leather-and-chains halter, with long blond hair, puffy lips, tired blue eyes, and a sultry air about her; drugs and booze had not yet robbed her of all her appeal.
Original Cindy smiled at the woman, who smiled knowingly back.
The big drunk biker, thinking the smile was for him, said, “I jus' might accept that apology, Brown Sugar,” and took a step toward Original Cindy…
… which was a mistake.
The first thing he lost was the blonde. Slipping out from under his snake-embossed bicep, the prom queen said to him, “Screw you and the Harley you rode in on,” and stormed off toward the tent city, leaving the biker to stare at Original Cindy.
“Hey, baby,” he said flashing that multicolored grin, his speech only a little slurred. “Three's a crowd, anyway.”
Original Cindy put her hands on her hips and reared back her Afroed head. “You can't be serious, Haystack— you think I was smilin' at
punk ass?”
His forehead clenched as he attempted thought.
Original Cindy continued with his schooling: “I was
at the sweet squeeze that went thatta way,” one long thin finger pointing in the direction the biker's chick had gone.
His eyes widened and the grin turned upside down. “Jesus! A fuckin'
”
He took another step toward her, a menacing one this time; but stopped when Original Cindy dropped into a combat stance.
She asked, “You denigratin' my sexual preference aside… you
you wanna go there?”
Cindy had been making her way back to Seattle since she'd gotten out of the army, not so long ago. And a woman, veteran or not, didn't hitch her way from Fort Hood, Texas, unless she knew how to handle her ass.
The drunk biker considered backing down for a moment, but his ego got the better of him and he pulled out his switchblade. The knife opened with a
long narrow blade finding light to wink off.
But he might have taken out a kazoo and started playing “Yankee Doodle,” for all the reaction it got out of Original Cindy, who merely smirked a little.
“Know what they say,” she said. “Longer the blade… ”
The biker wiped several greasy locks of hair out of his eyes. “Y'gonna
apologize now, bitch.”
She tilted her head and appraised him, as if the biker were fine print she was trying to make out.
“You know,” she said, “you done nothin' but call Original Cindy names since we met… the ‘d' word, the ‘b' word… and you're just about a consonant away from getting my boot in the crack of your wide honky ass.”
His eyes were white all the way around now, and he blurted another epithet— finally getting around to the “c” word— and charged her.
“That's the one… ” she said, and as he neared, she sidestepped, cracking him along the ear with the back of a fist as he stumbled past her, and kicking him in the ass.
That was the second thing the biker lost: his dignity… such as it was.
“God
” he roared, one hand going to the reddening ear. “I'm gonna cut you to fuckin' ribbons, you black bitch!”
Her response to this name-calling was nonverbal: with a martial-arts jump, she delivered a perfectly placed, spike-heeled kick to his foul mouth.
The biker dropped like a bag of grain, his knife tumbling from his popped-open fingers and rolling under some bushes, as if trying to get the hell out of this. The big man tried to speak again, but the words came out a mushy mumble mixed with the teeth he was spitting up like undigested corn. Blood streaked down his chin onto his bare, hairy chest in colorful ribbons.
“Ooooh,” Original Cindy said, hands on hips again, wincing in feigned disgust. “You do know how to gross a girl out… You wanna call me some more names? You ain't worked your way to ‘n' yet…'Course then I'd have to kill your ass.”
Wobbling to his feet, his eyes narrowing with hate, the biker glanced toward the bush where his knife peeked out from under some leaves.
“Now, you don't even wanna think about going for that, do you now? Your mama didn't raise a fool, did she— surely you know when you got your ass kicked?”
The response to this diplomacy was, “Fuck you!”
She waggled her head and waggled a finger, too. “No sir, nada chance, not on your
day… not even if I got some of that sweet thing you chased off afterward.”
Hysterical with fury and embarrassment, the biker lunged for the bushes where his knife awaited. Original Cindy cut off his path and met him with a side kick to the head. Again the biker dropped… and this time he stayed down. Breathing— a bubbly saliva-and-blood broth boiling at his broken mouth.
Turning casually toward the tents, Original Cindy thought,
But the blonde was nowhere to be seen.
“Damn,” Original Cindy said to nobody. “And just when I thought we had us a moment.”
Turning back, she went through the open cage doors into the bar. Two things assaulted her immediately: the raucous roar of a bad rock band in the far end of the room— almost twenty years into the twenty-first century and ZZ Top covers still ruled— and the aroma of sandalwood incense laced with monkey shit. Original Cindy decided the smart money was on breathing through her mouth— which meant she would fit right in with this group.
The joint was packed with the sort of lowlifes who made the road their home, and the combination of sweat, liquor, and bad breath was an invitation to be somewhere else.
she reminded herself, and besides… Cindy was parched. She'd been looking forward to a brew even before she worked up a thirst kicking biker ass. So she elbowed her way to the bar.
The band continued to whack away at their instruments the singer caterwauling into a frequently feeding- back mike; but Cindy knew it would take someone with a Ph.D. in classic rock to figure out which ZZ Top song they were currently butchering.
The bartender— a skinny pale pitiful-looking guy with more hair than his comb could handle and two puffy black eyes, courtesy of a dissatisfied customer no doubt— moved in front of her.
“Beer!” she yelled, over the din of the band and the crowd.
He nodded and walked away.
She wheeled to have a look at the predominantly biker crowd. Last time Original Cindy had seen this much denim and leather in one place had been at a rodeo near Fort Hood. This was nothing like that… thank God; even the bikers were an improvement over the shit-kicker cowboys in Texas. Original Cindy was not prejudiced, but she had little patience for rednecks.
Or for redneck bands like this one— two guitars, a bass, drums, and a druggie vocalist in search of the key; they sounded like marbles twirled in a garbage can with a couple of fornicating cats thrown in for good measure.
