Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [99]
As they pulled up to the drive-in theatre, April saw "Cuckoo" in the title so she thought they were going to see The Sterile Cuckoo with Liza Minnelli. April had always thought her own looks outside had to be just like the way Liza Minnelli felt inside, so she was looking forward a lot to seeing the movie. But right as they stopped under the light of the ticket booth, she could see that Gary's pants had blood on the cuffs.
They parked. He got shifty in his seat and said he would take a leak. Then she could see him rummaging in the back of the truck.
Looked like another pair of pants to her. He went off to the men's room. To herself, April was saying, "The FBI look in on houses to see if people are committing crimes. Through the TV, you know."
She tried to watch the movie while Gary was gone, but it made her think of the night she was raped. That was after walking through the street in Hawaii with the black dudes and the first one of the three black dudes said there was a party going on. Cocaine, and they would all get high. She'd had LSD already, and so was fascinated with the high-class looks of their pad, although the red couches aggravated the problem of her odor. She sweated when she sniffed Lady Snow, and the odor was very bad. The black boy named Warren told her she stunk, and she turned purple inside from those red couches and all these black people. Started to dance around. They asked her if she wanted a shower. She said yes. Then she was in the tub and wet and streaking through the place. She was naked, and she was dancing. "I think I'm a nymphomaniac," she said. "You're a maniac?" they asked. She said it again slowly, and they asked, "Info with a maniac?" She replied haughtily, "You are trying to make myself and my face black."
She danced with them right on the floor and they danced her down to the floor and hurt her pretty bad. She was bleeding all over the place. Like a whore. Warren was forceful on cocaine, awful mean. Even when he relaxed he was hard on her. She was hallucinating so bad that the one called Bob made his face come together at the top and the bottom while his nose wib-wobbled from side to side. One time, two times, three times, intercourse. Then they turned a light on and Bobby was sitting on the floor, and said, "Why don't you sit on the couch? Get high. Don't think of yourself so low, you know?" Then he was on top of her and she was screaming to the song. The twist they gave was vertigo and she was a turntable with the motor started and Satan could dance in the whirlpool the table made.
Suddenly, she could see the movie she had been looking at. It wasn't The Sterile Cuckoo. It was One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
All the kooks she had ever lived with in the hospital were on the screen. Jack Nicholson bothered her enormously. He had a numb spot under his nose like the numb spot under her own nose. That reminded her of the blood on Gary's pants-it was in the stiff way Jack Nicholson walked.
Now, Gary came back. She said, "Let's blow this place. I hate the movie. Fucker's freaking me out."
Gary looked disappointed. "This is one movie," he told her, "I want to see again."
"You insane fool," she said, "don't you have any taste?"
At eleven o'clock in the evening, a man drove into the Sinclair service station at 800 North, 175 East in Orem, and served himself twelve gallons of gas and one quart of oil. He couldn't find an attendant so he left his business card with a description of what he had purchased. A little later, Robbie Hamilton, who lived in Toelle, Utah stopped off. After filling his tank with gas, he went to the open door of the grease room and hollered, "Anybody home?" No answer, so he went back to the car. His wife told him to knock on the bathroom door. When he received no answer there, he pushed the door open a crack and saw a lot of blood. He did not enter. He just called the Orem City Police Department. It took them fifteen minutes to find it. Being from Toelle, Utah, Mr. Hamilton did not know what street he