Drop City

“Pasha Norm” behind his back and Star--well, Marco couldn't speak for Star, but from what he knew about her and what he felt for her, he doubted she and Norm had got it on, but anything was possible. Of course, either way it was all right, because everybody was enlightened and the flesh existed to be celebrated, didn't it? If anybody was jealous, if any of the usual bourgeois hangups festered beneath the surface of the long irenic dream that was Drop City, Marco never saw it. But then he wasn't all that observant, as he'd be the first to admit. “I think we're really attuned to one another,” he said, and his voice seemed to be caught in his throat. “Star and me.”
    Norm, leaning in close: “You mean like in a spiritual way? Agape instead of eros?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Are you balling her?”
    “What kind of question is that?”
    “A practical one.” Norm's breath was stale, or worse than stale--rotten. The teeth were rotting in his head and his head was rotting on his body. He didn't believe in dentists--only shamans--because it wasn't caries that caused your teeth to fall out, but the evil spirits of dentists gone down, and he had the gold in his mouth to prove it.
    “What,” Marco said, and he felt his face flush, “--you interested?”
    Norm shifted his weight in the seat, gave a shrug. “She's a groovy chick.”
    Sure she was. Everybody was groovy, every_thing__ was groovy. This was the world they were making, this was the new age, free and enlightened and without hangups, climb every mountain, milk every goat. “Yeah,” Marco heard himself say, “yeah, she is.”
    There was a moment's silence, the van's engine ticking off to sleep somewhere beneath and behind them. Norm made no move to get out. He pushed the glasses up his nose and they slid back down. He sighed. Lifted his hand as if in extenuation, then dropped it. “You know, there's something I never told you,” he said. “Or anybody, really, except for Alfredo. And it's not good, not good at all.” He tapped the watch again, then gave it a rueful glance, as if it were the source of all the world's sorrow and misery.
    “What do you mean?”
    “They don't like heads in this town, is what I mean--in this whole fucking fascist county, for that matter, and you better pay up now and worship the rules and regulations or you are _fucked,__ believe me. They don't want to see people living in harmony with the earth and each other--they just want Daddy, Mommy, Junior and Sis, all shoved into a tract house with a new blacktop driveway and a lawn that looks like it's been painted right on the dirt.”
    “You having trouble with the county?”
    “Bet your ass I am.”
    “Board of Health? Fire and Safety?”
    Bent over the watch, his head lolling weakly on his shoulders as if it were floating on the upended mass of his hair, Norm just nodded. “Bunch of shit,” he said finally, but all the animation was gone from his voice. “I didn't sign on for this, no way in hell.”
    They sat there staring bleakly out the bug-spattered windshield on the fruits of life in the land of plenty, _Wonder Bread, Skippy Peanut Butter, Oleo Margarine,__ and while Marco sucked in his breath and idly traced a finger up and down the face of the glove box, Norm heaved a sigh and filled him in. The situation was worse than he'd suspected. Far worse. The county health and sanitation people had been looking to close up Drop City for over a year now, and the fire and building inspectors were close on their heels. Norm had been in and out of court all through the past fall and into the winter; lately, he'd been using the summonses to light the fire in the incinerator out back, because he was through with all that, fed up to his ears, so pissed off and rubbed raw he just wanted to give it all up and let the bureaucratic pencil-pushing bastards take the ranch and pave it over if that's what they wanted. And it got worse still: the county had ordered him to clear the property of all persons and all substandard dwellings or face a fine of five hundred dollars a day. “Like as if I was a slumlord or something,” he said, staring out the window of the van on a row of piggybacked shopping carts and the bold bright ads for detergent, meat and liquor that crowded the windows of the supermarket.
    “What's so bad that we can't fix it?” Marco said. “The leach lines are in, aren't they? Shouldn't that make them happy?” He was talking just to hear himself, just to