“Seattle.”
“No kiddin'?”
Max looked at her curiously. “Shouldn't I be?”
“No, girl, it's just… I'm headed home myself.”
“Seattle is home?”
“One of 'em. Spent some time in the Emerald City.”
Max's eyes tightened in confusion. “Emerald City?”
“Yeah, that's what the peeps used to call Seattle back before the Pulse. You know… like
?”
Max got a funny expression on her face. “I've heard of that… ”
“'Course you have!” Original Cindy looked at Max like the girl was speaking Esperanto. “Who hasn't seen the best movie ever made?”
“Me,” Max admitted.
“Back in the old days, every kid saw that movie.”
“Well… I had a kind of sheltered childhood.”
“Oooh, Boo, we got to introduce you to the
things.”
Grinning, Max said, “I'm up for that.”
“Look, chile, here's the dealio: Original Cindy needs a ride to Seattle… and you're already goin' that way.”
Max looked into her cup. “I need to haul. I'm sort of… meeting someone there.”
“Haulin' ass is fine with Original Cindy. The sooner we get there, the sooner we're there… right?”
Max's eyes widened but she also smiled. “How can I argue with that logic?… Let's blaze, Boo.”
Original Cindy's face exploded in a smile. “Boo, the Emerald City ain't never been hit by a pair of witches
fine… ”
Going inland and traveling on the interstate might have been faster, but Max still took precautions to avoid any possible contact with Manticore; so they kept to the winding PCH and moseyed up the coast at a leisurely eighty-five to ninety miles per hour.
They stopped only for food and the call of nature— and to gas up the bike, which at eight or nine bucks a gallon was burning a hole in her bankroll, as Max had known it would. The roar of the motorcycle and the wind kept conversation to a minimum, but the two young women somehow knew that each had finally found the sort of friend they needed.
There weren't a lot of questions about each other's past; instinctively they both knew the other had secrets not for sharing. Nevertheless, they just sort of fell in together and the start of their friendship felt like they were already in the middle of it.
The last five hundred miles of the trip flew by and before they knew it, Max and Original Cindy were tooling through the streets of Seattle, still a striking city despite the squalor of post-Pulse life.
“Everything's so green,” Max said, over her shoulder.
“That's why it's the Emerald City, Dorothy girl.”
“Dorothy?”
“Boo, you ain't got no sense of culture whatsoever.”
“I might surprise you, Cin… ”
At Fourth and Blanchard, Max eased the Ninja over to the curb in front of a place called Buck's Coffee. The sign looked as though it used to have four letters before the B, but they couldn't be made out.
“Caffeine calling,” Max said.
“Original Cindy hears it, too.”
Inside, the pair of striking women walked up to the counter behind which stood a heavyset man barely taller than Max, a lascivious grin forming on his fat, five-o'clock-shadowed face. At a counter behind him, a blowsily attractive blond woman about their age— wearing knee-high pink boots, a blue miniskirt, and a pink top that bared both her midriff and most of her formidable chest— hovered over a sandwich in the making.
“Ladies, don't even bother orderin' no frappes, lattes, cappuccinos,” he said. Staring at Original Cindy, he added, “I serve my coffee just like I like my women— hot and black.”
The blue-cheeked guy seemed proud of himself, under the illusion he had minted this deathless phrase.
Max could tell that Original Cindy was considering jumping the counter to bitch-slap the white right off this horse's ass; so Max gently said, “Come on, Boo— let's go someplace where we can get a grande.”
“Yeah… instead of the limp mini this mope is peddlin'.”
Max giggled, and the blonde toward the back giggled, too… but the counter guy did not laugh; in fact, he reddened and fumed.
He started to say something, but Original Cindy cut him off with a wave of a finger accompanied by a sway of the head and shoulders. “Don't hate the playah, baby… hate the game.”
Max and Original Cindy bumped fists and the blond woman laughed out loud.
The counter guy turned on her. “You know what's really funny? A skank like you lookin' for a new job in this market, is what's
funny.”
The blonde fell silent.
“Hey,” Max said, taking a step toward the counter.
“Butt out,” the counter man said. “This ain't no concern of yours. And you… ” He turned to the blonde. “… you're movin' on to bigger and better things. Get your fat butt outa here!”
Max leapt the counter, landing between the blonde and the counter guy, who was startled and a little afraid by this sudden impressive move. “Hire her back.”
“What do you—”
Max lifted him up by the throat; his eyes were bulging as he stared down at her, too afraid and in too much discomfort to be properly amazed by the petite woman lifting him gently off the ground, a fact neither Original Cindy nor the put-upon blonde picked up on.
The blonde touched Max's arm. “It's all right… he can't fire me, 'cause I quit… I'm tired of workin' for this sexual-harasshole.”
“Good call,” Original Cindy said.
Max shrugged and put the guy down.
He was leaning over the counter, red-faced, choking, when the three women strolled out onto the street together. They stood at the curb, near Max's bike, and chatted.
“My name's Kendra Maibaum,” the blonde said, extending her hand.
Max shook it. “Max Guevera— and this lovely lady is Original Cindy.”
“Pleased,” Original Cindy said and shook hands with Kendra too.
“How did you do that?” Kendra asked. “Handle Morty like that, I mean.”
Original Cindy raised her eyebrows, smirking. “Girl had training.”
Max at that moment realized she would have to watch herself, from now on— she had been entirely too careless around Original Cindy.
“Training but no coffee,” Max said. Her X5 skills would have to be better concealed. “And we haven't even started
about findin' a place to crash.”
Kendra asked, “You guys need a place to crash?”
“We're kind of new in town,” Original Cindy explained.
“Like five minutes new,” Max added.
The blonde shrugged. “If you don't need a lot of space, you can stay with me. I've got a place. Room enough
