including slices of pizza.”
“Double Jack on the rocks for me,” Pax said as he approached the bar. “And a Pepsi and 7-Up for my ‘friends.’”
He set his hands on the bar and stared into Sammie’s green-blue eyes. “They’re driving,” he added with a slight laugh as he took in her beauty.
Pax was captivated by this stunning girl. She was in her early to mid-twenties, and had lost that early bloom of beauty so common to Hispanic women. Most girls of her heritage bloomed early and faded quickly into a darker-skinned version of Pax’s own German grandmother, who was built somewhat along the lines of a stout barrel.
He read her name tag. Sammie had acquired the size of a post-bloom Hispanic girl, but she was definitely not barrel-shaped. Her ample body was rounded in all the right places and narrowed slightly at the hips to highlight her DD breasts. Had she been wearing a loose-fitting outfit like most women her size wore, her curves would not have been visible. But her tight, University-of-Arizona-blue stretch pants with an equally tight red top hugged and showed off every curve. And there were a lot of them. Obviously, she was proud of her voluptuous body.
Pax laid several twenties on the bar. “Reverse tab,” he said. “We might be here a while. If we leave early, you get a bigger tip.”
Sammie took the twenties and put all but one of them under a heavy glass next to the cash register. She rang up the three drinks, put the twenty in the drawer, and put the change in the glass. “I never work an open drawer,” she said to Pax. “Keeps me honest.” She set the drinks in front of Pax, smiled, and added, “Besides, if the owner saw any of us not ringing something up or not closing the cash register, he would throw our asses out of here.”
“And such a beautiful ass it is,” replied Pax, waiting to see her reaction. Some girls would be offended; some would be embarrassed; Sammie just met his eyes and said “Thank you.”
“What’s a beautiful Hispanic girl like you doing here?” he asked, suddenly reddening as he realized how stupid and corny that sounded.
She just laughed slightly and answered, “My family—especially my father’s family—have been in this area or a little west of here since before the Gringos came up from Texas to steal the land from Mexico.”
Then she looked Pax directly in the eyes and asked, “What brings a bunch of Guidos from the Jersey Shore out to Phoenix?”
Paxton laughed. He liked Sammie. She stood her ground, but wasn’t angry or offensive. “Not everyone in Jersey is Italian,” he answered. “Most of the Knights are from German families. We started getting together in high school to ride together and work on our bikes together. We were just a bunch of friends that liked motorcycles. We became the Knights because we would sometimes race each other on the streets of the Lansing Square neighborhood. One day a little old lady turned onto the street in front of us and Long John and I ended up barely missing her. Nobody got hurt, but she wrote a nasty letter to the paper complaining about all these hooligans roaring around the street and demanding that the police do something about the gang of young thugs that had charged at her like knights in armor on motorized horseback. From then on we were the Knights.”
“Long John designed the emblem,” he explained, turning to show Sammie the back of the jacket. “Originally the end of the lance was shaped like a penis, but that was a little too obvious, so he changed it back to an ordinary lance. But if you look at where it comes out of the K, the intent becomes pretty obvious. And before you ask, the reason it doesn’t specify New Jersey is that for people who grew up in those neighborhoods, there’s only one Camden.”
“And why did the Knights leave Camden?” asked Sammie.
“Cities change. Cities die,” answered Pax. “Even before the Navy
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