T. Boyle - Drop City

Lydia, lounging in the seat across from Star, said “Paté,” as if she'd been thinking about it for weeks. “That's what turns me on. And those celery sticks with blue cheese inside. Swedish meatballs on a toothpick. Canapés and champagne. They used to have these parties at the place I used to work, and I'd just camp in front of the hors d'oeuvres tray and pig out.”

“Will this do?” Reba said, and she leaned forward in the flicker of passing headlights and handed Lydia a box of Ritz crackers and two cans of deviled ham.

“Lobster,” Merry said. “With drawn butter.”

“You haven't lived till you've had the Crab Louis at this place called Metzger's on Tomales Bay,” Maya put in. “I went there once, just after high school, with-”

“I know,” Reba said, “-this guy named Jack. With hair down to his ass and a Fu Manchu mustache.”

Star laughed. They all laughed.

Maya's voice went soft. “Actually, it was with my parents. They took me and my brother out west on a vacation. For my graduation present.”

No one had anything to say to that, and they were all silent a moment as the bus lurched through a series of broad sweeping turns, heading for the Canadian border. The engine propelled them forward with a steady _whoosh,__ as if there were a big vacuum cleaner under the hood. Wind beat at the windows, a spatter of rain. They could hear Norm's voice from up front, an unceasing buzz of fancy, opinion and incontestable fact fueled by Ronnie's speed and Premstar's lady-lotion skin, and who liked Premstar, who could even stand her? Nobody. On that, they were all in silent accord.

“Shrimp cocktail,” Reba said, feeding another sardine into her mouth. “For my money,” and she was chewing round her words, “a good shrimp cocktail, with big shrimp now, shrimp as long as your middle finger, with a spicy cocktail sauce and served on a little bed of ice, that's what I'd go for every time.”

Star said, “Pistachios. In the shell. And your fingers get all red. Has anybody in this world _ever__ had enough of those?”

“You know,” Merry said, and her voice was so drawn down and muted you could barely hear her, “I haven't seen my parents since I was sixteen. That's like five years. I can't believe it. And I don't hate them or anything either. It's just the way things worked out.”

“Where you from again?” Reba wanted to know.

Softly, as if it were a prayer, or the name of a prayer: “Cedar Rapids.”

“Cedar Rapids? Where's that?”

“It's in Iowa,” Lydia answered for her.

“Oh, _Iowa,__” Reba said, and she made it sound as unhip and lame as Peoria or New Jersey, and Star felt the mood start to slip away.

“There was this guy,” Merry began, her face lit suddenly by a pair of headlights, then sinking into shadow, “this cat, and he was twenty-three and he had his own car and money like I'd never seen before, like rolls of twenties and whatever. But that's not what did it-I wasn't like that. I'm not like that now. Money didn't mean anything to me, except that it could buy you freedom-and my parents, _Jesus,__ and my school. You know the story. Everybody does, right?”

No one rose to the bait. Star shifted in her seat. She could hear Lydia forcing her hand down into the box of crackers.

“His name was Tommy Derwin and he was from down south, Mobile, and his accent just killed me. The way he would say things, like 'Ahm just honahed that you would con-sent to be mah date tonight, Miss Merra Voight,' and then he'd take me to a bar in Iowa City where nobody ever got carded and then a motel, as man and wife, on the way back to Cedar Rapids. I never thought twice. He said let's go to San Francisco, that's where the scene is, and I went.”

Lydia was passing out crackers smeared with deviled ham, and Star took one, and so did Reba, but Maya and Merry passed-ham was meat, after all, pig, dead pig, no matter how you disguised it. “So what then?” Lydia said, and she wiped her lips with the back of her hand.

“We stayed a couple places. People he knew. We did drugs. I worked checkout at a Walgreens for a while, and when nobody was looking I'd shake pills out of bottles, you know, that sort of thing.” The cheese came round, and they all watched as Merry cut herself two thick slices and fitted them to crackers. “I don't know,” she said. “And then we joined this commune-Harrad House? It wasn't like this, not at all. More into sex. A group marriage kind of thing.”

“And how was that?” This was Lydia, the resident expert. “Did you have to sleep with everybody?”

“I'd hate that,” Star said. “I'd really hate that.”

“Sounds groovy to me,” Lydia said. “The more the merrier.”

Reba laughed out loud. She took a long swallow of the wine and passed the bottle to Lydia. “That's what you say now, but believe me-I mean, before I met Alfredo, I was pretty wild, like I was in heat all the time, like the only way I could relate to men was in bed, but that got old fast. Real fast. Right, Merry? You agree?”

“It stunk. There were way more guys than girls and Tommy was like a ghost or something-I hardly ever even saw him. I was on my back half the time, and if I refused some guy, one of the family members, I was the one who was uptight, I was the one spreading the bad vibes and poisoning the atmosphere, because that was the way it was. The bedroom down the hall. Take off your clothes. Five A.M., five P.M. Let's ball.” She paused, and her voice sank right down through the floorboards. “Everybody had jobs, like mop the floor, cook the pasta, go out and bring in a paycheck. My job was to fuck. Like a machine. Like a goat.”

“Where's Verbie when we need her-Women's Lib, right?” Reba said, missing the point. As usual.

Star could feel her heart going, and it was as if she were back in the supermarket again with fifteen dollars' worth of cheese shoved down her coat. “It's the Keristan Society all over again.”

“The who?”

But she was staring out the window now on a scene from another century, the sharpedged pines and a farmhouse framed in its own pale glow and the shadow of the barn beyond. They were asleep in there, the farmer and his wife, the kids, the dog. There would be an old oak table in the kitchen, heavy pink Fiesta ware set out for breakfast, a calendar on the wall. The refrigerator would clank on, it would hum, and then shut down, and no one would even notice, not even the dog.

“I don't know,” she said. “It's not important.”

They reached the border sometime after two. Star was asleep, curled up awkwardly in one of the bunks, and she felt the bus shift beneath her as if the whole world were in motion, then it shuddered and came to a halt, and she was awake. They were off on the side of the road, parked beneath a sign that said INTERNATIONAL BOUNDARY 2 MILES. Norm was coming down the aisle, rousing people from sleep. “It's the border, people, come on, wake up,” he was saying, his face a pale bulb hanging in the gloom, his shoulders hunched and arms dangling as if he'd lost the use of them. This was it. This was the big moment. If they couldn't get into Canada, then they couldn't get to Alaska, and Drop City was dead.

Marco was in the bunk beneath her, and he woke with a start. She reached a hand down to him, her hair trailing, and edged over the side of the bunk so she could see him. He was staring at nothing, the moistness of his eyes just catching enough light to show her they were open. “Hey,” she said, as gently as she could, “we're here. Time to wake up.”

“Shit,” he said, and he brushed her hand aside. “Already?” He pushed himself up and slid out of the bunk all in one motion, and then he was running his fingers through his hair and tucking in the tail of his shirt. People were shuffling around like zombies, bumping into one another, cursing softly. The dogs began to whine. Somebody sneezed. “Where's Ronnie?” he said, and there was an edge to his voice she didn't recognize. “Where's Pan? Is he here?”