Drop City
the frame and the main compartment, way down at the bottom and wrapped in a sock, were three one-hundred-dollar bills nobody knew about, not Marco, not Ronnie, not Merry or Maya. This was what she had left of her nest egg, the money she'd accumulated before she quit teaching, living dirt cheap at her parents' house when her only expenses were for records and clothes and maybe a Brandy Alexander or Black Russian at the Surf 'N' Turf, the nearest thing to a club Peterskill could offer; the rest had gone for gas and food coming across country, and everything since--food stamps, unemployment, whatever her mother managed to send c/o Drop City--had vanished into the communal pot. There was no way she was breaking those three bills, whether for luxury or necessity, and besides, Norm had guaranteed he'd float everybody through the first winter, at least as far as the basics were concerned.
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,
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