Disturbing the Peace

1 Everything began to go wrong for Janice Wilder in the late summer of 1960. And the worst part, she always said afterwards, the awful part, was that it seemed to happen without warning. She was thirty-four and the mother of a ten-year-old son. The fading of her youth didn't bother herit hadn't been a very carefree or adventurous youth anywayand if her marriage was more an arrangement than a romance, that was all right too. Nobody's life was perfect. She enjoyed the orderly rotation of her days; she enjoyed books, of which she owned a great many; and she enjoyed her high, bright apartment with its view of midtown Manhattan towers. It was neither a rich nor an elegant apartment, but it was comfortableand "comfortable" was one of Janice Wilder's favorite words. She was fond of the word "civilized," too, and of "reasonable" and "adjustment" and "relationship." Hardly anything upset or frightened her: the only things that didsometimes to the point of making her blood run coldwere things she didn't understand. "I don't understand," she said to her husband on the telephone. "What do you mean, you 'can't' come home?" And she glanced uneasily at their boy, who sat on the carpet eating an apple and absorbed in the CBS Evening News. "What?" she said. "I can't hear you. You're what? . . . Wait; I'll take this in the bedroom." When she was alone at the extension phone, behind two closed doors, she said "All right, John. Let's start at the beginning. Where are you? At LaGuardia?" "No, thank God; I finally got out of that son of a bitch. Must've spent at least two hours walking around and around out there before I figured out how to get a cab; then I got one of these damn talky cab drivers, and he" "You're drunk, aren't you?" "Will you let me finish?No,I'm not drunk. I've been drinking but I'm not drunk. Listen: you know how much sleep I got in Chicago? The whole week? Almost none. One, two hours a night, and last night I didn't sleep at all. You don't believe me, do you? You never believe the truth." "Just tell me where you're calling from." "I don't know; some kind of stand-up phone booth, and my legs are about toGrand Central. The Biltmore. No, wait: the Commodore. I'm having a drink at the Commodore." "Well, dear, that's practically around the corner. All you have to do is" "God damn it, aren't you listening? I just got through telling you Ican'tcome home." She hunched forward on the edge of the double bed with her elbows on her slacks, holding the phone tightly to both hands. "Why?" she said. "Jesus. Hundreds of reasons. More reasons than I could possibly begin topossibly begin to enumerate. One thing, I forgot to get a present for Tommy." "Oh, John, that's absurd. He's ten now; he doesn't expect a present every time you" "Okay, here's another thing. There was a girl in Chicago, little PR girl for one of the distilleries. I screwed her five times in the Palmer House. Whaddya think of that?" It wasn't the first news ofYates, Richard is the author of 'Disturbing the Peace', published 1984 under ISBN 9780385293327 and ISBN 0385293321.