Moe Pritchard, 52, antique typewriter restorer, stood in the Saturday farmers market parking lot at 8 a.m. seething. His sister had dropped him off, swiped his truck keys, and told him he wasn’t allowed to come home till he’d talked to at least three people who weren’t bringing him a broken machine to fix. He’d spent three nights prepping four fully restored units for the pop-up, and still figured the whole thing was a waste of time. The only people who cared about typewriters these days, as far as he could tell, were teen girls making TikTok reels and guys who wrote unreadable free verse.
He was tightening the carriage on a 1950s Royal Quiet De Luxe when a shadow fell over his folding table. He looked up to find Lena Marquez, 48, hair pulled back in a faded red bandana, a smudge of orange hot sauce on her left wrist, standing so close her rubber sandal was almost touching his scuffed work boot. She pointed at the Royal and said her ex-husband had one just like it in college, used to type terrible garage band lyrics on it till he threw it out a third-floor dorm window. Moe’s jaw tightened. Her ex was Jimmie Haskins, the guy he’d hated since 1989, when Jimmie hotwired Moe’s 1972 Camaro and crashed it into a cornfield. He told himself to be polite, not act like a petty 17-year-old 35 years later.
She ran a finger along the Royal’s dented metal casing, her bare forearm brushing his when she leaned in to squint at the serial number stamped on the back. He smelled jasmine hand lotion and smoked chipotle, the same scent that drifted from her hot sauce stall two spots over, the one he’d driven past a dozen times in the last three months, always slowing down before talking himself out of stopping. She teased him about his shop’s hand-painted sign, said she’d asked the local sign painter for a quote for her own stall and he’d told her Moe had made his own sign, refused to let anyone else touch it. He shrugged, said he only painted signs for himself, didn’t have time for side gigs that didn’t involve fixing typewriter keys.
For the next three hours, they bounced between each other’s stalls when the crowds thinned. She brought him a sample of her mango habanero sauce on a saltine, warned him it was the mild batch, wouldn’t burn a hole in his “delicate old man stomach.” He laughed, ate it, and was surprised when the heat built slow, sweet first then sharp, the kind of burn that lingered in a good way. He showed her how to thread a new ribbon into a 1960s Smith Corona, their fingers brushing when he handed her the plastic spool, and he noticed the thick callus on her thumb from chopping 20 pounds of peppers a day, the tiny pale scar across her knuckle from a vinegar bottle exploding the previous winter. He told himself this was just friendly, that he didn’t cross lines, especially not lines involving Jimmie Haskins’ ex-wife. He’d sworn off dating after his wife left him for a 28-year-old craft brewer eight years prior, had convinced himself he was better off alone in his workshop with his typewriters and black-and-white western marathons.
The sky went dark at 1 p.m. with no warning, just a low roll of thunder then fat raindrops slamming into the asphalt hard enough to bounce. Everyone scrambled to pack up their stalls. Moe fumbled with the flimsy blue tarp he’d stuffed in his cooler, too slow, and the corner of the Royal was already dotted with rain before a heavy black vinyl tarp dropped over his entire table, covering every machine. Lena was pressed up against his side, holding one end of the tarp, her shoulder digging into his bicep, rain dripping off the end of her bandana onto the front of his flannel shirt. They huddled there for ten minutes while the rain poured so loud they had to lean in inches apart to hear each other talk. She laughed when a raindrop hit his glasses, blurring his vision, and reached up to wipe it off with the hem of her shirt, her palm brushing his cheek for half a second.
She admitted she’d been driving past his shop every Saturday after the market for three months, trying to work up the nerve to stop, scared he’d be the same grumpy, closed off guy she remembered from high school, the one who never talked to anyone unless it was about old engines or machines. He admitted he’d avoided the market for six months because he didn’t want to run into people who knew his ex, who’d ask how he was doing when he didn’t feel like lying. He added that he’d avoided her specifically, too, because she’d been married to Jimmie, and he’d spent 30 years telling himself anyone associated with that guy was off limits. She snort-laughed so hard she snuffled, said she left Jimmie 10 years prior because he cheated on her with a waitress at his bar, that she hated him more than Moe probably did.
The rain let up as fast as it started, leaving the asphalt glistening, the air smelling like wet dirt and pine from the woods at the edge of the lot. They packed up their stalls together, him carrying her heavy crates of hot sauce bottles to his truck, her carrying the smaller typewriters so he didn’t drop them in the puddles. He stopped halfway to the pickup, turned to her, and asked if she wanted to head to the Wagon Wheel, the dive bar three miles out of town, to test her hot sauce on their famous fried cheese curds, get a beer that wasn’t the warm seltzer he’d brought in his cooler. She grinned, slung her arm through his, and didn’t let go when they walked the rest of the way to the truck. He opened the passenger door for her, and when she climbed in, she left her hand resting light on his forearm for three full seconds before pulling away.
