The Executioner's Song (10 page)

                Nicole was really scared of what she was getting herself into. She couldn't figure out why she was doing it. It was the first time she'd chased after a guy since Doug Brock, and that was the only dude who'd ever sent her away. Brock was a lot older, and she had sure liked him. Nicole had been working at a motel in Salt Lake for a little while, and he lived around the corner, and mentioned something one day about paying her to clean his house. Once he got her in, it turned out pretty terrific and he told her to come over anytime. One night she couldn't sleep and was tired of being by herself, so she walked over. It was two in the morning. He came to the door naked and said, What the hell you doing at this hour? Then he got rude, and mentioned some other guy, and told her he didn't want anything to do with a chick who was going with somebody else. He was just like a foreman when he said it—which happened to be what he did for a living. Right after, he said he was busy with another girl, told her right there at his door at two in the morning. That was gross. Nicole never went back to see him. In fact, she had hardly thought of him until now, going back to Sterling's, when she had to wonder if Gary would still be around.

                Then she became really scared of what she might be getting into. In fact her heart was so high, she could have been breathing some strange gas making her half faint, half exhilarated. She had never felt anything so strong as this before. It was as if it would be impossible to let this guy go.

                His car was still there and she parked right behind. The kids were asleep in the back seat so she left them. It was safe to leave kids on a quiet street like this. And went up and knocked on the door, even if it was still cracked open a little. She heard him say something just before she knocked. It was incredible but she heard him say, "Man, I like that girl."

                When she went in, he came over to her and he touched her, didn't grab her for a big kiss, but just touched her lightly. She felt really good. It was all right. She had done the right thing. They sat on the couch for a couple of hours and they laughed and talked. It hardly mattered if Sterling was in the room with them or not.

                After a while, when it was obvious she was going to stay, they went out to the car and picked up the sleeping children and put them in the house and laid them still sleeping on Sterling's bed, and went on talking.

                They did hardly anything but laugh. They had a great big laugh about counting her freckles and the impossibility of that because he said you couldn't count freckles on an elf. Then, in the quiet moment that followed a lot of this laughter, he told her he had been in prison for half of his life. He told her in a matter-of-fact way.

                While Nicole wasn't afraid of him, she was scared. It was the thought of getting mixed up with another loser. Somebody who didn't think enough of himself to make something of himself. She felt it was bad to float through life. You might have to pay too much the next time around.

                They got to speaking of karma. Ever since she was a kid, she had believed in reincarnation. It was the only thing that made sense. You had a soul, and after you died, your soul came back to earth as a new born baby. You had a new life where you suffered for what you had done wrong in your last life. She wanted to do it right so she wouldn't have to make another trip.

                To her amazement, he agreed. He said he had believed in karma for a long time. Punishment was having to face something you hadn't been able to face in this life.

                Yes, he told her, if you murdered somebody, you might have to come back and be the parents of that person in a future century. That was the whole point of living, he said, facing yourself. If you didn't, the burden got bigger.

                It was getting to be the best conversation she ever had. She had always thought the only way to have conversations like that was in your head.

                Then he sat on the couch and held her face in his hands and said, "Hey, I love you." He said it from two or three inches away. She felt reluctant to answer him. Nicole hated "I love you." In truth, she despised it. She had said it so many times when she didn't mean it. Still, she supposed she had to get it out. As she expected, it didn't sound right. Left a bad echo in her head.

                He said, "Hey, there's a place in the darkness. You know what I mean?" He said, "I think I met you there. I knew you there." He looked at her and smiled and said, "I wonder if Sterling knows about that place? Should we tell him?" They both looked at Sterling, and he was sitting there with a, well, just a funny kind of smile on his face, like he knew it was coming down that way. Then Gary said, "He knows. You can tell. You can see in his eyes that he knows." Nicole laughed with delight. It was funny. This guy looked twice her age, yet there was something naive about him. He sounded smart, but he was so young inside.

