Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [69]
Sirens came along the highway and wound down outside the door of The Whip. Two cops came in, and wanted to know who owned the blue Mustang. They asked everybody. Took down the name on every I.D. The revolving lights of their car kept flaring through the window of the bar. After they took off, Gary left with Gary Weston. Nicole's car, however, stayed behind. The cops had impounded it.
It must have been eleven o'clock. Brenda woke up to hear him knocking on the door. There was Johnny asleep, same as every night, on the couch. He had been there since eight. When she first met Johnny he had been a Class B state champion of archery and had a short pointed beard. Out on the archery range, he looked as handsome as Robin Hood. Today, if dear John didn't get his ten hours of sleep, he couldn't function. Now, Brenda recollected herself falling asleep bored to death.
"I had a hassle," Gary said.
"A hassle."
"I took a tape deck in Grand Central and walked out. The guard stopped me, so I threw it at the guy."
"Then what did you do?"
"I hit a car." He told the rest of it.
He looked so tired, so sad and his beat-up face was such a holy mess that she couldn't stay too angry. Johnny was up and stirring. His expression said the reason he liked to sleep was because it kept him from hearing news such as this.
"Brenda, I need fifty bucks bad," Gary said. "I want to go to Canada."
He had it figured out. "You explain to the police that Nicole had nothing to do with it. That way, they'll let her have the car back."
"You're a man," Brenda said. "Go down, and get the car yourself."
"You won't help me?"
"I'll help you write a confession. I'll see it's delivered."
"Brenda, there's a lot of loudspeakers in the back of the car. I ripped them off in a drive-in movie." "How many?" "Five or six."
"Just to be doing something," said Brenda. "Like a little kid."
Gary nodded. There was the sorrow in his eyes of knowing he would never see Canada.
"You have to turn yourself in to Mont Court in the morning," said Brenda.
"Cousin, keep on my ass about it, will you?" said Gary.
Nicole spent the night at her great-grandmother's house where he would never think of looking for her. In the morning, she went back to her mother's, and Gary called not long after, and said he was coming over. Nicole was scared. She put in a call to the police, and, in fact, was talking to the dispatcher when Gary walked in. So she said into the phone, "Man, get them out here as fast as you can."
She didn't know if Gary had come to drag her away. But he just stood at the kitchen sink. She told him to go away and leave her alone, and he just kept looking at her. He had a look as if everything inside him hurt, man, really hurt. Then he said, "You fight as good as you fuck."
She was trying hard not to smile, but, in fact, it made her a little less afraid of him. He came over and put his hands on her shoulders. Again, she told him to leave. To her surprise, he turned around and went. He practically passed the cops as they were coming in.
By afternoon, she regretted not letting him stay. She was really afraid he would not come back. A voice in her head kept sounding like an echo in a tunnel. It said, "I love him, I love him."
He showed up after work with a carton of cigarettes and a rose. She couldn't help but smile. She went on the porch to meet him, and he handed her a letter.
Dear Nicole, I don't know why I did this to myself You are the most beautiful thing I've ever seen and touched . . .
You just loved me and touched my soul with a wondrous tenderness and you treated me so kindly.
I just couldn't handle that. There's no bullshit or meanness about you and I couldn't deal with an honest spirit like yours that didn't want to hurt me . . .
I'm so fucking sad . . .
I see it in detail like a movie. And it makes no sense. It makes me scream inside.
And you said you want me out of your life. Not that I can blame you for that. I am one of those people that probably shouldn't exist. But