Free Disturbing the Peace (Vintage Classics) by Richard Yates Page B

ever would in the corporate structure. His excellent salary and stockholder’s dividends accounted for less than half his income; the rest came from shrewd investments. He lived in an exclusive Rockland County village; all his children were grown and he was a grandfather of three. Another man might have turned obsessively to golf or sailing or collecting antique shotguns, but George Taylor’s avocation was young girls. More than a few of his lunches with Wilder in the past had featured stories of girls who found it impossible to leave him alone, who hounded him and begged for him and fought for his favors, of how at least one had wept in his arms all night after her formal engagement to some recent graduate of Harvard Law.
    “Hell, I’m about ready for another one, aren’t you, John?” he said now, raising his empty glass.
    “Yeah; I’m ready.”
    And the second round launched him into a confessional monologue. “… Jesus, if you only knew what’s been going on with Sandy. I mean talk about a sweet little package of trouble; talk about a sweet little nest of rattlesnakes.” Sandy was a laughing, full-breasted girl who’d been his secretary for six months. “Bad enough when she worked for me, but it’s been even worse since I got her outa there. Told you I got her a job up at Drake and Cornfield, didn’t I? This new agency up onFifty-ninth? You know, one of these swinging little shops where everybody says ‘creative’ all the time; they’ve got girls running around the office barefoot; got a lotta bright young studs on the make; I figured she’d fit in there. But son of a bitch, John, she can’t quit. Worst part of it is I can’t quit. Three, four evenings a week, half my vacation – Jesus. Crazy child. Twenty-two years old and all sex. All sex. Says she can’t stand boys her own age. Says I fulfill her. Last week my wife said ‘Pajamas? What’re you wearing pajamas for?’ And you know why I was wearing pajamas? Because my back was all raw welts from where Sandy’d clawed me. Crazy, crazy child. Couldn’t stand her apartment. Had this apartment with another girl, didn’t like it because she didn’t have enough privacy with me, so I got her a new one by herself – oh, she pays the rent and everything – she’s very strict about that – but now if I don’t show up there damn near every afternoon she’s calling me on the
phone
. Then about a month ago she said ‘Drive me to Philadelphia.’ I said ‘Why should I drive you to Philadelphia?’ She said ‘Because I want to blow you while you’re doing eighty miles an hour on the Jersey Turnpike.’ ”
    “And did she?”
    “Damn right she did, buddy. Eighty miles an hour. Jesus.”
    There was a third round of drinks and finally some food, which grew cold before they began to pick at it; then there were gulps of coffee and the promise of a long and dismal afternoon. Taylor grumbled about having to arrange the God damn December Issue Sales Conference; Wilder’s desk held an indecipherable batch of expense-account vouchers from Chicago that would somehow have to be put in order, and after that he’d be on the phone trying to set up a week’s worth of calls.
    The office was better than Bellevue. Its walls were white and its lights indirect; it contained women as well as men; everybody wore clothes and nobody pleaded to be saved or screamed ormasturbated or kicked at windows – even so, there were signs of mounting desperation in every face as the day wore on, and the arrival of five o’clock was like the cop’s signal to unlock the big front door.
    “Hi,” he said, unlocking the door of his own home, released not only from the office but from the clangorous imprisonment of the subway.
    “Hi, there,” Janice said, and Tommy looked up from the television to acknowledge him with a mouthful of apple.
    When he’d taken off his coat and tie he went to the place where the bourbon and the ice were kept, with Janice following him closely.