The policemen–who were detectives actually, Dori assumed, since they weren’t in uniform–insisted on driving her to the station.  That was fine with her, seeing as how the cop shop in question was in Ypsilanti (Ypsi to its friends), which was also where Pandora’s was, and Dori usually burned a quarter tank of gas going to and from work.  That was impressive, considering it was a twenty-five-gallon tank, or something like that.  So if the police wanted to drive, that was fine with her.  She had pulled on some ‘whatever’ clothes (whatever she could find) that consisted of a pair of Smile’s jeans and a sky blue sweatshirt that had once read “Seattle” but was washed well past the point of legibility.  A pair of red and white thrift shop Air Jordans (too big) and an equally thrift shop knee-length leather and sheepskin coat (which didn’t look nearly as fancy as it sounded) completed the ensemble.

Dori had never been in a police car, that she could remember.  This one was unmarked, but it felt like a cop car should feel, with vinyl seats and no door handles in the back.  Detective Braum and his partner Rawski had very little to say during the twenty minute drive.  Dori wondered if she looked like a hardened criminal to passers-by, assuming they could even tell it was a cop car.

She started thinking about her grandpa, thanks to Mr. Barrett’s reverential memory of him.  It was strange to think of herself as being related to someone whom people considered a bona fide Hero.  She wondered what Peter Thomasson had done that was so great, how he had saved all of those people, and wanted to kick Mr. Barrett for not hanging around so she could find out.

Dori tried to picture Peter Thomasson.  She had never seen a picture of him, but then he was on her father’s side and Aunt Andrea was on her mother’s, so they wouldn’t have had any photos around the house anyway.  She didn’t think there were any at her parents’ house, either though.  They weren’t much into hanging family photos.  Dori tried to picture an older–no, younger, he would’ve been a soldier–version of her dad.  The red salt and pepper beard would go of course, and his hair would be crewcut.  Maybe he had freckles like hers.  No, more of them.  She tried to imagine her lanky father stockier, more muscular, but with a hint of baby fat in his cheeks.  He’d have a sunburn, too, like any pale-skinned Southern boy would.  The picture started to form, and then the whole thing fell apart when she tried to picture him in fatigues, with a rifle.  Her father had just never done anything.  Nothing remotely heroic, unless you counted the fact that he and mom fucked almost continuously, whenever they were in the same room it seemed.  Dori had been ten before they even bothered to leave the room if she was there, or to close the door if they were in their own room.  She didn’t even know where her dad worked, or what he did.  He had no hobbies (except sex) that she knew of.  Certainly he wasn’t hero material.  She had an uncle–technically a half-uncle, maybe?–on her father’s side who was pretty much equally nondescript–he had some blue-collar job and had a wife and four kids, the last she’d heard of him (about seventeen years ago).  If he was anything like her dad, Dori guessed, Peter Thomasson had stumbled into some situation that made him look all heroic, and then died before anyone realized that he hadn’t done anything on purpose.  The Thomassons were just not hero material, as far as Dori could tell.

Or maybe Peter Thomasson was this really heroic guy, and the family DNA was just breaking down.  Dori made a monkey-face at the window, to go with the thought.

There were three or four people waiting outside the doors of the Ypsilanti police station when they pulled up.  “Here we go,” Detective Rawski said.  He sounded like he was about to push a toboggan full of kids down a steep hill.

“Is that her?” one of them shouted, holding out a microcassette recorder.  Everyone started yelling at once then, and Dori realized they were reporters.  Two people started taking pictures of her, apparently just in case she was indeed “her.”  She wondered if she ought to throw her hands up like the celebrities and arrested Mafioso did but by the time she thought of it there was no point.

“Guys, give us a break,” Braum said.  He kept a gentle but persuasive grip on Dori’s elbow and steered her inside.

The reporters didn’t follow.  “Cool, I never had paparazzi before,” Dori said.  Neither Braum nor Rawski seemed to find it funny.

Braum took her first to a desk where they took down her driver’s license number (as usual, no one believed her name was really “Dorito” until they looked at her license and determined it wasn’t fake), social security number, and fingerprints, which was also pretty exciting in a third-grade field trip way.  Dori was looking forward to telling people about her afternoon, especially Brian, who was going to wonder why she wasn’t there when he called.  After that, she was escorted into an interview room.  Except for the mirror, it looked nothing like the one on Law & Order–it looked more like a classroom, right down to the orange plastic chairs–but she imagined S. Epatha Merkerson on the other side of the one-way glass anyway.

Braum sat down across from her, with a folder in front of him.  Rawski had disappeared.  “Coffee?” he asked, indicating one of the two styrofoam cups on the table.  She took one.  “Dori, we wanted to ask you some questions about Chris Sinclair.”

“Who?  Oh, the football player.”

Braum nodded.  “Do you know him?”

