Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [34]
Sure enough, he was there. She had had to go to the store, and left a note. All it said was, "Gary, I'll be back in a few minutes. Make yourself at home." But that note managed to stay around the house all the time they were together. She would stash it, and the kids would get ahold of it, and then she and Gary would run across it again.
On this afternoon, when she came back, he was already standing in the front room, grubby looking. His pants were the kind that look like they were made for a telephone man to carry tools in his pockets, and he had on a T-shirt and was dirty from working with insulation, and Nicole thought he looked beautiful.
Her grandfather, who lived up the canyon in Spanish Fork, came by a little later, just dropping in, and began to give her sly looks like, What the Christ, are you doing it again, Nucoa Butterball?-that had been the nickname he gave her when she was a child. Her grandfather knew the situations she could get herself into. Of course, he could also tell when she wanted the guy to be there, so he didn't stay very long.
Gary seemed uncomfortable to be in someone else's house. While she was busy with the kids, he went outside and walked around. Later, when things quieted, they stayed up late again talking and it made her uneasy at how close this guy was to moving in with her. It truly scared her. Nicole had always thought of herself as phony when it came to love. She might start sincere, but she wasn't so sure she'd ever really been in love with a guy. She'd care about guys, and have a lot of crushes, some of them pretty heavy. Mostly it was because the guy was good looking, or did nice things to her. But when she looked at Gary, she didn't just see his face and the way he looked, it was more like Nicole felt in the right place for the first time. She was enjoying every minute he was there.
Later, she would no longer remember what it had been like in bed on the second night, although it was better. Maybe it set no records, but it wasn't hassled like the first. Then the days and nights began to run together. He didn't move in completely for a week, but he was living with her just about all the time.
On the weekend he took her over to meet Vern and Ida, and acted pretty proud. She liked the way he introduced her, and went on about Jeremy's nickname being Peabody. Had they ever heard a better nickname? Nobody was surprised when he said, "Vern, I've decided to move out and live with Nicole." They all knew it was already settled, but he showed how he liked the sound of saying it.
Vern's attitude was fine. What Gary wanted, he said, was what he wanted. Vern allowed that with Nicole also working, maybe by the combination of the two of them, the two compensations, maybe they could swing it. In the meantime, Gary could feel free to keep his room. It wasn't like he was a boarder who lived in the basement and paid weekly rent.
When she saw his room, however, Nicole thought it was a rat-hole. No pictures on the walls, no lamps. It looked like a cubicle in a cheap hotel, and Gary had just a few things, one pair of pants and a few shirts in his drawers. A bunch of pictures in a green folder of his friends in prison. She hardly knew why he had brought her to the room until he got out his hat and put it on, sort of a crazy fishing hat. He looked at himself in the mirror, and acted as if he really looked cool. Then he produced another hat with red, white and blue stripes. That was the oddest thing about him, the absolutely nutty hats he thought looked good.
Sue Baker didn't even know Gary was seeing Nicole, let alone living with her. But one day Nicole called and said she had decided to take the day off from the sewing machine factory. Wanted a chance to talk to Sue. So they took the kids to the park for a picnic. It was there Nicole spoke of how she had never felt for anybody what she felt for Gary. She loved him.
About the third or fourth night she knew him, he had