Sleek California girls on Rollerblades, long blond hair flying, long suntanned legs gliding rhythmically, earphones clamped over their heads, the latest in music destroying their eardrums “even as we speak.” He remembered Ben Lister’s use of that phrase and Marla’s pickup on it. The woman was a subversive, no doubt about it, but she made him laugh.A bearded guy on a red Ducati 916––the fastest bike on the planet––throbbed at the stoplight, waiting while an older woman in a flowing white dress adorned with baby–pink ribbons and a huge hat covered in matching pink roses tottered slowly on white stilettos across the road. A couple of expensive blond women––were all Beverly Hills women blond? he wondered––smart in designer suits and lavish designer breasts, toting designer–labeled packages stepped into a waiting, chauffered black limo. And at the café across the street a motley crew of young folk sipped iced mochaccinos and double lattes, idly taking the world apart and putting it back together again more to their liking.
