The Dark Descends Read Online Free Page B

under her breath, and half an hour later, setting out the ingredients for a martini, she was humming it aloud. Why not sing? Or dance a jig? It had been a successful day from any point of view. She had found a job. She had received an invitation to join a consciousness-raising group, Something that wouldn't have occurred to her to do on her own initiative but that seemed like a fine idea, since she was bound to meet other women who were in the same boat she was in. Last but not least, she had acquired a table. The housewarming had proved that, while dining off one's lap might be okay for snacks, a proper feed demanded a proper table. Which meant a gate-leg table, that symbol of versatility or adaptability or whatever, and she had anticipated a long hunt, such tables being hideous more often than not. But the acquisition had been as simple as spotting one of solid walnut with clean, unfussy lines in the window of the shop downstairs, writing out a check, and carrying the table up the stairs with the help of the shop's proprietress, a dour, hard-faced girl with hair as improbably red as the hair of the employment agency interviewer had been improbably gold (incomprehensible, this obsession with trying to look like something created in a test tube).
    Joyce poured vermouth into the martini pitcher and back into the bottle. She poured gin and let it remain. She added ice. She stirred. Slowly. Gently. And then, all of a sudden, a sense of desolation swept over her, suppressing song. How forlorn the tall, slender pitcher looked on the counter—out of place, like an aristocrat at a saloon bash. Eliot had insisted on her taking it ("Who's the champion martini mixer anyway?"), and she hadn't needed much persuading. Now the mere sight of it was enough to arouse pangs of nostalgia. But nostalgia was the least of it. The pitcher was barely a third full—a quantity for a solitary drinker. That thought was positively painful. It shouldn't have been. She was used to drinking alone. How many times had she started on a martini before Eliot came home? Or had one by herself when he wasn't expected home for dinner? Countless times.
    Still, solitude with an end in sight and solitude without were two different things. It was the latter condition that produced that bugaboo of old wives' tales, the solitary drinker. But what kind of thinking was this? Old wives' tales indeed! If she didn't watch out, she'd be hiding under the bed next.
    She opened the refrigerator door and reached for the glass she had put inside to chill. As her fingers curved around it, there was a soft knock at the door.
    Something crawled down her spine. A convulsive movement of her hand sent the glass over on its side.
    Who on earth— Of course. Bonnie Prince Charlie, or, more formally, C. Bancroft, responding to the note she had left in his mailbox this morning. Anybody else would have to ring the outside doorbell to get into the building. Unless it was the landlord, come to greet his new tenant, which didn't seem likely.
    "One moment," she called out.
    The glass wasn't broken, fortunately. She righted it, then tried to put the pitcher into the refrigerator, but the shelves were too close together. She returned the pitcher to the counter. What to do? If she asked Bancroft in he could hardly miss seeing the pitcher and might take it into his head to fish for an invitation. Circumstances didn't warrant an invitation, but the way people tended to presume when it was a question of neighbors— On the other hand, Bancroft might have a thing about drinking, and letting him view the preparations for— To hell with it. The only solution seemed to be stashing the pitcher away in the cupboard, and damned if she was going to stoop to that. They would hold the powwow out in the hall.
    Stepping outside, Joyce released the door too soon and had to jerk an elbow back to prevent a slam. Most ungraceful, but then she might just as easily have fallen flat on her face. For C. Bancroft was a