The diner was hot and humid and smelled of something that had burned long ago and never quit haunting the room. A long counter with chrome trim, ten stools, five booths by the window. A waitress leaned into the grill window, talking to someone in the back. He took a seat at the counter. He wondered if that was her. He could feel his heart beat harder, that big loose boom that always seems like your heart has forgotten the usual rules.

She turned around, nodded at him, and reached for the coffee pot. She put a menu on the counter and held up the pot: yes? He nodded, studying her face. Could be. Could be. She sensed his attention and drew back, and something in her face told Joe she hadn’t been doing this long. She wasn’t used to be stared at by the customers. Unless, of course, she’d been waiting for someone to sit where he sat, look at her like he’d looked, and ask the question. Are you her?

“Do you have any matches?” Joe asked.

“Sure.”

She pulled a book out of her apron and laid it on the counter. Joe picked it up: different. He got out the matchbook from his pocket, still three matches left, and compared. Different lines. Different printer, different designer.

“You recognize these?” he asked, holding up the old book.

He saw the same slight emotion flicker in her eyes again – confusion? Dislike? Doubt? She took the matchbook. “It’s ours, I guess, that’s us, but these must be the old ones. We’ve had these as long as I’ve been here.”

“How long is that?”

“Well, a while? 

“Thanks.” He nodded and put the matches in his pocket. “Just the coffee.” He took out his cigarettes and lit one from the new book. “And ask the cook to come out, if you wouldn’t mind.”

She nodded and went back to the grill window. She spoke a few words, looked back at Joe, and said something she else. She shrugged. A minute later there was a crash of dishes and the sound of hissing water; then the kitchen door swung open and the cook emerged. He was shorter than Joe, slightly hunched, a parenthesis that wasn’t sure what thought it was supposed to end. He
looked down at the counter: no plate, no half-eaten Reuben. Wasn’t about that, then. He walked over, wiping his palms on his apron. 

“What can I do you for?”

Joe slid the matchbook across the counter.

“When did you stop using these?”

The cook looked at the book, then back at Joe. “I didn’t know we had. We still got them. Mary? We out of matches?”

“No. I mean this design. The green and the black. The new ones are orange.”

“I never noticed.” He patted his breast pocket, then stuck a hand in his apron. He pulled out a matchbook: green and black.  “Still got a few around. Takes a while to work through the stock.” He slid the book in his breast pocket and peered at Joe. “What’s the pitch?”

“Sorry?”

“You brought me out to talk about matchbooks? Usually it’s the grub, and then it’s usually because I made it the way they liked and it turned out they didn’t like it that way after all.”

Joe cocked a thumb at Mary, the waitress. “She’s new. Who’d she replace? You have someone quit recently?”

The cook leaned back, and gave Joe a dead-level look. “What’s this about? You a cop?”

“Yes, name’s Friday. I’m working the daywatch out of missing matchbooks.” Joe sighed and tapped the matchbook. “Don’t mean to be mysterious. I’m sorry. I’ve been getting matchbooks mailed to me. Someone thinks they should mean something to me. This was the last one. I think I was supposed to find someone here, but I don’t know.”

The cook looked at Joe without expression. After a while Joe decided to start counting to ten. The cook cut in on four.

“I think I know who you mean,” he said. He pointed to a booth by the window. “Talk?”

-----

The cook leaned against the window ledge and put his feet up on the booth seat. He looked like some sort of cricket, Joe though. A pale greasy cricket,  with stubble.

“Her name was, uh, Cindy. Lucindy. Probably Lucinda but Lucindy was what she called herself. She hit the wind a few weeks ago, big hurry. And she said someone might come around asking. I guess you’re that guy.”

“I don’t know. Why did she leave?”

The cook shrugged. “Boyfriend, probably.  They had this thing going on, I’d hear. He’d come in all the time when she was working. Really crafty looking guy, eyes that saw angles in a pancake, you know? I’d hear them talking. She had this idea she was an heiress or something.” He raised his eyebrows. “True. At least as she said it. Her real dad, that’s how she put it, her real dad was a big businessman, that’s what her mom told her. The boyfriend was convinced she should stake her legal claim.”

“Legal claim.”

“Right, like get what’s hers. That’s how she always put it, get what’s hers”

“Who was he?”

“Some big shot out of Cleveland, that’s what her mother said. You have to admit she had a point. Guy abandons her, he should do right.”

“She have a name?”

“Joseph something or other. Headed up some sales division for some big company.”

“Joseph. She said Joseph.”

“That was the name on the checks. He sent her money, see. Every month. Never enough, really an insult when you think about it. Had his name on the checks and everything, she showed me, which is – well, it must have gotten them thinking, you know?”

“Did the checks or the letters say anything about being her father?”

“Don’t know about that, but who’s rich enough to send money to someone else’s kid?”

“Not me.”

“Or me, that’s for sure.” He looked up at Joe. “You look like you’re doing okay.”

“I’m a salesman. I got one good suit. This is it.”

“Well, I’d buy, but I’m not in no position, and we don’t need any.”

“You have new ones.”

“That’s right.”  The cook swung his feet to the floor and slid to the edge of the booth; he checked the room for customers. None. “So you’re that guy?” the cook asked. “You can’t be that guy.”

“He wasn’t rich,” Joe said. “He died with about a thousand dollars in the bank. The house was paid for, though. That helped.”

The cook frowned. “Look, you want, I can see if I can send a message. She might be around. But you’d better –“

“The money didn’t come from her father. It came from her father’s brother.   Who wasn’t rich either. Made a lot but spent more. You’ll have to send my apologies. No rainbow. No pot.”

“Well, that’s for her to decide.”

“And her boyfriend.”

“’Course.”

Joe slid the pack of cigarettes across the table. The cook nodded and took one. Joe struck a match from the book he’d brought and lit his own; he waved it out, struck another, and lit the cook’s cigarette.

He tossed the matchbook at the cook, who put up a hand to catch it, and missed.

“Give that match to Lucindy,” Joe said. “She has any other letters she wants to write? Save the postage. Burn them.” Joe stood. “I get another letter, it all goes to the law.”

Joe went back to the counter and sipped his coffee. Cold. The waitress looked at the cook, who was heading back to the kitchen, staring hard hate at Joe.

“Rueben," Joe called to the waitress. “No pickle.”

When the sandwich came, Joe put a dollar on the counter and stood. “The kraut’s off,” he told the waitress.

“Do you want me to tell the cook?”

“He probably suspects,” Joe said, and left.