Drop City

neon orange and _drip, drip, drip.__ “Just you and Marco, right?”
    “Yeah, well I'm sure you had Lydia to comfort you, and what about Merry and that new girl I saw you being all friendly with the other day, what's her name, Premstar--the one that's so tripped-out she can barely talk? I'm sure they must've kept you from feeling too sorry for yourself.”
    “Just you and Marco, right?” he repeated.
    She just stared at him.
    “Okay, fine.” He drank off the juice in a single gulp, snatched the pitcher from the counter and filled the glass back up to the rim. “Don't even talk to me,” he said, and he was saying it over his shoulder, because he was already out the door and into the coruscating light that exploded all around him like colliding stars.
    Lydia was sitting on the counter by the sink, gazing off across the room as if she were oblivious to the whole thing--off on her own trip, and don't you confuse your trip with mine--but Merry came round the table and stood there till Star acknowledged her. “What was that all about?”
    Star was feeling it, right down to her toes, the first fluttering euphoric rush of the drug. She didn't want hassles, she didn't want possessiveness, jealousy, anger, bad sex and bad feelings--she wanted to let loose and watch the day play itself out, one swollen luminous minute after another. She looked at Merry, and it was as if Merry were underwater, her hair floating in gentle undulations, her face, her eyes, seaweed riding the currents and seahorses too. “I don't know,” she heard herself say, “I guess Pan's having a bad day.”
    That was when Lester's face hove into view, big smile, gold in his teeth, his skin as slick and worn as the leather on the speed bag Sam had hanging in the garage back at home. His eyes were huge, as if he'd been groping in the dark his whole life--and what were they, a lemur's eyes, an owl's--and his hair was teased out till it stood straight up off his head like Jimi Hendrix's. Franklin was with him, and they both had their shoulders hunched, as if they were stalking through a rainstorm. “Hey, Star, Merry, what's happening?” Lester said. “Just wondering if, uh, you might have some of that _juice__ left for a couple of hermits? Maybe some eggs too--wouldn't some eggs be nice, Franklin?”
    “Sure would,” Franklin said.
    Star couldn't seem to summon a response--try though she might, no response was forthcoming, not right then, not a yes or a no or a see you in hell first, nothing. Zero. She was drawing blanks. Sky Dog had moved on, as had Dewey and most of the others, but Lester and Franklin had persisted, though everybody treated them like lepers. They hadn't showed up for a meal in weeks, and hardly anyone ever saw them. But they were there, and everyone was aware of it, whether they pretended differently or not. Go out to the parking lot, and there was the Lincoln, dusted over till it could have been some spontaneous excrescence of the earth itself. Take a stroll at night, and the music came at you from the back house, deep-bottomed and mysterious. And every once in a while you'd look up from what you were doing, and there they'd be out on their tumbledown porch, stripped to the waist and passing a joint or a cigarette or a jug of wine from one adhesive hand to another.
    Merry spoke up first. “I don't think so,” she said.
    Lester turned to Franklin, as if to interpret for him. “You hear that, Franklin? The girl doesn't think so. What do you say to that?”
    Franklin stood a head taller than Lester. He was wearing a wide-collared polka-dot shirt, yellow on black. He had bags under his eyes, as if he'd been up for a hundred nights straight, and he was letting his processed hair grow out in reddish wisps. He looked at Lester when he spoke. “I don't say nothin'.”
    “Well, I say it's a bunch of racist hippie-dippy shit,” Lester said, swinging round on them. “What's a matter, us niggers ain't good enough for you?”
    “Fuck you, Lester,” Merry said, and there were faces at the door now, people jerked up short as if they had leashes fastened round their throats. And where was Marco? In Santa Rosa, with Norm, getting supplies.
    Lester thought this was funny. “Fuck me, huh? There's peace and love for you.”
    _Irate,__ that was a word, wasn't it? Star was irate--first Ronnie, and now this. “Look,” she said, stepping into the breach, “you know perfectly well this has nothing to do with whether you're black or white