Manny Ruiz, 59, makes his living restoring antique typewriters out of the sunroom of his tiny upstate New York bungalow, and he has not deviated from his Saturday farmers market routine in 11 years. He shows up at 9:17 sharp, buys a half-gallon of spiced apple cider from the Orcutt brothers’ stand, a loaf of sourdough from the Amish grandmother who parks her cart by the picnic tables, and walks back home in time to be at his workbench by 9:45. He built the schedule after his sister’s fatal car crash, when he realized he’d missed her final call because he’d stayed late at his old office job, filling in for a coworker who’d called out sick. Routine, he’d decided, was the only way to keep small, stupid, irreversible mistakes from blowing up his life.
He’s avoided the new honey stand for three weeks straight, even when he ran out of wildflower honey for his evening chamomile tea two nights prior, drinking bitter, un-sweetened cups instead of deviating from his path. But the tang of the cider he’s clutching right now reminds him how much he hates bitter things, and he veers left before he can talk himself out of it.
The stand smells like warm beeswax and clover, crammed between a jam seller stacked high with mason jars and a teenager selling knobby, uneven pumpkins from his family’s farm. The woman behind the counter, Clara, who moved into the blue bungalow two doors down from him last month, looks up from labeling a jar of buckwheat honey and grins. She has sun-bleached auburn hair streaked with silver at the temples, flannel sleeves rolled up to her elbows to show a tiny, fuzzy black bee tattoo on her left wrist, and calloused, smudge-streaked hands he’s seen hauling hive boxes up her porch steps at dusk.
He mumbles a request for a jar of wildflower, and she leans across the table to grab it, her shoulder brushing his bicep through his worn canvas work jacket. He can smell lavender hand soap mixed with the sweet, thick scent of honey clinging to her clothes, and he freezes for half a second, unused to casual, unplanned contact. She holds eye contact longer than most people do when he doesn’t immediately fill the silence, her hazel eyes crinkling at the corners like she can tell he’s fighting the urge to check his watch.
When she passes him the jar, their fingers brush. Her hands are warm, almost hot, from hauling hives all morning, and his are ice cold from clutching the frosted cider jug. He flinches like he’s been burned, and she laughs, soft and low, no trace of mockery in it. “Sorry,” she says, wiping her hand on the leg of her work jeans. “I’ve been lifting 50-pound hives since 6 a.m. My hands are basically portable space heaters this time of year.”
He nods, fumbling for his wallet, and his thumb brushes the crumpled photo of his sister he keeps tucked behind his credit card. Guilt twists in his chest; he’s already 4 minutes off schedule, and he’s wasting time making small talk when he has a 1952 Royal Quiet De Luxe waiting on his workbench, a client expecting it by the end of the week. He wants to turn and leave, hates the flutter of something light and stupid in his chest that he hasn’t felt since before the crash, hates that he’s willing to throw the routine he built to keep himself safe out the window for a stranger who smells like honey and lavender.
“I found an old typewriter in my attic last week,” she says, before he can hand over his cash. “Looks like it’s from the 40s? Keys are all stuck, I have no clue how to fix it. I’d pay you in as much honey as you can carry if you’d come take a look at it sometime.”
He glances at his watch. 9:44. He’s supposed to be unlocking his front door right now. He opens his mouth to say he’s too busy, that he doesn’t take last-minute jobs, and he notices the thin, pale scar above her left eyebrow, curved exactly like the one his sister got when they crashed their bikes into a ditch when they were kids.
“Now works,” he says, before he can think better of it.
She lights up, grabbing two extra jars of buckwheat honey off the shelf and tucking them into the paper bag with his wildflower, her hand brushing his again when she passes it over. They walk back down the dirt path toward the residential block, leaves crunching under their work boots, the warm sun seeping through the orange and red maple trees onto the back of his neck. He doesn’t check his watch again. When they reach her porch, she holds the screen door open for him, and the faint hum of beehives from her backyard mixes with the sound of her laugh as she tells him the typewriter was her grandfather’s, that he used to write pulp westerns on it in his retirement. He steps across the threshold, the smell of cinnamon and honey wrapping around him, and for the first time in 11 years, he doesn’t care that he’s late.
