Disturbing the Peace

  Pamela was inspecting her fingernails.

  “He stayed sober long enough to write a pretty terrific book,” Munchin said.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Wilder said. “I thought it was a little overwrought.”

  “Have you read it?” Pamela inquired. “I didn’t know you’d read it.”

  When they were driving home she said “Why were you so funny about Pratt? It would be a break if Munchin could get him.”

  “I don’t want him around, that’s all. I must say I’m surprised you want him around.”

  “Oh, John, he wouldn’t be ‘around.’ He’d be holed up writing the script, and once it got into production we’d probably never see him again. Besides, whatever we think of the man personally, he happens to be an excellent—”

  “Okay,” he said, gripping the wheel very tight in both hands to prove he wasn’t angry. “Okay.”

  “And in any case it’s silly even to think about it. I don’t think Munchin’ll ever get him.”

  Later that night, walking home from dinner, she stopped and bought copies of the two trade papers.

  “What’s all this?” he said.

  “I just want to check that item about Pratt. I want to see what they say about him.”

  “No you don’t.” He stopped on the sidewalk. “You’re not bringing those fucking papers into the house.”

  “Are you out of your mind?”

  It wasn’t their first quarrel in Hollywood but it was the most abrupt, and it was the first to happen on the street.

  “All right, read ’em!” he shouted. “Read ’em – they won’t have what you’re looking for; they won’t print his phone number.”

  “John, this is the most utterly pointless, ridiculous – if you don’t stop this, I swear I’ll—”

  “You’ll what? Take your daddy’s money and move out? Fine! Go shack up with Chester Pratt again! Get him together with Munchin and the three of you can make a movie about me! Oh, I’m a Dark Character, all right, baby; I’m Doomed; I’ve got the fucking Seeds of Self-Destruction coming out my ears …”

  She was walking quickly away from him, and several gaping adolescents in bright-colored T-shirts – two boys and a girl – had stopped to watch. There was nothing to do but turn and walk in the opposite direction, fast, in search of a bar to hide in.

  He found a cheap, loud, crowded place that was evidently a hangout for young actors – it had a much-used call-board instead of a mirror behind the ranked bottles – and after fighting his way to the bar for two shots and a beer, he left quickly. The second place was better, and the third was the best – so agreeably dark and somber that he felt he could stay here forever, signaling the courteous waiter for refills and hearing of how Tony Bennett had left his heart in San Francisco.

  Soon he would go home and apologize – he would wake her up, if necessary, to do so – but not right away. It was very important to think things out.

  “Sir?”

  “Yes, please. Another double.”

  He was faltering, staggering drunk by the time he got home. He thought at first that instead of waking her to apologize he would crawl in beside her and pass out, but he couldn’t even do that. He wasn’t sleepy.

  He sat on the living-room sofa, tapering off on beer, waiting for sleep. And he was still there, awake and whispering to himself, when daylight crept through the Venetian blinds.

  “… Good news,” Munchin said on the phone a few days later. “It isn’t final yet, but I think we’re going to get Pratt.”

  “Oh,” Wilder said.

  “His agent asked for the script yesterday, and Pratt’s reading it today. So listen: assuming he likes the property, what day do you think you two could come out here? To meet him and talk it over?”

  “Well, don’t count on me, Carl,” he said, and the phone trembled slightly in his grip. “I don’t want to see him at all. Hold on, I’ll ask Pamela.”

  She was sitting in an armchair across the room. She had been reading Sight and Sound but she’d dropped it when the phone rang, and now as he relayed the message she drew a section of her lower lip between her teeth and bit it. Her eyes were wide. “God,” she said. “I don’t know.”

  “She doesn’t know, Carl,” he said. “She’ll call you back in a few minutes when she’s made up her mind, okay?” And when he hung up the phone he said “Okay, baby. It’s up to you.”

  “I won’t go at all if you don’t want me to,” she said. “You know that.”

