Manny Ruiz is 58, makes his living restoring antique typewriters out of the converted garage of his 1920s bungalow in Silverton, Oregon, and hasn’t stayed longer than 10 minutes at a town event in 11 years. His ex-wife left him for a traveling solar equipment salesman a week after their 25th anniversary, and after six months of neighbors dropping off unrequested casseroles and asking too many questions about his dating life, he’d opted out of all casual community engagement entirely. He only showed up to the annual harvest fair that crisp September evening to drop off a fully restored 1952 Royal Quiet De Luxe he’d donated to the historical society booth, no plans to stick around for the fried dough or bluegrass set.
The first brush comes when he’s setting the typewriter on its folding table, shoulder knocking into someone’s upper arm hard enough that he fumbles the felt dust cover. He turns to apologize, and comes face to face with Lila Hale, his next door neighbor of three months, who’d moved into the empty bungalow after her husband died of a heart attack the previous winter. He’d avoided her waves across the fence, had pretended not to hear her when she’d called over to ask about his shop sign a few weeks prior, too wary of the gossip mill that would no doubt spin up if they so much as shared a 30 second conversation. She smells like cinnamon and lavender hand cream, her dark hair streaked with gray pulled back in a loose braid, and she laughs when he stammers out an apology, holding eye contact long enough that his ears go pink. She’s manning the library’s baked goods booth, stacked high with pecan pies and chocolate chip cookies, and she says she’s been meaning to knock on his door for weeks, that she found a box of typewritten 1930s poetry in the library’s basement archives and can’t figure out what model machine they were typed on.
The drizzle starts five minutes later, light at first, then picking up fast enough that everyone manning booths is scrambling to cover their stock with tarps. Manny grabs three of her heavy wooden crates of leftover baked goods before she can protest, hauling them under the awning of the adjacent dive bar, The Hitching Post, while she trails behind him carrying a stack of pie tins. The rain hammers the tin awning loud enough that they have to stand half a foot apart to hear each other, their shoulders pressed together when a gust of wind blows rain under the edge. He makes a dumb joke about how the old Royal he dropped off would short out faster than a teenager at prom if it got wet, and she snorts, leaning into his arm for half a second before she pulls back, like she’s just as surprised by the movement as he is. He can feel the warmth of her through his worn flannel shirt, and for a second he’s torn between stepping away to avoid the gossips who are no doubt peeking at them from under other awnings, and leaning in closer, because it’s been so long since someone touched him without pity in their posture.
She pulls a crumpled napkin out of her jacket pocket a minute later, dabbing a raindrop off his cheek, and her thumb brushes his jawline on the downstroke, calloused from turning library pages for 20 years. He doesn’t flinch. He’d flinch if the pastor from the local church tried to pat his shoulder, if his cousin hugged him at Christmas, but he doesn’t flinch now. The bar’s flickering pink neon sign paints faint streaks across her cheekbones, and she pulls a small unopened bottle of bourbon out of her coat pocket, says she stashed it there in case the fair got boring, offers to split it with him at her place when the rain lets up, says she’s got that box of poetry on her kitchen table. He knows every old biddy in town will be talking about it by tomorrow morning, knows they’ll say he’s taking advantage of a grieving widow, that he’s finally lost his mind after all those years alone, and for the first time in a decade, he doesn’t care.
The rain slows to a fine mist 20 minutes later, and they walk down the oak-lined sidewalk together, their hands brushing every few steps, neither of them pulling away. Her porch light is on, left on before she left for the fair, glowing warm yellow through the fog, and she fumbles in her pocket for her keys as they step up onto the porch. He spots the edge of a tattered 1920s poetry collection peeking out of her coat pocket as she turns the key in her front door lock, the faint scent of her lavender hand cream wrapping around him again as she leans past him to push the door open.
