The Dark Descends (2 page)

"It looks fine," Naomi said. "Even if it is kind of small"—she paused for a meaningful look around—"you seem to have everything you need." A slight stress on the second "you" implied that the everything would not have sufficed for Naomi's needs.

Or did it? There was such a thing as reading too much into an inflection. "Yes, it ought to do for me nicely. I won't pretend I wouldn't like a bit more space, but—"

"How much space does one person need?"

The tone was downright patronizing. And Naomi's dark eyes were full of hostility. Why? Was it possible that she was reacting to a potential threat? That she was thinking back to the days when she and Joyce had shared an office and the two of them had engaged in a mild rivalry for men? Joyce could not imagine herself taking an amorous interest in Phil, balding, forty pounds overweight, and a crashing bore to boot. The idea was ludicrous, but of course it wouldn't seem ludicrous to Naomi.

"It's not as if you'll be here all the time," Irene put in. "You'll be working, won't you? I mean, you're not being taken care of or anything, are you?"

Like an old-age pensioner. Or Marguerite Gautier. "Of course I'll be working."

"Got a job yet?"

The tone was casual enough, but Irene was leaning forward as though ready to pounce. Why? What was threatening her?

"Not yet, but—"

"You might not find it so easy to get one."

What was Irene's trouble? Other than looking like the archetypal disgruntled spinster, and perhaps that was trouble enough.

"I don't see why." From Sheila. Loyal Sheila.

"I don't see why either," Joyce said. "I'm able-bodied.

And I can supply references. It's true they're from way back, but—"

"They're not worth beans. Who cares about ancient history? For all anybody knows, the little gray cells could have disintegrated during all the years you've been hibernating in the sticks, doing the marketing and puttering around the garden."

"Long Island isn't exactly the sticks and I—"

The rest didn't get voiced. It didn't even get clearly formulated in Joyce's mind. There was an interruption. Footsteps overhead. Thunderous footsteps. A heavy person, or perhaps the weight was in the high heels that punished the floorboards as they marched—a parade of one. The parade stopped abruptly.

Everyone froze. Everyone seemed to stop breathing.

"You brought it upon yourself, Joyce," Dick said, breaking the spell. "If you give a party you have to expect a crasher."

Everyone laughed. Half-heartedly.

"Maybe you could ask your upstairs neighbor to put down a rug," Naomi said.

"A rug wouldn't help that much," Irene said. "I know a lot of people who have the same problem. Nothing you can do but grin and bear it. You get used to it after a while."

Silence. Everyone seemed reluctant to break it. Collective breath was being held again.

Not for long. The footsteps resumed their parade. Then came the impact of a massive object striking the floor of the room above—striking with such force that the floor of this room moved under-foot, as though suffering the effects of a distant earthquake.

And that was that, the guests almost falling over themselves to make a beeline for the door. The instant Joyce shut it behind them, she made a beeline of her own to the kitchen cupboard and poured herself a nightcap. Straight bourbon. Not a habitual thing, nightcaps, but tonight she needed one. Badly. She carried the drink over to the sofa and sank down. The cushion was warm from the long occupancy. The overly long occupancy. Such occupancy as she was resolved not to let it have again for a long time to come.

Peace and quiet now. Bronco-busting Charlie Bancroft was giving the floor upstairs a rest. Or was the image of Western boots wide of the mark? Perhaps Charlie was the sort of Greenwich Village denizen who liked to do his stomping in drag.

She sniffed bourbon—an aroma as reviving as smelling salts. Sipping had an even better effect. And now a cigarette to crown contentment. She had wanted a cigarette in the worst way all evening; had been compelled to go on wanting because of Phil Norman's asthma.

