The Dark Descends (19 page)

"I'll bet."

"Oh, my! Cynical, aren't you?" Charlotte gave her little girl's giggle. Her face was wooden; her eyes looked like blue marbles. "Just listen to me for a minute. It'll be worth your while, I promise. Now just listen. All right?"

"Do I have any choice?"

"Well, not really." Another giggle. "You know, in all the weeks I've been away from work my office simply hasn't been able to find a satisfactory replacement for me. At times they've had two people—college graduates—doing the work I did, and it didn't get done as well. Imagine. I never even went to college. But editing grammar school textbooks isn't the snap these college-trained hotshots seem to think it is. You have to see to it that the language is clear without being condescending, and you have to be accurate. It's darn hard work, I can vouch for that. You have to keep your mind on it all the time. Well, to make a long story short, they're dying to have me back, just as soon as I'm ready. They've offered me a raise, and you know what else? They said I could have an assistant. That's where you come in. The salary wouldn't be anything to write home about but—"

"Oh, my God!"

"I can see you don't care for the idea one little bit. What a pity. Why, if you worked for me, I'd see to it that you pulled yourself together. And another thing." Charlotte's voice dropped to a caressing whisper. "I'd see to it that you got plenty of rest at night. Think how nice it would be to sleep through the night again. Think, Joyce. Think good and hard."

"Stop it, Charlotte, please stop. If you have any decency left—"

"Decency! You're a fine one to talk about decency!"

"You have a point." Joyce looked down at her hands. They lay palms upward on her knees, chalk white against the crimson terry cloth, limp as dead birds. "It is a word that seems to have lost its meaning around here, isn't it? But there's no use getting into semantics. It's not going to help us find a workable basis for an armistice, is it? What do you really want, Charlotte? I told you I'm willing to do anything to bring the siege to an end. Anything within reason. If reason is still possible with you. If there's still some rational level where you operate. I've thought and thought about what goes on inside your head. I don't want to think about it anymore. I just want to be allowed to live in peace. All I've wanted from the beginning was peace and quiet. Was that such a lot to ask?"

"I'll say it was a lot to ask! It was too much to ask, the way you asked it. Oh, you were so high and mighty the first time I set eyes on you. Remember how you kept me standing on the doorstep? You didn't even have the courtesy to ask me into your precious apartment. And you were asking a favor!"

"I wasn't asking a favor, I was claiming a right."

"A right? What right?"

"The right to quiet enjoyment of the premises I pay rent for. It is, I might remind you, a right that's stipulated in the lease I signed. Not that it matters much at this point. What does?" The dead birds came to life for a brief flutter. "All right. Over to you. I'm at the end of my rope. I don't feel I'm my own person anymore. Obviously extorting your pound of flesh isn't enough for you. Obviously—"

"No, it's not enough. Not nearly enough." Calmly Charlotte picked up the half-eaten cookie from her napkin and nibbled at it. "You've done wrong, and now you're being punished for it. We're all of us put here on this earth to help each other, not hurt each other. All the time I was in the hospital, I thought and thought about how much you deserve to be punished for what you did to me. Night after night, when I couldn't sleep because of the pain, I thought about all the things I would do to pay you back. To make you suffer the way I suffered."

"I'm not to blame for what happened to you! Whatever I may have set in motion, I'm not responsible for that. You were a free agent. If you want to blame somebody, blame the man who attacked you, don't blame me!"

"I don't know who he is." Charlotte popped the remainder of the cookie into her mouth, chewed it quickly, and swallowed with a voracity that stretched the tendons of her neck. "I don't even know what he looked like. The police kept asking me to describe him. Over and over and over and over. Asking and asking and asking and asking the same questions until I was ready to scream. Did he have any distinguishing marks? What color were his eyes? What color was his hair? As if I could tell them! Why, I don't even know if he had hair. When he came in here he had his hat on, pulled down over his face, and I don't think he ever took it off. I don't remember. It's all fuzzy in my head. About all I do remember is that he was tall. Taller than I am. That's unusual, even for a man, but the police didn't seem to think it was very much help. I guess it wasn't. A man with no face. How do you describe a man with no face?"

"How indeed. And so I'm to be his stand-in."

"You have a face." Charlotte licked her fingers. Greedily. With relish.

