Free Ira Levin by Son Of Rosemary (v0.9) (htm)

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,