The Dark Descends (8 page)

Joyce awakened with her hands covering her ears. Drenched with perspiration, she was trembling so forcibly that it was several minutes before she gained enough motor control to light a cigarette.

Upstairs, a man and a woman were shouting, now one, now the other, now both. At odds? United in a common cause? Impossible to tell. Down here, it was nothing but noise.

...

The small back room of Anita D'Antonio's shop was a jumble of antique American furniture. Anita, a bright turquoise scarf tied pirate fashion around her head and enormous goggles shielding her eyes, was down on her knees stripping the finish from a maple secretary with a blowtorch. Catching sight of Joyce, she took a gauntleted hand off the torch to gesture at a chair. It was a magnificent nineteenth-century oak armchair with a huge circular back that could be dropped down over the arms to make a table; settling into it felt like perching on a throne.

In a minute, Anita shut off the torch and put it down. "Hi, Joyce, nice to see you. How's the table holding up?"

"Fine. Much better than I am, as a matter of fact. Listen, Anita, I'd like to ask a favor of you. I'm having a problem with the woman up on the third floor. It's her radio. She plays the thing so—" Joyce broke off, for Anita was making a face and rolling her eyes at the ceiling. "Apparently you know about it."

"Sure I know. How could I help it?" Anita peeled off her gloves, yanked off her goggles and scarf, raked her frizzy red hair with her fingers. "I hear the serenade down here on nights I stay late. Saturdays, too, all day long. Not like you hear it, naturally, but I hear it. How the hell do you stand it?"

"I don't. It's driving me up the wall."

"That's exactly what Joey used to say. Joey Jessup—the cat who had your pad before you. He used to bitch about it all the time. I thought maybe he was making it out to be more than it was, but once he invited me upstairs for the performance, and Jesus, it was enough to give anybody St. Vitus's dance. Joey said he tried a few times asking her politely to turn the volume down, but it wasn't any use. She'd be quiet for a couple of days and then step up the pace again. Joey thought she must have had it in for him for some reason, but he swore up and down he hadn't done anything to get her mad. Same story with you?"

"Just about. Except that I called the police once."

"Well, who wouldn't? Joey did, too, after he saw there was no reasoning with her. She must be a mental case. Joey had an idea she might have started on him because he was a man who wasn't giving her attention, but I kind of thought he was flattering himself, imagining anybody would take him for a man. I thought she just might have a thing about queers, the way lots of women do. But her starting on you— I guess it's a waste of time trying to figure out what motivates these meshugas. Can I bum a cigarette, by any chance?"

"Of course."

"Thanks." Anita inhaled audibly, let the smoke out slowly and grudgingly. "I mooch these days because I've given it up. I only indulge when I'm listening to people's troubles. I figure anybody who bends my ear can fork out."

Joyce laughed.

Anita didn't even smile. Her swarthy face, wrinkled like a monkey's, looked morose. "I feel for you, Joyce, baby, I really do. You've got troubles, all right. I don't see what you can do except move."

"That seems a bit drastic, and I'm not really in a position to do it right now. I've been hoping she'll let up after a while. When she sees the campaign isn't having the effect she's aiming for, whatever that may be."

"I wouldn't count on it. Joey had the barrage for almost a year. I can vouch for that because my lease started the same time his did, and I was in on the whole thing. He used to sleep with earmuffs on. Claimed they were better than rubber plugs. But of course with the hot weather right around the corner—" Anita shrugged. "Like I said, there's nothing you can do except move. Find yourself a wealthy protector the way Joey did. Save yourself a lot of sweat and tears."

"I don't quite see a protector looming on the horizon, and anyway, it goes against the grain to be driven from the field. I thought I could take it—will power and all that—but it's really getting to me now. I find that putting a lid on my anger only means running the risk of an explosion over something else, where it isn't called for, and—"

"Transference. Everybody's problem. You kick me and I punch the newspaper boy and he ties a firecracker to the cat's tail and the cat scratches you and round and round we go."