“Only because he was at the restaurant last night.  My boyfriend pointed him out.”

“Had you seen him any time before that?”

“At Pandora’s?”

“Anywhere.”

“No.”  She shrugged.  “On TV maybe, after he got stabbed.”  The coffee was horrible, but she drank some of it anyway.

“What do you know about that?”

“About him getting stabbed?  Some chick knifed him in the nuts for raping her, I think.”

She got a tight smile from Braum.  “That about sums it up.  Any idea who this ‘chick’ is?”

“No.  Why would I know–ohh, dude, do you think that I did it?”  Dori’s eyes widened in surprise.  “I thought you wanted to talk about the robbery some more!”

He was dispassionate, as if he hadn’t decided if her surprise was real or fake.  “Did you do it, Dori?”

“Shit, no.  I don’t even know the guy.”  Maybe she should stop swearing.

“Have you ever been to the Tri-Gamma house, on campus?”

Dori shook her head.  This was where Detective Briscoe on Law & Order would make up some crazy story about what she might have done, to shock her into revealing the real crime.  It would’ve been funny to just agree with him, and see what he did–oh, no, wait, that wouldn’t be funny at all, she’d just go to jail.  Which would suck, considering that she’d never even seen Chris Sinclair before last night.

“Mr. Sinclair came to us this morning.  He saw you in the restaurant, and has positively identified you as the woman who attacked him.  I have to ask, Miss Thomasson.  Do you have an alibi for the night of July fourteenth?”

She bit her lip.  “Umm, no, I doubt it.  That was like four months ago, and my life isn’t that interesting that I can remember.  You can check and see if I was working.”

“You weren’t,” he replied immediately.

“Sh–okay.”  Dori got a little creeped-out tingle at the back of her neck, that someone was checking up on her to see if she’d actually attacked this guy.  “I don’t remember what I was doing that night.”  What if they sent her to jail because she couldn’t prove she hadn’t done it?  Aunt Andrea would tell them about her parents, and she’d mean well, but they’d decide she was some kind of vindictive sex psycho and put her away. 

Rawski stuck his head in then.  “Tim,” he said, and Braum got up.  The two detectives had a little whispered conference in the doorway.  They looked in another folder that Detective Rawski was carrying.

Braum nodded a lot, patted Rawski’s shoulder (which was strange, since Rawski was taller and older and didn’t look like the junior member of the team at all), then came back to the table.  He had a friendly smile on his face.  “Looks like we’re done here, Miss Thomasson.  Your fingerprints didn’t match the ones we found at the scene and on the weapon.”

“Cool!  I’m not going to jail?”

“Of course not,” he said, smiling more broadly.  Now he looked like somebody else’s dad.

“Even though the guy said I did it?”  For some reason she had just assumed they’d take the word over a handsome jock boy over hers.  Dori made a mental note to kick herself for having low self-esteem later.

“We can’t put people in jail based solely on accusations,” he said with a polite smile.  “Thank you for being so patient with us today.  Makes our job easier.”

Dori shrugged.  “No problem, I guess,” she said.

When Detective Braum dropped her back at home, there was a message on the machine from Brian.  She forgot about eating breakfast, which had been her original plan, and got her keys to go over to Brian’s instead.

It was a short drive to a much nicer neighborhood.  Brian still lived at home, too, and he was three years older than she was.  Maybe she could talk to him about Aunt Andrea wanting her out.  “Hey,” she said when he answered the door, “sorry I wasn’t home when you called, but I got sort of arrested.  Well, not arrested exactly, but they took me to the station and questioned me about that football player who got stabbed.”

Brian blinked slowly at her, and then laughed hard.  “You stabbed a football player?” 

“No, dumbass, they asked me about it.  I guess he came into Pandora’s and saw me and thought I was the one who did it.  But I’m not.”

He made a big show of composing himself, straightening nonexistent hair.  “Of course you aren’t, dear.”

Dori could tell immediately that she was going to be hearing about this for a good long time.  Brian already jokingly treated her like Metro Detroit’s premier psycho because she’d vomited cow’s blood on her boss when she’d quit her job at Kroger.  Okay, maybe that had been a little crazy, but it had been over three years ago.  “Dude, you got your dick pierced, you have no right to even start with me about being a freak.  So do you want to go car shopping?”

He had come to the door ready to go, as usual.  Dori rarely went inside Brian’s house, because the resident dog, a generally good-natured grey cockapoo by the name of Cherry, hated Dori for some unknowable canine reason.  Brian had already closed the kitchen door so Cherry couldn’t get to the front door, but they could both hear the dog’s frenzied barking and clawing at the doorjamb.  Cherry even knew the sound of Dori’s car. 

