One for overnight - five for a week: the movie

Photo by Nathan Philps

I plop my pile of DVDs on the counter.
"One for overnight; five for a week."
"One for overnight; five for a week," the fellow behind the counter echoes, then we pause and look at each other.

"That sounds like a great movie title," I say with an air of faux dreaminess.
"I'll write the screenplay and give you the option," he offers.
"Great idea!"

He's gazing at my account. "I want to give her this one for free," he says to his coworker. Apparently, I'm within a few check-outs of a free rental, but not quite.

My mind drifts back twenty-three years to an evening shortly after we had taken up residence in our house on the edge of Fairfield. Elder daughter was five months old and I was drunk with exhilaration.
We live here. We actually live here.
I had strolled down to Pic-a-Flic to change the phone number on my account, explaining we had moved into a house a few blocks away. A mischievous grin spread across the face of the fellow who was behind the counter then.

"Party!" he stage-whispered. "Party at Persephone's!"

Back in the present, I collect the half-dozen DVDs, thinking ruefully of our eventual return to Hades, where the last two video-rental stores closed this past spring.