"That's about the size of it. I've decided to climb off the carousel ride and make a real stand. I'll need your help; that's why I'm here. I'd like you to be a witness to—"

"Joyce, baby, I'll say anything you want me to say. Or sign anything. Only don't ask me to come up and hear it. What is it you're planning to do? Bring a civil suit?"

"Yes. I hate to take such extreme measures, but—" Joyce broke off, for Anita was shaking her head, slowly and mournfully. "Joey tried that, too?"

"Sure. And he won his case, which meant winning exactly nothing. In fact, it meant losing—all the time he had to take off from work and didn't get paid for. In the first place, it took a whole morning just to get the summons—the lines are something fierce. Then, after a delay of weeks and weeks, he spent practically a whole day in court until the case came up before the judge. Joey had affidavits and testimonials and witnesses and fucking everything, and it turned out he didn't need any of it. They figure if you're willing to go through the sweat of taking your beef to court you must have a legitimate one. Or something. Anyhow, the judge found for Joey and told the bitch to go home and be a good girl. You can imagine how seriously she—Hey, you're beginning to look a little green around the gills."

"Am I? It's no wonder. Here I've been thinking of the courts as my ace in the hole and now—It's like a sick joke."

"Only not very funny. When you're a nobody like Joey or you or me, appealing to the law gets you about as far as appealing to the Lord. But don't just take my word for it. Check out the legal procedure. Maybe there's some angle Joey didn't find out about."

"Maybe. It doesn't seem very likely, though. Thanks for cluing me in, Anita. I appreciate it."

"Don't mention it. I know how you must feel." Anita's eyes narrowed, calculated visibly. "You know what I'd do in your place? Try getting a little of my own back. Not that it's any skin off my nose, but I hate to think of the bitch getting away with stuff like that over and over again. Why don't you put a good scare into her?"

"That's a laugh. I'd like to know what would put a scare into Charlotte Bancroft, I really would."

"You could get her rounded up on a narcotics charge."

"Oh, come off it, Anita!"

"Nothing easier, if you're interested. I've got a friend who could arrange it. For love. He's the quixotic type. Doesn't like to see people maneuvered into positions where they can't fight back, so he offers a big strong arm. Want me to start things rolling?"

"No, of course not. What on earth do you take me—"

"No need to get all uptight. It's not such a big deal. A question of planting a small cache of pot in her pad, that's all. Nothing much would happen to her. She'd probably get a suspended—"

"And what do we do for an encore? Leave a calling card to let her know that Zorro will strike again if she doesn't watch her step? Forget it, Anita. It's out of the question."

"Suit yourself. It's your headache." Anita's jaw was tight. “A word of advice, Joyce. When you live in the jungle, you have to do like the other animals do. You have to be flexible. If you're too rigid, you break. Keep that in mind."

...

Childhood: the most hackneyed topic under the sun. Groans of protest when Kitty threw it into the ring. In response to a request, she said. Whose? Looking around the room, Joyce was unable to guess. Ten faces, all but Kitty's showing disdain. Somebody was faking. Somebody was absolutely dying to hear about everybody else's thumb-sucking and toilet training, unless Kitty was lying, which didn't seem likely.

Veronica volunteered to lead off. No special problems with the toilet, but she had been a prodigious thumb-sucker until she discovered the more adult gratification of playing with her clitoris ("my ding-a-ling"). A couple of years of pure bliss ("didn't miss a night"), and then she was "caught wet-handed. Daddy came into my room one night to close the window—it was starting to rain—and I was too absorbed in bringing myself off to hear him. The next thing I knew he was screaming the house down, calling me a pervert, degenerate, and God knows what all else. The words were Greek to me, but he scared me out of my wits. I was sure I was such a monster the earth would open and swallow me up. My punishment was gruesome. I had to wear this huge bandage between my legs when I went to bed, and during the night my mother would make surprise inspections to see that it was still in place. Well, it didn't slow me down too much, but the psychological effect—You can imagine. By the time I had to make the Kotex scene I was a veteran of confinement, and I was pretty well brainwashed into believing that wearing all that uncomfortable gear over my privates was the only chance I had to preserve God knows what so I could become a decent woman. You know, when I first started wearing Tampax, I felt
guilty
."

