Maceo Rios, 59, has restored over 400 vintage pinball machines in the 22 years he’s run his west Asheville shop, and he’s avoided every single neighborhood block party for the last 12. The only reason he’s here now is his 16-year-old part-time employee, Javi, begged him to show face to promote the shop’s summer pinball tournament, promised he could leave after 20 minutes with a free pack of the sour cherry gum Maceo hoards. He’s got 7 minutes left on his self-imposed timer, leaning against the gnarled oak at the edge of the street, a lukewarm IPA sweating through the solo cup in his hand, when she slams into his side.
She’s stepping back to avoid a kid sprinting past with a dripping blue popsicle, her bare, sun-kissed shoulder slamming into his sunburnt forearm hard enough to make him slosh beer down his jeans. The first thing he notices is the jasmine lotion she’s wearing, sharp and sweet over the charcoal smoke and cut grass hanging in the humid July air. The second is the smudge of cherry popsicle on her lower lip, and the way her hazel eyes crinkle at the corners when she laughs and apologizes, swatting the kid’s back as he yells a distant sorry over his shoulder.
He knows who she is. Elara Voss, 52, moved into the creaky Victorian two doors down from his shop three months prior, after leaving her husband of 28 years, the lead pastor of the megachurch on the edge of town. The neighborhood gossip mill has run nonstop about her ever since: the HOA fined her $75 for hanging a rainbow flag on her porch, Mrs. Henderson from down the street called her “a homewrecker” at the last community meeting, even though no one has ever confirmed she left for another person. Maceo has always hated small town gossip, hated the way people pick apart anyone who doesn’t fit their neat little boxes, but he’s never had reason to talk to her before now.
She doesn’t let him mumble an awkward no-harm-done and slip away like he plans to. She spots the faded Space Invaders logo on his work shirt, lights up, leans in so close he can smell the spearmint gum on her breath, her shoulder only three inches from his, no polite, distant buffer. She says she has the exact same 1978 Space Invaders pinball machine in her basement, broken for 15 years, left behind by the previous owner, and she’s been trying to find someone who knows how to fix it without charging her more than the machine is worth. She says she’s followed his shop’s Instagram for a month, saw his rant last week about the common coil glitch that plagues that exact model, knew he was the only person in town who wouldn’t mess it up.
Maceo’s throat goes dry. He hasn’t done a house call in 10 years, hates stepping into strangers’ homes, hates the risk of letting anyone get close enough to see the half-empty side of his closet, the stack of his ex-wife’s old cookbooks he still hasn’t thrown away. He’s about to make an excuse about a backlog of repairs, about having to be up at 6 a.m. to fix a machine for a bar in Knoxville, when she shifts her weight, her denim-clad knee brushing his for half a second, and says she has a full unopened case of 1998 Pabst Blue Ribbon in her basement too, the old pull tab kind, the kind he posted about missing two weeks prior on his personal Instagram account he thought no one but Javi followed. She says she’ll trade him the whole case plus $200 if he comes over tonight to look at the machine.
He can feel Mrs. Henderson staring at them from across the picnic table, her lips pursed so tight they’re almost white, and the thought of making that old biddy mad is almost as appealing as the Pabst, almost as appealing as the way Elara is holding eye contact with him, like she knows exactly how long it’s been since he had anyone over that wasn’t Javi or a guy dropping off a broken machine. The old, familiar urge to run, to hide, to avoid any chance of getting burned again warms with the slow curl of desire low in his gut, the kind he hasn’t felt since his ex-wife told him she was leaving for the craft brewer who used to bring him custom IPAs as thank you gifts.
He pauses for three beats, then nods. She grins, so wide the little scar on her left cheek pulls tight, and hands him her half-eaten plate of potato salad to hold while she grabs her purse from the folding chair behind her. Their fingers brush when she passes it over, and he feels the rough callus on her index finger, the kind you get from turning thousands of book pages, the same kind he has on his thumbs from prying open pinball machine cabinets for decades.
They walk away from the block party together, ignoring the quiet murmurs from the HOA table, Elara’s shoulder bumping his every few steps as they head down the sidewalk toward her house. The sun dips low over the Blue Ridge Mountains, painting the sky pink and orange, and Maceo tucks the unopened pack of sour cherry gum Javi gave him into his pocket, already forgetting he’d planned to be home eating frozen pizza alone by 8.
