Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [33]
Then he sat on the couch and held her face in his hands and said, "Hey, I love you." He said it from two or three inches away. She felt reluctant to answer him. Nicole hated "I love you." In truth, she despised it. She had said it so many times when she didn't mean it. Still, she supposed she had to get it out. As she expected, it didn't sound right. Left a bad echo in her head.
He said, "Hey, there's a place in the darkness. You know what I mean?" He said, "I think I met you there. I knew you there." He looked at her and smiled and said, "I wonder if Sterling knows about that place? Should we tell him?" They both looked at Sterling, and he was sitting there with a, well, just a funny kind of smile on his face, like he knew it was coming down that way. Then Gary said, "He knows. You can tell. You can see in his eyes that he knows." Nicole laughed with delight. It was funny. This guy looked twice her age, yet there was something naive about him. He sounded smart, but he was so young inside.
He kept drinking the beer, and Nicole got up once in a while and went in to give Sterling's baby a bottle. Ruth Ann was out working-even though Ruth Ann and Sterling had split, they were still living in the same house. It was all they could afford.
Gary kept telling Nicole that he wanted to make love to her. She kept telling him she didn't want to start that night. He'd say, "I don't want to just fuck you, I want to make love to you."
After a while, she went to the bathroom and when she came out, Sterling was leaving. It gave her a funny feeling. Sterling didn't show a sign he'd been forced to leave. He didn't look like he was being ejected. Still, she thought Gary might have been just a little rude. The idea was quite a lot rude, if you wanted to get into it. With all that beer, he was also getting just a little gruff. Still, now that they were alone, there was hardly any logic left to refusing. After a while her clothes were off and they were on the floor.
He couldn't get a hard-on. He looked like he had been hit with an ax but was trying to smile. He wouldn't stop and rest. He had half a hard-on.
He was so heavy on her, and he just kept trying. After a while he began to apologize, and blamed it on too much beer. Asked her to help. Nicole began to do what she could. When her neck was as tired as it was ever going to be, he still wasn't ready to quit. It became straight hard work and it made her mad.
She told him they ought to cool it for a while. Maybe try again later. He asked her then to get on top of him, asked her gently. Now, he said in her ear that he would like her to lay there forever. Asked her if she would be able to sleep that way, on top of him. That would please him. She tried for a long time. She told him he should rest, and not worry. After the heat, and the exhaustion, and the fact that it wasn't going, she still felt tender toward him. She was surprised how tender she felt. She was sad he was drunk, and sorry he was that anxious, and might even have been loving him, but she was also irritated that he was too worked up to let it go and fall asleep. And he Wouldn't stop apologizing. Said again it was the beer and the Fiorinal.
He told her he had to keep taking Fiorinal every day for his headaches.
One time Sterling knocked on the other side of the door and asked if he could come back and Gary told him to get lost. She told him she didn't like at all how rude he was with Sterling. Gary finally pulled a rug over her, and unlocked the door so Sterling could get in, and then Gary came back and climbed under, and bothered her a little more. It went on all night. They got very little sleep.
About six in the morning Ruth Ann came home from where she worked at the old folks home. It was mildly embarrassing to Nicole because she knew Ruth Ann didn't necessarily have a high opinion of her. All the same, it gave an excuse to get up, which was all right with Nicole. She wanted to be by herself for a while.
Yet, before they separated, she gave him her address. It was a real