Page 41 of Rigid

“That’s easy,” she said. “Doris Day.”

My jaw dropped. “Doris Day?”

“Uh huh.”

“What the fuck? Really?”

She grinned and nodded eagerly as if truly satisfied she’d given the answer she wanted to. “She was always smiling, and her smile is infectious. Every time I see her movies, I either smile or cry, and her movies are awesome. Pillow Talk? Oh my God, that was so good. And Send Me No Flowers? Lover Come Back? Move Over darling? They were awesome. And Please Don’t Eat the Daisies? Yeah. It’d be Doris Day for me.”

“What would you say to her?”

“Thank you. That’s it. I’d just say thanks for making me smile.”

Her blonde hair normally hung straight down over her shoulders. She’d fixed it differently, and it was fixed into a mass of curls, leaving it not near as long, but twice as big. I studied it, and wondered just how much time she spent making it that way.

After deciding she must have spent an hour doing it, my focus went from her hair to her face. With her elbow resting on the edge of the table, and her cheek against her fist, she seemed to be daydreaming.

I let her sit there for a moment, lost in whatever she was thinking of. When her eyes appeared to focus again, I grinned. “I like your hair. It’s different today.”

“I made it big. I like big hair. Well, sometimes.”

“I like it, too.”

She made the “O” face, and then rapped her knuckles against the table. “What do you eat on a hot dog?”

“Mustard and relish,” I said flatly. Anything else is sacrilegious.”

She shook her head. “I disagree.”

I was curious to hear what she had to say about my favorite comfort food. She didn’t know it, but she picked the wrong guy to fuck with about hotdogs. “What do you eat on them?”

“Sport peppers and chili.”

“Good answer.” It was the only answer she could have provided that I would have accepted as being remotely close to proper. “Ever eat ‘em with ketchup?”

She scrunched her nose. “I don’t even eat it on French fries.”

“No shit? What do you dip ‘em in?”

“Horseradish sauce and barbeque.”

“No shit. Makes eating ‘em at McDonald’s tough, huh?”

“Nope.” She reached for her purse, stuck her hand inside, and after a digging around, pulled out a fistful of horseradish packets. “I keep these in my purse.”

“You keep fucking horseradish sauce in your purse?”

She tossed the packets in her bag. “I get it at Arby’s. Every time I’m in there I get about fifty of them.”

I nodded toward her purse. “What else you got in there?”

She dumped it onto the table and grinned.

Surprised at her willingness to dump her life onto the table, I sifted through the pile. A wallet. iPod. A dozen packets of horseradish. A red bikini bottom. A flip-top box of gum. Fingernail clippers. Earbuds. A pair of sunglasses. Three pens. Hand sanitizer. Lip gloss. A phone. A fingernail file. Car keys complete with pepper spray. Lipstick. Three different colors of fingernail polish. A folding pocketknife. A red bikini top. Three sleeves of takeout chopsticks. Numerous gum wrappers.

“Quite an assortment.”

She shrugged. “I just cleaned it.”