  He hadn’t known it, and it pleased him, but he didn’t want to show it. “No, you’d better go,” he said. “You’re one of the producers.”

  “Well, so are you. If you go alone he might never even know I’m connected with it.”

  “He already knows. Your name’s on the script.”

  “Oh. I didn’t think of that.”

  In the end she called Munchin and agreed to go on whatever day was most convenient.

  On the appointed afternoon she took longer getting dressed than usual, trying different dresses, until he said “Anybody’d think you’re worried about how you look.”

  “Oh, you’re right,” she said. “This is silly. I’ll just wear a shirt and some old slacks. You sure you don’t want to come?”

  “I’m sure.”

  But after she was gone he walked the floor with his fist in his mouth. Why hadn’t he gone along? Wouldn’t it have been better to let Pratt see she had another man? He had a drink – just one, he promised himself, because he wanted to be alert and keen – and settled down to wait for her.

  When she came back he studied her closely, weighing her every answer and every glance for signs of duplicity, and he had to admit there were none.

  “How was it?”

  “Oh, it was – pleasant. At least he was sober.”

  “How’d he act when he saw you?”

  “He was very discreet. He just said ‘We’ve met’ when Munchin started to introduce us, and after that it was all – you know – strictly business. I thought he had some interesting ideas. I wish you’d come along.”

  *

  Chester Pratt was retained to write the screenplay, and since it would take him a few months to finish it they were left with nothing much to do. They spent time at Munchin’s, meeting several directors, and they spent time with real-estate agents in futile search of “a nice little house in the hills,” but for the most part their days were empty.

  “We might as well do something with all this time,” she said. “Do you want to go up to San Francisco for a few days? Or down to Mexico?”

  But they did neither.

  Chapter Nine

  “And what seems to be the trouble, Mr. Wilder?” said Dr. Burton L. Rose of UCLA.

  “There’s no real trouble, doctor, but I suppose you could say there might be. I really only came to get my prescriptions refilled – here, look, I’ve brought the bottles – and then on the way over here I thought of a few things I’d like to talk about.”

  As soon as he’d said that he regretted it. Dr. Rose was a very small, slight, pale man who couldn’t have been over thirty, with humorless eyes that stared unblinking at his visitor. His office, deep in the labyrinthine complex of the Medical Center, was barely big enough to contain a desk, two chairs, and a psychiatric couch that looked obscenely out of place. How could anyone “talk” to this solemn, staring boy in this claustrophobic room?

  The doctor frowned over the labels of the pill vials and reached for his prescription pad. “How long have you been on these medications?”

  “These four, you mean, or medications in general?”

  “These four, to begin with.”

  “Oh, let’s see. About three months. Before that I was taking something else, another combination of drugs. Dr. Brink used to change the prescriptions quite often, you see. I’ve been on drugs of one kind or another for two and a half years.”

  “And what did you want to talk about?”

  Wilder’s hand went involuntarily to his brow
and a small patch of skin near his eye began to twitch. “I don’t know; it’s very complicated. If I started telling you everything it would take all day.”

  “You’ve been feeling a good deal of anxiety?”

  “I’m not sure if ‘anxiety’ is the right word; but yes, I guess that’s about it. It’s just that there’s so much I’d have to tell you to explain it – even begin to explain it. For one thing I haven’t been sleeping well and I think I’ve been drinking too much.”

  “Didn’t Dr. Brink tell you not to drink when you’re on these medications?”

  “He said one drink would have about the same effect as two. Look, maybe I don’t want to talk to anybody. Maybe all I need is to have my prescriptions changed again. Could you help me there? Could you put me on a stronger antidepressant or a stronger psychic energizer or something?”

  “I’m not a magician, Mr. Wilder. And in any case I can’t change your medication without knowing more about you. If you’ll sign a records-release form I can write to Dr. Brink and have him send me an abstract of your history.”

  “Okay.”

