Drop City

over by half a dozen women, and that was an image Marco wanted to hold--but the blurred outline of him still clung to the wet flagstones as if it were a piece of some elaborate puzzle to which no one had the solution. Jiminy settled into one of the chaise longues with a pair of bongos and started a slow lugubrious slap-palmed beat. A beer--still cold from the tub--appeared in Marco's hand, and then Star was at his side. She didn't say a word, just leaned forward and kissed him and held her lips there until he came back to life.

Drop City
    13
    When the black-and-white sheriff's cruiser came nosing up the drive like some sort of mechanical hound, sniffing out the curves and drawing a bead on the main house, Pan didn't feel much of anything. The day had careened right by him. There was all that hassle and hysteria, diving and diving again till he damned near wound up drowning _himself,__ and then a lull that smoothed out all the wrinkles like a hot iron. Reba's brats had been saved and resurrected and either punished or rewarded or both--of that much he was sure, or at least he thought he was--and then at some point Norm had appeared with a bloody strip of cloth pressed to one eye and his glasses cobbled together with a white knuckle of masking tape. Norm was wearing his ask-no-questions look and went straight for his room at the top of the stairs, so that little drama was over before it began, and after a while the party or communal navel-gaze or whatever it was had recommenced in all earnestness.
    But that was hours ago. What Pan was concerned about now was meat, and to that end he'd sequestered a package of Safeway hot dogs in the depths of the refrigerator and stashed an eight-pack of spongy supermarket buns under a pile of dirty clothes in the back bedroom, and as the cruiser worked its slow sure way up the road--moving so slowly, in fact, it barely even spun the dust off its tires--Pan was thinking he'd be building a little fire soon, after which he'd have a couple of hot dogs slathered with mustard and sweet pickle relish, and anybody who happened to be around, weekend hippies and part-time heads included, would be welcome to join him.
    He was sitting on the front porch, Merry, Maya and Mendocino Bill settled in beside him and some new cat in a serape and high-crowned straw hat sprawled on the steps (_his__ trip was Krishna and there was no way to shut him up about it unless you took a claw hammer to the back of his head, and for the past half hour Pan had been giving it some real consideration). Merry wasn't going to eat any meat, or Maya either, that was for sure. Maybe Mendocino Bill, but Ronnie really didn't give a shit about Mendocino Bill one way or the other so it hardly mattered. “Krishna is love,” the new cat said, and the cruiser eased into the space in front of the railing like a foot slipping into a shoe. Two cops, each a replica of the other, got out.
    They stood there in the dirt a moment, shifting their eyes around, two almost-young men, and what currents were _they__ floating on? Lean, narrow-hipped, all but hairless, they looked as if they'd been specially bred in some police kennel somewhere, and Ronnie could picture it, the women staked out on chains and the bull-headed men going at them till they got the litter just right. _Woof-woof.__ He studied their faces, but their faces gave away nothing. Their eyes, though--their eyes lit up every particle of dust, alive to every gesture, every nuance, eyes that could see through walls, through clothes, through flesh, and you'd have to be crazy not to feel the heat of them.
    As the car doors slammed in unison, the two yellow dogs slunk out from beneath the porch to sniff at the cops' boots, and Freak, the one with the hacked-off tail, seized the opportunity to lift a leg and piss against the sidewall of the near tire. The cops never so much as shrugged. They took a minute to square their shoulders and adjust their belts, running their hands idly over the butts of their guns and truncheons and the rest of their head-cracking paraphernalia, then turned their attention to the porch. “You live here?” the one to the left asked, addressing Ronnie but letting his cold blue eyes jump to Merry, Maya, Mendocino Bill and beyond, where the depths of the house stirred with a thick, lazy batter of activity.
    Though half of Drop City had melted off into the woods at first sight of the cruiser, Ronnie played it cool. He had nothing to fear. He'd never been in