Drop City

settled on Norm, as if she knew what was coming, as if she'd had a premonition, not only about Marco and Ronnie and the long downward slide of the night, but of the fate of Drop City itself.
    Norm tipped back his head, the hair spilling loose around his shoulders, and drank noisily from the cup. “That's beer,” he said, fighting back a belch. “That's the best thing about this place, our greatest achievement--Tom Krishna's beer. We ought to bottle it and sell it. 'Old Flatulence,' we'll call it. How does that sound?”
    Nobody laughed. But he'd accomplished what he wanted: he had the attention of the room now, people looking up from books, games, conversations--he was working up to something, they could all sense it.
    “You know,” he said, talking to the room now, “while we've got everybody gathered here, or mostly everybody, if you want to discount the people harboring grudges and ill will, and I guess that's probably about _half__ of us, people, half the Drop City Maniacs gone round the _bend,__ and how about that as testimony to the power of brother- and sisterhood?” Still nobody laughed. “While we've got everybody here I just want to lay something on you, I mean, on behalf of me and Premstar--” They all looked to Premstar, who sat still as an icon, her lips parted in an expectant pout, her eyelids gleaming naked because she was out of glue for her false lashes and down to the last few dwindling traces of her pastel blue eyeshadow. Premstar glared back. She was out of her league here, Star was thinking, a prima donna in a community of equals, and there was no excuse for her, none, zero. She could pout all night long for all anybody cared.
    “Let me guess,” Bill said. “The Air Force is making an emergency drop of eighty-seven tubes of crab ointment right out on the river--”
    “And six color TVs, with rabbit ears the size of the Empire State Building,” Weird George cried out, thrusting up his mug of beer as if to propose a toast. “And all the back issues of _Playboy__ in existence!”
    There were a few sniggers, a nervous laugh or two. The stove sighed. Snow ticked at the windows. Merry looked up from her cards and held Star's eyes, as if to say, _What next?__
    Norm had no problem playing to the gallery. He was like an actor--he _was__ an actor--and he swung round on the pivot of his heels and threw out his arms as if to embrace everybody leaning over the rough-hewn edge of the railingless loft, the cheap seats, everybody in the cheap seats. “I only wish,” he said.
    Reba, who'd been sitting in the corner staring at nothing while Che and Sunshine picked sodden lumps of fish off their untouched plates and flung them at one another in a silent, dragged-down war of attrition, spoke up suddenly. “We need a Ski-Doo is what we need. So we can get into town and get the damned ointment, because this is ridiculous, and the mail, and, and--”
    “And see some new faces for a change,” Bill finished the thought for her.
    Weird George said he'd like to hoist a few at the Three Pup.
    “Toothpaste,” Maya said. “Shampoo. An orange stick for my nails.”
    Jiminy's opinion was that they were welcome to walk--“Walking is good for you, man, like the best exercise in the world”--but nobody rose to the bait. The idea was patently ridiculous. Sure, they could walk the twelve miles, and a few people had done it since the river had frozen up, but it was twelve miles _back,__ and there was no place to stay in Boynton because the bus had no heat in it and Sess Harder had refused them the use of his shack cum toolshed, even for just an overnight stay. Everybody was out here now--no more furloughs--and they were going to stay here till the river broke up in May. Count the months--two weeks more of November, then December, January, February, March and April. It was a lifetime. A prison sentence. And already they were chafing, all of them--what would it be like in three months? In four?
    Everybody chased the issue around for a minute or two, any topic the subject of rancor and debate, and then there was a silence, a time-out while they each contemplated the future, both individual and communal, and then Bill coughed into his fist and looked up and asked Norm what he had on his mind.
    Norm put on a mask. His face was neutral but for his eyes, his red-rimmed eyes, sharpening suddenly from the depths of the two holes he'd poked in it. “It's nothing really, no big deal, nothing to get _uptight__ about,