The Dark Descends

by Diana Ramsay

Rooms have character. Vacant, stripped of the imprints of the people who have inhabited them, they will yet manage to make that character known. This room was an exception. Approximately twelve feet by twelve feet—large by the terminology of real estate advertisements—it was redeemed from perfect symmetry by a kitchen alcove that jutted beyond one wall, but a curtain or a screen could have canceled out redemption in an instant. Opposite the alcove, two windows admitted daylight through Venetian blinds with slats at the horizontal. The white walls were dimmed with dust. More dust, overlaying the wooden floor, was in the process of being disturbed by human feet. A woman's feet. Her steps were cautious, yet firm and decisive, as though she were charting a new planet. She was not alone in the room. A big man with a fleshy face and a bush of unkempt grizzled hair lounged against the door, watching her with eyes at once bored and amused. He looked the sort of man who would leave the action to others and opt for standing still ninety-nine times out of a hundred.

The action, a tour of inspection, could safely be left to this woman. Small, not more than a couple of inches above five feet, and very trim in a tailored camel-colored trouser suit, she moved with the brisk efficiency of those who have never entertained a doubt of their ability to cope. Her tour was thorough. She had explored the bathroom for a good five minutes, turning on taps, flushing the toilet again and again. She had poked around every inch of the closet. Now she was in the alcove. She scrutinized the inside of the refrigerator. She tested all the burners on the stove and struck a match to investigate the interior of the oven. She opened the wall cupboards above the stove and the sink and examined them, but here she ran into a difficulty—she wasn't tall enough to see the top shelves. She went up on tiptoe. Not good enough. She placed her hands flat on the rim of the sink and hoisted herself up off the floor (at this the man shook his head), came down again after a few seconds. Still not good enough. With a shrug, she backed out of the alcove and completed her examination of the cupboards from the middle of the room. Then she reared back on her heels and pivoted, doing the full 360 degrees in slow, slow motion, her eyes searching and searching, and when she came to a stop she was frowning.

Instantly, the man was at attention, all business. He gave the woman as thorough an appraisal as she had given the room. The heart-shaped face said youth, but not first blush. The casual flip of auburn hair said money or skill with a hair scissors; the trouser suit said money or skill with a sewing machine; the soft brown pouch slung over her shoulder and the stylish brown boots said money, no option. Which of the room's many deficiencies would bother a woman like this most? His calculating eyes searched as her eyes had searched, then came back to her. Still frowning, she was staring at the refrigerator door, at the place where the porcelain coating had peeled away, leaving a great, ugly blotch of rust in its wake.

"Listen, Mrs. Chandler—" The man's voice, deep and rumbling, was not especially loud, but it shattered the silence like a shout. "I'll level with you. The landlord's better than a lot of them when it comes to keeping things in pretty good repair, but that's about it. If you're wondering whether you can get him to paint for you, forget it. Making the place fit for habitation is strictly up to you."

"That's no problem." Her voice, like his, was deep—a vibrant contralto, unexpected in a woman of her size.

"If you want, I can give you the names of a couple of guys who'll do the renovating without soaking you an arm and a leg."

"I said it wasn't a problem." She turned to look at him. The frown was gone, and her eyes, hazel in color and large in proportion to the rest of her features, were almost merry. "I can handle painting, plastering, and whatever carpentry might be necessary. I'm good at that sort of thing. I've even tackled plumbing in my time, believe it or not."

He laughed. "Well, it probably won't come to that around here."

She did not respond to the laugh. Her eyes went back to the refrigerator door. "The problem is"—she heaved a sigh—"it's small. It's so damned small. I'm used to rattling around from one room to another and—" Her voice trailed off in a sigh.

"Mrs. Chandler—"

"I know. You don't have to say it. I'm being unrealistic. At what I'm prepared to pay, I can't expect to do any better than this, barring a miracle." She smiled. It was not a hopeful smile. "I don't believe in miracles, but—Could I sleep on it, do you suppose?"

"Mrs. Chandler, be reasonable. I could probably rent this place sight unseen. Everybody wants to live in Greenwich Village. I know I could rent it in five minutes, or however long it would take to walk to the office and bring somebody else back here. In the time I've spent with you, I could have rented two or three places. I don't know how long you've been looking for a pad in Manhattan—"

"Weeks." The contralto had an edge. "Weeks and weeks. You can spare me the hard sell. I know what the score is. In all the weeks I've been hunting, I doubt if I've actually seen more than a dozen places. Most of them are gone when I telephone at the crack of dawn, so I assume gremlins get them during the night. I'm sick of the whole scene. Sick of people who run ads in the New York Times and treat you like a public nuisance when you ring up five minutes too late. Sick of snotty real estate agents who give you the bum's rush if you can't manage three hundred dollars a month in—" The tirade came to a dead stop. "I'm sorry. That wasn't very tactful."

"That's okay. Present company's not really an exception. Sure we'd rather handle the high-priced pads and get the bigger commissions, but to tell the truth, we don't get many at this price. When we do, they go like that." He snapped his fingers. "This one's been empty for a few weeks because the last tenant did a moonlight flit and didn't bother to let the landlord know. The minute after the landlord checked up on why the rent wasn't paid he telephoned us, and the minute after he telephoned us you happened to walk into the office. Judge from that."

"My lucky day, obviously." Dryly.

"That depends on you. Take it from me, Mrs. Chandler, you'd be making a big mistake if you pass this up. Sure it's on the small side, but it's compact. You've got a nice big closet for your clothes—a double closet, in fact—and you've got plenty of cupboard space in the kitchen for—"

"I said you could spare me the hard sell." Still dry, but a smile took some of the asperity out of it. "I've seen what the place has."

