The Dark Descends (10 page)

"Sheila's not overstating the case." Tight, clipped accents—a match for the corrugated forehead. "I'm most anxious to hear your story. The crumbs I got from Dick only served to whet my appetite. I must confess to a clinical interest in all deviant behavior. I'm a psychologist, you see."

Of course. What else would he be? Joyce took a sip of her drink. Fortification. "What do you want to know?"

"Well, everything." He flashed a bright, artificial smile. "The way Dick tells it, the change came about overnight."

"That's right. It did."

"Do you actually know it came about overnight? Things like that don't, as a rule. As a rule, things build up inside for a long—"

"Look, I don't care to get into an argument about it. I don't even care to talk about it, if you really want to know the truth. I've related the saga so many times I'm getting a bit weary of it. It's not as though I've ever taken any particular interest in the woman. I became acquainted with her habits not because I wanted to, believe me, but because they were forced on my attention. She lives directly above me, and she used to torture me with noise."

He nodded. Wisely. "Dick told me about the radio. Obviously she was reaching out for contact with another human being. That's not unusual. In fact, it's a commonplace of urban life. The unusual factor is the suddenness of the change."

"You've already pointed that out. I'm sorry if it jars with your preconceptions, but that's the way it happened. One evening the radio was switched off and I heard footsteps—male footsteps—first on the stairs and then—"

"How did you know they were a man's feet?"

"They had seven-league boots on. You know, fee-fi-fo-fum."

"I wasn't being facetious. Some women are heavy walkers."

Oh, God. Literal-minded. "1 know that. However, I didn't make my deduction on hearing alone. I know that wouldn't be ratiocination according to Hoyle. Since that night, she's continued to have visitors who come and go at all hours. A couple of times they rang my bell by mistake, so I had the opportunity to see them and determine sex. If that still isn't enough for you, the girl who has the antique shop on the ground floor and comes in to start stripping furniture at the crack of dawn says she's seen men leaving. You could check—"

"There's no need to get defensive about it. I'm not challenging you. I'm merely trying to assemble data. From my point of view, the story is quite remarkable."

"Why? Isn't it a commonplace that inside every frustrated spinster lurks a whore dying to be released?"

A guffaw. It sounded strained. "Very much a commonplace, but I don't think I've ever heard it phrased quite so succinctly or so wittily, Joyce. I may call you Joyce, mayn't I?"

"I don't see how I can stop you."

"Oh, now, look!" Exasperation played havoc with the bedside manner for a moment. Only for a moment. "This isn't an inquisition, for God's sake, Maybe I'm pressing beyond the point of good manners, but I'm just plain fascinated by this neighbor of yours. The transformation isn't a unique phenomenon in itself. It's so well known that someone has even written a play about it—Tennessee Williams, if I'm not mistaken. What's unique here is that it seems to have taken place so suddenly, and this makes me wonder if something happened to touch it off. A severe emotional shock, perhaps, or an un-looked-for rush of attention from some man. Something to explain why she's locked up in a chastity belt one day and giving out keys to all and sundry the next."

"I notice you're no slouch at turning a succinct phrase yourself."

"Flattery will get you anywhere you want to go. Except off the subject." The professional smile was firmly in place. "Now, Joyce, come clean. You're an observant woman. You must have seen signs of upheaval in the offing. Am I right or am I right?"

"You couldn't be more wrong." Joyce drained her glass quickly. "As I told you, I took notice of her only because I couldn't help it, and unlike you I'm not a student of human behavior. Now if you'll excuse me, I need another drink." She was halfway across the room before he could open his mouth for the gallantry that was de rigueur under the circumstances. It was flight, and pretty ignominious flight at that. Well, too bad. Damn Sheila for sicking him on her in the first place. Probably it was a mistake to have been quite so rude to him. Probably the little gray cells were hard at work right now, reading all sorts of ulterior motives into her reluctance to discuss Charlotte Bancroft's activities. What did she care? What the hell did she care?

Her glass replenished, she joined a quartet, two advertising men and their wives, who were evaluating the achievements of Picasso in lukewarm tones. Very lukewarm. It was hard to summon up much interest in what they were saying, but at least they were safer company than the psychologist.

