The Dark Descends (5 page)

The wait was long, almost three-quarters of an hour, and when her lasagna finally arrived the first forkful told her that the sauce had been liberally sprinkled with fennel, an herb she loathed.

She trudged home, enticing her tired limbs on with the thought that, once indoors, she would be able to collapse in a heap on the sofa. And collapse she did, without delay, not even bothering to turn on the light or remove her coat. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, to feel herself sinking into a vegetable state. The house could burn down around her, for all she cared. Time and the world were slipping away from her, slipping further and further away. She was content to let them go. She wouldn't mind being a vegetable forever. To do nothing, say nothing, think nothing, feel nothing, virtually become nothing—how glorious.

All of a sudden, intrusion. Footsteps stomped overhead. A heavy weight struck the floorboards. Footsteps stomped again. The radio started up full blast—a slow rendition of "I've Got You Under My Skin," with a hard, insistent ground bass. Joyce felt the floor move under her feet. She covered her face with her hands and, exactly like the typist this morning, burst into tears. It was too much. It was simply too much, after a day like today, to have to cope with Charlotte Bancroft again. That radio. That god-damned radio. It wasn't enough that she could hear every footfall overhead, that every night around eleven o'clock every nerve in her body began to throb in anticipation of the moment when the sofa upstairs would open up and descend with a crash like a thunderclap. No, that wasn't enough to bear. She had to have the radio, too.

Stupid, stupid, stupid to cry. Self-pity. Self-indulgence. A sheer waste of time. She wiped her eyes with her palms, swallowed the obstruction in her throat. All right, she had stopped crying. Mind over matter. Hurrah. Triumph in a vacuum. What was there to do but cry? What the hell else was there to do?

She was at her wit's end. Requests for quiet were useless. She had left a note in Charlotte Bancroft's mailbox on Friday, had as a result passed a tranquil weekend, but now here she was, back at the old stand. Was she to go on to the end of her days being tortured by that radio? No use, at this stage, trying to tell herself that it was still a question of forgetting—if, indeed, it had ever been a question of forgetting. Time to stop kidding herself. High time. For the pattern was clear; it had become clear long ago. After the visit in response to the initial note of complaint, Charlotte Bancroft had lowered the volume of her radio, kept it low for a week or so, and then, little by little, it had crept up to an intensity that no one desirous of sleep could ignore. Another note. Another stretch of quiet. How many repetitions? Two? Three? Hard to remember.

Not hard to remember her own visit upstairs, though. The miserable, suffocating visit, made on a night when she felt she would jump out of her skin if the noise didn't stop. Her appearance at Charlotte Bancroft's door had been greeted with profuse apologies and an invitation to "come in and have a cup of coffee, since we're both up," delivered in accents too importunate for anyone who didn't have a heart of stone to resist. Once inside the door, Joyce had been gripped by overwhelming depression. The way the place looked was cause enough, God knew. Identical to her own in size and shape and layout, it was light-years away in atmosphere, all blue-flowered chintz slipcovers, thickly varnished wooden surfaces (how her fingers had itched to start stripping the wood!), and bookcases full of Book-of-the-Month Club selections. And the radio! It was housed in a monstrous turn-of-the-century mahogany cabinet—something for a Dr. Caligari whose trained sleepwalker was an obese dwarf. If the surroundings hadn't been enough to dampen the spirits of Pollyanna the Glad Girl, there had been the promised coffee, watery and tasteless, accompanied by stale chocolate-chip cookies, and the conversation. Conversation? Monologue, rather. Nibbling at a cookie that crumbled to dust on her tongue, Joyce had listened to the story of Charlotte Bancroft's life—Minnesota origins, departure for New York after high school graduation, acquisition of a job with a textbook publisher and gradual elevation to the position of senior copy editor—knowing that some sort of response was called for but unable to make any. What was there to say about a life that sounded so bleak, so unfulfilled? At last, when the answer to a question about her own occupation had elicited, "Imagine both of us working in publishing! A real coincidence, isn't it, that we should have so much in common?" Joyce had taken flight, feeling all kinds of a snob. Floating down the stairs after her, with the gentleness of a lullaby, had come Charlotte Bancroft's promise to "be more careful about keeping the radio low, but if I forget and get too loud again, you'll come up again and remind me, won't you?" Of course, of course, of course, Joyce had lied. Go up there again? Never. Not in a million years.

