The Dark Descends Read Online Free PDF Page B

would be living a solitary existence from now on, and damned if she could see herself developing any kinks because of it. But of course the cases weren't really analogous. She had been bedded and wedded, while poor old Charlotte Bancroft looked the sort who—
    Wedded. How had Charlotte Bancroft known it was Mrs. Chandler? There was no ring to tell her so. Had she made some inquiries about her new neighbor? Well, what if she had? Where there was such proximity, curiosity was only normal. Hadn't Joyce made some inquiries herself?. And heard the praises of Charlie Bancroft, that prince among men, that model of respectability? That agent had to be credited with being a good mailbox reader. And with batting five hundred in the dark as well—he had certainly got the respectability right.
    Joyce started to laugh, but mirth died in her throat as she caught sight of the crystal pitcher. The liquid within looked as pure and transparent as spring water: all the ice had melted.
     

Stage Two
     
    Mondays were always the worst. After two days off, Joyce found it difficult to settle into the big glass cube, where the furniture had a today's-purchase-tomorrow's-throwaway flimsiness and the carpet was so charged with electricity that everyone kept a bobby pin handy to poke at the metal desks and chair frames and doorknobs, thus absorbing the shock of contact. And of course it hardly improved matters that the cube was placed right spang in the middle of the typesetting room with the desks facing outward: one had the sense of being a goldfish every time the typesetters hit a slack and lined up around the cube with their faces pressed against the glass. The other five copy-readers didn't seem to mind being gawked at, but then they were fresh out of college, young enough to get a bang out of any kind of masculine attention. One thing they did mind, as Joyce did, was being under the eye of Margaret Weston, the supervisor of the copy room, whose desk faced inward and commanded a full view of her underlings. Though Margaret, to do her justice, made no show of watching or, indeed, of supervising—delivering rebukes, when rebukes had to be delivered, quietly and in terms of "doing better" or "not letting
Yardstick
down."
    Invariably, a Monday launched a new week with a plethora of crises. Today was no exception. First thing in the morning, there was a scene with a typist who had forgotten to sign the chart, taped to the glass behind Margaret's chair, that kept track of who had which piece of copy at what time. Despite the low-pitched, almost soothing cadences of Margaret's reprimand, the typist burst into tears and fled from the office.
    That chart of Margaret's was a royal pain in the ass, no question about it, but then much of the routine at
Yardstick
was a royal pain in the ass. Doubtless the elaborate system of classifying and delegating tasks was efficient, and doubtless it had served the magazine well over the years. Still, it did get pretty trying, having to take any editorial matter other than spelling, punctuation, and word divisions for the printer through channels—then so simple a matter as the essential change from the indefinite article to the definite with which Joyce had been forced to concern herself on one memorable occasion, waiting for two hours outside the office of the editor whose signature had been necessary to sanction the change. Most of the time, mercifully, nothing caused a ripple in the copy room routine of transferring editorial changes to printer's copy or proofs and dealing with such stylistic points as elimination of the last serial comma (
Yardstick
took a dim view of the last serial comma, frequently making that known in the style sheets circulated among the staff writers, who never seemed to remember).
    None of hers to wonder why, certainly. But, since it was Monday, she did wonder, and bitch inwardly, and hope that a Somewhat overactive spleen would be the limit of the day's hex as far as she was concerned.