Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [250]
Monday, after Vern's visit, Brenda got a call from Gary who asked the name of the doctor that was taking care of her daughter.
He wanted the doctor to make certain his pituitary gland would go to Cristie after the execution. Since Johnny and Brenda were always broke trying to keep Cristie in pituitary extract, which was the most expensive thing on God's earth, this call from Gary, out of the blue, telling Brenda he wanted the doctor to credit his pituitary after death to Johnny's account, was like handing over a thousand bucks. It was a crazy conversation. Brenda didn't know if they were now friends.
"Take care, Gary," she said at the end. He just hung up.
3
That same morning as Tamera came into the newsroom her editor said, "We're getting a lot of calls about Nicole. Your story won't hold till Gary is executed. I want you to get permission from Nicole to run it."
Driving over to Springvllle, Tamera didn't know how to ask.
When she laid her predicament on Nicole, however, there was a smile and Nicole said, "Well, I got to tell you something, too. I decided to give an interview for $2,000." Some kind of affiliate for NBC out of Boston-at least as Nicole understood, it-had sent over this good-looking tall fellow, Jeff Newman with curly hair, blue eyes, and a beard. He had talked her into it. She would be giving the interview this Friday. Later Tamera found out it was really the National Enquirer, not any Boston affiliate of NBC. But for now, her only reaction was that Nicole had told her to go ahead. So, Tamera left on real good terms. Went back to the office, and spent the rest of the night working on the story.
Over the last week, Nicole had gone to several doctors she had picked from the phone book and told them she was from out of state and had trouble sleeping. The only thing that worked were reds. Seconal was what did it.
She managed to collect fifty of them and twenty Dalmanes. Now, with Gary on her case about it, she decided Monday morning was the time to pass them over. So she split the stuff down the middle, twenty-five Seconals and ten of the Dalmanes for Gary, same for herself, and put Gary's capsules in a kid's balloon, two balloons, in fact. Both yellow, one inside the other. Then she inserted the balloons her vagina.
She felt afraid all the way over to the prison that Gary would scold her. He had kept telling her to get more. Pushed her and pushed her to go to more doctors, but she had the feeling none of those doctors trusted her, and if she went to even one more, it could blow the whole thing. Those doctors might even be calling the prison ten minutes after they wrote the prescription. She really sweated it out all day Sunday. Now, here she was inside Maximum with those balloons inside her.
They gave her a skin search, but the matron didn't put her fingers anywhere, just looked under her armpits and in her cheeks, went through her long hair. It wasn't an indecent search, and, in fact, the matron would have had to have a long finger, the balloons were pushed up that far.
In the visiting room, there happened to be nobody else, just the guard in the glass booth, and she and Gary went to the chair by the window and she sat on his lap. Sometimes they allowed you to do that, sometimes not, but this day the guard wasn't bothering them. They could do some heavy petting. It was really lucky. Sometimes as many as four or five people could be in the room, or a couple of lawyers, but she and Gary were the only ones this time.
As she sat on his lap, Gary made a pass with his finger for the balloon, but got nowhere. It was too far up. Finally Nicole had to stand by the window with Gary hugging her from behind so the guard couldn't see her body. In that position, with his arms around her shoulders, she reached down under her skirt to get the balloon. It was a real sweat. She had shoved it up so high, there was nothing to touch with her fingers, and she got to the point where she had to try to