Free The Dark Descends by Diana Ramsay

indisposed, and the ranting of his understudy proved how badly the play needed carrying. Or so Joyce thought. Irene disagreed, and what began as a dispute over aesthetics changed in a twinkling into a real cat-fight, in the course of which Irene's grievances erupted ("Must you be so god-damned smug? All you're good for is to pronounce superior judgments. Who do you think you are anyway? From where I sit, you come on like one of the lilies of the field. Maybe a little toiling and spinning over the years would have improved your character"), and Joyce was not slow to retaliate ("Maybe you ought to worry about your own character. From where I sit, you come on like a cantankerous, embittered spinster so eaten up with envy of married women she can't see straight").
    Worst of all, there was the dream. Joyce was a little girl again, dressing her doll in the familiar room under the sloping roof. How clearly and sharply she could see everything—as though she had left only yesterday. The high four-poster bed. The cherry-wood bureau. The dressing table with the pink organdy skirt and the heart-shaped mirror. The big bookcase completely filled with books, because, Mommy always said, you couldn't acquire a good habit early enough. Joyce was taking great pains with her doll, who had a new dress (pink organdy, to match the skirt of the dressing table). It was an important day. Mommy and Daddy were coming home from Washington this afternoon. How excited she was[ Downstairs, Mrs. Swenson was humming "Long Ago and Far Away" and clattering dishes in the sink. All of a sudden, the humming and the clattering stopped, and footsteps came up the stairs. Brisk, no-nonsense footsteps. Not Mrs. Swenson—she always came up slowly and heavily, groaning all the way. It was Aunt Blanche. Boring Aunt Blanche, whose frozen face always seemed to crack when she smiled, whose kisses tasted of Sen-Sen. Today she wasn't smiling and she didn't offer a kiss; she just stood in the doorway with a dull, dead look in her eyes, like somebody who wasn't really there at all. And Joyce was frightened. So very, very, very frightened...
    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