What misguided spark of bravado had ever prompted the idea of a housewarming? It would have been far more sensible to celebrate taking possession of the new apartment by inviting Sheila and Dick in for drinks and dispatching Dick, who had encyclopedic knowledge of all delicatessens in the five boroughs, to rustle up pastrami sandwiches. But then the Wallenstein's were real friends. They had lasted. Though the ties of friendship had of necessity loosened over the years, they had never been dropped. It had been fatuous in the extreme to suppose that she would find herself still in rapport with the others, when her sole contact with them for years had been the annual exchange of Christmas cards. Hard to believe that once upon a time she had considered Naomi and Irene friends. Or, at any rate, the most congenial of the editorial staff at the Patrick Henry Press. What a pair of harpies they had become! There had, to be sure, been comic value in watching the harpies go for one another, as they had several times, and in watching Sheila and Dick watching the harpies. Mainly, though, the evening had been one big drag.

It had also been painful. Stupid of her not to have anticipated that it would be. She should have taken it for granted that she would be subjected to a barrage of questions. The harpies had probed and probed, sometimes moved by politeness or simple decency to sheathe the claws, but always managing to draw blood. Well, they couldn't be blamed for being curious. It was only natural. People were inevitably curious about a failed marriage.

A failed marriage. How bleak that sounded. Like a storm-tossed vessel smashing to bits on a reef. The harpies had expended a lot of energy in probing for causes, doubtless thinking in terms of lipstick on the collar or appetite jaded by too monotonous a diet. And, of course, it had not been like that at all. But how explain a decision to separate by two people who still respected each other; still liked each other; still, perhaps, even loved each other, whatever that meant? A decision, moreover, subject to review today, tomorrow, or ten years from now? Marriage pending. No way of explaining that to anybody else, and none of anybody else's business even if there were. In any event, a matter of semantics. For all practical purposes she was on her own, and this evening had shown her she had a long way to go in adjusting to the idea. She would have to get herself over the distance. Pronto. The sooner she stopped feeling like poor little castaway, boo-hoo-hoo, the better.

She had quite a few other adjustments to make as well. First and foremost, the adjustment to living in such close quarters. Odd how crowded the room appeared, in spite of all her planning, in spite of all the work she had done to make the best use of what space there was. The furniture, every stick of it, had come from the den-cum-spare room in Moccasin, and that room had never seemed crowded, though it was actually much smaller than this one. Why on earth did everything look so busy here? The clever arrangement of walnut shelves spanning one wall practically shrieked its own cleverness. The orange and red geometric-print upholstery on the sofa bed, so cheerful and amusing and easy to live with heretofore, now seemed to be trying too hard. And had it really been a good idea to extend the kitchen by building a counter in front of it? Perhaps modern super-functional decor only worked when it wasn't really required to function. Perhaps—

Damn Phil Norman and his ship's cabin analogy. Damn herself, for letting it get to her. If you were strapped for space, you did the best you could. The trouble was, she waS spoiled after the years of having a whole house to herself. Well, she would just have to get unspoiled. Lots of people didn't have more than one room to live in, and they managed. She would learn to do as the other cliff dwellers did. It would simply take time. Everything took time. She had tried to do too much too fast, and that was doubtless the reason she was experiencing a feeling of deflation now. She would force herself to slow down from now on, take things as they came.

Joyce sipped bourbon and swallowed it slowly, letting it trickle down her throat drop by savory drop. All at once she became aware of footsteps overhead. Prince Charlie (or Queen Charlie) was on the march again in those high heels; must have been on the march for some time without her taking notice. A good sign. Surely if she could accommodate herself to that annoyance she could accommodate herself to anything. Time. It was all a question of time.

...

Not quite awake. Not quite asleep. Nowhere. Consciousness in limbo, suspended there for eternity, unable to go or stay. It went. Joyce was awake. Her brain resisted, tried to retreat. The awakening was too precipitate. She never awoke betimes. Never. The world's soundest sleeper, that's what she was. She could sleep through an atomic blast, Eliot said. Once he had made love to her while she slept and she had responded without waking. Or so he'd told her. She'd never been sure it wasn't pure invention. Never been sure—Strangeness. Dislocation. Where was she? She sat up, her eyes raking the unfamiliar darkness, searching for something known, some sort of landmark. There was nothing. How could that be? How—

Someone was shouting. A man. A man with a heavy, booming voice. Shouting unintelligible words that fell all over each other. It sounded terribly, terribly urgent. Now his voice gave way to another voice. Not so heavy, this one, but the same urgency seemed to be driving it. What was up? What on earth was going on? Something of the magnitude of the Titanic, from the sound of it. Fire? Air raid? No, nothing like that, because the voices were coming from the same place, not moving around. Some sort of dispute, evidently. An argument over a card game? A police raid on a cache of grass or acid? God, the things the imagination came up with in the middle of the night!