Peace, after that, had lasted about two weeks. And the effect of a couple of telephone calls was that peace lasted a week each time; of attempting a return to the written word, that Charlotte Bancroft forgot in three days. Forgot? Not unless she was subject to fits of amnesia. There was nothing accidental about the blasting off. Charlotte Bancroft wanted attention, and blasting off was her way of getting attention. It was as simple as that. It was really as simple as that.

All right. The problem was analyzed, faced up to fair and square. Now the question was what to do about it? That wasn't so simple. That wasn't simple at all. No great mental effort was required to see that notes and telephone calls would not avail in future, that the only way to obtain relief from the blare, from the vibrations, was to enter into a relationship of sorts with Charlotte Bancroft. What a prospect! Joyce could see, stretching before her, an endless succession of visits to that ghastly chintzy room for coffee and a tête-à-tête about the radio. Every two weeks. Or—if she was on her very best behavior—would she be permitted three weeks or even four? Not likely. What would happen, should she be foolish enough to acquiesce to the demands being made of her, was that the demands would increase and go on increasing, as with any other kind of extortion. There would never be an end to them.

"I've Got You Under My Skin" rose on a crescendo, finished with a wail of brasses. A split second of silence, and then the combo began "The Street Where You Live" at exactly the same tempo, with exactly the same ground bass. Heavy footsteps, keeping time with the music, sounded overhead and, unmistakably, the volume of the radio was turned up.

Joyce felt tears welling up again. Damned if she would give way to them! She sprang to her feet, shed her coat, began pacing. Back and forth. Back and forth. No use—it only intensified her sense of being trapped. The restricted space dictated the extent of her movement, the music dictated the rhythm. Sinking down on the sofa again, she switched on a lamp. The sudden illumination of the furnishings, so carefully selected and arranged for civilized living, seemed to mock her. What good were the appurtenances of civilization to an animal in a cage?

The analogy was faulty. Shutting the door of a cage shut the animal in, but it also shut the world out. Here shutting the door shut out nothing. Stupid, stupid, stupid of her not to have investigated the thickness of the floors before signing the lease. But could any floor absorb a bombardment like this? Not very likely. Anyway, it was senseless to castigate herself for failing to guard against a situation only a clairvoyant could have foreseen. What was blameworthy was letting herself be imposed on this way. She was entitled to quiet enjoyment of the premises—her lease said so. Why should she have to beg for her rights on bended knee?

She shouldn't. She wouldn't. To restrain justified anger was to behave like a spineless booby. To hell with restraint. It was time to let the bitch upstairs know she was mad, good and mad. Anybody else would have done it long ago.

She bounded up, ran to the alcove, grabbed the broom, ran to the middle of the room. Taking a two-handed grip on the broom just above the bristles, she hoisted it high. Bam bam bam bam BAM. The battering left little round indentations in the ceiling.

She lowered her arms and let the handle slide through her fingers, stood with her hands cupped over the end. Waiting. Holding her breath. Surely there would be a response to that universally acknowledged signal for quiet. Surely.

But there wasn't. The music continued as before. It didn't get louder, it didn't get softer. Perhaps the pounding hadn't been audible over the din?

Up went the broom again. BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM. This time the indentations were deeper. Unsightly, like pockmarks. So what? BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM—

The broom dropped out of hands drained of all their power. The sound of its collision with the floor was engulfed by the brasses wailing "The Street Where You Live" to a close. A brief pause, and the combo launched into another tune. An unfamiliar tune. The tempo and the ground bass were familiar, though. As familiar as a hangnail. Or an ulcer.

She returned to the sofa and lit a cigarette—with difficulty. Her hands were trembling. So much for universally acknowledged signals. A waste of time, like tears. Well, not entirely.