"Yes, I have a face." Joyce lifted her hands and passed exploratory fingertips over her cheekbones. They were sharp; the skin over them was dry and rough and unpleasant to the touch. "People used to think it was a nice face. I used to think it was a nice face myself, once upon a time. It's not a nice face anymore. Not a face anybody would enjoy looking at for very long. But I suppose that's not unusual. I don't see too many faces that bear looking at for very long nowadays." Her hands returned to her lap. "Where will it all end? Maybe there's some magic formula that might induce you to stop persecuting me, but if there is I can't guess it. I'm not even going to try to guess it anymore. I've spent too much time at the game already. Charlotte, for the last time I'm begging you to lay off. For your own sake as well as mine. Anybody who keeps up a campaign like yours departs from the human race and becomes—"

"Oh, that's rich! That's really rich! I suppose next you'll tell me you're worrying about saving my soul!"

"No, I'm worrying about myself. First and foremost, last and always. Just like everybody else. And isn't that a pretty sad confession, when you come right down to it. But then who else is there to worry about except number one? There isn't room for anybody else. We spend our lives in little boxes. Sleep in one box, work in another, try to relax in still another. If we ever find out the sun is shining, it's probably by accident. It's so soul-destroying to live like that. It turns the mind in on itself, erodes any sense of proportion we might have started out with. Everybody becomes a victim. I'm a victim, you're a victim, and there doesn't seem to be anything either of us can do about it. Unfortunately." Joyce thrust her hands into her pockets. "Not that any of this is relevant now. Where do we go from here, Charlotte? If begging you for mercy isn't enough, where—"

"You haven't begged me for mercy."

"But—" Joyce broke off.

It was as though a light had suddenly been turned on behind the blue eyes. Exultation? Triumph? Inspiration? The pale, pointed tongue darted out, passed over the upper lip, paused over the lower lip, retreated. Charlotte placed a forefinger at her temple, held it there for a moment, sending a message: Think, Joyce. Use your head. Then, with great deliberation, the forefinger descended to point at the floor.

Joyce felt her stomach heave, and fought against nausea. It was important not to let revulsion show. So very important. The message was crystal clear. Nothing for it but to obey. Yet somehow she couldn't move, couldn't lift her lead-weighted body from the sofa. She slid. Off the cushion and into the narrow space between the sofa and the coffee table and down onto her knees. Her hands came out of her pockets, clasped in an agony of whitened knuckles under her chin. "Charlotte—"

"No, not Charlotte. Miss Bancroft. I'd like you to call me Miss Bancroft from now on."

"Miss Bancroft—" Joyce's voice quavered, and, all at once, she didn't have to force herself to plead: the words came pouring out. "Miss Bancroft, I have descended to my knees to beg you to show mercy to a poor, downtrodden wretch, to stop making my existence hell, to raise us both up to the level of human beings again. Miss Bancroft, please, I beg of you,
get off my back
."

Silence. Joyce's heart stopped beating. Time stood still. The room receded in perspective, became as remote as a room in a photograph. Only Charlotte was real. Only Charlotte, sitting as motionless as a figure of stone. Until the stone moved, nothing else could move.

Charlotte shook her head, and the world started moving again. Moving in the wrong direction.

Joyce sank down on her heels. She unclasped her hands and thrust them into her pockets. "Okay, Miss Bancroft, what next? It's your party. I'm sure it isn't going to end with ground glass slipped into my coffee or a tarantula crawling out of the woodwork to bite me. At least, not yet. Not until you've had all your kicks. So what next?"

"Oh, that's witty, Joyce. So very, very witty. And you say you're at the end of your rope. Well, you're not, are you? Not quite. You wouldn't be so flippant if you were. You're still Madam Hoity-Toity who looks down her nose at other people, aren't you? As if they're not quite human. As if they belong to some inferior species."

