Read Online Drop City by T. C. Boyle - Free Book Online

get napalmed every day?”
    She sat up and put a hand on his arm. “Whoa,” she said, “whoa. I’m just talking, that’s all.”
    â€œThat’s okay,” he said, and he was looking into her eyes now, no problem at all. “So am I.”
    â€œAll right,” she said, “all right, if we’re just talking, then I was just wondering what you think about being nude in front of a girl you’ve never met before, and stoned on top of it at something like half past eight in the morning. Is it a statement or something, or are you just out of clothes?”
    She’d expected him to laugh, but he looked away from her. He shrugged, eloquent shoulders, hard muscle, a cord flashing in his neck. “I don’t know,” he said, and caught her eyes again. “Does it embarrass you? The human body, I mean?”
    All the leaves held steady, then jumped, as if somebody had slipped a new slide into the projector that was the world. “Maybe,” she said. “Sometimes.”
    They were silent a moment, the bleating of the goats rising up to them, a distant shout, the rumble of a car on the dirt road. Then he said, “Why don’t you take your clothes off, see what it’s like?”
    â€œI know what it’s like—I was naked in the shower at six o’clock this morning. Why don’t you put yours back on?”
    â€œThey’re wet.”
    She laughed then—he had her there. His clothes were wet, pasted to the branches like papier-mâché and dripping arrhythmically on the goat party below.
    â€œListen,” he said, “Star,” and he used her name for the first time since she’d given it to him, “you want to maybe just hang with me up here for a while, kick back—”
    â€œAnd ball?”
    He shrugged again, rubbed at an imaginary spot on his calf. “Sure. If you’re into it.”
    She gave it a minute, thinking of Ronnie and the new girl, Merry, and the big-tits woman and everything that was hers to taste at Drop City and in the redwood forests and anywhere else she wanted to go outside the rigid stultifying confines of the straight world, and she considered Marco, his smile, his manner, the way he put things, and then she said, “No, I don’t think so.”
    He dropped his head, let his voice go loose till it sounded like something that had pitched out of a basket and rolled across the floor: “I was just asking—”
    â€œWhat am I trying to tell you?” she said, and she propped herself up on one elbow and took hold of his arm just above the wrist. “I’m involved with somebody right now, I guess, okay? That’s all.”
    She watched him gather up his legs, two balls of muscle flashing in his calves, and even as he stood he was careful to keep himself turned from her. “I don’t know,” he said, and he was apologizing now, “you never know unless you ask, right?”
    She gave a laugh, but it wasn’t the kind of laugh she’d intended, because it had Ronnie and the teepee cat all tangled up in it. “No,” she said, “you never know.”

    The night was darker than any night had a right to be, no moon, no stars, the sky locked up tight with the fog seeping in off the river. She couldn’t see Marco or Ronnie, though they were three feet ahead of her, feeling their way around the trikes and tools and discarded saltillo tiles, but she could smell the dust beneath her feet and the fishy stagnant odor rising from the pool somewhere off to her right, and she could hear the goats softly rustling their chains as they changed position beneath the oaks. A lone cricket kept opening and shutting a tiny door in the deep grass. There was nothing else.
    Verbie had decided to come along, as referee, and Jiminy, adamant Jiminy—he was ten feet behind them, cursing softly in the dark. “Shit. Fuck. I can’t see a thing. Hey, Verbie,