The Starlight Lounge

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              It began modestly. Ginny, turning down the bed for the night, started to say something, and couldn’t quite find the word: “Oh, I was at the — I was getting toilet paper — you know, the big counter!”

And Don tidied up the sentence: “My heart medication at the pharmacy. Thank you.”

              Don Salo and Ginny Mancuso had fallen in love fifty-seven years prior to that moment, among the cracked concrete and foggy windows of Brockton High School, and Don still loved the feel of Ginny’s soft cheek when he pressed his lips to it. They had become adults in step, Ginny supporting Don when he broke free of a commercial construction crew and put his own framing crew together; Don supporting Ginny through nursing school. The two of them raising three girls. All the hard work and sacrifice never crowded out the tender love and honest respect they held for one another.

              Having been together all those years, the fact that Don and Ginny were finishing each other’s sentences was hardly a surprise. They hadn’t even noticed, in fact. There had already been years of it, maybe decades. But both had felt there was something different about that particular exchange, and neither knew what it was.

Then the tidying up of sentences became something — more. Don would begin to say something, and not only would Ginny finish the thought, she would find the most exacting words to speak it back to him, bringing new truth to the phrase, I couldn’t have said it better myself. Their counterpoint had articulated the thought perfectly, and sent it back out into the real world in the most familiar of voices.

              A few months later, Ginny was ready before Don for a routine they’d fallen into in their 60s — Thursday night supper at the Red Wing Diner. She was in the kitchen, studying the magnets on the refrigerator of the places she and Don had travelled. None were recent — shoulder surgery had sidelined Don for a while, and Ginny’s increasing joint pain had limited her walking. Aging had naturally drawn comfort and routine closer as it simultaneously and silently disconnected them from things new. Ginny was looking at a plastic waterfall magnet that said Niagara Falls in the foam. They’d been in their twenties — it was a Saturday morning and Ginny was listening to a story about Niagara Falls on the radio as she cleaned. Don was on the roof fixing loose flashing. An hour later they were in the car to New York. The idea of shooting off like that felt impossible to her now, and she shook her head.

              Don entered the kitchen but stopped upon seeing Ginny. Feeling his presence there she turned, and froze upon seeing Don.

              Don looked at Ginny: brown flats, jeans, white button-down, navy jacket.

              And Ginny surveyed Don’s outfit: brown boots, jeans, white polo, navy jacket.

              Mother Mary, Don thought, when did she start parting her hair like mine?

              Jesus Christ, Ginny thought, even our hair’s the same.

              Don offered an uncomfortable laugh. Ginny smiled weakly and waved him back to the bedroom as if saying, get back in there, you crazy prankster. But it felt decidedly un-jokey to both. Ginny had noticed this years ago, maybe as far back as in their 30s or 40s, that their dressing began to — and this was the word that had come to her then — agree with one another. Ginny had a flowery style in high school and Don had a sort of greaser look. When their styles merged years later it was easy to simply pass off as maturing.

But this. This was uniform. This was cultish.

              Back in the bedroom, Don didn’t know which clothes he should switch. He briefly considered stripping down nude and changing everything. He felt emasculated somehow, as if after all this time it had finally happened: he turned into his wife. And, just as bad, Don felt that he’d somehow made Ginny masculine at the same time. He changed his white polo for a blue t-shirt and pulled a gray sweatshirt on top. Still, it didn’t feel like quite enough.

              He returned to the kitchen and found Ginny applying a thick coat of lipstick in the kitchen window. “That was odd, huh,” Don said.

              “Oh, it was funny,” Ginny said, and he could tell she meant it. And yet, that lipstick was the brightest she owned.

***

              Years earlier, when Don and Ginny were in their mid-50s, they had decided on diner out, opting for an old favorite, Antonio’s. Before even leaving, Don and Ginny had — unbeknownst to one another — decided to avoid their usual marsala and piccata in favor of something new. They had both felt the danger of routine at points in their marriage, speaking openly about it a few times. At one point — in their early 40s after the third baby girl was out of diapers — Don had told Ginny he believed comfort and apathy were two sides of the same coin. It was after a period where Ginny had been bored with work and domestic routines, and that dullness had soaked into her mind. She began opting for the same meals. For movies at home even when they could get a sitter. That image had always stuck with Ginny — the comfort/apathy coin. And it was what Ginny was remembering then, in their mid-50s, as they buckled into the car on their way to Antonio’s, the clicks of the seatbelts coming one on top of the other.