Stupid of her to have let his curiosity get under her skin like that. He would wonder about it. He might even come up with the idea that she felt in some way responsible. Which, of course, she did, though the psychologist would never in a million years come within miles of guessing why, unless he was clairvoyant. Who could have foreseen that her scheme would have such consequences? Not in her wildest speculation had she envisaged anything like them. Immediately after the distribution of the cards (according to Anita they had traveled as far as Yonkers and Shea Stadium), she had been on pins and needles, half expecting the roof to cave in, half expecting given the notorious indifference of New Yorkers toward everything under the sun—that nothing at all would happen. But, within the space of a single day, something had. First, the sudden cessation of the radio, followed by heavy, unquestionably masculine footsteps mounting the stairs, pausing for an instant outside her own door, and continuing on and up. A brief silence, broken by slow, cautious footfalls overhead, a door opening and shutting, the heavy tread of the visitor. A scuffling noise, as of a tug of war in progress. A long silence. Then—the unmistakable sound of the sofa bed being opened; more scuffling; the dropping of shoes to the floor.

The entire sequence flashed through Joyce's mind with the unstoppable drive of a radio newscast, and, as always, she felt an impulse to laugh? Hurriedly she brought her glass to her lips and sipped from it. Camouflage?

Once the initial shock was over, how could any civilized person respond with anything but laughter to the thought of Charlotte Bancroft's discovery of sex? Certainly it tickled the funny bone to imagine how, instead of reacting with anger to a telephone call that must have been something other than chivalrous, she had been so taken with the voice at the other end of the wire that she was willing to get something going. After the fact, it seemed predictable enough: someone with a need for attention as profound as Charlotte Bancroft's would hardly be likely to put too fine a point on what kind of attention it was. "You've discovered a new panacea for lonely hearts," Anita said, and laughed and laughed. It had been funny once. It was still funny, damn it.

A martini too many, that was the trouble. Sometime during the course of Joyce's wool-gathering, the Picasso-loving quartet had packed up and left her. No great loss. Then she saw that the glass in her hand was almost full, so the diagnosis of one martini too many had to be incorrect. The trouble was one martini too few.

She drained her glass and, lowering it, picked up movement out of the corner of her eye. Lo and behold, the psychologist was at her elbow.

Hello again." There wasn't a glimmer of bedside manner In the smile he offered her. It was tentative, somewhat nervous. "I owe you an apology for hounding you like that. I got carried away and didn't know when to stop. I'm sorry. Honestly."

"That's okay. I shouldn't have been so touchy, even if I am sick and tired of hearing myself spin the same yarn over and over again."

"I can see how you would be. You must get a lot of requests for encores. I realize I was being a pest. But you know how it is when you get interested in something. I do psychological consulting for an advertising agency—in plain language, that means spying sanctioned from on high—and the neuroses start to repeat on me after a while. Dick handles a lot of work for the agency, and he happened to mention your neighbor to me the other day, and one thing led to another. The only reason I'm here tonight is to scavenge for the details. Well, not the only reason." He heaved a sigh. "I got lonesome. My wife's in Chicago visiting her folks."

Joyce laughed. "Such disarming honesty. I'm sure your curiosity is purely professional, but—"

"Oh, I wouldn't say that. Semi-professional would be more accurate."

"Professional or semi-professional, I'd be glad to gratify it if I could, but—"

"You would?" Nothing tentative about his smile now; it was downright beamish. "What about physical manifestations? Have you noticed any difference in the way she looks?"

"You don't give up, do you? As a matter of fact, I have. The other day I ran into her on the street. The first time I've set eyes on her since it all began. She didn't see me, or didn't seem to. She didn't seem to see anything. She looked a bit starry-eyed. And positively soigné—as though she's been concentrating on taking the kind of trouble women usually take. Makeup. A decent haircut and a rinse. She was wearing a very pretty dress. Blue paisley with bell sleeves. Probably new. I remember seeing one just like it in a window on Greenwich Avenue quite recently. I almost didn't recognize her, to tell the truth. I had to do a double take."

