Javi Mendez, 53, had only agreed to man the vintage typewriter demo booth at the Hood River harvest fair because his niece had threatened to stop bringing him her famous green chile rellenos every Sunday if he bailed. He hated these events, the forced small talk, the side glances from people who still remembered how his ex-wife had left him for the county agricultural extension agent at the same fair eight years prior. He’d showed up 20 minutes early, hauled three fully restored Royals and Underwoods to the dented folding table, set out a stack of neon construction paper for kids to type silly notes on, and resolved to leave the second the clock hit 4 PM, no exceptions.
The first hour dragged. A group of elementary school kids banged on the keys so hard he flinched every time, a retired teacher asked him three separate times how much he’d charge to fix her 1960s Smith Corona that had been sitting in her attic since 1998, the wind kept blowing his printed price sheets off the table and into the dust. He was digging in his beat up cooler for a root beer when a 10 year old on a sugar high came barrelling around the fried pie truck at the end of the row, holding a 32 ounce slushie of spiced apple cider vinegar, and slammed straight into the booth next to his. The slushie went flying, splattering neon orange across a stack of used poetry collections and the front of the woman running the booth’s cream flannel shirt.
Javi was on his feet before he thought about it. He grabbed the three books that were sliding off the edge of the table just as she did, their knuckles brushing hard enough to leave a faint tingle that crawled up his forearm and settled at the base of his neck. She was leaning in so close her shoulder pressed to his, and he could smell cedar, jasmine perfume, and the faint sweet burn of fried dough from the funnel cake stand ten feet away. He’d seen her around town before, ran the used bookstore on Oak Street, but he’d never spoken to her, never even gotten close enough to catch the way her dark hair had a thick streak of silver at the temple, or the way her laugh when she realized none of the books were irreparably ruined was low and warm, exactly like the Chet Baker records he played while he sanded typewriter casings in his workshop after dark.
He offered to pay for the stained books, offered to buy her a new shirt, offered anything to make the awkward flutter in his chest stop before it turned into something he couldn’t ignore. She waved him off, plucking the worst stained copy of Mary Oliver’s *Devotions* off the stack and holding it out to him. “Consider this a limited edition harvest exclusive,” she said, her fingers brushing his palm for a full two seconds when she handed it over, leaving a faint smudge of orange slushie on his skin. “Only 1 in existence. Comes with a free request: I’ve been hunting for a 1951 Royal Quiet De Luxe for two years. My dad had one he used to write me letters when he was driving cross country for work, I lost mine in a messy move a decade back. If you ever come across one, let me know.”
Javi’s throat went dry. He had exactly that model sitting half-restored on his workbench at home, had been planning to sell it to a collector in Portland for $825 at the end of the month. His first instinct was to lie, to say he’d keep an eye out, to go back to his safe, boring routine, no interruptions, no risk of getting his heart broken again. That stupid, rigid flaw of his, the insistence on sticking to the plan he’d built after the divorce to keep everyone at arm’s length, screamed at him to keep his mouth shut. But he looked at her, the way she was tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, the slushie stain streaked across her wrist, the tiny crinkle at the corner of her eye when she smiled, and he found himself saying he had one, finished restoring it last week, could bring it by her store tomorrow, no charge.
Her smile got wider, and she leaned in a little more, her knee brushing his under the edge of the table as she grabbed a ballpoint pen from her canvas apron pocket. She scribbled her cell number and the store’s address on the back of the Oliver book, her handwriting looping and messy, dotted with a tiny hand-drawn heart next to her name, Lena. “I’ll make you my famous salted pecan pie as payment,” she said, and the way she said it, soft like she was sharing a secret only the two of them could hear, made his ears go hot. He stood there holding the book for ten minutes after she left to grab a new shirt from her car, watching the fair goers mill around, the cider press cranking in the distance, the dry oak leaves swirling across the patchy grass.
He checked his watch. It was 3:42 PM. He’d planned to leave in 18 minutes, pack up the typewriters, go home, order a pepperoni pizza, watch an old John Wayne western, go to bed at 9 like he always did. Instead, he pulled his beat up flip phone out of his work pants pocket, typed her number in slow, and sent a text saying he’d bring the Royal by at 10 tomorrow, and he’d take that pecan pie warm, if she had the extra time.
