The Dark Descends Read Online Free
raised her hand to the doorbell again, lowered it to her side again.
What if Bancroft had fallen asleep? Preposterous as the idea seemed, she knew very well (who better?) that it was possible to sleep through anything. Now the question was whether she was prepared to rouse somebody from slumber. To be sure, she had been roused from slumber herself, but tit for tat merely constituted two wrongs, and what they didn't add up to was proverbial. Ethics aside, it stood to reason that someone awakened in the middle of the night wouldn't be likely to have his best foot forward, and this was a someone it was to her advantage to be on good terms with. What if he came to the door with his hair in curlers or cold cream on his face?
This was going overboard, of course. But still, why risk jeopardizing future relations by putting the guy on the defensive? Better to let it go for now. She could put up with the racket for one night. She could put up with anything for one night. She would slip a note into Bancroft's mailbox in the morning. That would settle the matter in a dignified fashion.
She turned and retraced her steps. Before getting back into bed she stuffed absorbent cotton in her ears. It didn't help much. She lay wakeful, hearing the voices rumble above her, feeling the floor shake below her, until the first slivers of dawn light poked through the Venetian blinds.
...
The employment agency looked extremely high-powered, all laminated imitation walnut and plastic patent leather, but the advertisements ("Got those small-cog-in-big-wheel blues? We have the cure." "We have the brain jobs if you bring us the brains!") had been sufficient preparation for that. And for the appearance of the interviewer—a knockout, with long legs and full, conspicuously braless breasts, lustrous artificial gold sausage curls and a startling quantity of rouge. The surprise was encountering, under that facade, not the expected professional hauteur and indifference, but warmth of manner and genuine helpfulness.
"Nothing here for you, honey. You don't have enough experience for anything high up, and the trainee jobs we handle call for girls just out of school. They're happy enough to start at the bottom, whereas somebody like you—" The interviewer shook her golden head, and not a single curl moved out of place. "Employers figure you'd have too much of a sense of yourself, if you know what I mean. Your best bet is to sashay into the personnel department of some big magazine or book publisher and try talking your way into something. Don't put 'Mrs. Joyce Chandler' on your application the way you did here—put '
Ms
. Joyce Chandler.' Let them get the idea you're liberating yourself from the kitchen on principle rather than out of necessity. Just be careful not to come on too militant—that could hurt your chances."
It was excellent advice, carrying Joyce smoothly through the personnel department of
Yardstick
magazine and into the copy room, where she landed a job as copy-reader instantaneously. Well, almost instantaneously. First she had to prove her qualifications by submitting to a test.
"It was a bit humiliating," she reported to Sheila via telephone. "The rudiments of spelling and grammar. An insult to anybody with an IQ above seventy-five."
"Not these days. The present generation doesn't take the mechanics of written communication as seriously as ours did. Anyway, taking a test or standing on your head, what does it matter as long as you got the job? In a couple of months the editor in chief will probably be down on his knees begging you for ideas."
"Not unless you're willing to put in a little overtime on those knees first." Dick's voice, somewhere in the background.
"Dick says—"
"I heard. Tell him I think it's pretty unlikely. I think the major policy decisions are made by a computer."
Joyce had no great respect for
Yardstick
, which had always struck her as literary fare calculated to disagree with no one's digestion, like Pablum. But
What if Bancroft had fallen asleep? Preposterous as the idea seemed, she knew very well (who better?) that it was possible to sleep through anything. Now the question was whether she was prepared to rouse somebody from slumber. To be sure, she had been roused from slumber herself, but tit for tat merely constituted two wrongs, and what they didn't add up to was proverbial. Ethics aside, it stood to reason that someone awakened in the middle of the night wouldn't be likely to have his best foot forward, and this was a someone it was to her advantage to be on good terms with. What if he came to the door with his hair in curlers or cold cream on his face?
This was going overboard, of course. But still, why risk jeopardizing future relations by putting the guy on the defensive? Better to let it go for now. She could put up with the racket for one night. She could put up with anything for one night. She would slip a note into Bancroft's mailbox in the morning. That would settle the matter in a dignified fashion.
She turned and retraced her steps. Before getting back into bed she stuffed absorbent cotton in her ears. It didn't help much. She lay wakeful, hearing the voices rumble above her, feeling the floor shake below her, until the first slivers of dawn light poked through the Venetian blinds.
...
The employment agency looked extremely high-powered, all laminated imitation walnut and plastic patent leather, but the advertisements ("Got those small-cog-in-big-wheel blues? We have the cure." "We have the brain jobs if you bring us the brains!") had been sufficient preparation for that. And for the appearance of the interviewer—a knockout, with long legs and full, conspicuously braless breasts, lustrous artificial gold sausage curls and a startling quantity of rouge. The surprise was encountering, under that facade, not the expected professional hauteur and indifference, but warmth of manner and genuine helpfulness.
"Nothing here for you, honey. You don't have enough experience for anything high up, and the trainee jobs we handle call for girls just out of school. They're happy enough to start at the bottom, whereas somebody like you—" The interviewer shook her golden head, and not a single curl moved out of place. "Employers figure you'd have too much of a sense of yourself, if you know what I mean. Your best bet is to sashay into the personnel department of some big magazine or book publisher and try talking your way into something. Don't put 'Mrs. Joyce Chandler' on your application the way you did here—put '
Ms
. Joyce Chandler.' Let them get the idea you're liberating yourself from the kitchen on principle rather than out of necessity. Just be careful not to come on too militant—that could hurt your chances."
It was excellent advice, carrying Joyce smoothly through the personnel department of
Yardstick
magazine and into the copy room, where she landed a job as copy-reader instantaneously. Well, almost instantaneously. First she had to prove her qualifications by submitting to a test.
"It was a bit humiliating," she reported to Sheila via telephone. "The rudiments of spelling and grammar. An insult to anybody with an IQ above seventy-five."
"Not these days. The present generation doesn't take the mechanics of written communication as seriously as ours did. Anyway, taking a test or standing on your head, what does it matter as long as you got the job? In a couple of months the editor in chief will probably be down on his knees begging you for ideas."
"Not unless you're willing to put in a little overtime on those knees first." Dick's voice, somewhere in the background.
"Dick says—"
"I heard. Tell him I think it's pretty unlikely. I think the major policy decisions are made by a computer."
Joyce had no great respect for
Yardstick
, which had always struck her as literary fare calculated to disagree with no one's digestion, like Pablum. But
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