"Sounds like a change for the better. The better for you, if she's not torturing you with her radio anymore."

"She's not. Oh, she still plays it now and then—pretty loud, sometimes—but I notice it simply the way one would notice a nuisance. A minor nuisance. I have the sense she's listening to the radio, not using it as a weapon of assault, and so I'm not bothered."

He nodded. "She's found an interest to replace you, that's clear. Let me get you another drink." He took the glass out of her hand and dashed away, as though he feared she'd leave him flat if he delayed.

In an instant he was back with a martini for her and a whiskey and soda for himself. "Very dry," he said, handing her the martini. He raised his glass aloft. "Here's to your neighbor's new interest."

Had the clink of the glasses been any sharper, they probably would have shattered.

...

Footsteps. Several pairs of feet pounded up the stairs, slowed down as they passed Joyce's door and crossed the landing. They started up the second flight, but someone stumbled and the ascent came to a halt.

A girlish giggle rang out. "Clumsy," Charlotte Bancroft whispered, the sibilant a whistle. "You've got two left feet."

"Mus—mus—mustn't make fun of people." A throaty baritone, slightly the worse for alcohol. "Naughty girl."

A hand slapped flesh. Not lightly.

"Ouch! Keep your hands to yourself, if you don't mind.
You're
the one who's being naughty."

"Quit holding up the parade, sister." Another voice—a reedy, rather quavery tenor. "When we get upstairs we can all be naughty together."

"That's what you think," Charlotte Bancroft said. "The very idea. Shame on you!"

"That's what we know," the baritone said.

The sound of a scuffle. Charlotte Bancroft's giggle rang out again, was cut off by a series of slaps. The ascent was resumed at breakneck speed. Then, overhead, a door opened, slammed shut.

There is a lot to be said for living in Greenwich Village. There is a lot to be said for the fact that, given a sudden, decisive impulse to get out of doors at an hour when most people are retiring for the night, one can snatch up a trench coat and toss it over one's underwear and go, confident that others will be wandering around in equal or greater dishabille. Then, too, killing time need not be quite the purposeless activity it would probably be in some other neighborhood, for there is always Eighth Street, where, if one has the fortitude to brave freaked-out youth, representatives of black, red, chicano, gay, and women's power, assorted eccentrics and tourists and unclassifiables, one can do some nocturnal browsing in record shops and bookstores.

Joyce gave it two hours. Then, just to be on the safe side, she walked around the block until, as she passed for the third time the brownstone reputed to belong to the Mafia overlord, a man came out on the steps and stared at her with hard, blank eyes. A warning to do her pacing elsewhere? Simple lechery? She did not linger to find out, fleeing back to her own four walls.

The coast appeared to be clear. Or at least the building was silent. Joyce put down her purchases—a record coupling Mozart's clarinet concerto with his clarinet quintet and a copy of the
New York Review of Books
and fixed herself a gin and tonic. She drank it without haste, scanning the journal. The silence was uninterrupted. She turned on the phonograph and heard the quintet all the way through, the charming variations of the closing movement providing a much-needed lift to the spirit. Still there was silence. Blissful silence.

She decided to postpone listening to the concerto until after her bath. But scarcely was she settled in the tub, a cigarette smoldering on the rim, reading an article on the incarceration of Russian intellectuals, when she heard footsteps on the floor above. A moment later, a couple of pairs of feet descended the stairs and crossed the landing.

"Wait a minute." The same baritone voice heard earlier.

The footsteps came to a halt just outside Joyce's door.

"Hang on till I find my matches. I need a butt in the worst way after that workout. Man, I haven't seen action like that in a long time."

"Didn't I tell you she was a lulu? You know"—the tenor voice dropped—"when I picked up that card I thought it was Some kind of gag. But I figured what the hell, try anything once."

"You sure got on to a good thing. Not many of the amateurs go for stuff like that these days. They're too liberated or something."

" 'Or something' is right. When you find any who will put out you have to talk yourself hoarse trying to convince them you respect them, not to mention pumping so much food and drink into them you might as well invest in a pro." A snicker. "With her, you won't get laryngitis or go broke getting her in the mood. A two-minute phone call is all it takes."