Drop City

beer pinned to his lips like a medallion--“I'd still be shitting bricks in the county jail. He's the one that went to the bail bondsman. I mean, what does that take? A genius?”
    Star didn't have any response to that, because everything froze up inside her at the sight of Sky Dog. She'd thought all that was done with, thought he'd gone on to infest some other family with ego and selfishness and the kind of love that was no love at all, just words, empty words. He didn't acknowledge her, just drained his beer and flung the bottle into the fire.
    There was a pop like a gunshot. The flames snapped and roared.
    Ronnie said, “So what do you think?”
    “You mean Norm?”
    “Yeah. Norm. Like as if there's anything else to discuss tonight.”
    “We looked it up on the map--Boynton. It's a real place. I mean, just like all the places on the map when we were coming across country.” And she couldn't help herself--she laughed. “A dot. A little black dot.”
    “What's it near?”
    She was the expert here, the old Alaska hand, but she'd already reached the limits of her knowledge: “Fairbanks. Like maybe a hundred fifty, two hundred miles?”
    “The fishing up there,” Ronnie said, and he wasn't really talking to her now. “Grayling, char, king salmon as long as your leg. You could shoot a moose. A bear. In fact, you know they have to shoot a bear, everybody does, every year? You know why? The fat. I mean, it's not as if you can just stroll down to the grocery store and pick up a tub of margarine or Crisco or whatever--”
    “What about the goats,” she said, and she had an image of them crammed into the back of the Studebaker, shitting all over everything, stinking, drooling, making a zoo of the place. “We're taking the goats, aren't we?” And there it was, a fait accompli: _we.__
    “Hey, man, you want another beer?” Dale Murray leaned into them, his face swollen in a stabbing flash of light. Ronnie held his bottle up experimentally, shook it twice and drained it. “How about you, Star?” Dale Murray wanted to know, and his voice had softened till it was reasonable, seductive even. Was this a peace offering--after all, she hadn't put him in jail; she hadn't even been there--or did he just want to ball her like all the rest of the _cats?__
    “I'm okay,” she said, and Dale Murray moved off into the shadows. She took a sip from the fruit jar and turned to Ronnie. “So what happened to your shirt?”
    Ronnie pulled his eyes back and stared off into the distance. He shrugged. “I tossed it in the fire. Norm said to get rid of the bad shit, right? The shit with the negative vibes? Leave it all behind, isn't that what he said?”
    It took her a minute. “The shirt I made for you?”
    His eyes came back to her, dwindling and accusatory. He fingered the beads at his throat. “So what did you throw in the fire, like a little voodoo effigy of me or something? Or that turquoise bracelet I bought you in Sedona? I don't see that. I don't see you wearing that anymore--”
    “Okay, look: I'm sorry. I love you, I do, but you have to understand--”
    “Understand what?”
    “Marco. I'm with Marco now, that's all.”
    “And who the fuck is he? I've known you since _junior high.__ Christ, we came out here together, we had all those adventures, remember? Doesn't that mean anything?” He bent forward to fling his empty bottle into the flames, and there was another pop as the heat took the glass down. “Shit, I don't even know if I want to go to Alaska if it's going to be like this--I mean, are we taking the Studebaker or what? And Marco, what about him--he doesn't even have a car, right? Not to mention all the rest of them. How are we going to get there, even?”
    And what had she heard Lydia say in the kitchen just yesterday? _I don't watch pornography, I do it.__ Right. Chicks and cats. Free Love. He was so full of shit it was coming out his ears. She took his hand and squeezed it. “Star and Pan,” she said.
    “You know, I thought you were coming over here to ask do I have any more of those downs left, because I know you right through to the bone and I was figuring you were going to want to sleep tonight, isn't that right?”
    She gave him a blossoming smile. “Mind reader.”
    “You're going to have to come with me,” he said, reflexively patting the pockets of his jeans. “I got a little paranoid and went and stashed everything under this rock up in the woods. It's like three minutes from