---

Morning in Fort Stockton doesn’t so much arrive as it seeps in through the cracks like dust under a screen door. By the time the sun gets serious about it, the regulars at the big round table inside Grounds for Divorce have already claimed their territory like a pack of aging coyotes with bad knees and strong opinions.

The coffee is Folgers. It always is. It flows from the Bunn-O-Matic like a municipal service, dependable and faintly judgmental. The mugs are thick, chipped in places, and hold heat the way grudges hold memory.

Lucinda moves between tables with the efficiency of someone who’s seen every version of a man a town can produce and has long since stopped being surprised by any of them. Dark hair pulled back, white uniform with red piping, top button doing what it always does, which is to suggest rebellion without committing to it.

At the big round table: Rusty Hammer, red beard already catching crumbs from a biscuit he swore he didn’t order; Rex Hall in his pharmacy coat, glasses low on his nose like he’s perpetually disappointed in the world’s dosage; Chad from the Piggly Wiggly, who has the managerial confidence of a man who can’t quite manage anything; and a rotating cast of others who’ve earned their chairs through longevity, stubbornness, or both.

Lucinda sets down a fresh pot.

“Y’all ever heard of something called Irritable Man Syndrome?”

That lands like a flat tire.

Rusty doesn’t even look up. “Nope. And I don’t intend to start this early in the day.”

“I’m serious,” she says, topping off Rex’s cup. “It’s in the paper. Says there’s a medical reason for men acting like—”

“Careful,” Rusty mutters. “You’re fixin’ to describe everybody in this room and I don’t feel like bein’ diagnosed before breakfast.”

Chad leans back. “Is this like when they tried to tell us coffee was bad for you? Because I ignored that and I’ve been proven right for twenty years straight.”

Lucinda folds yesterday’s Stockton Telegram-Dispatch with a snap that says she’s not asking permission. “It’s called Irritable Male Syndrome. IMS. Been studied and everything.”

Rex adjusts his glasses. “Sounds made up.”

“It was coined in 2001,” she says. “By a scientist studying sheep.”

That gets a reaction.

Rusty finally looks up. “Now hold on. If I’m gonna be compared to livestock, I’d at least like it to be something that can pull a plow.”

---

---

“He noticed male sheep got irritable when their testosterone dropped,” Lucinda continues, ignoring him with the practiced grace of a woman who has ignored worse. “Same thing happens to men.”

Chad snorts. “We ain’t sheep.”

“No,” Rusty says. “We got more dignity than that.”

Rex sips his coffee. “Debatable.”

Lucinda reads. “Symptoms include mood changes. Irritability. Lower motivation. Depression.”

Rusty points his biscuit at her. “That’s called Tuesday.”

“Cognitive changes,” she continues. “Difficulty concentrating. Memory lapses.”

Rex frowns. “Now wait a minute.”

“What?” Chad says.

“I forgot what I was about to say,” Rex replies, then pauses. “Which may or may not prove her point.”

“Low energy,” Lucinda goes on. “Fatigue that isn’t explained by poor sleep alone.”

Rusty leans back, chair creaking like it’s filing a complaint. “I slept eight hours last night.”

“You snored through half of it,” Rex says.

“That’s not the same as poor sleep,” Rusty shoots back. “That’s efficient sleep.”

“Reduced libido,” Lucinda says, not looking up.

The table goes quiet in a way that suggests several internal calculations have just been performed.

Chad clears his throat. “Well now, that’s—”

“Don’t,” Rusty says. “Just don’t.”

“Fewer spontaneous erections,” she adds.

Rusty stares into his coffee like it’s betrayed him personally. “I come here for peace. Not… audits.”

Lucinda keeps reading, relentless. “Loss of muscle mass. Increased body fat, especially around the midsection.”

Chad pats his stomach. “That’s just prosperity.”

“That’s pie,” Rex says.

“That’s living,” Chad corrects.

“Sleep disturbances,” Lucinda says. “Insomnia. Poor-quality rest.”

Rusty gestures around the table. “You’re describing aging like it’s a crime.”

“It’s not a crime,” she says. “It’s a syndrome.”

“It’s life,” Rex says.

“It’s also apparently your hormones,” Lucinda replies.

Rusty leans forward. “Let me tell you something. I don’t need a Scottish sheep doctor to explain why I get irritated. I get irritated because people keep trying to explain things that don’t need explaining.”

“Like your temper?” she says sweetly.

“My temper is justified,” he says.

“Your temper is legendary,” Chad adds.

“My temper is earned,” Rusty corrects.

Through the front window, something red flashes.

It’s subtle at first. Just a color cutting through the morning like a memory refusing to stay buried. Then the engine note follows, a low, confident rumble that doesn’t ask permission so much as announces presence.

Every head at the table turns in unison.

A 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air two-door hardtop rolls into the Piggly Wiggly parking lot next door like it owns not just the asphalt, but the decade it came from.

---

---

Red with a white roof. India Ivory and Matador Red, if you want to get proper about it, and around this table, you better.

“Now that,” Rusty says, voice softening in a way Lucinda has never once heard applied to a human being, “is something worth talkin’ about.”

The Bel Air glides into a spot, sunlight catching chrome like it’s trying to remember how to be sunlight.

Twin wind splits. Hooded headlights. Rear fender skirts that make the whole car look like it’s wearing a tuxedo to a barbecue.

“283,” Rex says, already halfway out of his chair without realizing it. “Four-barrel, I’d bet my license on it.”

“Rochester,” Rusty adds. “Breathes like it means it.”