She was wide awake now; she knew where she was. But the noise? What was all the shouting about? It was coming from Charlie Bancroft's apartment, and it was so loud that the floor was vibrating, the bed moving under her. What was he doing up there? What in God's name was he doing up there?

Crash! A collision and a half. Like a planeload of bricks coming down on the Lever Building. The bed not only moved, it actually rose up from the floor. If she hadn't been awake before, she would certainly be awake now. So would anyone who wasn't either cataleptic or comatose.

A television set. Or a radio. It had to be one or the other. Stupid of her not to have realized it at once. The human voice didn't have the power to shake floors without some kind of amplification. A radio, most likely. A radio turned to one of those night-long discussion programs. Long John, perhaps. The crash was probably one of the disputants slapping the table that held the microphone. Damn the producers of such programs anyway! Understandable that they should want a wide audience, but did they have to seek it by swelling the ranks of the sleepless?

Her mind was still befogged, that was clear. The one to merit damnation was Charlie Bancroft, who had his volume control turned up too high. Inconsiderate wretch. Possibly he suffered from insomnia, but that was no excuse for blasting off at this time of night. Ten to four, by the luminous dial of her old alarm clock. A familiar sight, with its minute hand that was broken off to half the length of the hour hand. Reassuring.

Throwing off the bedclothes, Joyce swung her feet to the floor and thrust them into her mules. Alarm swept over her. Where was her bathrobe? Over there. On the armchair beneath the window—a crumpled heap of crimson terry cloth, fiery in the light coming in slivers through the closed Venetian blinds. All was well. Amazing how much importance trivial things could assume when one was surrounded by the unknown. Amazing, and a bit frightening.

With the robe swathing her naked body she felt considerably more secure, even though the floor was shaking under her feet as she went to the door. Outside in the hall, the floor felt a little more stable. The reverberations were not so great—though the noise was still loud enough, God knew—and the voices, both shouting at once, sounded almost human. She could even distinguish the occasional phrase: "unwanted fetus"; "right to life"; "battered babies." Well, she knew what they were going on about, at any rate. As if she cared, at four in the morning.

She switched on the hall light, blinking against the glare of the unshaded bulb suspended from the ceiling. As she crossed the hall, she noticed that the bright blue enamel was streaked with dirt and grease. A new paint job was in order. And the stairs leading up needed a thorough scouring, as did the stairs below. Well, she would get around to everything. Eventually.

The hall light on the top floor was controlled by the same switch as the light on her floor, and here, too, all was bright as day. The door of Bancroft's apartment, directly above her own door, was painted white like her own door and, except for a jagged rust-colored scar cutting diagonally across the upper half, might have been her own door. Oddly, this made her feel uneasy. Or something did. Her hand, poised in midair with the index finger almost touching the doorbell, dropped to her side.

Was it really advisable to barge in on Bancroft at this time of night, however just the cause? He was an unknown quantity, and such a move was scarcely calculated to get neighborly relations off to a flying start. His radio was intolerably loud, that was beyond dispute, but it might well be he had no idea there was anybody within earshot to object. Her apartment had been empty for a while, and she had done her renovations during daylight hours, when Bancroft wasn't home, to judge from the fact that she had not heard so much as a footfall overhead. This was the first night she was spending in the apartment, and she hadn't yet put her name over the mailbox, so it was quite likely that Bancroft was still unaware—

No, that couldn't be right. How could he have escaped hearing the departure of her guests earlier? They had made plenty of noise clomping down those rickety stairs. Possibly he had been too engrossed in whatever he was doing to take notice. Or possibly he was hard of hearing, and that was why the radio was so loud.