Elias Voss, 59, retired railroad signal technician, shows up to the Maplewood Volunteer Fire Department fundraiser at Hank’s Taproom at 6:17 p.m., two minutes later than his usual weekly bar arrival. He’s wearing the same faded navy flannel he’s had since 2018, the cuffs frayed from years of prying open signal boxes, work boots still dusted with fine coal residue from the abandoned line he walked that morning. His usual bar stool is occupied by a teen volunteering to run the 50/50 raffle, so he leans against the pool table edge, beer in one hand, crumpled raffle ticket in the other, already mentally mapping his escape route if the crowd gets too loud.
He’s avoided this fundraiser for three years running, but the fire chief cornered him at the hardware store last week and guilt-tripped him into buying a ticket, said the department needed new hoses and Elias, who’d spent 32 years prioritizing public safety, couldn’t say no. People-pleasing has always been his biggest flaw; he’d rather sit through three hours of small talk than hurt a stranger’s feelings, a habit his ex-wife had complained about constantly before she left seven years prior, saying he cared more about everyone else’s comfort than his own.
Maren Hale spots him before he can slip out the side door. She’s the town’s new librarian, 54, moved to Maplewood three months prior from Portland, and she’s been badgering him for weeks to donate his collection of 1970s railroad signal manuals to the library’s local history archive. He’d dodged every one of her messages, too awkward to say he didn’t want to let go of the books, too flustered by the way she’d smiled at him when she first introduced herself at the post office.
She crosses the room holding a paper plate stacked with pulled pork sliders, her scuffed white sneakers sticking a little to the beer-sticky linoleum, denim jacket slung over one arm, silver hoop earrings glinting under the bar’s neon Pabst sign. She smells like pine cleaner and vanilla lip balm when she stops next to him, close enough that his bicep brushes her shoulder when he shifts his weight. “Thought I’d find you here,” she says, holding out a slider. “I asked Hank what your order was. Figured bribery would work better than another email.”
When he takes the slider, their fingers brush. It’s the first non-familial physical contact he’s had in 18 months, outside of a handshake from the hardware store clerk, and he jolts a little like he’s touched a live signal wire. He hopes she doesn’t notice, but she smirks, like she does, and leans in closer when the jukebox blasts a Johnny Cash deep cut, her mouth nearly touching his ear when she talks over the noise. “I saw you fixing that old crossing signal by the park last Saturday,” she says. “I sat on the bench and watched you for, like, 20 minutes. You talked to yourself the whole time. It was cute.”
Heat crawls up his neck. The voice in his head that’s been loud since his divorce sneers that he’s too old, too boring, too set in his routines for this, that he’ll make a fool of himself if he leans into the warm, tight feeling building in his chest. He almost steps back, almost makes an excuse about having to get home to his old hound dog, but then she laughs at his dumb joke about signal lights being the original traffic influencers, and the sound is brighter than the bar’s neon, and he can’t make himself leave.
They talk for an hour, pressed shoulder to shoulder by the pool table, as the crowd thins out. She tells him she keeps bees in her backyard, that she moved to Maplewood to get away from a toxic job at a university library, that she’s never ridden in a train caboose. He tells her about the time he got stuck in a signal box during a blizzard for four hours, about the way the old railroad line glows gold at sunset, about how he’d thought about selling his manual collection a dozen times but never could.
The raffle announcement cuts them off, and they both lean in at the same time to hear the numbers being called, their foreheads bumping soft, just above his eyebrow. She snorts, reaching up to rub the spot with her thumb, her palm warm and a little calloused from turning book pages and lifting bee boxes, and for a half second he thinks she’s going to kiss him right there by the pool table. “I don’t care about the raffle,” she says, pulling her hand back slowly, like she doesn’t want to. “I still want to see those manuals. I’ll bring that pumpkin beer you like. I can be at your place at 2 tomorrow, if that’s not too early for your routine.”
He hesitates for two full seconds, the voice in his head screaming that this is a mistake, that he’ll mess it up, that he’s better off alone with his dog and his manuals and his quiet Thursday nights. Then he nods, so fast his glasses slip down his nose. “2’s perfect,” he says.
He walks her to her beat-up forest green pickup out in the parking lot, the October air crisp enough that he can see his breath, crunched maple leaves sticking to the soles of his boots. She climbs up into the driver’s seat, pauses before she closes the door, leans in, and presses a quick, soft kiss to his cheek, right where their foreheads bumped earlier. “Don’t hide those manuals before I get there,” she says, winking, before she turns the key and pulls out of the lot.
He stands there for three full minutes, beer long gone, raffle ticket crumpled in his fist, his cheek still warm where she kissed him. His old hound dog will be waiting for him to feed her, his favorite western is on TV at 9, and for the first time in seven years, he doesn’t feel like rushing back to his quiet, empty house.
