Rosemary's Baby Read Online Free PDF Page B

elevator, isn’t it? I could ring your bell and we could come down together. We could call each other first on the house phone.”
    “That would be great,” Rosemary said. “I hate coming down here alone.”
    Terry laughed happily, seemed to seek words, and then, still laughing, said, “I’ve got a good luck charm that’ll maybe do for both of us!” She pulled away the collar of her blouse, drew out a silver neckchain, and showed Rosemary on the end of it a silver filigree ball a little less than an inch in diameter.
    “Oh, that’s beautiful ,” Rosemary said.
    “Isn’t it?” Terry said. “Mrs. Castevet gave it to me the day before yesterday. It’s three hundred years old. She grew the stuff inside it in that little greenhouse. It’s good luck, or anyway it’s supposed to be.”
    Rosemary looked more closely at the charm Terry held out between thumb and fingertip. It was filled with a greenish-brown spongy substance that pressed out against the silver openwork. A bitter smell made Rosemary draw back.
    Terry laughed again. “I’m not mad about the smell either,” she said. “I hope it works!”
    “It’s a beautiful charm,” Rosemary said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
    “It’s European,” Terry said. She leaned a hip against a washer and admired the ball, turning it one way and another. “The Castevets are the most wonderful people in the world, bar none,” she said. “They picked me up off the sidewalk—and I mean that literally; I conked out on Eighth Avenue—and they brought me here and adopted me like a mother and father. Or like a grandmother and grandfather, I guess.”
    “You were sick?” Rosemary asked.
    “That’s putting it mildly,” Terry said. “I was starving and on dope and doing a lot of other things that I’m so ashamed of I could throw up just thinking about them. And Mr. and Mrs. Castevet completely rehabilitated me. They got me off the H, the dope, and got food into me and clean clothes on me, and now nothing is too good for me as far as they’re concerned. They give me all kinds of health food and vitamins, they even have a doctor come give me regular check-ups! It’s because they’re childless. I’m like the daughter they never had, you know?”
    Rosemary nodded.
    “I thought at first that maybe they had some kind of ulterior motive,” Terry said. “Maybe some kind of sex thing they would want me to do, or he would want, or she. But they’ve really been like real grandparents. Nothing like that. They’re going to put me through secretarial school in a little while and later on I’m going to pay them back. I only had three years of high school but there’s a way of making it up.” She dropped the filigree ball back into her blouse.
    Rosemary said, “It’s nice to know there are people like that, when you hear so much about apathy and people who are afraid of getting involved.”
    “There aren’t many like Mr. and Mrs. Castevet,” Terry said. “I would be dead now if it wasn’t for them. That’s an absolute fact. Dead or in jail.”
    “You don’t have any family that could have helped you?”
    “A brother in the Navy. The less said about him the better.”
    Rosemary transferred her finished wash to a dryer and waited with Terry for hers to be done. They spoke of Guy’s occasional role on Another World (“Sure I remember! You’re married to him? ”), the Bramford’s past (of which Terry knew nothing), and the coming visit to New York of Pope Paul. Terry was, like Rosemary, Catholic but no longer observing; she was anxious, though, to get a ticket to the papal mass to be celebrated at Yankee Stadium. When her wash was done and drying the two girls walked together to the service elevator and rode to the seventh floor. Rosemary invited Terry in to see the apartment, but Terry asked if she could take a rain check; the Castevets ate at six and she didn’t like to be late. She said she would call Rosemary on the house phone later in the