T. Boyle - Drop City

“What?” he said, propping himself up on his elbows so she could see the full spill of him.

“It's Norm. Some kind of emergency. Norm called a meeting-”

“Emergency? Now? What time is it?”

“Nine, maybe-I don't know. I thought it was morning.”

“What kind of emergency-did the pump burn out in the well or something? Or let me guess: Reba lost her kids again. Or Pan, what about him? Did he fall into his wienie fire and get all singed around the ears?”

“Verbie didn't say. But she sounded freaked out.”

“She always sounds freaked out.”

He was reaching for her, to pull her back down into the sleeping bag, but she pushed his hand away. “I'm scared,” she said. “After today… the kids, the horse, I mean. The whole thing. We're out of control here, Marco-everybody's out of control.”

“Yeah,” he said, giving her a smile so faint it was barely there. “But isn't that the point?”

The main house was ablaze with the power company's light, the light Norm and Alfredo were always hassling them to conserve-_Candles, people, use candles!__-and when she and Marco came up the worn steps and onto the porch, the floorboards seemed to fall away beneath her feet, as if the whole place were on the verge of collapse. She saw the gouged wood of the doorframe, the tattered mesh of the screen door, the worn spot where the embrace of ten thousand hands had abraded the paint round the latch and replaced it with dirt, human dirt-saw everything with utter clarity, though she could feel a headache coming on, a pounding, relentless, newly awakened shriek of a headache that threatened to burst her skull from the inside out, and that was what acid did for you, that was the price you had to pay. Open up your mind, feed your head. Sure. And wind up feeling like something washed up on the beach and left for dead. She took hold of Marco's arm for support, and then the screen door was slapping behind them and they were standing uncertainly in the front room that was like a funeral parlor-no music, no candles, nobody playing chess or checkers or settling into one of the grease-slicked armchairs with a book. There was litter, though-newspapers, magazines, unwashed plates, cups and glasses, somebody's striped shirt, a pair of muddy boots-and where there was litter, there was life. As if to underscore the point, the dogs chose that moment to waggle into the room and nose at her hands even as the faintest hushed murmur of voices seeped in from the room beyond.

Nearly everybody was there already, most of them sitting cross-legged on the floor, their faces blanched, eyes vacant. People were rubbing their temples, circulating a pitcher of iced tea or Kool-Aid, she couldn't tell which, picking idly at their ears or toes and sprawling in the sea of all that massed flesh as if they were learning to float-or maybe levitate. Alfredo and Reba were up front, and Reba had a cigarette going, lecturing her old man about something and painting the air with the glowing ember at the tip of it. Ronnie was all the way across the room with Merry and Lydia, melting into a heap of pillows, and Jiminy was slouched over the table with Verbie and her sister and Harmony and Alice.

Star wondered how she looked-she hadn't been near a mirror in days-and as she stepped into the room she tried to part her hair with her fingers, forcing it down like a cap over the crown of her head and looping the odd strands behind her ears. She was wearing a pair of ceramic earrings-blue dolphins with painted-on grins-that seemed to grow heavier by the minute till they felt like bricks tearing at her lobes, but she couldn't muster the energy to pull them out. She hadn't been able to find her sandals, but most of the tribe went barefoot most of the time anyway so that was all right, yet her T-shirt and cutoffs seemed damp, clammy almost, and when was the last time she'd washed them? Washed anything? Her head was pounding, and suddenly she was afraid again-for herself, for Marco and Drop City, for all the lost neurons and miswired synapses of a whole continent full of dopers and heads and teepee cats. _Boom,__ the blood pounded in her temples, _boom, boom, boom.__

She exchanged murmurs of greeting with a couple of people, thought of crossing the room to Merry and felt so weak suddenly it was as if her bones had dissolved. “Let's just sit here,” she said to Marco, and they sank to the floor just inside the doorway, because really, what difference did it make? Norm didn't call emergency meetings for nothing-this was going to be bad news, and it didn't matter if you took it standing up or sitting down, at the periphery or at the red-hot glowing center.

She watched Alfredo rise to his feet, turn and face the gathering. His eyes glowed with a dull sheen, as if they'd been painted on and hadn't quite dried yet. The overhead light stabbed at his face, hollowing out his cheekbones and giving him the look of the crucified Christ in the big fresco over the altar in the church back at home. He was long-faced at the best of times, but now he appeared nothing less than tragic. “Listen, people, we've got a problem here,” he said, and his voice was a dirge. “It affects all of us, Norm especially, but all of us ultimately, and Norm asked me to get everybody together, because he wanted to say a few words-”

She could barely hear him for the throbbing in her head. It was as if a pair of pincers had come down from the ceiling and clamped onto her temples and was slowly and inexorably drawing her up into the air, and all she could think of was one of those arcade machines where you try to extract a prize from a heap of trinkets. She was the prize, the gold ring that was really brass, and the jaws had hold of her, squeezing and pinching, and what she needed was a Darvon, or better yet, a Seconal, something to kill the pain. She'd ask Ronnie once the meeting broke up-he was usually good for something, and he always had his own little stash hidden away somewhere. She stared at her folded hands and tried to concentrate on looking normal. Or human. Just that.

Alfredo was rattling on-“Brothers, sisters, _people,__ we're all in this together, and now, of all times, we need to _stick__ together…” She leaned into Marco, and a flare of irritation leapt up in her. “What's he talking about? The accident? Is that it? Can't Norm just pay a fine or something?”

Marco tucked a coil of hair behind his ear, smoothed his beard with a ringless hand (he didn't believe in jewelry, not for men, though she saw he was wearing the string of painted wooden beads she'd given him, and for a fraction of a moment that made everything balance out). He was sitting in the lotus position, legs folded, back arched, as perfect as an illustration in one of those pamphlets by Swami Kriyananda Norm was always handing out, _Yoga Made Easy, Eight Steps to Enlightenment, The Swami Speaks.__ “No,” he said, shaking his head, “it's gone way beyond that. It's-I don't know. I didn't want to tell you this, at least not till tomorrow, anyway, but you want to know the truth? It's over, is what it is. He was trying to tell me this morning, when we went for the cream soda and the rest of it-and the wire for the horse, which is still in the back of the van, by the way, wherever the van is. Not that it matters.”

“Over?” She sought out his eyes, but his eyes dodged away. “What are you talking about?”

That was when Norm's voice rang through the room and everybody looked up to see him standing there in the kitchen doorway, his arm around Premstar. “A horse!” he cried. “My kingdom for a horse!” That was all it took-two phrases-and the pall Alfredo had cast was dissolved, and they all, everybody-even Reba, even Alfredo and the Krishna cat-laughed aloud. “Or a match,” Norm said, pulling a number the size of a cigar from the inside pocket of his jacket. “Anybody got a match? Or did you forget about the bonfire? Longest day, man, longest _day__!”