So next day, Monday, Bishop was with the gang again. He was at Cobra’s place in Berkeley, a great big clapboard box of an old house in the town’s run-down southwestern lowlands.
Bishop, Cobra, and Shorty were all out in the wide garage. This was Cobra’s chop shop, where he and his buddies worked on their bikes. Cobra, ass planted on an upended milk crate, was taking the carb out of his silver hog’s manifold for a rejet. Shorty was assembling a new chrome intake system on his Fat Boy. And Bishop, just to be doing something with them, was on one knee, laboriously polishing the spokes on his front wheel—a new wheel he’d gotten because of the wind resistance on the full disc original.
Unscrewing a Phillips head from the carburetor’s float bowl, Cobra stole a glance across the garage at the newcomer. Checking him out, gauging the give-and-take between the man and his machine. This was important business around here: the bikes, the way they chopped the bikes, knew the bikes. It was like the language these guys spoke to one another. Even just shining up the chrome the way he was, Bishop could feel Cobra watching him, judging him.
Now, fingering the grooves of his screwdriver handle, the outlaw pinned Bishop with one of his gaudy emerald eyes. The angles of his craggy, V-shaped face sharpened in a canny smile. “Hey, waxer,” he said. “That chrome won’t get you home, y’know.”
“Oh yeah.” Bishop nodded at the other’s silver Softail. “Look at that thing, dude. Like something that came out of a slot machine. This, I just put a new stroker in last month, gave me another quarter inch.”
“That’ll speed her up, all right,” said Shorty. He was cross-legged on the shop floor, his shaved head bent as he twisted a breather bolt into a carb bracket. “Till you blow your rods all over the highway.”
Bishop went on carefully working his rag around spoke after spoke. “Nah, I ran a plate in there at one-eighth, kept the ratio the same. She starts a lot better now, too. Of course, I had to weld in a spacer to get the engine back, and fuck me if I blow a gasket.”
Cobra laughed. Nodded, satisified. He sighted along his screwdriver blade and started on the next Phillips head.
Bishop polished the wheel. The smell of the degreaser and the oil was thick and sharp. The garage door was closed. There were two windows on one wall, open to let out the fumes, but there was no cross breeze and it was a still, warm day. The fumes and the stench were stifling. Sweat dripped off his brow onto his arms, onto the floor.
Now the door from the house came open. Both Bishop and Shorty automatically glanced over that way. Then they kept looking that way as Honey stepped into the garage.
She was wearing one of Cobra’s leather jackets. It covered her to the tops of her thighs in back but it was unzipped in front and she had nothing on underneath but a pair of pink panties, bikini panties. When she moved, the jacket came open. The white of her flat belly flashed. The curve of one small breast showed to the dark nipple. She had her blonde hair tied back in a ponytail with a red ribbon. It was a sweet touch. It made her face look scrubbed and fresh and innocent. It was the way she looked in the photographs, Bishop thought. Those photographs on the vanity table in her father’s house.
“I brought you guys some beer,” she said.
She had two bottles of Rolling Rock in one hand and a third in the other. They clinked and rattled as she set them on the worktable at Cobra’s back.
“Ah, you’re the best,” Cobra growled at her.
He pulled her down across his lap. He kissed her deeply. His hand went up her back, lifting the leather jacket. The pink panties had only a thong back there. Her slim ass was bared to the other two men.
Cobra worked his tongue in her mouth, worked his hand up over her waist, pushing the jacket up farther. She moved her body against his touch.
Bishop watched her. He felt the rhythm of his breathing change. The sweat ran down his forehead in two streams. He and Shorty exchanged a glance. Shorty shook his head and smiled in admiration.
Cobra broke out of the kiss. He nuzzled his face affectionately against the girl’s. Then he spanked her twice and set her on her feet. She pouted down at him.
“You ever coming in?” she asked him. “You said you would. I’m getting bored.”
He reached behind him casually, snagged his Rolling Rock off the worktable. “Yeah, just let me finish up in here, okay, baby?”
She sighed, trailed her finger down his cheek. “You sure do like to take those things apart, Co. You spend all day at it practically.”
“S’ what it’s all about, sweetheart. What it is all about.”
“What?” She still pretended to pout down at him. Moved her hips near his face. “It’s all about taking engines apart?”
“Fucking A,” said Cobra. He winked at the two others. “And not just engines, either. Everything. Am I right? Taking everything apart. Taking everything apart until it all comes tumbling down.”
He lifted his beer high by his head, sitting knees wide and grinning, wicked, a sceptered king on his milk crate throne. As if he’d said something true and profound, he toasted them all and drank to it.
Honey smiled at him indulgently. Gently mussed his combed-back hair: He was her baby boy. “Well, when you’re finished bringing society to its knees, you can come upstairs and do the same for me,” she said. “Okay?”
“Oh man!” whispered Shorty, shaking his head again.
Honey stepped in between Cobra’s spread legs. She drew one side of her jacket open. Cobra pushed open the other side with the neck of his beer bottle. She pressed her naked self against him, the jacket folding over him.
Shorty bit his lip, squeezed his eyes half shut, jamming to the turn-on like it was a riff on a mad guitar. It was hot to see, all right. Bishop lifted the stub of a cigarette burning on a cinder block beside him. He wiped his brow with his T-shirt sleeve. He pulled smoke and watched Cobra’s hands lift Honey’s jacket in back again. He watched the way her yellow ponytail hung down against the black leather.
He wanted her. He was surprised how much. He watched her through the fumes and smoke and heat that swirled around his head. He watched her grinding into Cobra. He thought of the cheerleader and the prom queen in the photographs. He wanted her a lot.
This wasn’t going to be easy, he thought. To draw her off, to steal her. He’d felt pretty sure of himself in her bedroom back home. He’d sounded awfully sure, striking the raw deal with her father. Why not? Women fell for Bishop. It was wild sometimes the way they fell. Maybe it was because of his good looks or all the cool stuff he did, riding motorcycles, flying planes, beating people up and so on. Or maybe it was just because he was such a coldhearted bastard, a challenge to the female sensibility.
But Cobra—Cobra was just as cool, just as cold, and every inch as big a bastard. It was going to be genuinely tough to take Honey away from him.
Bishop took a last drag off his cigarette. He smiled to himself behind the smoke. Yeah, he thought. It was going to be tough as hell.
Finally, the lovers broke it up. Honey drifted off reluctantly, lifting her arm to let her hand linger in Cobra’s hand, her fingers trailing away. She blew him a kiss from the door.
Bishop watched her, still smiling to himself. He watched her until she went inside, until the door closed behind her.