Ira Levin (8 page)

    He showed her how to use the tape player and its remote control, and how the tapes were more or less arranged-Gc's own productions, news coverage of its activities, and documentaries on all kinds of related subjects. Movies too, some on records like LP'S that used a different player.

    "This is great!" she said, looking around. "You don't by any chance have Gone With the Wind, do you?"

    "As a matter of fact we do," Craig said, smiling. "With screen tests and outtakes and a whole mess of other material." "Oh God!" Rosemary cried. "I'm in HEAVEN!" cJssgsr caret Just caret fandsUs caret So tilde*iood morning, may I ask who's calling??-a VJ-PLEASANT female voice with just a hair of a Japanese L.

    "This is Andy's Mom," she said. "He gave me this number."

    118One moment please. Is this Rosemary E. Reilly speaking?"

    "Yes, "she said. *8Please hang up, Rosemary. Andy will return your call soon. If you wish him to call you at a different number, press one."

    She hung up, suspecting she'd been talking with a computer chip. She'd have to watch It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. She punched the pillows up higher behind her, settled her glasses, took the other half of the croissant from the plate on the tray, what the hell, and nibbled while she checked the crossword puzzle. She did the upper-left- hand corner in her head and was refolding the paper one- handed to the book review when the phone rang. She dropped the paper and the croissant stub, licked crumbs from her fingertips, brushed them on satin, picked up. "Hello?"

    "Hi, Mom, everything okay?"

    "Couldn't be better!" she said. "Breakfast in bed! I feel like I'm in an MGM movie, the old MGM. Norma Shearer, Garbo

    …" She swooned on the satin.

    He chuckled in her ear. "I think you'd make the cut."

    Smiling, taking her glasses off, she said, "Where are you, angel?"

    "In Rome, just the right place for one."

    "You sound as if you're right around the corner."

    "Wish I were. What's up?"

    She said, "I don't mean to be pushy but I-was

    "If it's about Craig and the commercial, I called him about something else and he mentioned it. I think it's a great idea."

       She said, "You do?"

    "Absolutely. Talk about someone coming to something with fresh eyes; who could possibly have fresher eyes than Rip Van Rosie? Not just about the commercials but about everything that's going on. You've put your finger on something I should have seen for myself weeks ago. We'll get right to work on it, you included. I'm sorry but I'm really in the middle of something. I'm coming back Saturday." "Saturday!" she said.

    "I canceled Madrid." A beat. "I never missed anyone before." e.Js caret r*@.* i i caret to to i-greater-than

    She watched a whole batch of GC commercials and specials comthe medium's best, undoubtedly-handsomely produced, stirringly written and visualized, all featuring Andy. Sometimes when he was talking to her, about lightening up, lighting her candle, and so on, she could almost see a flicker of his old eyes in the new ones. She rewound, froze, and stepped the picture forward frame by frame a few times, but no, there was nothing- just his hazel eyes and her memory, seeing his beautiful tiger eyes in the wake of the kiss, the wicked, shocking kiss… "s

    But really, could anyone blame him? Poor lonely angel…

    And it wasn't as if she looked like his old mom. Every newspaper and magazine article and TV talking head- well it was vain even to think about what they had to say on that subject.

    She watched, five or six times, a ten-second spot where he was his absolute Jesus best, strong and loving and just plain gorgeous, reminding her to pick up her candles at the supermarket or wherever and put them out of reach of the kids, and to wait and open the shrink- wrap along with everyone else in the world, just before the Lighting.

    After that, as a break, she watched screen tests and outtakes from Gone With the Wind.

    M

    she was edgy Friday, thinking about Andy being thirty thousand feet in the air tomorrow afternoon.

    And down on the ground tomorrow evening…

    Around midafternoon she called Joe to arrange to go to the airport with him. "The spa, the fitness center, whatever," she said, "it's coed all the time, isn't it?"

    "Unisex. Sure. When you thinking of going?"

    "Now," she said. "I want to loosen up. I'm a little tense, with Andy flying tomorrow."

    "Give me twenty minutes. I'll show you around and introduce the guys and make sure nobody pesters you."

    She said, "I don't want anybody being shut out, Joe."

  "It's just a question of cluing people in on how to behave, that's all. Don't worry."

    "That's great," she said. "Thanks. Whenever you're ready. Don't rush."

    They pedaled exercise bikes side by side. He told her about his ex-after-twenty-years, Veronica, in real estate now in Little Neck, and his daughter, Mary Elizabeth, going for her master's in economics at Loyola. She told him about the proposed commercial" and how pleased she was to be getting actively involved in GC. Both ideas sounded good to him.

    She jumped rope, atrociously, while he punched a punching bag, awesomely. "I used to box," he said, dancing in and out, rat-a-tat-tatting. "Golden Gloves, middleweight."

    "I used to jump rope," she said, untangling the damn thing from around her ankle. "Omaha Junior High School Championship Team, two years running."

    "I can tell by your form," he said, rat-a-tat-tatting.

    They strode along on side-by-side treadmills.

    "Great place, isn't it?"

    "Oh terrific," she said. "A real morale booster." A floodlit photo shoot was going on across the equipment- filled room. Small swimsuits on large young women.

    Joe sneered and looked away, striding along. "Not my style," he said. "Ronnie was a fashion model when we started going together. The first time she turned sideways I called Missing Persons." He smiled at her. "My mother was a broomstick. You know how it is with us guys-"I want a girl, just like the girl, that married dear old Dad." his

    Striding along in place, Rosemary nodded. "Yeah, I know how it is," she said, "I know."     