  The doctor opened a desk drawer in search of recordsrelease forms, and now, freed from his scrutiny, Wilder let his eyes roam around the tiny office. On the desk blotter were scattered half a dozen bright, foil-wrapped chocolate mints, the kind sold at check-out counters for two cents apiece, and by leaning forward and peering over he could see many crumpled foil wrappers in the bottom of the tin wastebasket. Maybe Dr. Rose was trying to quit smoking. Or maybe he was a candy freak; maybe when he had no patients to stare at he sat here alone, staring at the wall and masticating the chocolate and the cheap cream filling, compulsively easing some dark and secret neurosis of his own.

  “If you’d like to arrange a series of appointments for psychotherapy,” he was saying, “let me know. In the meantime I would suggest very strongly that you stop the alcohol.”

  On the way home Wilder thumped the steering wheel several times with his fist and said “Shit! … Shit! …”

  “What’s he like?” Pamela inquired.

  “He’s a jerk. He’s not much older than you and he has an office about as big as a phone booth and he stuffs his face with chocolate mints all the time. The hell with him. At least I got my prescriptions refilled.”

  “Did you ask him to put you on something stronger?”

  “He says he can’t until he writes to Brink.”

  “Oh.” She was reading a copy of Newsweek, probably the “Movies” section.

  He fixed himself a drink without asking if she wanted one; he was reasonably sure she’d say it was too early.

  “I’ve got an idea,” he said after a while. “Let’s go to one of those big, opulent restaurants on La Cienega where they have fountains and strolling violinists and the whole works. Just for the hell of it.”

  “No,” she said. “We’ve been eating out too much. I’m going to fix dinner here tonight. Do you want to come along to the market with me, and help?”

  He had always hated supermarkets, and the one she took him to was a giant – more aisles and more check-out stations than he could count, with acres of brilliant overhead lights trained on the eggs and carrots and toilet paper. She wheeled her doubledecked shopping cart briskly down one aisle in search of meat, and he followed her, staring at the passing merchandise and into the petulant, bewildered faces of other shoppers. He guessed he ought to push the cart for her – was that what she’d meant by “helping”? – but when he offered to take it she said “No, it’s easier this way; I know just where I’m going and where I’m going to stop.” But she hadn’t allowed for all the stops she would have to make for traffic jams, where the carts and the people blocked the aisle.

  “Excuse me,” she said helplessly. “Excuse me.”

  “Jesus,” he said. “At this rate we’ll never get out of here.”

  “I only have a few things to get. Just be patient.”

  He wanted a drink, and chain-smoking cigarettes didn’t appease his thirst as he followed her through the enormous store. The Muzak system was playing “I’ll Never Smile Again,” and when that was over it played “All the Things You Are.”

  “Aren’t you about finished?” he said.

  “No. I need bread and paper napkins and something to make a salad with; also we need some Comet cleanser and some toothpaste and a few other things. Why don’t you wait for me at the front?”

  “No, that’s okay.”

  “Please,” she said. “I don’t want you tagging along and suffering this way; you’re like a little child.”

  On his way to the front of the store (“Excuse me … Excuse me …”), he passed Duz and Oxydol and Brillo; then he passed Grape Nuts and Post Toasties and Cheerios and a great many other bright things until he found what he suddenly knew he’d been dreading all along: a tall revolving display of Marjorie Wilder’s Chocolates. It was a six-sided rack, mechanized by some mysterious electric motor in its depths; it held hundreds of candy boxes, and it seemed to be turning to the slow, seeping rhythms of the Muzak system. “To have … to give,” read the cardboard sign; “The aristocrat of fine candies.”

  What would happen if he pushed the damned thing over? Would women scream? Would men come running? Would somebody call the police? He kept both fists tight in his pockets to restrain the impulse. Several of the boxes in each row were open to reveal their plump and succulent contents – nougat, coconut cream, English toffee, nut fudge – and he remembered sitting in wholesale offices long ago with the salesman who said “Taste one – just taste one. Be our guest.” How fine it would be to see the whole elaborate structure toppled to the floor, boxes dented and smashed, chocolates spilled and rolling in the dust under people’s feet.

