The Dark Descends (18 page)

Joyce woke up drenched with perspiration, though the window was wide open and the chill of night pervaded the room. It was four o'clock.

Exactly twelve hours later, she heard footsteps on the stairs: the slow, careful footsteps of someone who ascends a staircase by placing one foot upon a step and drawing the other up beside it. A halting progress across the landing, and the footsteps continued on to the floor above. A moment later, the footsteps reverberated overhead. Then there was an explosion of sound as the air tuned in to a jazz combo's attack on an unrecognizable melody. Joyce felt the floor underneath her begin to quake.

...

One foot, almost naked in a flimsy rubber thonged sandal, stepped over the door-sill. Tentatively. Cautiously. Testing the water. Even out here in the hall, where the floor vibrations were less than those inside, the noise was unbearable. Unbearable? Not the right word. It just seemed like the right word. For she had been bearing it, she had been bearing it and bearing it and bearing it. Thumps and bangs that sounded like a simultaneous shattering of all the skyscrapers in Manhattan, the fragments colliding in midair and crashing to earth. Atonal brazen bells that tolled as though all the fire engines from the five boroughs had converged at a single point to pool their resources. Wailing sirens beside which official citizens' alert signals had the charm of a lullaby. Relentlessly, inexorably, the bombardment went on in ever-changing combinations of cacophony. And over and above it all, a single constant—a high-pitched, high-powered whistle that attacked the eardrum the way torpedos attack a ship's hull.

Joyce came all the way out into the hall and closed the door of her apartment carefully. Absurd, this reluctance to let the door slam. Irrelevant. Like polishing the silver during a blitz. But old habits died hard. A good thing, perhaps. They told you who you were. Or had been.

The glare from the unshaded bulb on the ceiling was blinding. Squinting, Joyce backed up against the door. Cowered there. Like an animal. Just for a moment. Just long enough to summon the courage to take the next step. Every muscle, every nerve in her body balked. The landing, except for the place where she stood, was littered with tin cans, cardboard containers, scraps of leftover food—what looked like a week's accumulation of garbage. And yet she had swept the landing only this morning. How the hell did the bitch manage to collect so much garbage? Maybe she had clout with the Department of Sanitation.

A joke. Ha-ha. It was supposed to be a sign of health, being able to make jokes during a siege. Something to build on, in case you survived. So ha-ha. And ha-ha one more time, for good measure.

Joyce pulled away from the door and started to wade through the garbage, holding the skirts of her crimson terrycloth robe closed over her bare legs. Modesty. Another refinement of civilization. Another irrelevance. The stairs, mercifully, were clear. Had Charlotte Bancroft's supplier let her down? More likely it was prudence. Not wanting to break her neck. Clever Charlotte.

From below, the white door looked very white indeed. Immaculate. As though it had recently been given a fresh coat of paint. In contrast, the bright blue enamel of the surrounding walls was a mess—dull with dirt here, shiny with grease there. Once upon a time it had seemed like a sensible idea to paint those walls. When? How many lifetimes ago?

One foot went onto the first step, but the other foot balked, as though it possessed an independent will countermanding her orders. Foolish foot. Insensate. Unaware that it wouldn't survive another night of siege. Placing both hands on the railing, Joyce began to pull herself up the stairs. Hand over hand. Foot over foot. It was difficult. God, how difficult it was. She felt as weak as a baby. Or a convalescent. But she had to make it. She was making it.
Voila!

No, the door had not been painted, merely washed. There was the familiar jagged rust scar running diagonally across the upper half. A single stride brought her up to it. She rapped with the knuckles of an open hand. The sound was barely audible to her own ears; no chance that it would surface over the banging and clanging and wailing and whistling within. She clenched her fist, prepared to pound.

But the door was moving. Opening. Slowly. Inch by inch. When the space between the door and the frame was about a hand's breadth, movement stopped. An eye appeared in the aperture. A sparkling blue eye encircled by dark bruises. Then the door closed. Quickly. The din stopped. The silence was total.

No, not total. Feet shuffled on the other side of the door, which opened again, fast, creaking on its hinges. The spick-and-span blue and white interior looked like a set for a television commercial, awaiting the entrance of the make-believe housewife. She didn't appear. No one appeared. Instead a disembodied little girl's voice sent "Do come in, Joyce" wafting out into the hall.