    She was still edgy when she got back to the suite. She called Judy, who was home sounding teary. She jumped at the invite.

    She arrived on the dot of eight, in a kerchief and a wool coat with damp shoulders, holding a big brown Bloomingdale's shopping bag. Under the coat the sari was peach; out of the bag came a plastic Scrabble board with a built-in turntable and molded nests for the tiles, a beaded drawstring bag, two black racks, a miniature silver-caged hourglass, and-naturally-a scorekeeping gizmo.

    They set up on the table by the window. Light snow was falling, powdering the park's treetops, hazing Fifth Avenue's cliff of lights half a mile away. Rosemary won first move.

    She looked through her glasses at jetty m on the rack-trying not to think of ice forming on wings and the damn timer at the side of the table (sand running out)-and lifted the tiles in clusters. She fed them into the nests across the board as jittery. "Double on the J," she said, "double word, fifty-point bonus."

    Judy tapped at the gizmo-not with a special fingernail, just one of a set of matching pearl ovals. "One hundred," she said. "Good beginning."

    "Thank you," Rosemary said, giving her an over-the- glasses look while drawing new tiles from the bag.

    Judy turned the tinier over, looked at the board through her mascara, blinked, and set tiles down below the J, making jinxed. "Double word," she said.

    Rosemary plucked up tiles, reached without turning the board, and began laying in foxy using the X and the pink space beside it.

    Judy wailed and wept and tore at her hair. "Now he's ruined my Scrabble too! Look what I did! An X by a pink! You win! You win! He's melted my brain! He's made my life SHIT! I'm jinxed! Jinxed by HIM! That's why I saw the word!" She threw herself across the board sobbing, beating her fists on the table.

    "Oh dear," Rosemary said, catching the rolling timer. She set it up straight and got up; moved to the side of the table and bent over Judy, patted her hair, stroked her heaving back. "Ah, Judy," she said, "ah, Judy… No guy is worth getting this upset about, not even oh jeez it's Andy, isn't it? Isn't it Andy? It is, isn't it?"

    Yeses snuffled in among the sobs, yeses and Andys.

    Rosemary nodded, sighed. She was getting slow. In her old age.

    Judy raised herself from the board, weeping, tiles dropping from her cheek, the mascara holding up surprisingly well. "I hate Andy!" she cried, tearing her button away, tearing silk, flinging the button against the window. "I only wore it because I didn't want you to guess! I hate him! I'll make my own button to say how I really feel! Oh Rosemary, if you knew the whole story, if you knew what goes on up on the ninth-was

    "Shh, shh." Rosemary hugged and soothed her. "Shh, calm down, dear," she said. "Ssh. Take a good, deep breath. That's it… Atta girl… There… That's a little better. Now why don't you go pat some cool water on your face and then we'll have a good long talk. Would you like something to drink? There's room service, so if you're hungry, just say so." t@lzandrfand*itand-9 f" caret hey sat on the sofa.

    JL "He spoke at a benefit for Indian flood relief," Judy said, dabbing. "Last summer at Madison Square Garden. I brought a proposal I had written for improving methods of food distribution, and was able to hand it to him personally. Right then, there was a little spark between us."

    Rosemary nodded, listening.

    "A few days later," Judy said, "he called me here, to his office, and invited me to join GC, as a secretary at first but with the prospect, the promise, of going higher. We began a relationship-as equals-but within days, nights I should say, he gained complete mastery of me. You can't begin to imagine what an incredible lover he is."

    "No," Rosemary said, "no, of course not, being his mother. No, I certainly can't. No."

    "I meant that in the general sensest" Judy said. She leaned closer to Rosemary. "In my culture," she said, "women readily confide in one Another about intimate matters. I have two married sisters, and my roommates at Vassar liked nothing better than to discuss their sexual activities. So even though I've only known one other man myself-a slimeball named Nathan about whom the less said the better-I know that all men, not only he, are more concerned with their own satisfaction than that of their partners. And in truth, as the climax approaches, women are too, n'est-ce pasl Don't we all ultimately become involved solely with our own mounting excitement?"

    Rosemary nodded.

    "Not Andy," Judy said, and sighed. "It's as if a part of him is always in control, always aware of me and my needs and my feelings. And now it's HER needs he's aware of, HER wretched feelings! I can't bear it!" She grabbed at her hair.

    Rosemary caught her wrists. "Whose?" she asked. "Who?"

    "The woman he's in Rome with!" Judy cried. "And going to Madrid with! His new beloved! The woman he was with after your dinner on Thanksgiving, when I waited all night for his call! The one he took to the retreat for the weekend instead of me! There has to be someone! Why else not a word, Rosemary, not a single WORD, in eight days and nights right-brace Why elsel" Rosemary stayed silent a moment. Shrugged. Said, "still don't know…"

    "And if only that were the worst of it…" Judy drew a breath, shook her head, cast a sidelong look at Rosemary. "He led me into-practices I didn't even know were-was

    "Stop right here," Rosemary said, pressing a hand on Judy's arm. "I really don't want to hear details. You're upset for no reason. He isn't going to Madrid; he's cutting the trip short because there's someone here he misses very much. He told me so yesterday morning."

    "He did?" Judy stared at her.

    Rosemary nodded. "Yes," she said. "He's coming back tomorrow. I'm absolutely certain he'll be calling you. I'll bet on it. And I'm sure he'll have a good reason for not having called you. I'll bet on that too."

    "Oh, Rosemary, do you really mean it?" Judy asked. "Are you sure you're not saying this just so I'll feel better?"

    Rosemary smiled at her. "Judy," she said, "I'm Andy's Mom. Would I lie to you?"