Charlotte leaned forward. Her color was vivid, her eyes hot. "You know something? I've been facing that look for twenty-five years.
Twenty-five years.
I'm sick and tired of being snubbed by superior beings, believe you me. It's bad enough when they really are superior, but when it comes to nobodies like you— Who are you to queen it over me? Who are you to queen it over anybody? Oh, I've met your kind before, don't think I haven't. You pop out of your nice, cozy little home where you've had it made for years—or maybe you're booted out—and you expect things to be handed to you on a silver platter just like they were before. Move over, everybody, here she comes, the new liberated woman. What a laugh! Drones aren't new, they're an old story to everybody. But you don't know that. You're so surprised when people aren't falling all over themselves to hire you for jobs you're not equipped to do. So surprised when you have to pound the pavements. Pound and pound and pound and pound. After a lifetime of thinking you're somebody, you find out you're nobody.
Nobody
, Joyce. You're nobody. You're
nothing
. Who are you, Joyce?"

"Nobody."

"What are you?"

"Nothing."

"Say it again. As if you mean it this time."

"I'm nobody. I'm nothing."

"Better, but not good enough. Not nearly. You know why? Because you don't really believe it yet. Deep down you still think you're somebody or you wouldn't have the nerve to be flippant with me. Deep down you still have some shreds of self-respect. Well, I'll knock them out of you, I promise you that. Before I'm through with you, you'll crawl up those stairs on your knees, if I ask you to. You'll kiss my foot, wipe my ass, do whatever I ask you to do whenever I ask you to do it. And there are lots of things I'm going to ask you to do, I promise you that. Lots and lots of things. Right now I'll ask you to get out. I'm sick of the sight of you. Smug, supercilious, arrogant
bitch
!" Charlotte pursed her lips and spat.

The spray struck Joyce on the cheek, sharp and stinging, like pellets of hail. She cringed. Dropping her head to her shoulder, she rubbed the afflicted cheek against her robe. The terry cloth felt as abrasive as sandpaper, but she went on rubbing and rubbing. When at last she raised her head again, her cheek seemed to be on fire.

All emotion had gone out of Charlotte's face. The blue eyes were dull, empty; the mind dwelling behind them was closed off, inaccessible.

"Well, that appears to be that. There isn't a shadow of a doubt as to where we stand now, is there? Not that I really thought there was. Not really. Once a person sets out on the destruction of another, it's like a toboggan ride downhill. The momentum grows and grows, and the destroyer is powerless to stop. He may want to stop, because he knows going on will play such havoc with his conscience that he may never recover, but he can't. I'm wasting my breath, I know. I suppose it would be wasting more to plead my case one last time?"

No response. Charlotte's face was a mask, and the mask was impenetrable.

"Yes, I can see it would be. All right, I'll be off now." Joyce's left hand emerged from her pocket, hovered above Charlotte's knees. "Would you mind giving me a lift up? I'm afraid I'm wedged in here."

For a moment, Charlotte did not move; did not react at all. Then, with a slight shrug, she held out her own hand to be taken. It was seized, gripped hard. Astonishment began to dissolve the mask.

Joyce vaulted to her feet, drew her right hand out of her pocket, slashed it across Charlotte's throat, leaped aside. Blood spurted from Charlotte's throat, spurted upward and forward like a gusher, spurted for what seemed an eternity, drenching the tray and the table, cascading to the floor. But of course it wasn't an eternity. The human body contains only a limited quantity of blood, after all.

Blood stopped spurting. Joyce extended her right arm over the table, shook her wrist vigorously. Only a few drops of blood fell from the wet, reddened razor blade, and the fingers that held it were, amazingly, untainted. She reached into her left-hand pocket, took out a wad of cotton and a plastic bag, wrapped the blade in cotton, put the cotton in the bag, replaced the bag in her pocket. Easy. So very, very easy. It had all gone without a hitch.

What else needed attending to? She had touched nothing. Except the sofa cushion, which sagged a little. She pounded it with her fists. There. Now it was firm. A needless precaution, unless the police were taking impressions of backsides these days. The thought started a giggle in her throat. Bad, bad, bad. A prelude to hysteria.

A look at her handiwork squelched any impulse to laugh. Charlotte's lifeless head had fallen back against the sofa; above the bloody gash running from ear to ear, wide blue eyes and parted lips cast astonishment at the ceiling. Mild astonishment. Astonishment that hadn't progressed very far into the depths of consciousness. Well, there hadn't been time enough. And whose fault was that?

"I begged you, Charlotte. I got down on my knees and begged you. What more could I have done? What more could anyone have done?"