Laurie watched Katie head off to the bus stop, then fell onto the porch step, a sigh escaping her. She pulled the headphones on and held her battered Discman still as her burnt copy of the soundtrack for High Fidelity spun up to speed.

She skipped forward to the eighth track and relaxed. With an hour before she had to go to work, she wanted to enjoy the outdoors for at least ten minutes.

Laurie saw a car pull into the Simmers' driveway but ended up watching a purple butterfly float by. She missed seeing two people get out and one hug Mrs. Simmers, the other glancing over and seeing her. The man turned away, a smile on his face.

“Mom, this is my friend, Cab. He's in town to pick up his new car and maybe look for a new place. Come on in, dude, and you can have some coffee while you wait for a taxi,” Lisa told her former business partner. Cable had sold his half of their consulting firm to her and had decided to stick to his faux-retirement plans of just drawing and writing.

He threw back the rest of the coffee in his mug, hugged his former partner briefly, then said thank you and goodbye as he headed out the door, sliding into the backseat of the taxi as he said, “Mainline Exotics. If you need the address, give me a sec.” He was looking for the PDF in his smartphone.

“I know where it is, man.”

Cable nodded and opened a different PDF, wanting to catch up on a book he had been reading for the book group he had just quit.

At the end of the taxi ride, he tossed a twenty and a five over the seat then got out. Pulling a piece of lint off his hoodie, he walked to the door of the showroom. Knocking on the door, he waited until it was opened. The showroom wasn't open to the public. With cars that ranged in price from a quarter of a million to forty million being sold at the shop almost daily, they didn't need—nor want—walk-ins.

“Mr. MacLeod?”

He nodded and the dealer stepped aside to let him in. The giant warehouse was lavishly outfitted on the inside, filled with rare classic cars and a handful of antiques beside a dozen recent supercars with girders, floors, and walls clad in exotic hardwoods.

They sat down to finish up the paperwork he had mostly finished at their first meeting. An hour later the dealer placed the temporary license sheet in Cab's hand. One of the workers in the shop pulled the cover off of Cab's new car, an Aston Martin Vantage V8. It was a very deep purple with white leather interior. He ran his hand over the hood as the worker placed the temporary license in the window then pulled it out to the alleyway.

Cable shook hands with the dealer then headed out to his new car. He slid into the driver's seat and grinned at the sill plaque: My Mistress. They had put a new one in since the original owner had had his name on it. While it wasn't brand new, it had only one thousand miles on it. Just enough to really work the engine in. He had asked his daughter what he should put and she had giggled as she said, My Mistress, the same name as his own father's excessively large yacht.

Pulling away, he decided what to do. While he had been only mildly debating moving to the Seattle area, his notice of a realty box had him pull up to it, then get out of the car. Cable pulled out a periodical and sat on the hood of his new car, looking over the houses for sale and condos being leased with options to buy.

In a local Allan Bros—a café he was almost stunned to find in the city since it was an Oregon only corporation—he used a red Sharpee to circle houses he was interested in, trying to keep the cost of them below three hundred thousand. There were some million dollar homes that greatly interested him but something about Simmers' neighborhood drew him. Something purple had caught his eye on the drive in.

Finally, he settled on six homes, ignoring his original cheap home idea. Five were looked after by one realty company with the sixth being sold by the owner. He called the owner of the sixth house and she said she could show it to him that day. Cable arrived at the house a short time later and got out of his car, hitting the fob to turn on the alarm then pulled the GPS card out of his phone and tucked it into the carrying case he had sewn. It held four two gig memory cards of MP3s, his GPS card, a four gig stick of ebooks, five empty four gig sticks, an extra battery, a car/wall charger, an SDIO two megapixel camera, and his Bluetooth unit. The phone had built in WIFI, though he was debating getting a WIFI card to see if he could increase range.

The woman showed him around the house and he nodded, though wasn't impressed. The price was about fifty thousand more than the home would be worth if it hadn't been a fixer-upper. He thanked her for her time then headed out to his car as his phone rang. “ 'Lo? Hi, Poli. Uh-huh. I'll be home soon enough. You didn't unpack anything, did you?” After a few moments, he said goodbye, then stuffed his phone back in his pocket. Except absolutely needed things, most of their belongings had been boxed up and many items placed in storage.

He used a pay phone since his battery was low and found the realty had a woman available to show him the five places. Cable drove over to their office and plugged his phone in as he waited. She was finishing up the loan paperwork for a family buying a home near the one he had just left.

As he waited, he leafed through the latest Redbook, reading the recipes. The rest of the magazine was supposed to be for intellectuals but seemed more for the type that thought tabloid fare was real.

“Mr. MacLeod? I'm sorry I kept you waiting.” The woman was in her late thirties-early forties and vaguely reminded him of Mary Jane White, though without the trashy bleached blonde hair. They both had droopy ears.

