Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [81]
Gary kept talking to that man Conlin as if he had the money. It was a real irritant.
Next, he wanted to stop off and see Craig Taylor. That was the dumbest. Craig's wife, Julie, was in the hospital. Now Nicole's kids and the Taylor kids were carrying on all over while Gary got to play chess with Craig. Whooped when he beat him.
Then Gary started to tee off on Val Conlin for making him wait on the truck. "I'll wreck the place and a couple of his cars too," he said. "I'm going to kick them windows in." It was like opening a bottle that smelled awful.
Craig just listened like an owl. He had the biggest shoulders she'd ever seen for a guy with an owl's face. Never said anything. Just blinked.
Gary said he hated to watch TV. He especially hated the police shows. Nicole yawned.
As they were leaving, Gary asked Craig, "What do you think of me?"
"Well, it seems like you're trying," said Craig. "Just have a few breaks and you'll be all right."
Going up from Craig's to Kathryne's, right on the long road to her mother's house, darn if the Mustang didn't stall again. Gary got so pissed he broke the windshield.
Simply reared back with his feet and kicked the windshield. It cracked.
That got the kids upset. Nicole didn't say two words. She got out and helped him push the car to get it started. It still didn't go. Then somebody came along to give them a shove. They drove in silence for a couple hundred yards.
For a week she had been trying to say that they could live in separate places and see each other time to time. Now, when it came to it, Gary spoke. "I'm taking you to your mother's house," he said, "I don't want to ever see your face again."
He dropped her off with the kids as easily as going down to the grocery for a six-pack. She thought she'd be glad, but she wasn't. It didn't feel like it was over in the right way.
In twelve hours, Gary showed up at Kathryne's house. Just ahead of lunch. He wanted her to come back. He was drunk even as he asked her. She said she wouldn't. She said, I want to think about it awhile.
He didn't want her to think. He wanted her to agree. Still, he amazed her. He didn't force a thing. After he left, though, she decided it had been too easy. By tomorrow he would be coming every few hours. So she called Barrett and asked if she could stay at his pad. Nicole made it clear she didn't want to hang in. Just wanted a bed for a couple of days.
If she was going to disappear from Gary, there had to be places other than Barrett's. She went looking for an apartment. The same day, Barrett found one in Springville. Hardly anybody knew the address, and she made him swear to keep it secret.
Now she was living five miles from the house in Spanish Fork. If Gary took the back highway to Provo instead of the Interstate, he would pass two streets from her place.
Barrett wanted them to try one more time. One more trip of the mind. When she was young and used to read animal stories Kathryne had told her about reincarnation. Made it sound like a fairy tale. That was when Nicole made the choice to come back as a white bird. Now she thought that if she didn't straighten out the way she lived with men, she was going to come back ugly and no would ever want to look at her.
Chapter 11
EX-HUSBANDS
Barrett had this tendency to think of himself as small. In fact, his mom and dad used to tell him that when he was born, he looked no bigger than a kitten you put in a shoe box. Now he was five-ten and might weigh 145, but he never had the habit of thinking of himself as other than small-sized and self-sufficient. Like a kitten. During the stretch when he had his first romance with Nicole, he remembered spending one week all by himself in a yellow cell in the nuthouse. Painted pale yellow like a kid's nursery, only it was a cell. He remembered taking his socks, rolling them up, and throwing them at the wall, throwing them and catching them. It was the only thing he had to do. He got along.
On