Drop City

over for you last night.” The water lapped, dragonflies hovered. And then: “Did you hear what happened?”
    No, he hadn't heard.
    She blinked the water out of her eyes, snaked a hand up his leg, and he felt himself go hard against the rough wet folds of his cutoffs. “A girl got raped.”
    “Raped? What do you mean _raped?__”
    “I mean she was some runaway--fourteen, she was only fourteen--and Norm's freaked about the whole thing, running around the kitchen jabbering about the man--the man's coming, the man's coming--and hide the dope and all, and clean this shit up, and do this and do that, and Alfredo's right there with him. They want Lester out. And Sky Dog and the rest of them.”
    Ronnie considered this, the water lapping at his legs, Lydia's breasts bobbing at his ankles, her hand crawling up his thigh. His normal response would have been something like “Bummer” or “Heavy,” but the moment was huge and hovering and his head wasn't clear yet, not even close, so he just stared down at the white ghosts of her legs kicking rhythmically beneath the surface.
    “What I hear is they got her stoned, and then they pinned her down, and it wasn't just Lester and Sky Dog either. It was all of them.” She paused, kicking, kicking, the slow fluid rhythm of her legs. Che threw something--a scarred Frisbee--at his sister and she let out a shriek, and then the dogs started barking and Reba, at the far end of the pool, went off on a laughing jag, ha-ha, ha-ha, ha-ha. Lydia's hand was cold. She clutched him tighter. “Somebody said you were there,” she breathed, and then trailed off.
    He was there. Sure he was. And he'd gotten into it with a couple of them too, hadn't he? Sure, sure. He must have. Because he didn't care how stoned he was or how voluntarily primitive it got, he wasn't about to stand by and watch something like that . . . And the thought of it, the thought of that cheap little acidic moment in the back house with all those null and void faces and the thump, thump, _blat__ of the stereo and the girl with her stick legs flailing just made him feel so black inside he wished he'd never left home himself. What could he say? How could he explain it?
    “Yeah,” he said, “yeah. I was there.”
    Lydia seemed to consider this a moment, her eyes glittering like planets in the uncharted universe of her face. She was a big girl, big in the shoulders and the hips, big all over, black hair, everted lips, flecks of eye shadow caught in her lashes like drift washed up on a beach. Her legs kicked beneath the surface. Her hand tightened on his thigh. She blinked the water out of her eyes and gave him half a smile. “You want to rape me too?” she said.

Drop City
    4
    Alfredo was the one who called the meeting, eight P.M., the supper dishes mostly washed, or soaking anyway, and everybody feeling lazy and contented, six pans of brownies cooling on the kitchen table and the promise of a movie afterward (Charlie Chaplin, one Star hadn't seen--something about Alaska, was that possible?). A few people had dressed for the occasion, Verbie in particular, because a meeting was really the template for a party, everybody already collected from their huts and yurts and the back bedrooms and all those acres of strung-out woods, and why not, Star was thinking, why not? Party on. If you thought about it, even peeling potatoes for the veggie stew or hacking the weeds out of the garden was a kind of party. It certainly wasn't work, not in any conventional sense, not when you were surrounded by your brothers and sisters and nobody was standing over you with a time clock.
    By half past seven, Verbie was parading around in a lime green cape over a pink ruffled blouse, her face painted the color of the cracked saltillo tiles Norm had inexplicably dumped on the west side of the house one morning before anybody was awake. Jiminy was right there with her, wearing a high hat and tails with nothing underneath but a pair of Donald Duck briefs, some new guy was playing bongos, rat-a-tat-tat, the dogs and even the goats were in a high state of alert, and Maya swept in the door in a Goodwill wedding gown that looked as if the moths weren't done with it yet. And Ronnie? Ronnie was Ronnie, keep it simple. Star settled for a little face paint--a peace sign on each cheek and a third eye, replete with false lashes, centered in the middle of her forehead.
    It must have been eight-thirty or so by the time Reba came in and lit some candles