Manny Ruiz is 53, makes his living restoring vintage pinball machines out of a cinder block workshop behind his tiny ranch house outside Detroit. He’s been divorced eight years, and his biggest flaw is that he’s built every part of his life around rigid, unbreakable routines: same coffee at 7 a.m., same work order schedule two weeks out, same six pack of Old Style Lager on his back porch every Friday night, no exceptions. He only agreed to show up to the VFW summer cookout because his old Army buddy who runs the hall begged him to man the grill, and he owed the guy a favor for helping him haul a 1972 Space Mission pinball up three flights of stairs the month before.
The sun beats hot on his forearms as he flips burgers, charcoal smoke stinging his eyes, grease popping against the calluses on his knuckles. He still has streaks of silver metal polish under his fingernails from a 1965 Gottlieb Buckaroo he’d finished the night before, can’t scrub it out no matter how hard he scrubs with dish soap. The air smells like grilled onions and cut grass, the distant crack of cornhole bags and old Toby Keith playing through the hall’s beat up speakers. He’s halfway through handing a burger to a 72 year old vet who lives down the street when he sees her.
Lena Marlow is 41, Diane’s younger sister, the one he’d always considered strictly off limits back when he was married. She moved to Oregon right after high school, he hadn’t seen her in 18 years. She’s wearing cutoff denim and a faded flannel tied around her waist, work boots caked in mud, sun streaks in her dark brown hair, no makeup. She’s grinning that same crooked smile he remembers from when she was 14 and used to sneak into his and Diane’s basement to play his old pinball machines when Diane wasn’t looking. She leans against the grill railing, close enough that he can smell lavender hand soap and citrus gum on her breath, her shoulder brushing his when she leans in to point at a medium rare burger on the grate.
She says she moved back to town two weeks prior, took a job as an ER nurse at the local hospital, found her dad’s old 1965 Gottlieb Buckaroo in the back of her garage when she was unpacking, doesn’t work, heard he’s the best guy in the state for fixing that exact model. Manny hesitates. He’s got three jobs lined up for the next two weeks, no free slots, and more than that, it feels wrong, talking to his ex wife’s little sister like this, like he’s crossing a line he swore he’d never cross even when his marriage was falling apart. She teases him, says she already bought a six pack of that Old Style he used to drink back in the day, remembers he hated craft beer with all the fancy fruit add ins. He caves, tells her he can stop by Saturday afternoon, just for an hour, no promises he can fix it that day.
Saturday is humid, the air thick with impending thunder when he pulls up to her small bungalow, toolbox in the passenger seat. She meets him at the garage door, already holding a cold beer out to him, the label sweating in the heat. The pinball is under a dusty canvas tarp in the corner of the garage, exactly the same model as the one he finished the week before. He kneels down to pop the front panel off, she kneels right next to him, handing him screwdrivers and spring pliers when he asks for them, her shoulder pressed tight to his the whole time. He swears when a loose flipper spring snaps, hits his wrist hard enough to draw a tiny drop of blood, and she grabs his wrist before he can wipe it off, her fingers warm and calloused from planting tomato plants in her yard that morning, her thumb brushing the cut soft enough that it doesn’t sting.
She says she’s had a crush on him since she was 14, thought he was the only decent guy Diane ever dated, waited until she was sure he was long over her sister and she was done with her own messy divorce to even talk to him. Manny feels that pull in his chest, the one he’s been ignoring for eight years, the conflict between the voice in his head saying this is wrong, that everyone they know will talk, and the part of him that can’t remember the last time someone looked at him like he was more than just the guy who fixes pinball machines for cash. He doesn’t say anything, just leans in, kisses her slow, the smell of sawdust and her laundry detergent mixing in the warm garage air, the distant rumble of thunder rolling through the neighborhood.
They get the pinball working an hour later, the lights flashing bright, the old western theme jingle crackling through the machine’s speakers. She drops a quarter in, hits the flippers fast, gets a high score 200 points higher than his first try on the same model. She teases him, says he’s going to have to come back every week to practice if he ever wants a shot at beating her. Manny smirks, takes a sip of his beer, already mentally moving the two work orders he had scheduled for next Saturday to the following week, his whole rigid routine flying out the window without a second thought. He tucks a stray strand of sun bleached hair behind her ear, already counting down the days until he can come back.
