Page 99 of Road Queens
“God, I’ve even missed the shushing; what iswrongwith me?”
“Nobody’s got that kind of time,” Sidney informed her. “But I can put together a list if you want. Might take a few weeks.”
“It will not!” Amanda insisted, and got a quick hug from Cass for it. “Four or five days at most. Ow!”
Dave edged closer for a look at Cassandra’s breakfast like he didn’t want to spook an antelope at a watering hole. “I’ve never seen anyone eat meat loaf and gravy at nine fifteen in the morning.”
“That’s her thing,” Sidney said. “Dinner for breakfast. It’s how you know she’s a raging sociopath.”
“Huh. Okay. Amanda, if you don’t need me to watch the counter, I thought I’d be a customer for a change.”
“Yes, of course—I know what you’re here for.” Amanda went to the small bookshelf labeled with stickers of each letter of the alphabet, and pulled out two new tomes from the slot markedC. “I can’t believe it took the publisher two weeks to get this to me. Thanks for not getting impatient and buying it from Amazon.”
“That’s okay. Gives me an excuse to come in and—”
“Awwww, Dave! I’m touched.”
“—learn how to duck when you inevitably throw more pens at me.”
“Oh, boo. And here’s the other one, you’re gonna love it.”
“What’d she make you get?” Sidney asked, peeking over Dave’s shoulder. “Oh. Wallach’sRugged Road. Yeah, thatisa good book.”
“It’s about a pioneering motorcyclist—”
“He bought the book, Amanda.”
“—who famously rode from London to Cape Town via the Sahara and through Africa. Without a compass!”
“He’ll be able to read all about it, Amanda.”
“And she did this on a 600cc single-cylinder Panther motorcycle! While hauling a sidecar and a trailer! She was also the only female engineering student at Northampton Polytechnic. She also—”
“You just have to let her run down,” Sidney told Dave. “Booze doesn’t work and neither do gags. Nothing on earth can stop her when she’s midlecture. Sorry she’s spoiling the entire fucking book for you.”
“She alsojoined the Women’s Engineering Society. And raced motorcycles. And was a mechanic in World War Two. Like Queen Elizabeth the Second!”
“Amandaaaaaaa ...”
“And she was the only female dispatch rider in the British Army and was the ATS’s first female tank mechanic, and that’s all I’m going to say about her.”
“Lookin’ forward to it.” Dave examined the other book,The Way Things Work, and smiled. “My niece is gonna love this one. She shadowed me last week and wants to start her own construction company.”
“Sidney was telling me about your construction company too,” Cass said.
“No, she wasn’t,” Sidney replied. “Cass is making small talk to make you feel included.”
“Whoa! Not nice, Sid. Even for you.”
“Fine, Cassandra, sorry, get over yourself.” Sidney waved her apology away even as she made it. “What? If I go over the line, I’m mature enough to own it.”
“Are you, though?” Amanda teased in the “Is he, though?” tone of voice made famous inThor: Ragnarok. To Dave: “We were actually talking about Jonny Frank and why it’s terrific that he’s dead.”
“I hate when we remember the scumbag’s name but not the victims’,” Cass said. “Can you tell me the name of even one of Bundy’s victims?”
“Margaret Bowman, Kimberly Leach,” Amanda said.The Stranger Beside Mewas one of her desert isle books. “Nancy Wilcox. Brenda Ball.”
“Okay, someone who isn’t Amanda? Or Dahmer’s victims, can anyone name ... no, wait, that last is a bad example. Dahmer was from Wisconsin, so lots of people around here can name some of his vics. Steve Tuomi was one.”
