Rafe Mendez, 53, makes his living bringing dead neon back to life, and he’s got the burn scars crisscrossing his left forearm to prove it. He’s spent the last eight years holed up in his cinder block workshop on the edge of downtown Silverton, Oregon, turning rusted 1950s motel signs and old malt shop displays back into glowing, humming pieces of history, and he’s made a point of keeping other people at arm’s length. His ex-wife left for a wine sales rep in Portland, his cousin screwed him out of $12,000 in seed money when he first launched the business, and he’s long since decided relationships are more trouble than they’re worth. He only agreed to man a booth at the annual downtown summer block party because the city waived his next three permit fees for doing it.
The July sun hangs low and heavy by 7 p.m., sweat sticking the collar of his faded Carhartt tee to his neck, and he’s halfway through his second cold IPA when she steps up to the booth. He’d know that smile anywhere. Clara Ruiz, his cousin’s ex-wife, last seen at a family cookout 12 years prior, slipping him extra pork tamales under the table when his cousin was too busy yelling about fantasy football to notice. She’s wearing cutoff denim shorts, a frayed Fleetwood Mac tee, and silver hoop earrings that catch the pink glow of the restored “CHERRY COKE 5¢” sign he has propped up behind the table. She smells like coconut sunscreen and peppermint gum, and when she leans in to run a finger along the neon tube’s curved edge, her bare shoulder brushes his bicep, sending a jolt up his spine he hasn’t felt in years.
She says she bought the vintage record shop three blocks over three months prior, had no idea he lived in town. He’s frozen for half a beat, caught between the old grudge he’s carried against her ex-husband for a decade and the quiet, unspoken crush he’d nursed for her back when she was still technically family. He doesn’t mention the cousin. They talk about the neon sign first, then the record shop, then the way Silverton smells like pine and blackberries this time of year. She laughs at his story about restoring a 1960s drive-in movie sign that had a family of raccoons living inside it, and when she sits on the folding chair next to him to avoid a group of screaming kids chasing an ice cream truck, her bare knee brushes his, warm and solid, through the rip in his work jeans. She keeps leaning in when she talks, her eyes darting from his mouth to the flashing neon behind him, and he has to fight the urge to brush the strand of sun-streaked hair stuck to her lip balm-shiny upper lip. He keeps telling himself this is a terrible idea. Small towns talk, his cousin still lives an hour away, and he doesn’t do casual flings, doesn’t do anything that could mess up the quiet, orderly life he’s built for himself.
The first drops of rain hit his cheek at 9 p.m., fat and warm, and within 30 seconds it’s pouring, the crowd scattering for cover. They haul the heavy neon sign off the table together, rushing to get it under the awning of his workshop 20 feet away, both of them soaked through by the time they get there. She slips on the wet sidewalk, and he grabs her wrist to steady her, his calloused fingers wrapping around her soft skin, and for a second they just stand there, chests heaving, rain dripping off their hair, the neon sign flickering pink and blue behind them, turning the falling raindrops into tiny, glowing orbs. He doesn’t overthink it. He leans in and kisses her, and she kisses him back, her hands coming up to tangle in the graying curls at the nape of his neck, her mouth tasting like peppermint and the lime seltzer she’d been sipping all evening.
They duck inside the workshop a minute later, the low hum of the half-restored signs on the workbenches wrapping around them like a blanket. He hands her a dry gray flannel shirt he keeps hung by the door, and she pulls it on, it falling to her mid-thigh, the sleeves rolled up twice to expose her wrists. He makes coffee on the old percolator he’s had since college, and she runs her fingers over the half-restored 1960s coastal motel sign he’s been chipping away at for six months. She mentions she’s been looking for someone to fix the broken neon “OPEN” sign hanging above her record shop door, and he says he’ll do it for free, as long as she brings him a batch of those pork tamales he remembers from the cookouts. She laughs, says she already has a dozen in her fridge at home, left over from dinner the night before.
He walks her to her beat-up Subaru when the rain lets up an hour later, the street smelling like wet asphalt and crushed blackberries. She kisses him again before she climbs in, slipping a crumpled vintage matchbook from her pocket into his hand, her phone number scrawled across the front in sparkly purple ink. He leans against the lamppost outside his workshop, watching her taillights fade down the tree-lined street, the cherry coke sign glowing softly behind him. He tucks the matchbook into the front pocket of his work jeans, already counting down the hours until 10 a.m. the next day.
