The Shortbreads love their bike more than anything in the world. They love clothes, and the right pair of sunglasses, and fucking and being flash, and Annie in particular loves choosing out mornings from her collection of ear and nose studs. But nothing beats squeezing their bodies up close together, Annie in front, Dawn behind, on the seat of their silver and black enameled beloved. Killer, they call it. Not tremendously original, but then they don't have to be. They steer Killer the long, slow way through the city just so that it will have more time to call attention to itself, and them. Every street corner, guys hollering, hooting, demanding their phone numbers -- power. And power, as we all know, is Annie's dearest friend. Dawn, who spends these rides with both hands on her sister's bare belly, says she can feel the thrill in both their skins. It's electric, she says.

That's why they're always fucking late.

"Well -- look what the breeze blew in."

"What's wrong?"

"Wrong is, I pay you girls by the hour."

"Sorry. I left my watch somewhere."

"Incredible. I think we'll have to get one sewn into your navel. What was it today, Dawn?"

"Apricot nectar."

"Huh?"

"Annie was thirsty."

Nobody I mean nobody pulls this on me and gets away with it.

"Fridge full of Evian, Hi-C, and God-knows-what-else not good enough for you, eh?"

"C'mon, Trash. You know you can't stay mad at us. Let's get to work."

What these tiny wind-up butterflies don't know, goddamn them. They're the only ones who can pull this and get away with it. They know for what I ask them to do they've more or less got the right to blow in a half-hour late.

"What are we doing today, Trash?"

They sense, too, Trash can only do good work when she is at least a little bit pissed.

"For starters you can take off that ridiculous thing you're wearing."

"You're just jealous."

"On second thought -- stop. Dawn, you take it off her. We'll start with that."

Annie is beautiful.

File under 'obvious'. It's that raven black hair mostly. I'd like to see girlhood pictures of her, find out if it was always so. Weeks of hovering, gliding, peering into cracks, smelling her, brushing and combing, oiling, powdering, developing and enlarging her and still I hyperventilate.

"What did that thing cost you, Annie?"

"Thirty-five --- aw, c'mon Trash. I just got it."

"You'll be reimbursed. Dawn?"

The tearing sends me, oh it simply does. Let it go, girl, let it go. Gotta keep the trigger finger moving though. This is where Dawn grins and Annie pouts, where the cautious girl has her way with the naughty, where tearing -- hm -- becomes a metaphor for something.

"Tell me Dawn. What's in Annie's pretty little head this afternoon?"

"Annie has the hots for a man who sells fruit."

"Does she now?"