"01 - Rosemary's Baby (a)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Levin Ira)

"I'm sorry," Rosemary said. "I thought you were Anna Maria Alberghetti, so I've been staring at you. I'm sorry."
The girl blushed and smiled and looked at the floor a few feet to her side. "That happens a lot," she said. "You don't have to apologize. People have been thinking I'm Anna Maria since I was, oh, just a kid, when she first started out in Here Comes The Groom. " She looked at Rosemary, still blushing but no longer smiling. "I don't see a resemblance at all," she said. "I'm of Italian parentage like she is, but no physical resemblance."
"There's a very strong one," Rosemary said.
"I guess there is," the girl said; "everyone's always telling me. I don't see it though. I wish I did, believe me."

"Do you know her?" Rosemary asked.
"No."
"The way you said 'Anna Maria' I thought-"
"Oh no, I just call her that. I guess from talking about her so much with everyone." She wiped her hand on her shorts and stepped forward, holding it out and smiling. "I'm Terry Gionoffrio," she said, "and 1 can't spell it so don't you try."
Rosemary smiled and shook hands. "I'm Rosemary Woodhouse," she said. "We're new tenants here. Have you been here long?"
"I'm not a tenant at all," the girl said. "I'm just staying with Mr. and Mrs. Castevet, up on the seventh floor. I'm their guest, sort of, since June. Oh, you know them?"
"No," Rosemary said, smiling, "but our apartment is right behind theirs and used to be the back part of it."
"Oh for goodness' sake," the girl said, "you're the party that took the old lady's apartment! Mrs.-the old lady who died!"
"Gardenia."
"That's right. She was a good friend of the Castevets. She used to grow herbs and things and bring them in for Mrs. Castevet to cook with."
Rosemary nodded. "When we first looked at the apartment," she said, "one room was full of plants."
"And now that she's dead," Terry said, "Mrs. Castevet's got a miniature greenhouse in the kitchen and grows things herself."
"Excuse me, I have to put softener in," Rosemary said. She got up and got the bottle from the laundry bag on the washer.
"Do you know who you look like?" Terry asked her; and Rosemary, unscrewing the cap, said, "No, who?"
"Piper Laurie."
Rosemary laughed. "Oh, no," she said. "It's funny your saying that, because my husband used to date Piper Laurie before she got married."
"No kidding? In Hollywood?"
"No, here." Rosemary poured a capful of the softener. Terry opened the washer door and Rosemary thanked her and tossed the softener in.
"Is he an actor, your husband?" Terry asked.
Rosemary nodded complacently, capping the bottle.
"No kidding! What's his name?"
"Guy Woodhouse," Rosemary said. "He was in Luther and Nobody Loves An Albatross, and he does a lot of work in television."
"Gee, I watch TV all day long," Terry said. "I'll bet I've seen him!" Glass crashed somewhere in the basement; a bottle smashing or a windowpane. "Yow," Terry said.
Rosemary hunched her shoulders and looked uneasily toward the laundry room's doorway. "I hate this basement," she said.
"Me too," Terry said. "I'm glad you're here. If I was alone now I'd be scared stiff."

"A delivery boy probably dropped a bottle," Rosemary said.
Terry said; "Listen, we could come down together regular. Your door is by the service 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."