Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [156]
This time, they took her around to the front and kept her inside for a half hour, and she made herself right at home, using the floor for an ashtray, laughing at their threats, she didn't give one shit. They could let her go, or lock her up. Without female cops they couldn't shake her down, and she still had the razor.
After a while, they let her go. On the way out she noticed a small cement tunnel that went under the freeway. It was just a few feet in width and dark enough so you couldn't see far. She crawled in, and it was sure dark. Her sleeves were rolled up over her biceps, but she pulled them up further, and then cut herself as hard as she could right across the vein and the artery. It was a good feeling. Really warm, really bleeding and splashing on the cement. She could feel blood running down her arm and it was hot, and good. She liked the way it felt, kind of soothing. There was so much going on. Like the ocean was coming into the tunnel. She could see the opening where she had come in, and all the light Nicole could see in the world was in the circle of that hole.
She sat there, and the nice warm feeling changed. She began getting sick. Then she was nauseated. Started shaking all over. She wasn't cold but she was shaking. There was blood all over the cement. Every nice long slow thought faded, and now she didn't feel as if she was slipping into something warm, but as if everything was getting colder. She didn't like that. But she made herself sit. Even made herself lie down and try to go to sleep. Then she tried to talk herself into not moving. Just stay there until it was over.
Finally, she thought, I got to get to a doctor. At least, I got to try. That's the best I can do, is give it a good try. Then I can handle dying.
She got up, and couldn't even walk straight, and kept feeling she was going to pass out. She would walk a few steps, and spots would come in front of her eyes, and she'd squat. But it was just a little way from the jail, and she made it back over, and there was a cop washing a truck, wasn't even in uniform. She told him she'd been climbing a chain-link fence and slipped and showed him how her shirt was bloody. He took her down to the Utah Valley Hospital.
The doctor didn't believe her shit about climbing a fence. He said, Looks like a pretty sharp thing did the job. Asked her how much she bled, was it a pint or a quart. She said, well, she didn't know what a pint or a quart was. Not when it was running out of you. They took her blood pressure, and she began to feel better, and hitchhiked home. By the time she got back, she was sick to her stomach again, couldn't really stand up without getting dizzy. Slept a lot. In the morning she found out they were mad out at the jail and had lifted her right to visit.
August 29
Fucked me up that I couldn't see you today-these chickenshit pricks. Give a motherfucker a little authority and they think they have to start taking privileges away from people . . . bunch of slack-jawed fizz-gurgling come-drunk punks.
8
Nicole went to bed with Cliff Bonnors the night after she got home from the hospital. Her arm was stitched and it hurt like hell. All the time she was making love she kept thinking that if she didn't watch out it would start bleeding again. Night after, she found herself in bed with Tom Dynamite. Same damned thing. Her arm hurt like a fucker, and it got to her. She had to stop making love.
Sometimes she was convinced Gary could hear her think. It wasn't that she thought it was right or wrong to be doing this while Gary was in jail, it's just that it came over her how it might seem peculiar to be in love with a man and still make it with guys on the outside. She had never experienced this feeling before. That it was important to be faithful. Something she had to ponder.
She finally decided to test the water, and say something in a letter. She decided to use Kip as an example. Kip, of all people, had dropped in on her almost