Javi Mendez, 61, has restored 47 vintage pickups out of his converted east Austin garage over the last 19 years, and he’s got a hard and fast rule he’s never broken: he doesn’t waste time with anyone younger than his ex-wife, who turns 62 next month. It’s not a pride thing, mostly. Eight years prior, she left him for a 38-year-old software sales bro who’d moved to town from Silicon Valley, bought the house two doors down, and spent every weekend complaining that the neighborhood taco truck played mariachi too loud. Javi’s been bitter enough about the influx of new faces and skyrocketing rent that he only leaves his shop twice a week: once for groceries, once for the VFW Friday night fish fry, where the catfish is $8 a plate, the beer is ice cold, and no one asks him if he’s “considered listing his garage as an Airbnb.”
It’s 91 degrees at 8 p.m., three days after the record-breaking July heat dome finally broke, and the plastic picnic table under his forearms is still sticky from the day’s sun. He’d spent an hour before the fry replacing the dead battery in 82-year-old Korean War vet Earl’s F-150 for free, and his hands are still streaked with grease, the paper napkin he’s using to wipe them disintegrating into little white flecks on his plate of coleslaw. A shadow falls across his food, and he looks up.
She’s leaning against the edge of the table, cutoff jean shorts, faded Black Sabbath tee, a scar snaking up her left forearm from wrist to elbow, a tiny Army rank tattoo peeking out from the edge of her wristband. She’s holding two paletas, the lime and mezcal kind, condensation dripping down the wooden sticks onto her knuckles. He recognizes her: Lila, the woman who opened the mezcal bar two blocks over three months prior, the one he’d refused to step foot in because he’d assumed it was just another overpriced spot for tourists. “Figured you could use something cold,” she says, holding one out to him. He almost says no, out of habit, but the sweat is dripping down the back of his neck into his shirt collar, so he reaches out. Their fingers brush when he takes it, and he notices her hands are calloused, rough, the same kind of calluses he has from hauling engine blocks and turning wrench all day, no fancy gel manicure, no fake nails.
He’s immediately flustered, half turned on, half annoyed at himself for it. She’s got to be at least 12 years younger than him, he thinks, breaking his rule before he even knows her last name. She sits down across from him, shifting her weight to avoid a line of fire ants crawling up the table leg, and her knee brushes his under the table. He doesn’t move away. She teases him about the 1972 Ford F-100 he’s got parked out front of his shop, the one he’s been restoring for two years for his nephew’s high school graduation gift, says she’s walked past his garage a dozen times and stopped to stare at it. She asks if he’ll bring it to the vintage car show she’s hosting at her bar next month, all proceeds going to the VFW’s veteran mental health program.
He bristles, ready to tell her he doesn’t do trendy bar events, that he’s not interested in being a prop for her marketing. She just laughs, holds his gaze steady, no smile, and tells him she grew up three blocks from his shop, joined the Army straight out of high school, did two tours in Afghanistan, moved back three years ago to take care of her mom who has end-stage COPD, opened the bar with 70% veteran staff so she could hire other vets who couldn’t get work elsewhere. Her ex-husband was a tech bro too, she adds, the kind who complained about the taco truck music too, so she gets the chip on his shoulder.
He feels stupid, the kind of stupid that makes the back of his neck burn. He apologizes, tells her about his ex, about the rule he’s had for 8 years, about how he’s been such a hermit he didn’t even realize her bar hired only vets. She leans in, her shoulder brushing his now, and he can smell jasmine perfume and cedar smoke on her hair, says she’s been watching him work on trucks in his garage for months, had to work up the nerve to come talk to him because he always looked so grumpy.
He agrees to bring the F-100 to the show, offers to help her set up barricades and park cars the day before for free, no strings attached. She grins, pulls a pen out of her back pocket, scrawls her cell number on the back of a paleta wrapper, presses it into his palm, her fingers lingering for two slow beats longer than necessary. She stands up, waves, and walks back to her paleta cart by the VFW entrance, the last of the sunset gilding the edges of her dark hair. He takes a slow bite of the paleta, the mezcal burning warm and soft down his throat, and tucks the wrapper into the front pocket of his work jeans, pressing it flat so the ink doesn’t smudge.