                He kept drinking the beer, and Nicole got up once in a while and went in to give Sterling's baby a bottle. Ruth Ann was out working—even though Ruth Ann and Sterling had split, they were still living in the same house. It was all they could afford.

                Gary kept telling Nicole that he wanted to make love to her. She kept telling him she didn't want to start that night. He'd say, "I don't want to just fuck you, I want to make love to you."

                After a while, she went to the bathroom and when she came out, Sterling was leaving. It gave her a funny feeling. Sterling didn't show a sign he'd been forced to leave. He didn't look like he was being ejected. Still, she thought Gary might have been just a little rude. The idea was quite a lot rude, if you wanted to get into it. With all that beer, he was also getting just a little gruff. Still, now that they were alone, there was hardly any logic left to refusing. After a while her clothes were off and they were on the floor.

                He couldn't get a hard-on. He looked like he had been hit with an ax but was trying to smile. He wouldn't stop and rest. He had half a hard-on.

                He was so heavy on her, and he just kept trying. After a while he began to apologize, and blamed it on too much beer. Asked her to help. Nicole began to do what she could. When her neck was as tired as it was ever going to be, he still wasn't ready to quit. It became straight hard work and it made her mad.

                She told him they ought to cool it for a while. Maybe try again later. He asked her then to get on top of him, asked her gently. Now, he said in her ear that he would like her to lay there forever. Asked her if she would be able to sleep that way, on top of him. That would please him. She tried for a long time. She told him he should rest, and not worry. After the heat, and the exhaustion, and the fact that it wasn't going, she still felt tender toward him. She was surprised how tender she felt. She was sad he was drunk, and sorry he was that anxious, and might even have been loving him, but she was also irritated that he was too worked up to let it go and fall asleep. And he Wouldn't stop apologizing. Said again it was the beer and the Fiorinal.

                He told her he had to keep taking Fiorinal every day for his headaches.

                One time Sterling knocked on the other side of the door and asked if he could come back and Gary told him to get lost. She told him she didn't like at all how rude he was with Sterling. Gary finally pulled a rug over her, and unlocked the door so Sterling could get in, and then Gary came back and climbed under, and bothered her a little more. It went on all night. They got very little sleep.

                About six in the morning Ruth Ann came home from where she worked at the old folks home. It was mildly embarrassing to Nicole because she knew Ruth Ann didn't necessarily have a high opinion of her. All the same, it gave an excuse to get up, which was all right with Nicole. She wanted to be by herself for a while.

                Yet, before they separated, she gave him her address. It was a real step. He kept asking whether it was truly her house. When she said again it was, he told her he was going to come over after work.

                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 gotten drunk, Nicole said, just so drunk on his butt that she was angry at him. But then he sat down and drew a picture of her. Up to then, he had talked about how good he was at drawing, and how he got prizes in contests, but she'd never seen him do anything. Hadn't believed him. She had listened to guys talking about what they could do. She had heard a lot of bullshit. But when he drew that picture, it was really good. He didn't just draw a little—he did it like a real artist.

                When it was time to leave the park to pick Gary up at work, there was a light in Nicole's eye. It had come in just at the thought of picking him up. So Sue didn't need anybody to tell her how good Nicole was feeling. If Nicole was that much in love, then, no matter her first impression, Sue was ready to change her mind about the guy.

                Of course, now that Rikki and she were split, Sue had no transportation. So she went along with Nicole to Lindon, and, in fact, began to like Gary on the way back. He was sure agreeable. Kept on about how good he felt to be picked up by two gorgeous women.

                It was a compliment. Her belly was big. Sue was still dating once in a while these days, and had even gone dancing once, but she was big and Rikki had sure done it to her. First he complained her IUD hurt him, then she took it out, then he made her pregnant. She was the youngest of ten kids, the outcast at the bottom of her own family, and now Rikki had left her.

                If it hadn't been for Gary's compliments, at this minute, Sue Baker would have sunk right into the swamp of misery.