              Ginny said, “I know the plan was Antonio’s, but let’s do something different.”

              “Agreed,” Don said.

              Ginny paused, feeling something off in what she was about to say.

              “I’ve had this craving for—”

              “TexMex,” Don said as he turned to Ginny, a little thrill running through him as he did.

              Don and Ginny stared at one another, each lightly calculating the situation, which felt new and unfamiliar. And new and unfamiliar didn’t happen much in a relationship that was, at that point, pushing four decades. Eventually, Ginny nodded, almost imperceptibly.

              “I knew it,” said Don, laughing as he did.

              Ginny smiled, exhaling. “Ok, she said, burritos it is.”

              Don’s laughter slowed, then stopped. He moved his hand from the ignition and set it in his lap, studying Ginny. But there was only one question to ask.

              “How’d you know I wanted burritos?”

              “Well, I don’t know that I did, exactly,” Ginny said.

              “Gin, we haven’t been to Don Jose’s in years. And I never got burritos, not once.”

***

              Back inside the house, Ginny fixed some grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. Don poured Ginny a white wine (with some trepidation, as he feared he’d anticipated her desire for it). He opened a Budweiser for himself.

              “Musta been that detective show last night. They were in Tijuana; everybody was eating all the time.”

              “Oh, come on, Don.”

              “Well, what the hell am I supposed to say? It’s gotta be something.”

              “It’s just — sometimes it feels like we’re morphing into the same person. That was just too weird, you know?”

              “I know. I was purposefully gonna avoid the marsala at Antonio’s tonight for that reason. Predictability is a killer.”

              Ginny took a shaky sip of wine.

              “Gin, you ok?”

              She nodded.

              “Oh, Jesus,” Don said.

              “What?”

              “You weren’t getting the goddamn piccata, were you.”

              Ginny set her wine down.

              “We need time apart, Don. We’ve always known in the past. You’d take the girls out for ice cream or something without asking me when I needed some time to myself. I’ve pushed you out to go play cards or go watch a game at the bar when I knew you were antsy.”

              “This is different, hon.”

              “I’m aware of that, Don. Even more reason.”

              Don had been taking a long haul from his beer, but cut it short. He’d heard a seriousness creeping into Ginny’s voice he’d only heard once before, when they had been together for just a few years, and were newly engaged. But that tone had made an impression.

              They were at the wedding of one of Don’s friends, and the bride’s cousin had clearly seen something she’d liked in Don, and Don had not hidden the fact he at least enjoyed the attention, and at worst wanted to act on it. They’d flirted at the table, they’d flirted at the bar, they’d flirted in the buffet line — and the wedding as a whole glanced with pitied eyes at Ginny.

              Don had first heard that serious in Ginny’s voice on the phone the next day. That cold self-preservation and steely self-respect. Emotionlessly, she told him she’d taken off her ring. She didn’t say it, but in her mind, it was over. It was weeks before she let him even speak to her again. The anger was gone but the seriousness was not, and Don never wanted to hear that tone again, never wanted to feel that resolve against him, that distance she so easily created. But he heard the beginnings of it in the kitchen then. He offered Ginny a gentle nod, that of someone backing away, palms raised in peace. He knew this stubborn toughness was something that would not change about her, and something he had to, and did, respect.

              Don took a breath to speak, hoping for a start at softening her, easing her.

              “I need space,” she said, shortly. “I don’t like this hocus pocus stuff.”

              Don nodded, waited for Ginny.

              “And that—”

              Ginny pointed to the driveway where the car was parked, still warm from their bizarre encounter in it.

              “Never happened before tonight.”

***

              Ginny had taken her space. She managed to gather a few girlfriends on short notice and was gone that Friday afternoon for the weekend. When she returned on Sunday night, she was committed to one thing and relieved by another. She was committed to the work of keeping their love a new and renewing thing. And she was relieved, because she had missed Don while she was away.

              Don, as he fixed the gate into the backyard, as he painted the front door, as he tuned up the furnace, committed over and over to be better for Ginny, and was relieved how genuinely and deeply he was missing his wife. It was painful.

              They had successfully reset something that weekend, and the years past — five, ten, twenty. Now, in their 70s, this new oddness had arrived.

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The rest of this story is available in Volume 5, Issue 1 of Night Picnic.