Snippet: Starlight Lounge
May 16, 2008 by myrnajacobs
There she was. I’d seen her there every Tuesday for months standing on the corner in front of the Starlight Lounge. She never looked like she was waiting for a bus or anything but she was waiting. It was easy to see she was not a street person or a hooker. She wore little white gloves like my grandmother used to wear. But this woman was not old. She must have been in her mid twenties.
Today I had decided I would be late for work and I would wait and watch to see if she did meet someone. There was no place really convenient for me to park and no place to sit on the street without being too obvious. I pulled up into a driveway that went to nothing but an empty lot. From there I could sit in my car and watch.
Today she had on a pale blue dress and white pumps. She stood demurely looking down at the sidewalk straightening the folds of her skirt. When she looked up and out across the street I saw that she wore glasses, some of those cat eyed ones that are in style again. Maybe she was just a girl who liked vintage clothing or an actress going to a audition. After all, this is Burbank.
The Starlight Lounge is one of those mysterious little bars from another time. I never see anyone go in or out. There is never anyone even walking by it. But I like it because it’s quaint and clean and looks just like it probably did in 1950. The neon is perfect and the outside is freshly painted.
I once saw a movie called Groundhog Day where the main character keeps living the same day over and over again. I wonder if this white gloved woman is caught up in something like that and has been coming out in her white gloves every day for fifty years.
But, of course, that isn’t possible. I turn to see if the patrol car coming through the intersection is going to stop and make me move but he just goes by. When I turn back to my lady with the gloves, she is gone. I like to think that she has gone to get married in Vegas, and that she is going to do it again tomorrow, and again and again. I imagine that she doesn’t know she’s been doing this same thing for fifty years and that every day she is happy and expectant about all the years to come.
Aug. 2002
