Manny Ruiz is 59, spends most days hunched over a workbench in his garage, repairing vintage typewriters for collectors and high school students who swear the analog clack helps them focus better than a laptop. He spent 28 years as a wildland firefighter, retired after a tree fell on his left knee during a 2019 blaze outside Grand Junction, and he’s avoided most small town social events since his wife left him for a real estate agent in Denver 12 years ago. His only regular excursion is a Thursday night trip to the dive bar off Main Street for buffalo wings and a $3 draft, no chit chat required. He only agreed to set up a display of his restored typewriters at the annual Palisade harvest festival because his 82 year old neighbor brought him homemade tamales and begged him to contribute to the local history booth.
The first two hours are fine. Kids tap at the keys of a 1950s Royal, old timers stop by to talk about typing class in high school, he sells a small portable Smith Corona to a retired teacher for $120. Then he drops a glass jar of typewriter cleaning solution, it shatters across the grass between his booth and the adjacent jam stand, and a woman kneels down to help him pick up the shards before he can stop her. Their hands brush when they both reach for the largest piece, and he recognizes the faint lavender hand cream, the smattering of freckles across the back of her hand, before he looks up and sees Lena. She’s his ex-wife’s younger sister, 52, he hasn’t seen her since the 2012 family Christmas, when he left halfway through after a fight with his wife about her upcoming trip to visit the real estate agent.
His first instinct is to stand up, mumble an apology, and pack his display up early. It feels wrong, being this close to her, the kind of small town gossip that would start if anyone saw them talking would spread faster than the brush fires he used to fight. He’d always had a dumb, unspoken crush on her when he was married, the kind he pushed down deep, told himself was just a byproduct of how much warmer she was than her sister, how she’d laugh at his bad jokes instead of rolling her eyes. He never acted on it, never even said a word about it to anyone, but the guilt still sits heavy in his chest when she stands up, wipes her hands on her jeans, and grins like she’s not surprised to see him.
She teases him for still being as clumsy as he was when he tripped over her backpack at the 2009 Labor Day barbecue, and he finds himself laughing before he can stop himself. She leans across the two foot gap between the booths to pass him a cold bottle of lemonade, her forearm brushing his, and he can feel the heat of her skin through his thin flannel shirt, see the faint scar above her left eyebrow from when she crashed her dirt bike when she was 17, the one he’d helped her clean up after her sister refused to drive her to the ER. They talk for an hour, the festival noise fading into background static, and she admits she just moved back to town two months ago, got divorced last year, moved into the old cottage her grandma left her on the edge of town. She says she still has the typewriter he gave her for her high school graduation, the beat up 1960s Hermes 3000, it’s been sitting in her closet for 20 years with a stuck shift key, and she’s been meaning to look him up to get it fixed.
The sky opens up halfway through her story, fat cold rain drops pouring down, sending festival attendees running for cover. He helps her stack her crates of jam into the back of her beat up Subaru, and they end up huddled under the overhang of the community center, soaked through to the bone, waiting for the worst of the rain to pass. The air smells like wet dirt and fried funnel cake and her lavender hand cream, and for a second he thinks he should make an excuse, leave, go home to his quiet empty house, but then she says she always had a crush on him too, back when he was married, never said anything because she didn’t want to hurt her sister, didn’t think he’d ever notice her anyway.
He doesn’t say anything at first, just brushes a wet strand of hair off her face, his thumb grazing her cheek, and she doesn’t pull away, leans into the touch a little, her eyes staying locked on his. He tells her he thought about her more times than he can count, back when he was married, never did anything about it because he thought it was wrong, thought he’d never get the chance to say it out loud. They agree to meet at his usual dive bar next Thursday, he’ll bring the parts to fix her typewriter, she’ll bring him a jar of the peach jam he said he loved, the one she only makes once a year.
She waves when she pulls out of the parking lot, her window rolled down, rain spotting the collar of her flannel, and he finds himself smiling so wide his cheeks ache for the first time in over a decade.
