You would expect them to hate each other, but no: Tits fell in love with every peaceable inch of her the moment they locked eyes over the rapidly cooling corpse of Miles of the Ponies. “Little sister,” Tits told her, breathing easy as she tipped gCopaleen’s corpus delicately over the side of the Skunk River bridge, “you got nothing to fear from me. Let me stand you a reefer.”

They got high as two kites, cooling the resinous smoke in their lungs and laughing it out in each other’s faces, Tits blowing hot, Hope blowing cold. Hope told her about her sisters with their pointed virtues, and Tits read her the litany of every mother-loving man she’d killed. Dawn and the police found them still leaned against the rail, so Tits tipped her hat to Detective Mulrooney and took them off to an automat for a cup of coffee and more talk.

“Tits Akimbo’s made a friend,” cracked the streets, agog at the sudden brazen humanity of her. The quietest mule kicks the hardest, and Tits would have had to grass a few valuable connections for talking out the south side of their mouths, only Fisheye made the mistake of peeling after Hope with a boathook. Word got around about the smoking crater Fish left in Hamartia Street and Hope clean and virginal at the dab center of it, and suddenly things were calm as lenten service.

Thick as thieves, those two, and full of sister-love as any blood; one blowing hot, one blowing cold.