  “I’ll be through in a minute,” Pamela said, pushing her cart up close to him. “What’re you looking at? Oh.”

  “Hey listen,” he said, plucking a box of chocolates from the rack and dropping it in the cart. “Let’s give Rose some decent candy to eat.”

  “Let’s do what? Give who?”

  “Rose. My little buddy out at UCLA. Here; let’s get him two.”

  That was when it happened. He was leaning with one hand on the edge of the cart; with the other he reached for the second box, and when the cart rolled forward under his weight he lunged heavily into the display rack and down it went, scattering boxes, spilling loose chocolates in a spectacular crash on the linoleum floor. A woman did scream – one of the check-out girls – and two or three young men in white did come scurrying from different directions.

  “Come on, quick,” he said, grabbing her arm. “We gotta get outa here.” And he forced her through the crowd, around the last of the check-out counters and through a big automatic door marked OUT.

  “John, this is crazy,” she said breathlessly on the sidewalk.

  “Quick. Hurry. Get in the car. Those slobs are gonna call the police.”

  “Why would they do that? It was an accident.”

  “It was an accident-on-purpose. I’ve been wanting to knock over one of those fucking racks for years. Never quite had the guts.” He wrenched the car into “Drive” and winnowed swiftly out of the parking lot, nicking the bumper of another car.

  “Will you watch your driving? John, I left all my shopping in there.”

  “Tough. I don’t happen to feel like spending three hours explaining the story of my life to some supermarket manager while the cops take notes, that’s all. If you gave a shit about me you’d see what I mean.”

  Swerving through traffic, driving foolishly and fast, he took her to La Cienega and to the very kind of restaurant he’d suggested before: opulent, with a trickling fountain in its vestibule and a group of violinists strolling among its rich tables.

  “Something from the bar, sir?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, please. Couldn’t we just order some food?”

  “No. I’ll have a double bourbon on the rocks.”

  “I’ve never done anything quite
so silly in my life,” she said. “Running away from that store like a pair of thieves. How can I ever go back there?”

  “Nobody’ll recognize you. It’s a big town.”

  “I’m worried about you, John,” she said. “It’s not just the drinking, though God knows you’ve been drinking too much. It’s something else. Something worse. I think you’re – I don’t think you’re well.”

  “Thanks for the information,” he said. “I believe I’ll have another drink.”

  Then at her insistence they ordered “New York Strip Sirloins,” which turned out to be the heaviest slabs of meat he had ever seen. He looked fixedly at his portion and knew that if only he could cut into it and eat it some balance might be restored to the evening, some act of self-rescue might be performed, but the sight of it was nauseating. So was the sight of his huge baked potato, its own bulk overwhelmed by a gout of sour cream and chives, and so was the glistening amplitude of his salad. Close beside him, Pamela was tucking into her food with apparent relish, and he didn’t want to watch her. The only thing on the table that held any appeal for him was his half-finished whiskey. He picked it up, swirled the ice and drank; then he sliced out a small wedge of meat and chewed it mightily, but it was almost impossible to swallow.

  “You enjoying that?” he asked her.

  “Yes; it’s delicious.”

  “Good. I’m not hungry, is all. You go ahead and eat. I just don’t happen to feel like watching you, is all. Makes me a little sick to watch you, as a matter of fact.”

  She laid down her knife and fork, still chewing, and then she swallowed. “All right, tell me,” she said. “What’s the matter now?”

  “They’re doing it again.”

  “Who’s doing what?”

  “Everybody in this whole place. Staring at me. Look at the fat guy over there in the silk suit. Don’t look now. And those two painted-up old whores in the corner. And that bunch of flaming faggots near the door.”

  “John, nobody’s ‘staring’ at you. You’re hallucinating.”

  “‘Hallucinating,’ huh? You like that word? You planning to have Chester Pratt work that into the screenplay? Look now. Look at the guy in the silk suit. Look at every single person in this—”