Going Native Read Online Free PDF Page A

affecting moons of powdery gray, there was nothing immediately distinctive about him, no crags or crannies or funny clumps of hair for words to adhere to. Average, she'd have to admit, conceding her failure because the choice attributes, the ones you couldn't readily explain, escaped definition, and those were the ones she loved.
    "We've been spanning the globe," Tommy claims. "Toxic crime, the drug deficit, celebrity terrorism. It's been an evening for the macroview."
    "An evening for macaroni," corrects Gerri. She's intrigued by Wylie's hands, there's something positively noble about his fingers.
    "Save the planet," announces Tommy. "Take a whale to lunch."
    "We like coming here," says Gerri, making sucking noises with her straw. "So many of our other friends have given up drinking."
    "Yes," Rho says. "The Eco-Age."
    "I feel like eco-trash myself," jokes Tommy.
    "Have you ever had a cherimoya?" Gerri asks.
    "What's that?"
    "It's a fruit, actually, some bizarre mating of an apple and a pear and a coca tree, for all we know. It's Peruvian. Quite yummy."
    Tommy chuckles softly through his nose. "Yeah, since the Grand Tour has had to be temporarily postponed until the advent of our second million, Gerri here is eating her way around the world."
    His tone irritates her. "Well, why go on tasting the same boring old tastes, doing the same boring old things?"
    "I don't know," says Tommy. "Why?"
    "Oh, you." She kicks at him under the table.
    "Did you remember the charcoal?" inquires Rho.
    Wylie's glass halts in midair.
    "Damnit, Wylie, I asked you not to forget. Well, don't be long. We're starting to get hungry here."
    "Tommy can go with you," declares Gerri.
    "Hint, hint," says Tommy.
    On the way out Wylie scoops up a handful of chips. "Mmmmmm," he mumbles, over his shoulder, "good nachos."
    The vehicle is an '87 Jeep Cherokee. "Shouldn't we be wearing baseball caps?" Tommy's stale line. He has difficulty envisioning himself in such a machine and cannot understand why Wylie, whom he knows as well as anybody, would want to be seen in one, would apparently delight in one, would sometimes even drive the thing to work, for Christ's sake. It is a curiosity.
    The passing streets are quiet, well tended, as are the lawns, the homes, the people. The radio is tuned to a popular FM station, classic rock, one uninterrupted hour of Canned Heat. Wylie is stolid behind black sunglasses. Tommy unreels another gripping scenario; this time it's Tony Perkins as a zany Dr. Jekyll who accidentally discovers crack, smokes it, naturally, then runs amok in a blue street frenzy of fucking and slashing rarely witnessed within the precincts of an R rating.
    "But he's already nuts," Wylie points out. "Even playing normal. One look at the eyes and anyone but an idiot can tell there's another person in there."
    "Granted," Tommy admits, "so maybe the suspense element is somewhat compromised. It's still an engaging piece of work."
    Wylie hasn't seen the film, doesn't know if he will, he's been trying to cut down lately.
    "Yeah yeah," says Tommy, "don't think I haven't heard all this before, it's a bad habit, yeah, waste of life, sure, but it's either sit in front of the box or talk to Gerri all night."
    "Something else you could do with Gerri."
    "Yeah, but not as good as they do it on the box."
    The parking lot of the Feed 'n' Fuel is a mad snarl of cops and cars and rotating lights and the fear of the curious drawn, as always, to the center, wherever it may appear, a modern-day gathering at the rim of the awful, a satisfied peep down into the smoking crater, wonder that such things could be so great and so near. Police cruisers sit abandoned at opposed angles, doors hanging open, radios squawking like caged birds. Between scarred trash containers yellow tape fluttering upside down in printed repetition crime scene do not cross clears a space around the store entrance. In the middle of this opening, arranged rather carelessly on the gum-embossed, soda-stained