“We’re going to make an incredible first impression,” Brian said as they walked out to Dori’s car.  She was still in her “whatever” clothes, and he was dressed head to toe in black.  Metal loops and chains on his pants and boots matched his eyebrow and septum piercings nicely.  He had shaved his head again, too, which had a way of making his brow look heavy and squinty even though it wasn’t really.

“What, should I have dressed nicer?”

“No.  I like looking like a punk when I go to car dealers.  If they ignore me because of the way I look, I know I don’t want to shop there.”

“Hey, that’s kind of smart.  So it’s a good thing I didn’t shower?”

“You look fabulous.  If it was summer, you could’ve worn a tank top, so they could see your tattoos and the hair under your arms,” Brian said.  Dori chuckled and unlocked the door for him.

Her car had apparently gotten wind of the day’s plans, however; it refused to start.  The Oldsmobile whined sullenly, once, and then ceased to make noise altogether.  “Shitfuck,” Dori said.  “What’s up with that?”

“Sounds like your starter,” Brian said. 

“Oh, right, like you know shit about cars.”

“Hey, I’m not the one who got asked to come help you shop.”

“I know, but I just want you to stand back and look intimidating, so no one will try to cheat the chick with the S&M boyfriend.  You’re moral support.”  Brian leaned back in the seat and closed his eyes.  When he didn’t respond, she poked him.  “What are you doing?”

“Just taking a moment to get into character, as your boyfriend.  You know, I had a crush on you, back in the day.”

“I know,” she replied with a smile.  “About six months before I had one on you.”

“Why’d you have to go and like girls too?” Brian said with mock disappointment that still managed to be a little bit insulting.

“Most guys would consider that a bonus,” she said.  “It’s not like I planned it that way.”

“It doesn’t bother me, exactly.  I just don’t think I could deal, if we were dating.  I’d feel like I was competing with everyone else in the world, instead of just all the other men.  I’d go crazy.”

“Thanks for sharing,” she said a bit sourly, taking the keys out of the ignition.  “Can you drive?”

“Weren’t you going to try to trade this one in?”

“Not now I’m not.”  She sighed.  “I’m too hungry.  Man, I didn’t have my donut yet and it’s almost noon.  Why am I even awake?  Let’s just go, and I’ll find a new car and then I’ll sell this one later, or set it on fire, or something.”  Dori had set a car on fire once, too, but Brian didn’t know about that.  After the blood incident, she figured he didn’t need any more fuel.

He didn’t mind driving, and was even kind enough to swing by Dunkin’ Donuts and treat her to two glazed and a custard filled.  “You okay?” he asked her while they munched donuts and coffee and drove toward the nearest “dealer row,” in Westland.

“Hm?  Do I look not okay?”

“A little.  You seem rushed.  Is the police thing bothering you?”

“Not really.  There’s shit going on with Smile that bothers me more.”  Dori shrugged.  “Pandora’s got robbed last night, too.”

Brian all but swerved out of his lane.  “What?  What the fuck are you talking about?  Dori, I have got to educate you in the fine art of gossip one of these days.  The store got robbed and that wasn’t the first thing you told me about?”

“Um, no, I had to tell you about getting arrest–”

“Forget that, forget it,” he said, waving his hand at her.  “Was everyone okay at the restaurant?”

“Pretty much.  We got tied up in the cooler, and they took Walter–”

“You got tied up in the cooler?  For how long?  Who found you?”

She gave him a shorthand version, and it slipped her mind to mention that Amber had pissed her pants.  But that was okay, she wasn’t going to blab about that anyhow.

They were still going on like that when they pulled into the Dodge dealer’s lot.  Dori was reminded of why she didn’t always tell Brian things; he was a good listener, but he also had a tendency to explode with shock or delight or disgust or whatever was appropriate at every little thing.  It got kind of tiring.  His vocal responses were more than a little bit effeminate, in fact, which was funny because Brian was relentlessly straight.  As a salesperson came out the door to greet them–that was nice of him, considering it was kind of cold–he put his game-face on.

Buying a car turned out to be easy.  So easy it bordered on creepy, in fact.  Dori had never purchased a new car–had never purchased a car that cost more than a thousand dollars, in fact, but a smiling, chubby Vietnamese-American salesperson named Paul was happy to show them the whole nine yards.  After being hustled into a couple of different cars, looking through about a million glossy catalogs full of pictures of happy-looking young corporate hipsters, sitting through a credit check (Dori actually had a checking account and a credit card, thanks mostly to Aunt Andrea’s insistence that she get them), looking over warranty information, trying to follow numbers and costs and interest rates that were thrown at her, and waiting a few times for Paul to talk to his manager (Brian said they were probably going in the office and watching Ricki Lake for a while, not discussing anything at all), Dori found herself signing a bunch of papers and accepting the keys to a brand-new, bright red Dodge Neon.  The air of unreality was palpable as Paul shook her hand, and shook Brian’s hand too.  “Congratulations,” Paul said, as if Dori had just given birth.  Considering that she’d just bought a $12,000 car, the financial commitment was similar, at least.