“Emma, right?” She nodded and he continued. “It was no problem. Do you mind us taking my car? I just got it and I don't want to leave it.”

“No problem. Let me grab my briefcase and we can go.”

She walked out and stopped. Her father owned an Aston Martin Vanquish so she recognized it and thought, Hell yeah, a good commission, finally. “My stepfather has a Vanquish.”

“I thought about getting one but I have a three series BMW for a daily driver. I wanted a two seater for fun.” He opened the passenger door for her and when her skirt hitched up, he saw through the small slit on the side of her skirt that she was wearing thigh-highs.

As he slid in behind the wheel, he debated asking her out then decided not to. He was more interested in dating women that he could have a future with at the moment and she was at least fifteen years older than he.

---

Poli flipped the panel down on her father's office television—the only one still unpacked—and carefully connected the leads from her portable DVD player to the inputs. With it connected, she turned on the television and flicked to the input signal then settled on the floor as she pressed the play button.

“Your dad's gonna spank you,” she heard and turned to see her Imaginary Friend, an anthropomorphic Patagonian Mara named Meara. “But since you're already watching...” She sat down beside her and plugged her headphones into the DVD player as well. Poli passed her the popcorn as Meara asked, “Where's Leela?” Leela was her occasional minder when her father had to be away.

“She's on the phone with cootie monster.” That was Poli's nickname for Leela's boyfriend, Joel. She actually liked him since he always gave her Pocky but didn't admit it to him since his crestfallen face was so amusing. Joel was a huge fan of her father's work and sometimes assisted as an inker for him.

---

Cable walked slowly through the third house again. They had come back to it. It had four downstairs bedrooms and five upstairs as well as a second sitting room, though one of the downstairs ones was listed as a den. The home had also been wired for a Gigabit home network, though the router had been taken. The basement was furnished as well, with a separate entrance for its four rooms. The original owner had rented them out to college students.

As he pulled his phone out, Meara walked into the room. “Wow, nice place. Are you buying it?”

“What are you doing here?” Meara had been his imaginary friend as a child. His childlike innocence was still around since he was an author of children's novels, at least enough he could see his Imaginary Friend that had become his daughter's, but for a few years, she had been a half-forgotten memory.

“Narcing. She's watching Lichtspielhaus.” A DVD about the group Rammstein.

“This is what I get for being so cool, yes?”

Meara giggled then watched the woman walk in and made funny faces at her to try and get a reaction. Nothing.

“Did you call me?”

“Hmm, oh no. I was hashing a story idea.” He held up his phone. “How much are they asking again?” He looked out the window. The house had a three car garage as well as a shed that had been painted to look like the house and was big enough to fit two cars .

“One point three five.”

He nodded. “Tell them I'll give them Twelve twenty.”

She nodded then asked, “Now?”

“May as well. I'd like to move as soon as possible. Tell them I'll pay half cash, then the other half over two years with five percent. Plus the usual closing fees out of my pocket.” Emma's eyes almost turned into dollar signs. Twelve hundred twenty thousand still gave her a eighty-five thousand dollar commission. She had thought the place would be a lucky sell at one point one million.

When she left the room, Meara asked, “Does this mean I get my own room now?”

He laughed and pushed her towards the door. “Evanesce, pesky rodent. And tell her she's getting a spanking.”

The creature did, fading like a wisp of vapor from a manhole cover on a cold night.

---

Cable walked through the Import and PC shop then did a double-take and turned back. A radar unit designed to fit in phones? He thought. Cool. He motioned to one of the employees and asked, “Know anyone who's messed around with one of these?”

“Actually, yeah. My dad just reviewed one for the site he works at, Hexus. He gave it a must-have for compatible Smartphones.” The employee pulled down one of the boxes and showed the back, then described to him how his father had fitted it in his car. Cab decided to buy it and put it on his credit card.

He spent twenty minutes checking it out, then found he had a wireless network nearby with lots of free shares and a network named . He was more than happy to peruse and 'evaluate' the media he found on it.

When he arrived home late that night, he woke Poli so she could come see his car as he had promised, then paid Leela and watched her walk out to meet Joel who was parked in front of his house.

“Oooh, it's pretty,” Poli exclaimed when he turned on the outdoor lights.

He opened the driver's door and slid the seat back then she clambered onto his lap and pretended she was driving. Cab smiled and kissed the crown of her head. “Time for you to go back to bed. I'll just ground you from Nintendo for a week instead of a spanking.”

She pouted but ran off when he looked at the palm of his hand then her backside.

Cable pulled the car into the garage next to his daily driven WVO-fueled BMW and his restoration project, a '57 Chevrolet pickup he was turning into a AWD cruiser with a 502 mated up with duel turbochargers. He had also extended the cab to the gate of the bed and put six bucket seats in. it. When he was finished, it would end up as a much cooler SUV. If he ever finished it.

He walked into the house and settled onto the leather couch, yawning, then picked up his laptop and signed onto his forums.