Retha loves her bouffant almost as much as she loves her man Hank. First time she saw Jackie Kennedy with that gorgeous dark hair as high as her grandma’s mile-high meringue, she knew that was the hairdo for her. The Miller girl, the one that Earline hired a month ago, never really manages to get it as big as Retha wants, and she doesn’t gossip as much as good old Earline does to those factory women who always eat lunch at the Bus Stop Cafe and then head over to Earline’s shop for a bottled coke and a smoke and a look at Photoplay. Retha likes a chance to dish on those Hollywood sorts–Liz Taylor and whichever man she’d spidered her web around this week. Retha’d never get over Eddie Fisher leavin’ Debbie Reynolds for that raccoon-eyed hussy. Hank would never do her that way. She and Hank had been together for 15 years. Hadn’t had no kids, but Hank said he didn’t mind. Meant he got to keep Retha all to himself. Retha loved the way he’d squeeze her backside when he said it. She wasn’t the wisp of a girl she’d been when they first met back in high school. They still loved to go bowling at Barnett’s Bowl-a-Rama. But lord that man was always late! And so here she was, standin’ in a downpour, her new do as sticky as a honeybun, and it wadn’t as if $3.00 was chicken feed. But as long as they took time to pull into the Bus Stop Cafe for a cup of coffee and a piece of Miss Watkin’s homemade chocolate pie, Retha would find a way to forgive him. Hank was the one as sweet as sugar, she was a bit more earthy, a touch of salt. This rain wadn’t gonna make her melt.