Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [151]
Next time she came into the store, he said he'd like to trade with her, you know? Said it in a nice way and told her how pretty she was, and that he really liked her. She joked back. "Nothing to trade this week," she said. Then, after a while, she moved out of Provo to Spanish Fork and rarely got to shop there.
Now, about a year later, she started seeing Albert Johnson again. He was the only store manager she knew who would give her cash for her food stamps. To get him to agree, she had had to tell him about Gary and her new troubles but he sympathized enough to trade eighty bucks for that much worth of stamps. This time, however, she was out and told him she just needed fifty. He gave it to her without conditions. She heard herself saying that she didn't like leaving debts unpaid.
Afterward, Johnson said he wished to Christ he hadn't done this to her. Begged her not to turn professional. She wasn't that way. He was a family man, and felt real bad.
She told him not to worry. It was only because she was without a car and needed wheels so desperately. It was really an incredible story in her own ears, all that stuff about the transmission out, and hitching to see Gary.
Albert Johnson hadn't been bad to her, but it was an ugly experience. With all she had mentioned to Gary about her life, she could never tell him about the store manager.
Anyway, she had the cash, fifty dollars. And gave it to Barrett. He got in his car and went off to get the main clutch plate. She went home. Next thing she learned Barrett had split for Wyoming. Must have been a week before he returned. Then she went over to look at her car, and he still hadn't done a damned thing. The Mustang was sitting wide open with the parts on the ground starting to rust, and the body on blocks like a corpse. She could feel how angry Barrett was. So she did no more than leave word she'd been there. Sure enough, three in the morning, he showed at her apartment, stoned out of his head.
2
It had been one of those days when Nicole was getting to Barrett on the sentimental side. He kept remembering the first time he had brought her home to his mother and dad. When his mother had said they'd have to sleep outside in the Volkswagen until they were married, Nicole had answered, "I don't care where we sleep. We're going to be happy." He could never get that out of his head. Every time he was sure that he was free of Nicole, no love left whatsoever, he would think of that remark, and all over again would be nothing but a man with a wound.
He had been on so many hits the last week in Wyoming that he could hardly remember what he had taken and with whom-couldn't even remember who first said Nicole was seeing Gary again. Then everybody was telling him. They all knew but Barrett. He went on a self-pity cruise. Couldn't help thinking of all the times he had come in to rescue Nicole, taken his lumps, dared his life if you get down to it, and she had rewarded him with a trip to the bedroom. Not love, just the bedroom. It was an unhappy situation when screwing your nearest could bend you out of shape.
Full of self-pity, he decided it was still all right. At least, self-pity let the good memories come back. Like the time Hampton found him after he first stole Nicole, and wasted him, and yet that was still a good memory after all these years.
He had been over at a friend of his selling drugs, a little crystal, some speed, toked a couple, got blasted.