Elio Marquez, 62, retired wildland fire crew foreman, only showed up to the block party because his 10-year-old granddaughter begged. She’d spent three hours the night before stirring blueberry filling for the kid’s pie contest, and she refused to enter if the only family in the crowd was her mom. Elio had spent the last eight years avoiding neighborhood events like they were spot fires with a 30 mile an hour wind at their back, especially after the last HOA meeting where Todd Carter, the association president, called him a “menace to the neighborhood aesthetic” over his stack of cured oak logs. But he’d never been able to say no to that kid.
He leaned against a splintered folding table half-buried under Tupperware bowls of potato salad, cold Pabst in one hand, work boots caked in pine sap from clearing a fallen oak off his property line two days prior. The air smelled like charcoal, overripe peaches, and the cheap citronella candles the HOA had set out to keep mosquitos away. He’d already made eye contact with Todd twice. Both times Todd had pursed his lips and looked away like Elio was a pile of discarded construction debris.
He was halfway through his second beer when she tripped over the cooler at his feet. Clara Carter, Todd’s wife, mid-50s, ran the pottery studio in the downtown strip he drove past every Saturday on his way to get breakfast tacos. She reached out to steady herself, palm wrapping tight around his forearm, and he felt the rough calluses on her fingertips first, same kind he had from 32 years of swinging axes and hauling fire hoses, not the soft, gel-manicured hands of the other HOA wives he’d seen trailing behind Todd at meetings.
“Shit, sorry,” she said, laughing as she righted herself, brushing a strand of graying auburn hair off her face. She was wearing a pale blue linen dress streaked with brown clay at the hem, bare feet in scuffed leather sandals, freckles dark across her nose from the August sun. “I’ve been throwing mugs all afternoon. My legs are still shaking from how many I cracked when Todd spent an hour yelling about the short-term rental vote last night.”
He nodded, not sure what to say. He’d half expected her to launch into a lecture about his log stack, the one Todd had been threatening to fine him $250 for, calling it an eyesore that lowered property values. Instead she nodded at his boots, then at the oak trees lining the edge of the party. “You the one with the log pile on the corner lot? I’ve been meaning to knock on your door. I need a few thick rounds for pedestal bases for my larger pottery pieces. Todd says I can’t bring random scrap home but I don’t care.”
He blinked, then found himself talking before he could stop himself. Told her he’d stacked that wood himself, cured it for two years after cutting it down when a lightning strike took half the tree out, told her about the rules for stacking so it didn’t rot, the way he’d learned on fire crews out in Oregon. She leaned in as he talked, elbow brushing his every time she reached for a napkin or a sip of her iced tea, hazel eyes flecked with gold locked on his like he was telling her the most interesting story she’d ever heard, not rambling about firewood. The edge of her dress brushed his calf when she shifted her weight, and he felt that low, warm pull in his chest he hadn’t felt since his wife died eight years prior, sharpened by the stupid, thrumming little taboo of it all: this was Todd’s wife, the woman married to the guy who’d left three passive aggressive notes in his mailbox in the last month. He should step back, make an excuse, leave. He didn’t.
He told her about the 2018 Camp Fire, the way he’d carried an old woman’s cat out of a burning trailer, the way the smoke had stuck in his throat for three weeks after. She told him about her son who’d moved to Alaska to work on a fishing boat, how she’d started pottery after he left because the empty house felt too quiet, how she’d sold three large pieces to a restaurant downtown the month before. He didn’t even notice the party winding down around them until Todd walked over, red-faced from drinking too many spiked seltzers, slinging a heavy arm around Clara’s shoulders.
“Hope you’re not giving my wife a hard time about that stupid log fine, Marquez,” Todd said, voice tight, eyes cold.
Clara shrugged his arm off so fast he stumbled a little. “Actually, I’m buying half his log stack for my studio. If you fine him, I’m donating your entire set of custom golf clubs to the youth thrift store on Main Street. Don’t test me.”
Todd blinked, huffed, then turned and stormed off to yell at a group of teens who’d been climbing the oak at the end of the block. Clara laughed, pulled a crumpled piece of receipt paper out of her dress pocket, scrawled her studio address and phone number on it in messy blue ink, the edge smudged with clay.
“Come by tomorrow around 2,” she said, pressing the paper into his palm, her fingers lingering on his for half a second longer than necessary. “We can load the rounds into my truck, I’ll buy you that green chile burger from the taco shop you like after. No Todd allowed. Promise.”
He tucked the paper into the pocket of his faded fire crew hoodie, nodded, not trusting himself to speak without sounding like a flustered kid. She winked, picked up her half-eaten plate of peach pie, and walked off to go congratulate his granddaughter, who’d just won second place in the pie contest, holding up her blue ribbon like she’d won an Olympic medal.
He stood there for a minute, sipping the last of his beer, watching her walk, the hem of her blue dress swishing around her calves, the brown clay stain bright against the fabric. He didn’t even notice when Todd glowered at him from across the yard, holding a stack of HOA flyers. He pulled the crumpled receipt out of his pocket, ran his thumb over the smudge of blue ink at the bottom, already counting the hours until 2 PM the next day.