Her rage had left her along with her strength. And she had, after all, been given incontrovertible proof that the blasting off was not accidental, not forgetful, but deliberate. Not that she had needed proof, except to quell the hope, lurking deep in the dark regions of her soul, that she might find some way to cope with the problem besides permitting herself to be forced into a travesty of friendship.

All right, then, where did she go from here? There was only one place to go, of course—the law. She knew (who didn't?) that she had every right to complain to the police about noise after eleven at night, and it was now getting on toward midnight. And yet the idea of calling copper was repugnant, ~somehow. It seemed to imply aligning herself with the crabs and spoilsports who made a habit of putting up a beef every time their neighbors were having a good time. Absurd to have scruples under the circumstances—Charlotte Bancroft's radio hardly came under the category of overflowing high spirits—but a lifetime's belief in live and let live dies hard. Still, there was no alternative.

Joyce telephoned the police. The masculine voice at the other end of the line was matter-of-fact, as though complaints of this nature were a very old story. That was reassuring. The two patrolmen who mounted the stairs to her door twenty minutes later were reassuring, too. They looked, despite the grim blue uniforms and the flaunted weapons, entirely human, one a sandy-haired youngster with the kind of fresh, open face that always appears to be on the verge of a blush, the other a grizzled veteran with knowing eyes that had seen everything and taken it in stride. They went to the middle of the room and listened intently, striking attitudes that suggested they had built-in decibel counters.

"I feel for you, ma'am," the youngster said, giving Joyce a sympathetic glance. "I really do."

"Jesus, it sure is loud," the veteran said.

Telling her not to worry, they left. She heard their footsteps going up the stairs. A moment later, the music stopped. Footsteps came down the stairs. There was a knock at Joyce's door, and the youngster's voice called out cheerfully that everything was okay. The footsteps continued on and down. The outside door opened and closed.

That was that. Everything was okay. She could relax now. Except that she couldn't. She remained standing with her back against the wall. Waiting. Holding her breath. The unfamiliar silence seemed to be holding its breath with her.

She was still all keyed up, that was the trouble. Calling the police had gone against the grain, no doubt about it. Even though no second thoughts were called for, even though she had dealt with the situation in the only way possible, she felt obscurely guilty. She was reminded of the time when she had set the mousetrap in Aunt Blanche's kitchen and, waking in the middle of the night, had crept out of bed and down the stairs to find a very still, very dead mouse in the trap. Oh, God, what a memory to be dredging up now! Damn Aunt Blanche for the fair-mindedness that had made every unpleasant task a task everybody took turns at. Damn the mouse for being dead. Damn Charlotte Bancroft for being the pathetic wretch she was. Above all, damn herself for being—

A shout. A veritable explosion of sound. It shook the floor so hard that Joyce would have reeled had she not been leaning against the wall. The shouter, a man, went on shouting as though he never intended to stop.

It couldn't be. It couldn't! But of course it was, however much the mind boggled at it. Charlotte Bancroft was blasting off again, police or no police. Was there no authority that could keep the woman in bounds? Perhaps she thought that calling the police had merely been an attempt to intimidate her; that she was dealing with an adversary too soft-hearted or lily-livered or whatever to take further measures. Well, she had another think coming.

This time, the instant the outside doorbell rang, the shouting stopped. Joyce pressed the buzzer and then, listening to the ascending feet cut into the silence, felt suddenly empty-handed, like a soldier who finds himself without ammunition just as the battle is about to begin. Fortunately, the patrolmen who appeared at her door were the same two who had answered the first call.

"Am I glad to see you! The thought of having to explain to someone else—She was blasting off as loud as ever until a moment ago, but she must have heard you ring the bell and—" Joyce broke off, for the two of them were looking at her sorrowfully, like medical men about to deliver truth to a terminal case. "Don't you believe me?"

"Oh, we believe you, all right," the youngster said. "She must have been on the alert in case you decided to follow through. A real shrewdie, that one. We had to make the request to pipe down through the door. She wouldn't open up, and when they're that well acquainted with the drill—" He shrugged.

"An old hand," the veteran said. "Knows all the tricks."