Drop City

Where would it end? Was the whole thing going to come tumbling down now? Was that what this meant? Marco slouched over his plate. For the moment, at least, he was too tired to care.
    “What do you mean, Fairbanks?”
    Joe Bosky's voice was thick in his throat. “I got her a job at this place I know. A saloon. She's going to be a dancer.”
    And now Verbie: “Only till winter, though, is what she told me. To get some money together, for all of us--she's doing it for all of us--and then she's going to come back to the fold. That's a promise, she said--tell them that's a promise.”
    “And if any of you other girls are interested,” Bosky said, and here he turned to Star and fixed his null gaze on her, “I can arrange it, because Christ knows they are starved for women up here. And Lydia. I mean, she's a natural, with that body she's got on her--”
    “You mean topless, right?” Maya said.
    “Right down to her G-string, honey, because full frontal nudity is still against the law in this state, but I tell you she's going to take in more tips a night than you people'll get in a month out of welfare or food stamps or whatever it is you're on.”
    Everyone looked to Norm, whether they were conscious of it or not. And Norm, at the head of the table, hair dangling from the cincture of his headband, the cowbell like a cheese grater hung round his neck, set down his cup of chocolate and licked his mustache till all the sweet residuum was gone. “All right,” he said finally. “Cool. I mean, we can live with that, right, people? Lydia's going to show off what she was born with and make a little cash for Drop City in the bargain, and where's the problem with that?”
    Verbie's voice came back at him like a whipcrack. “It's exploitation.”
    “Exploitation of what?”
    “Of the female body. It's sexist. I mean, I don't see any of you men up there dancing in your jockstraps or whatever--”
    “Only because they didn't ask,” Norm said, and people were laughing now, avowals going up and down the table, and then Sky Dog said he'd do it in a heartbeat.
    “Oh, yeah,” Verbie shot back. “Then why don't you do it now? Why not get up on the table and give us something to look at, come on, let's see what you got, big boy, come on--”
    Sky Dog rose unsteadily from his seat and began undoing the buttons of his shirt while the catcalls rang out, but once he got his shirt off, he seemed to lose track of what he was doing--gone into the wild blue yonder--and he sat back down again.
    “Chicken,” Merry said.
    “See, what'd I tell you?” Verbie said.
    And then Premstar, propped up beside Norm like a painted mannequin, Premstar the beauty queen who was more worried about her nails and her lipstick and her eyeliner than about anything that could possibly go down at Drop City, past or present, entered the conversation for the first time all night. “What about our treats?” she demanded. “All the things we ordered from Pan, I mean. Did everybody forget, or what?”
    That was the unfortunate moment Ronnie chose to come bobbing across the field from his tent, the sun firing the threads of his hair, his torso riding over his hips as if he were walking a treadmill, and the table fell momentarily silent to watch his progress. Everyone was thinking the same thing. Pan had been crashed in his tent all this time, out of sight, out of mind, but the boat had come in with Verbie and Sky Dog and Dale, strange cargo indeed, and the windows for the meeting house and the three prospective cabins were there, uncracked and true, and the cans of kerosene and the bar oil and blades for the saws, but nothing else. No candy bars. No underarm deodorant. No books or magazines or tubes of suntan lotion. And if they weren't in the plane and they weren't in the boat, then where were they?
    “Hey, Dale,” Sky Dog said, trying to get it going again, “remember that shit they tried to palm off on us in, where was it, Carmacks, in that roadhouse? _Moose__burger they called it?” But nobody was listening. All eyes were on Pan as he shuffled up to the table, tucking in his shirt and swatting absently at mosquitoes. Even Freak lifted his head from the dirt to give him a look of appraisal. The smoke drifted. The moment held.
    “Hey, what's happening,” Ronnie said, leaning over Marco's shoulder to peer into the depths of the nearest pot. “Am I too late for dinner?”
    At first, he tried to deny everything, squeezing himself in on the bench