This last prompted a bit of discussion. Six of the other women said that they, too, had felt guilty about starting to wear tampons—an open admission that they weren't "nice girls" anymore, despite what the ads said. Rebecca confessed, in a small, shamed voice, that she had not begun using tampons until after she was married, and this confession was echoed by Dottie Herman, a skinny, nervous brunette with five children. Kitty didn't say anything.

Joyce didn't say anything either. She had experienced no traumas over the change from sanitary napkins to tampons, since it had followed, as day follows night, her relocation to a college dormitory. Her trauma had come earlier, when she had menstruated for the first time. She had been totally unprepared mentally, and the sight of all that blood—Even now, after all these years, the memory set her heart beating double time. Then she had been utterly terrified; had run sobbing to her cousin Jimmy, a medical student. Poor Jimmy, nearly dying of embarrassment, had led her into the parlor to confront Aunt Blanche, and there, with the door locked, Joyce had learned, belatedly, what it was all about. Had any of the other women had experiences like that? It might be interesting to find out.

But they were on something else now. Early sexual discrimination. Very early. First the cradle and the protocol dictating blueness or pinkness of blankets, nighties, and teething rings. Then on to snails and puppy dogs' tails versus sugar and spice, and the hangups resulting from growing up on the wrong side of the dividing line. Sugar and spice. The panorama of nice things. Much sarcasm was lavished on miniature houses with miniature furniture inside, on miniature tea sets with cups that held two or three sips of tea for a little girl and one for a grownup, and, of course, on dolls. Especially on dolls—spleen was being vented at some length.

Joyce found her attention wandering. It all seemed out of proportion, somehow. Boys were boys. Girls were girls. There were biological differences, and to go on
ad nauseam
about the fact that the differences had been recognized since the beginning of time was a bit absurd, to say the least. Still, it had to be admitted that snips and snails and puppy dogs' tails had it all over sugar and spice and all things nice. Amusing to think how reciting that innocent little tribute to femininity should nowadays have become tantamount to waving a red flag in front of a bull. Not all that amusing, though. Boring, at the umpteenth repetition. And worse, disturbing, the spectacle of so many bulls going after that very small scrap of red.

Her eyes picked out a bull in one of the posters on the wall. He was grazing in a rather barren field near a white hut with a sloping, red-shingled roof, which stood all by its lonesome in the field. Where? She would have guessed somewhere in Spare, but the caption was in Cyrillic script. Doubtless Kitty's invisible percussionist would know. Possibly Kitty herself would know. Not that the where really mattered. The hut seemed to stand outside of place, outside of time. How peaceful it looked. And quiet. So very, very quiet, with a silence that covered everything like a snowfall. Wouldn't it be wonderful to creep inside that hut, close the door, and—

"Hey, Miss Muffet!"

Joyce started. She met Del's eyes: they were challenging, full of enmity.

"Your turn to answer the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. If you'll condescend to honor us, that is."

"What question? I'm afraid I didn't hear it."

"How old were you when you stopped playing with dolls?"

"Six."

Del's eyebrows shot up. "That's pretty young. You spilled it without any hesitation, too. What was it—some kind of milestone?"

"Not especially. It's not worth going into."

"Oh, no, baby, you can't get away with that. When we go round the horn like this we're after something. Truth. Honesty. From everybody, because even one constipated type holding back her little secrets blows the whole game to hell. Now give!"

"But—" Joyce looked around the room. Ten expectant faces. "What's the point? It's so trivial."

"Nothing is trivial. Give!"

All ten faces were in agreement. Give, they were saying silently. Give, give, give. There was no trace of sympathy on any of them.

"What's the story, Miss Muffet? A progressive mommy who decided that her darling little girl should have creative playthings and took the dolls away too soon?"

The ten faces were devoid of humanity now. Merciless. Feral. Give, they said. Give, give, give.

"Or was it something nasty? Did your mommy find you trying to give suck one night and take away your doll for good, so you felt you could never be a woman?"

"No, of course not." Joyce felt her stomach churn. "It was nothing like that. Why must you know? Why is it so important?"

Give, the faces said. Give, give, give, give, give.