Joyce went in, meaning to stop just beyond the threshold, but a hand reached out to take her arm, tugged, and the struggle to shake loose carried her farther than she meant to go. Behind her, the door closed. Softly, but with finality. She turned.

Charlotte Bancroft was standing against the door, standing tall, like a schoolgirl waiting to have her height measured. Her clothes—baggy gray trousers and a shapeless gray cardigan missing its top two buttons and fastened with a safety pin—shrieked deprivation, affliction, victimization. But her face was not a victim's face. Not remotely. The skin was firm and smooth, with the glow and high color of perfect health. The fine brown hair, brushed straight back and trimmed just below the ears, unmolested by permanent wave or curling iron, looked healthy, too. The blue eyes had so much vitality that the surrounding bruises looked unnatural, like smudges left by dirty fingers.

"It's rude to stare. But go ahead, I don't mind. Maybe you'll know me the next time you see me." Charlotte Bancroft spoke through pursed, scarcely moving lips. And then she smiled.

Joyce gasped. Below Charlotte Bancroft's upper lip, where the long, unsightly front teeth had been, was a row of symmetrical teeth with the texture and color of fine porcelain.

"Well, how do you like the results? I think I look pretty good, if I do say so myself. They did a swell job putting me back together again, didn't they? But of course, like Humpty Dumpty—" A stride forward: a Tower-of-Pisa-in-motion lurch because the right leg was so much shorter than the left.

Joyce backed away.

"Go and sit down, Joyce." A casual wave at the sofa.

Joyce went and sat down. On the coffee table was a carefully ordered blue and white ceramic tray: two blue earthenware mugs with a scant teaspoonful of instant coffee powder in each; a white china sugar bowl with lump sugar and a matching creamer with powdered cream substitute; two teaspoons set out on folded paper napkins. A diligent housewife's preparations. Everything in that brightly varnished, chintzy, model-home interior bespoke the housewife on her mettle to impress other housewives. No, not quite everything. Not the huge, mahogany-encased radio standing amid a profusion of amplifiers, speakers, tape recorders, microphones, and equipment whose function was known only to God or hi-fi buffs.

"You'll have to excuse the looks of the place, Joyce." The housewife was busy in the kitchen alcove. She had put a kettle on and was arranging cookies on a plate. "You don't mind my calling you Joyce, do you?"

Would it matter?

"
Do you?
"

"No."

"That's good. And you must call me Charlotte. All right?"

"All right."

"You mean all right, Charlotte. Say 'All right,
Charlotte
.' "

"All right, Charlotte."

The kettle began to whistle. Charlotte took it off the stove, hobbled across the room with it, and poured hot water into the mugs.

"I hope you don't mind instant. It's so much easier. Help yourself to cream and sugar."

Charlotte hobbled back to the alcove, put down the kettle and picked up the plate of cookies, hobbled across the room once more. Setting the plate down on the tray, she sank onto the sofa beside Joyce with a sigh.

"I get tired so easily. You wouldn't believe how easily I get tired. I guess I'm just not up to par yet. Certainly not up to doing any heavy housework. That's why the place is such a mess."

What was there to say to that? Offer commiseration? Or a contradiction of the false modesty that labeled perfect order a mess?

"But of course you wouldn't be bothered by a little dirt, would you? I mean, wallowing in filth the way you do down there. I bet your place is swarming with cockroaches."

Joyce winced.

"Oh, my!" Charlotte giggled. "You ought to see your face. You really ought to see your face, Joyce. It's obvious you're no fan of cockroaches. But who is? They're horrible little beasts, aren't they? Really horrible. The building I lived in before this one was simply infested with them. I sprayed and sprayed and sprayed all the time, but still, there they were, all over the place. Once they find their way into a building you can't ever get them out. They never used to be such a terrific problem here, but of course when every inch of a building isn't immaculate, you can't expect—"

"Okay, Charlotte, I get the message. You've been sending a lot of messages recently, and I assure you I've been getting them all."

"Have you? I was beginning to wonder." Charlotte picked up the plate of cookies. "Have one."

Joyce shook her head.

"I said have one, Joyce."

The plate came up higher, almost touched Joyce's chin. The cloying smell of musty sugar filled her nostrils. She raised a hand, hesitated over the jumble of Fig Newtons, jelly sandwiches, and chocolate-covered graham crackers, scooped a Fig Newton off the top, stuffed it in her mouth. Stale. Stale and tasting of mold.

