Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [103]
"The world makes you work," she said, "because of the rich. Every organization is rich, you see."
"Man, you sure can talk," said Gary. He walked over and gave her a kiss. She said, "Sissy. Sissy wouldn't like this." He walked away from her and took out a stick of pot. "I want some," said April. He laughed and held it out of her reach. "Give us a kiss," he said.
"I can't kiss you because of Sissy," she said. "Sissy has vampires."
Gary lit the stick, and took a puff. "A toke?" he asked. But when she came near, he held it out of her reach again.
Walking around the room she started taking off clothes. She felt as if they were congesting her. First her peasant blouse, then her Levi's. Walking around in her bra and her panties, she felt better.
"Did you ever get up at four in the morning, Gary, and make cookies?" He was lying on the bed and taking his time on the marijuana.
He just waved a hand. Then he sat up and burped. A look of pain came over his face, and he reached for the milk and took a swig.
"Hey, kid, let's unwind," he said. "I'll give you a massage and you give me one."
"The FBI," she said, "look in on houses to see if people are committing any crimes. They do it through the TV, you know." She lay back on the bed and the room was spinning. It was like a motel room she had gone to with a rich man. She had felt so alive that night because the plastic was so dead.
"Gary," she said, "give me a toke. I'm kind of messed up." He passed her the stick and she sucked in. She must have taken a trip because there was Gary kissing her face, waking her up. "Leave me alone," she cried. When he gave her another kiss, she said, "Gary, you and Nicole were meant for each other,"
"Nicole can get fucked."
She started to walk around, remembering the night in Hawaii when she was walking around and Bobby and Warren were massaging her and dancing with her, and then Gary was sort of giving her a massage, walking behind her, right behind her, his legs locked with hers as if they were in prison lockstep, and they walked around the room that way with his thumbs massaging her shoulders and the back of her neck. After a little while she began to feel very close to him and whispered, "It isn't very good for us to do that. Sissy wouldn't think that was very good." She decided to turn on her mind and listen to Paul McCartney. "Open the door and let them in," went the music in her head, and it got to be a carnival. Gary would smack her from behind, or finger her panties, then he would growl in her ear like a lion. She'd think of rich men in motels and knock off his hand with her elbow. "Fuck you," she said. "Let me go to bed."
"We're sleeping standing up," he replied.
They were a king and a queen and she began to get pleased at the thought of them sleeping each in a separate bed, but she knew she would go down into a sleep that gave a very heavy feeling, like pictures she had seen in the Bible of demons coming out of dark space to torment people on this planet and really tear us apart limb from limb. She could picture thousands in the sky coming down like eagles on mice.
All the while he was crawling on her, giving her a back massage.
When she closed her eyes, she saw a man flapping his arms. He had about eight limbs on each side and was flapping them, an evil force, bringing disease and everything else like Satan, the strongest, to earth.
Now she knew there was something wrong with the back massage. Gary had changed his personality. Gary, who was always so manly around her, more manly even than her father, had turned female and was crawling on her from behind with this back massage.
If she would turn around and look at his face, she would see a woman. He was feeling her in order to feel his own breasts, his own belly. April could feel a woman behind her. That turned her off cold, man.
"Let's go to sleep," she said. He didn't fight. He got into his bed and she got into hers, and he turned out the lights and she lay down in the dark and looked up at the ceiling. The spackled plaster had sparkles of glass embedded to look like a thousand