Rafe Ortega, 59, retired diesel locomotive engineer, sinks into the scuffed vinyl of his usual booth at The Rusty Spike, half annoyed that the annual town chili cookoff afterparty has overrun his usual quiet Friday night spot. He’s worn the same faded Burlington Northern work jacket every Friday for seven years, the oil stain on the left cuff stiff and permanent, a leftover from a 2021 repair on a SD70ACe engine that kept him on the side of the tracks outside Laramie for 12 hours in a blizzard. His routine hasn’t shifted once since his wife Linda died of breast cancer: Pabst Blue Ribbon, a side of cold fries, 45 minutes of people-watching from the booth that faces the door, then home to work on his vintage train lantern restoration project in the garage. Spontaneity, he’s long decided, is just a fancy word for unnecessary risk.
The seat across from him slides open before he can register the shadow falling over his table. She doesn’t ask permission, just sets a dented plastic cup of spiked cider down, shrugs off her thrifted flannel, and says the only seat left in the bar was next to the guy who won the chili cookoff and won’t stop bragging about his secret habanero blend. He recognizes her immediately: Clara Voss, the new town librarian, ex-wife of his former rail yard foreman, the man who wrote him up three times in 2018 for taking two extra minutes at the water cooler after his sister called with news of Linda’s first recurrence. His first instinct is to tell her to find another spot, the old resentment coiling tight in his gut, but then she shifts to get comfortable and her knee brushes his under the table, denim on worn work denim, and he catches a whiff of jasmine hand lotion mixed with the sharp cinnamon of the chili she’d clearly just eaten, and the rejection dies on his tongue.
She leans forward, elbows propped on the sticky table, the neon Pabst sign behind him gilding the edges of her dark hair, and holds his eye contact for three full beats longer than polite small talk requires. “You’re Rafe, right? The guy who restores old train lanterns. I saw your display at the town fair last month. That 1927 Union Pacific model you had? I’ve been thinking about it ever since.” He blinks, stunned. He’d set up the display as a favor for the local historical society, figured only the handful of retired rail guys in town would give it a second glance. He mumbles that it’s just a stupid hobby to keep his hands busy, and she snorts, the sound loud and unselfconscious, and he finds himself smiling before he can stop. He shifts to reach for his beer, knocks over a drop of it onto his jeans, and she passes him a crumpled paper napkin across the table, her fingers brushing his for half a second, warm, calloused at the tips, like she spends half her free time sanding furniture or repotting plants.
The internal conflict hits him fast, sharp. Part of him is screaming that this is a terrible idea, that she’s tied to the worst boss he ever had, that letting anyone new into his little carefully constructed routine is just asking for the kind of pain he spent seven years learning to outrun. He feels a flicker of guilt, too, like he’s betraying Linda by even enjoying the way she’s looking at him like he’s something more interesting than the scuffed work boots on his feet. But the other part of him, the part he thought died when he took his final locomotive run two years prior, is thrumming, the same quiet thrill he used to feel when he rounded a bend in the Rockies at sunrise, the kind of thrill that doesn’t come with a printed schedule or a pre-approved route.
He admits he almost didn’t talk to her because of her ex, and she laughs so hard she snorts, wiping a tear from the corner of her eye with the back of her hand. “That loser? I left him in 2015 after I caught him cheating on me with the rail yard secretary. If I’d known you hated him too, I would’ve tracked you down months ago.” She leans in a little more, and this time when their knees press together under the table, it’s not an accident. “I see you come into the library every Tuesday to check out those old rail history books. You always tuck your receipt bookmark into page 72 before you leave. I’ve been waiting for you to say hi.” Something tight in his chest loosens, like a rusted brake line finally releasing after years of being stuck, and he realizes he hasn’t felt this light in longer than he can remember.
He finishes the last sip of his beer, wipes his hands on the thigh of his jeans, and tells her the 1927 lantern is in his garage, that he just finished rewiring the original gas line last weekend, and asks if she wants to come see it. She grins, stands up, slings her canvas library bag over her shoulder, and her hand brushes his bicep when he stands up next to her. The jukebox switches over to a slow Patsy Cline track as they walk out the door into the crisp October air, the streetlights glowing orange over the empty main street, and he doesn’t even spare a thought for the seven years of rigid routines he’s breaking. He unlocks his beat-up Ford F-150, opens the passenger door for her, and when she slides in, she leaves her hand resting on the center console, palm up, waiting.
