Manny Ruiz, 52, has restored 117 vintage motorcycles out of his cinder-block garage in east Austin since his wife passed from breast cancer eight years prior. His worst flaw, the one she’d nagged him about every Sunday over pancakes, is that he holds grudges so long he often forgets how they started. He’d only dragged himself to the neighborhood beer garden that crisp October night because his old motocross buddy promised to bring a box of original 1970s Honda CB750 parts he’d dug out of a storage unit.
The air smelled like smoked sausage and freshly cut cedar from the new perimeter fence, the bluegrass band off to the side sawing through a cover of “Folsom Prison Blues” so hard the fiddle player’s bow was fraying at the edges. Manny leaned against a splintered picnic table, sipping a cold Shiner Bock, wiping phantom grease off his calloused knuckles even though he’d scrubbed his hands twice with Lava soap before leaving the garage. He spotted her across the lawn before she saw him, and his jaw tightened. Lila Marlow, his high school girlfriend’s little sister, the woman he’d hated for 28 years for ratting him out for sneaking out of her sister’s bedroom window, costing him a three-month license suspension and the regional motocross qualifier he’d saved $200 mowing lawns to enter. He hadn’t seen her since she left for art school in the late 90s.
She looked different now, a streak of cobalt blue paint in her graying brown hair, jeans caked in muralist’s paint, work boots caked in mud, holding a seltzer can in one hand. When she spotted him, she grinned and walked straight over, no hesitation. “Still wearing that same ratty leather vest you had the night you snuck out?” she said, nodding at the worn black leather slung over the picnic table bench. “Thought you’d have upgraded by now.” Manny bristled, ready to snap back with the same quip he’d rehearsed in his head for decades, before she laughed and cut him off. “For the record, I didn’t rat you out to get you in trouble. You left your entire race entry fee on my sister’s nightstand. I yelled after you but you were already peeling out down the driveway. I figured if Mom caught you, you’d have to come inside, grab your cash, and not waste all that money you worked for.”
Manny blinked. He’d always assumed the cash fell out of his jacket pocket on the ride home. He stared at her, at the crinkles around her hazel eyes when she laughed, at the tiny motorcycle tattoo peeking out from the cuff of her hoodie. She leaned against the table next to him, their knees brushing every time she shifted her weight, and he caught a whiff of turpentine and lavender hand cream on her clothes. She told him she’d moved back to Austin six months prior, painting murals of old east Austin landmarks for the city’s public art program, that she’d gotten the motorcycle tattoo the year before when she finally took a rider safety course. He found himself laughing at her stories about painting a 20-foot armadillo on the side of the local grocery store, a sound he barely recognized coming out of his own mouth. He fought a weird, roiling mix of disgust and desire: disgusted he’d held a stupid grudge for nearly three decades, hungry for the easy warmth of her attention, guilty he was even noticing another woman eight years after his wife died.
The drizzle started a little after 9, light at first, then picking up enough that the band packed up their gear and most of the crowd headed for their cars. Lila groaned, said she’d walked to the garden, her rental house three blocks over. Manny offered her a ride on his 1968 Harley Electra Glide, the bike he’d spent two years restoring after his wife died, the one no one but his old beagle had ever ridden on the back of. She slid on behind him, wrapping her arms tight around his waist, her cheek pressed to the back of his flannel shirt, and he could feel the warmth of her through the fabric when she yelled over the engine that he drove slower than her 82-year-old grandma. He took the long way around the neighborhood, past the empty lot that used to be his old motocross track, now filled with pastel-colored tiny homes, and pointed out where the old starting gate used to be. She yelled back that she’d already painted that exact spot into the mural she was working on for the community center.
When they pulled up to her porch, she fumbled for her keys in her hoodie pocket, dropped them on the damp wood, and they both bent down to grab them at the same time, their foreheads bumping with a soft thud. They both laughed, and when she took the keys from his hand, her fingers lingered on his for three beats too long. She asked if he wanted to come in, see the mural, maybe have a cup of cinnamon coffee she’d left brewing on the stove before she left. Manny hesitated for half a second, thinking of the empty house waiting for him, the half-restored CB750 on the lift in his garage, the photo of his wife taped to his fridge that he still said goodnight to. He nodded. She pushed the front door open, the warm smell of cinnamon and acrylic paint washing over him, and he stepped across the threshold, letting the screen door click shut behind him.
