Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [37]
Each day she kept coming across the realization that some of the little things he did gave her surprising pleasure. He didn't smoke, for instance, yet when he saw her rolling her own, he brought home a carton of cigarettes. It was beautiful, those little lifts.
They would sit around and drink beer in the evening, and there was hardly time enough together. She could be as honest as she wanted, and tell him anything about her past. He would listen. He would observe everything she had to say. If another fellow would have sickened her with such constant attention, it didn't bother Nicole a bit. She was studying Gary the same way.
All she wanted was more hours with him. She had always appreciated any minute she had to herself, but now she would get impatient with wanting him to be back. When five o'clock rolled around and he was there, the day was made. She loved opening that first beer for him.
Sometimes, he would take his BB gun out to the back, and they would shoot at bottles and beer cans in the twilight until you couldn't tell anymore when you were hitting except by the sound of the ricochet or a plink of glass. The twilight came down slowly. It was as if you were taking one breath and then another from a cluster of roses. The air was good as marijuana then.
In those early evenings, if they stayed home, there were always kids around. Their babysitter was a girl named Laurel, an adolescent who had a lot of little cousins, and they came with her. Sometimes when Gary and Nicole got back from a drive, all those kids would be around and he would play with them. He'd give them piggyback rides. They'd stand on his shoulders and touch their hands to the ceiling. He liked to play with the ones who had enough nerve to walk all the way across the room like that. They just loved the holy shit out of him.
A lot of the time, though, as soon as he got home, they would get Laurel over, and take off for a ride alone.
Usually they would eat at a drive-in, and a couple of times he took her to the Stork Club to play pool. There were afternoons right after work when they went to the shopping mall and selected sexy underwear for her, or picked up beer and cigarettes for the drive-in movie.
Pretty soon after they parked, he'd want her to take her clothes off. Then they would make it in the front seat. Gary just loved to have her naked. Couldn't get over the idea he was holding a naked woman.
Once, watching Peter Pan, they got out and sat on the rear deck over the trunk, back to back, and she was naked then. The Mustang was parked way in the outfield, but there were other cars around, and she had nothing on. God, it was the nicest feeling. After all those years in prison, Gary was insane about watching her walk about with her bootie exposed and her boobs bouncing. She dug it that he liked her without clothes. He had her right around his finger and she didn't mind it a bit.
Yet, he didn't get arrogant. He was so touching when he asked her to do something. One night, late at night, she even took off her clothes on the back steps of the First Mormon Church, in Provo Park, practically the center of town. It was late at night. They just sat there on the steps, her clothes on the grass, and she danced a little, and Gary began to sing in a voice like Johnny Cash, although not as good, unless you were in love with Gary, and he sang "Amazing Grace"-
Through many dangers, toils and snares, We have already come, 'Twas Grace that brought us safe this far, And Grace will lead us on—
That way she sat beside him naked at two in the morning, on a hot spring night, with the heat pushing in from the desert instead of the cold settling down from the mountains.
That night, very late at night, back in bed, they really made it. Just as the sex was going good, he talked of putting his rough