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place, a place designed by some higher power--_higher__ power--for the sensory awakening and spiritual uplift of every one of his brothers and sisters.
    Until nightfall, that is. The night came seething and festering up out of the shadows that bunched themselves in circus shapes at the feet of the trees and in the clotted scrub that chased the hillside round and round. He was feeling a little--well, a little _jittery.__ There'd been an interlude there where he'd let things slide, a second hit of the mesc, a bottle of red wine and a couple of hits of something somebody had been smoking after dinner, and he hadn't even made dinner, had he? Dinner. Big pots full of mush, women with their tits hanging, health and simplicity and the good rural life. The pool glistened like oil, like blood, in the fading light. He wasn't hungry.
    He had a sudden urge to see Star, to just sit with her someplace quiet and talk about home, the little routines and reminiscences that had kept them going all the way across the flat shag of the Midwest and into the Rockies and beyond--Mr. Boscovich and tenth grade biology and how he would call everything _material,__ as in _these cells are constructed of cellular material,__ the way the books in the school library smelled of soap and burning leaves, the afternoon Robert Stellner, the straightest kid in the school, stuck his head in a bag of model airplane glue and carved the mysterious message _Yahweh__ into his chest with a penknife while standing in front of the mirror in the boys' room, all of that--but Star was up in the tree with the new guy all the time, and that rankled, it did, all the shit about Free Love and the Keristan Society notwithstanding. He pushed himself up off the pavement, but that was a bit much, so he sat back down again. The pavement was warm still, and that made him think of the rattlesnake somebody had seen out here just two nights ago. “They come for the warmth,” that's how Norm had put it, “--and you can deal with that or you can kill 'em, skin 'em and eat 'em, but then you'll have bad snake karma your whole life and maybe into the next one, and do you really want that?”
    From the main house, the sounds of laughter, conversation, music, all blended in a murmur that was like some sort of undercurrent, as if that was where the real life was, the only life, and this out here, this nature and this crepitating dark, was for losers--losers and snakes. Lydia was in there, and Merry, Verbie and the rest of them. Maybe he'd get up and go inside, just for the human warmth and companionship, because that's what Drop City was all about, companionship, a game of cards maybe, or Monopoly--but then the image of Alfredo clawed its way into the forefront of his brain, and he thought maybe he wouldn't.
    Alfredo was one of the founding members of the commune, one of Norm Sender's inner circle, one of those sour-faced ascetic types, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, Reba's old man. He was always going on about natural childbirth and how Reba had cooked up the afterbirth and everybody shared a piece of it and how Che and Sunshine had been born outside under the moon and the stars, but he was an uptight, tight-assed jerk nonetheless, and two days ago Ronnie had gotten into it with him over some very pointed criticism about _volunteering__ to do wash-up or haul trash or dig a new septic field because all these _people__ were clogging up the commune's only two working toilets until they were rivers of _shit,__ and he wouldn't mind, would he? Hell, yeah. He minded. He didn't come all the way out here to California to dig _sewers.__ Jesus Fucking Christ.
    That was what he was thinking, sitting there on the warm snake-loving pavement with the night festering around him, just a little shaky, but pissed off too, royally pissed off, when Lester and one of the other spade cats--Franklin, his name was Franklin--appeared out of nowhere with a jug of wine. “Hey, brother,” Lester breathed, easing himself