"Yeah. You sure have. And then some."

"I've also seen what it doesn't have. Unfortunately." She began moving about the room again, slowly and purposefully—a resumption of her space walk. "What about the neighborhood? I'm not familiar with this part of the Village. It seems to be full of warehouses. Is it safe?"

"Couldn't be safer. The big avenue one block over is Hudson. It may not look much like a main drag, but it's always well populated. Right around the corner is a brownstone where a Mafia bigwig holds court. He was born in the building, bought it after he made good, and now it's like Buckingham Palace inside, I've been told. And the legend has it that any street where the Mafia hangs out—"

"—is as safe as the inside of a police station." She came to a halt. "Safer, I shouldn't wonder. It sounds thoroughly immoral, but reassuring."

"What's immoral about a little protection? Another thing, Mrs. Chandler. You won't be hemmed in by neighbors. The landlord didn't convert the whole building into apartments. There's just this one and the one upstairs. Downstairs is an antique shop, as you probably noticed, and the rest of the building is rented to the storage company around the corner."

"What kind of person is the tenant upstairs?"

"Oh, a prince." Then, as she raised her eyebrows, he grinned. "Well, respectable anyway. The landlord wouldn't rent to anybody who wasn't. His name's Bancroft. Charlie, I think, but I wouldn't swear to it. A fine fellow. Take my word for it."

"You're really quite a salesman, aren't you?"

"You seem to need a lot of selling. That's not a complaint.

I don't mind—it makes a nice change. I started out in this business back when it wasn't entirely a seller's market and you had to hustle to make out."

"The good old days?"

"The good old days. They really were good, in a lot of ways. Buildings were really built, not put together with cardboard and Scotch tape. You used to be able to rent an apartment and be sure it was all yours. Nowadays you can hear your neighbor breathe through the walls. Like I said, you won't have anything like that here. You'll have your privacy."

"All right, you've made your sale. That's really the selling point, too."

"I knew it would be." Then, as her eyebrows went up again, he shrugged. "It shows. You keep yourself to yourself. It's a trait that's going out of style. Maybe because people get so used to living in each other's pockets they actually get to like it."

"Oh, come now. I can't believe—"

"Well, there could be a few other reasons, too. They put up with it anyway." He consulted his watch. "I'll tell you what. Suppose we go back to the office and you sign the lease while I relieve you of a nice chunk of your bankroll, and then we'll go have a drink and talk about the good old days." All at once his brow clouded over. "You do have the bankroll handy, don't you?"

"Oh, yes, I know the drill." The hazel eyes became merry. "Three months' rent down before I get my hands on the key.

One for the rent"—she began counting on her fingers—"one for the security, and one for
you
." She finished with a peal of laughter.

There was nothing merry about the sound. It was harsh, intrusive, eerie m the barren room. Then it was swallowed by the silence.

"I'd be happy to take you up on that drink." She spoke quietly, tentatively, like a child making overtures of reconciliation after a rebuke.

"A pleasure, Mrs. Chandler."

Phil Norman said, "You know what it reminds me of?. A ship's cabin. All the gear stowed away out of sight and all the hatches battened down." Pursing his thick lips, he began to whistle "The Sailor's Hornpipe."

Joyce smiled. She had smiled so many times, with such great effort, that her facial muscles were practically paralyzed. The gaiety of Sheila and Dick Wallenstein looked a bit forced, too, but perhaps they were simply uncomfortable after the long confinement in those diminutive twin armchairs. Irene McCarthy's wide, toothy grin looked as though it came from the heart.

The lone non-smiler was Naomi Norman; she was pouting. "There aren't any hatches in the cabins," she said. "They're out on deck."

"I was speaking, figuratively, kiddo. I know where the hatches are. I was in the navy, remember."

"For six months. When you were all of seventeen."

"Well, it isn't my fault they made peace in Korea." Irene threw back her head and laughed, showing more teeth; the green glass beads dangling on wires from her earlobes bounced against air.

No one joined in. Joyce looked at Sheila, met a glance of commiseration, and looked away quickly.

"Anybody for more cheese and crackers?" The cheeseboard came up from the coffee table with a flourish.

Groans of satiety. A round of accolades for what had sated. Well, the dinner had earned them: the beef braised in mustard sauce and the accompanying salad of watercress, bean sprouts, and water chestnuts had been a resounding success; the honey mousse and shortbread (browner than it should have been because the new oven was tricky to regulate, but the texture just right) had gone over well, too.

"More coffee?"

Yeses from Naomi and Irene, truly prodigious eaters, to judge from this evening's performance. On Naomi it showed (incredible that within a decade that quondam gamine should have blown up into this blimp of a hausfrau), but Irene was all skin and bones. Phil declined coffee as he had before, this time with the remark that it kept him awake. Sheila and Dick declined, too, looking woebegone, as though the re-circling of the coffeepot had sent a chance for making a getaway out of the window. Not exactly flattering, but then a hostess who was as eager to terminate the festivities as any of her guests could scarcely take umbrage.

Never mind. They were sure to leave soon. In the meantime, she had work to do. Finding a way to cut into yet another of the long silences that had threatened at intervals to send everybody into the land of nod. How?

Sheila came to the rescue. "You've really done wonders with the place, Joyce." Loyal, true-blue Sheila. So what if she had said the same thing twice before? Or was it three times?

"Thank you," Joyce said, for the third time. Or the fourth. Would there be an encore of "The Sailor's Hornpipe"? No. Phil had either missed his cue or was ignoring it. He sat staring straight ahead of him with an abstracted air, perhaps speculating on the outcome of the Knicks game he had passed up, he had explained earlier, "to be a social butterfly and make my wife happy."