘danger zone’ business.”
    “Hutch believes it.”
    “Well, it’s still crap.”
    “I can imagine what he’s going to say when he hears about this.”
    “Don’t tell him,” Guy said. “He sure as hell won’t read about it in the papers.” A strike against the New York newspapers had begun that morning, and there were rumors that it might continue a month or longer.
    They undressed, showered, resumed a stopped game of Scrabble, stopped it, made love, and found milk and a dish of cold spaghetti in the refrigerator. Just before they put the lights out at two-thirty, Guy remembered to check the answering service and found that he had got a part in a radio commercial for Cresta Blanca wines.
    Soon he was asleep, but Rosemary lay awake beside him, seeing Terry’s pulped face and her one eye watching the sky. After a while, though, she was at Our Lady. Sister Agnes was shaking her fist at her, ousting her from leadership of the second-floor monitors. “Sometimes I wonder how come you’re the leader of anything! ” she said. A bump on the other side of the wall woke Rosemary, and Mrs. Castevet said, “And please don’t tell me what Laura-Louise said because I’m not interested!” Rosemary turned over and burrowed into her pillow.
    Sister Agnes was furious. Her piggy-eyes were squeezed to slits and her nostrils were bubbling the way they always did at such moments. Thanks to Rosemary it had been necessary to brick up all