“Can I drive it?” Brian asked.  Dori had never so much as sat behind the wheel of his car.

She made a squint-eyed, tongue extended face at him, and said, “nyeanngh.”  Paul laughed.

Brian just grinned.  “You have the longest tongue I’ve ever seen,” he said.  He had made this observation before.

“That’s why the girls like me,” she said, and he laughed.

Dori followed Brian back to his house.  She noticed five things immediately about her new car:  it was tiny compared to every other car she’d ever owned, it smelled like plastic instead of the previous owner’s BO, the heater worked really well, the stereo was extremely loud and had a CD player (oh, right, Paul had said it came with CD and cassette; she wished she’d brought a CD to listen to), and it was kind of fast.  She almost rear-ended Brian twice because she was going faster than she thought she was.  It was cute, though.  All in all she was pretty happy having a new car.  This was being a good day.

When they got to Brian’s house, she asked him if she could use the phone.  “I want to call Smile,” she said, “and tell him that I’m a grownup now.  Just like the hipsters in the catalog.  I need to get stock options, and a jet-ski,” she joked.

“Yay, call and report in to the boyfriend,” Brian said.

“What, jealous?”

“Nope.  Just counting down till the fight.”

“What do you mean?”

He rolled his eyes.  “What do you think I mean?  You guys are going to get into a fight.  It’s all that you do.  You two get along much better when you’re not dating.”   

“Oh, fuck off,” Dori said, giving him a shove. 

Of course, it didn’t help that as soon as she told him about the Neon, Smile went all Rampaging Michael Douglas on her.  “What do you mean, you bought a car today?”

“Just what I said.  We found one, and I thought it was okay, so I got it.”

“You just got it?”

“Calm down, Smile, that’s what I said.  It’s nice, it’s red.  My car wouldn’t start, so I needed something.  What are you so pissed off about?  You’re the one who said I should look for a car in the first place!”

“I said you should look, I didn’t say you should run out and buy one.”

“Well, mine’s broke and everyone says it’s not worth fixing, what was I supposed to do?”

“Shit.”  She could almost see him rubbing his eyebrows with one hand, the way he did when he was all pissed off and trying to either calm down or think of something even meaner to say.  “What is it?”

“A Neon.”

“New or used?”

“New.”

“You bought a new fucking car?  You could have gotten a decent used car for less money!  I could have helped you with that.”

“What are you, my husband?  Calm down, already.”  Somewhere in Brian’s house, a door opened.  His mom had come home, or something.  Great.  Now Brian’s whole family could listen to her argue with her weirdly psychotic boyfriend, just like Brian had predicted.  Dori’s mood soured further.  “You’re ruining my day, dude.  I was feeling kind of good about myself.”

“God, Dori.  What did it cost?  Can you afford it?”

“It cost twelve nine fifty, something like that.  And the payment’s not that bad.  I think I can afford it and rent–oh, Aunt Andrea’s kicking me out, I think.  She left me a note.  It didn’t say as much, but I think that’s what it amounts to.”

Smile missed the last part.  “You got a Dodge Neon?”

“Yeah.  It’s cute.  And it gets good gas mileage.”

“When it’s running, it does.  Dodges suck.”

“You’re just saying that because your dad works for Ford.”

“Actually, I’m not.  Did you check Consumer Reports?  See what they say about it?”

She rolled her eyes, even though he couldn’t see.  It was a reflex.  “What do you think?  Look, if you were so into this, you could have told me before I said I was going shopping, and helped then.  Now it’s too late.”

“You said you were going shopping, not going out to buy a whole new goddamn car!” Smile hissed.  He was clearly trying to yell, but not so he’d be heard by anyone else, which meant he was calling from his parents’ house and not his apartment, which was probably part of the reason he was randomly psycho.

“Dude, what are you displacing onto me?  I don’t know why you’re freaking about this.”

He let out a harsh sigh.  “I have to go, okay?  I’ll talk to you later.”

That set off a grenade of uncharacteristic anger and irritation in Dori.  Smile was good at cutting her off when she had just gotten past being mad and petty and was ready to talk like an adult and maybe work things out.  It was like a door slammed shut in his brain, and usually it smacked her in the face.  “Fine, fuck you very much,” she said, and hung up.

Brian was sitting on the floor with a magazine in his hands, looking embarrassed and apologetic.  “Um…that didn’t sound so good,” he said.

Dori stood up to replace the phone on his shelf.  “Smile’s being a dick,” she said.  “I don’t know what crawled up his ass and–”

That was as far as she got before Cherry streaked into Brian’s room, silent and deadly as a grey-furred cruise missile, leapt over Brian’s legs, and attached her jaws to the back of Dori’s knee.