The plate went back to the tray with a click. "You haven't even stirred your coffee." Charlotte picked up a teaspoon and stirred the liquid in Joyce's mug, then her own. "Cream and sugar?"

Impossible to answer: getting that cookie down was a task that might have challenged Superman. It must have been lying around for months, since before—Joyce swallowed hard, forced the soggy mass down her throat.

"Cream and sugar?"

"Neither. I don't want any coffee."

"Don't you? You look like you could use some. You smell like it, too, if you don't mind my saying so. Well, maybe later."

"No, not later. Not anytime. This isn't a social call, as you very well know. I came up here strictly to parley. It's absurd to pretend otherwise."

"Well, I know that, for pity's sake. But there's no reason why you can't be polite, is there? I mean, here I've gone and offered you coffee and cookies, and you don't even say thank you."

"All right. Thank you." Joyce rammed both hands into the pockets of her robe. "Now that we've taken care of the amenities, suppose we get down to business. What do I have to do to get you to lay off?."

"Yes, I knew you'd have to come around to that eventually." No expression in Charlotte's voice. With great deliberation, she inserted her thumb and forefinger into the sugar bowl, picked up a lump, dropped it into her mug. She took a second lump. A third. She poured some of the powder from the creamer into her cup and stirred. "You certainly took your time about it, I must say. I expected you long before this. I expected you right after I got the new amplifier, as a matter of fact. I wondered how on earth you could stand it, but then I thought maybe the drinking provides insulation, helps you shut things out."

"Nothing helps."

"Really? Then you must be very tough, Joyce. You held out for six days. I admire you for that. I really do." Crooking her little finger, Charlotte lifted her mug for a dainty sip of coffee and set it down again. "Such a good idea of mine, getting the tape recorder and the amplifying equipment. Expensive, but worth it. I was afraid you were getting so used to the radio you simply weren't hearing it anymore. People build up tolerance for all kinds of noises after a while. Especially people who live in Manhattan. But when the noises keep changing and get louder and louder all the time— You know, the man in the shop assured me even the teensy-est little Sound would be amplified beyond belief, and he wasn't exaggerating. Why, when I played that tape of cracking nuts last night, the noise was so loud in here it scared me. How it must have affected you I can't imagine. What did it sound like to you, Joyce?"

Joyce did not reply. Her hands were fists, jammed tight against her knees.

"You know what it sounded like to me? It sounded just like bones breaking. Somebody told me about that trick with the nutcracker a long time ago, and I remembered it. Did you know that back in the early days of television the men who did the commentary for wrestling matches used to supply sound effects with nutcrackers? They used to crack and crack and crack and—"

"Stop it! How you can bear talking about it is beyond—"

"Oh, I don't mind talking about it. I've lived through it. It's over for me. I can forget it. But it's different for you. You'll never be able to forget it, will you? You're remembering it right now, aren't you?"

"What do you want from me? What exactly do you want from me? Tell me and I'll do it. Just tell me. I'm willing to do anything you ask. Anything."

"Are you?" Charlotte picked up a chocolate graham cracker and bit into it cleanly with her white, even front teeth. "I think you'd better drink your coffee, Joyce."

"What can I do to get you to lay off?. Lay off the stunts with the garbage, lay off the phone calls, lay off the noise, just
lay off
. What can I do? If you want the ego high of hearing me say I'm completely at your mercy, I'll say it. Every blow of your little campaign has drawn blood. I think I've more than expiated the sins of a lifetime. Sins against you, sins against all the people I've ever known, sins against people I haven't even met yet.
What more do you want? What more can you take out of my hide?
"

"I think you need that coffee, Joyce. I really do."

"I'm not drunk!"

"Well, you don't sound too rational. And you smell like a distillery, so I don't imagine you're entirely sober. But then you seldom are these days, are you?" Charlotte took another bite of her cookie and set it down on her napkin. She brought her fingers to her mouth; a thin, pointed pink tongue darted out and licked them. "You know, Joyce, I'm worried about you, honestly and truly worried. The way you hole up down there with the bottle just isn't a good thing, and it's getting worse and worse. It's starting to show, too. If you don't pull yourself together you'll never be able to find a job, and you need to find one, don't you? It's none of my business, of course, but it's hard to watch somebody going to the dogs without wanting to help. I think I can help you. In fact, I
know
I can."