“Two-speed automatic,” Chad says, standing now, drawn to the window like a moth with better taste.

Lucinda watches them, arms crossed, the article forgotten in her hand.

“Y’all were sayin’ something about symptoms,” she says.

Nobody hears her.

---

---

The car settles into idle, that gentle, confident lope of a small-block V8 that doesn’t need to prove anything because it already did.

“Look at those lines,” Rusty murmurs. “No nonsense. No apologies.”

“Fuel filler’s behind the taillight,” Rex says. “Left side. Cleanest design decision Chevrolet ever made.”

“Whitewalls,” Chad says. “Coker Classics, by the look of ’em. 205/75s.”

“Faux knock-offs,” Rusty adds. “But done right.”

“Drum brakes all around,” Rex says.

“And still better than half the nonsense they’re puttin’ out now,” Rusty replies.

Lucinda taps the table. “Mood changes. Irritability.”

Rusty doesn’t turn around. “Not now.”

“Difficulty concentrating,” she says.

Chad waves her off. “We’re concentratin’ just fine.”

“Memory lapses,” she adds.

Rex squints at the car. “Did those come with gold badging standard or was that—”

“Standard,” Rusty says immediately.

“You sure?”

“I was there,” Rusty replies.

“You were not,” Rex says.

“I was there in spirit,” Rusty corrects.

Lucinda smiles. “Lower motivation.”

Rusty finally turns. “We just got up outta our chairs. That’s motivation.”

“For a car,” she says.

“For the right car,” he replies.

She flips the paper open again. “Reduced libido.”

Chad laughs. “Now see, that’s where they lose me.”

Rusty points at the Bel Air. “Back in ’57, you had that car, you didn’t have a problem in that department.”

Rex nods. “That car was half your personality.”

“More than half,” Chad says.

“Whole thing,” Rusty corrects.

Lucinda raises an eyebrow. “So your personality now is what, exactly?”

Rusty looks at her. “Refined.”

“Diminished,” Rex mutters.

“Selective,” Rusty says.

“Sleep disturbances,” Lucinda continues.

“I wake up at night because I got things on my mind,” Rusty says.

“You wake up at night because you gotta pee,” Chad says.

“That too,” Rusty admits. “But I handle it.”

Lucinda folds the paper again. “The article says it’s a slow drip. Testosterone declines about one percent per year after forty.”

---

---

Rex nods thoughtfully. “That explains some things.”

“Explains why I don’t like people as much as I used to,” Rusty says.

“You never liked people,” Chad says.

“I liked better people,” Rusty replies.

“Or you were just younger,” Lucinda says.

Rusty considers that, then shakes his head. “No. People got worse.”

“They didn’t,” she says. “You did.”

He smiles, slow and stubborn. “That’s your opinion.”

“That’s science,” she says, tapping the paper.

Outside, the Bel Air’s owner steps out. A man of a certain age, moving carefully but with purpose. He shuts the door with a solid, satisfying thunk that echoes faintly through the glass.

“Listen to that,” Rusty says. “That’s a door.”

“That’s craftsmanship,” Rex adds.

“That’s weight,” Chad says.

“That’s 1957,” Rusty finishes.

Lucinda watches them all, the way they lean toward the window, the way their voices soften, the way their complaints disappear like they’ve been temporarily repossessed.

“You know what else the article says?” she asks.

No answer.

“It says men going through this don’t realize it’s happening to them.”

Rusty chuckles. “That’s because it ain’t.”

“It says it can affect relationships,” she continues. “Communication. Emotional availability.”

Chad snorts. “I been married nearly eighteen years. If emotional availability was required, I’d have been outta there after the first ten.”

Rex nods. “Same.”

Lucinda tilts her head. “Or maybe you just got lucky.”

Rusty looks back at the car. “Luck had nothin’ to do with it.”

“What did?” she asks.

He watches the Bel Air for a long moment, then says, quieter than usual, “Timing.”

That hangs there.

Outside, the man walks into the Piggly Wiggly, leaving the car alone in the sun like a promise parked between eras.

Lucinda softens, just a touch. “The article says it helps to talk about it. Get checked. Make changes.”

Rusty sighs. “I don’t need to talk about it.”

“Of course you don’t,” she says.

“I know exactly what’s wrong with me.”

“And what’s that?”

He gestures toward the window. “That’s what’s wrong.”

Lucinda follows his hand.

“That car?”

“No,” he says. “The fact that it ain’t mine anymore. That none of that is.”

Rex nods slowly. “We had our run.”

Chad shrugs. “Still got coffee.”

“Still got opinions,” Rex adds.

“Still got each other,” Lucinda says.

They all look at her like she’s just suggested something radical.

Rusty grumbles. “Don’t get sentimental on me.”

She smiles. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

They sit there a moment, the hum of the Bunn-O-Matic filling the silence like a heartbeat that’s seen better decades but refuses to quit.

Outside, the Bel Air gleams.

Inside, the regulars shift, settle, sip.

Lucinda pours another round.

“Next symptom,” she says, just to see what happens.

Rusty waves her off. “Save it for someone who needs it.”

She looks around the table, at the men who’ve just spent twenty minutes proving every word of what she read.

“Alright,” she says. “I will.”

She walks away, leaving them with their coffee, their car, and their carefully defended version of themselves.

Rusty watches the Bel Air a little longer, then mutters, almost to himself, “Still got it.”

Rex hears him. “What?”

Rusty straightens, takes a sip of coffee, and looks back at the table like nothing happened.

“I said,” he grumbles, louder now, “they don’t make ’em like they used to.”

And for once, nobody argues.

---

---