Manny Ruiz is 53, spent 22 years as a Border Patrol K9 handler before he retired, now runs a one-man mobile dog grooming service exclusively for senior pet owners in south Tucson. He’s got a scar slashing through his left eyebrow from a run-in with a smuggler’s pit bull in 2017, and a habit of leaving his radio tuned to old Tejano stations so loud his van rumbles when he pulls into a driveway. His biggest flaw? He’s spent eight years convinced romance is for people who don’t have three dogs to bathe before noon and a bad back that acts up every time it rains. His wife left him for a real estate agent right after he filed for retirement, and he hasn’t so much as bought a woman a coffee since.
He’s at the annual summer street fair off South 6th Avenue on a Tuesday evening, dropping off a freshly brushed 6-pound chihuahua named Muffin to his oldest client, Mrs. Eleanor Henderson, when he rounds the cotton candy booth and slams right into a woman carrying a stack of art prints. The prints go flying, Muffin yips so loud the kid selling sno-cones turns to stare, and Manny is immediately gruff, apologizing in that short, barking tone he uses when he’s flustered. She laughs instead of snapping, bending to grab a print of a saguaro wearing a tiny studded leather jacket, and when their knuckles brush reaching for the same print, he freezes. She’s got dark curly hair shot through with thick streaks of silver, a half-sleeve of cactus tattoos winding up her left arm, and laugh lines crinkling at the corners of her warm brown eyes. She holds eye contact for three full beats longer than polite, tilting her head at the faded K9 patch on his work shirt, the one stitched with his old partner Max’s name.
“Eleanor’s groomer, right?” she says, wiping dust off the bottom of a print. “I’m Lila, her granddaughter. In town from Brooklyn to help her downsize. She’s been raving about you for months. Said you carry Muffin up the porch steps every time you drop her off.”
The air smells like roasted elote slathered in cotija cheese, cinnamon from the churro stand ten feet away, and the warm, dusty asphalt still holding heat from the 98-degree day. Manny shifts Muffin’s carrier to his other arm, suddenly hyper aware of the sweat beading at his hairline, the hole in the knee of his work jeans. He mumbles something about Muffin being a good passenger, and Lila snorts, holding up the leather jacket saguaro print. “I do tattoo flash and desert art. Trying to sell enough of these to cover gas for the drive back east next month.”
He doesn’t know why he offers to buy her a churro to make up for spilling her prints. He never does stuff like that. But she agrees, and ten minutes later they’re sitting on the curb across from the mariachi stage, Muffin curled up in Lila’s lap, crumbs of cinnamon sugar sticking to her tattooed forearm. Their knees are pressed together, denim on denim, and every time she leans over to adjust Muffin’s little pink bow, her shoulder brushes his. She teases him about the scar on his eyebrow, asks him to tell the story behind it, and when he does, she leans in so close he can smell the coconut sunscreen she’s wearing, sweet enough to cut through the street food smell. He hasn’t talked this much to anyone who isn’t a dog or a 70-year-old pet owner in years, and he’s halfway through a story about Max stealing a whole bag of tacos from his lunchbox when she reaches out, her thumb brushing the edge of his jaw to wipe a fleck of churro crumb off his stubble.
He doesn’t pull away. The mariachi band shifts to a slow, syrupy love song he remembers his mom playing on the radio when he was a kid, and Lila’s thumb lingers for half a second before she pulls back, her cheeks flushed pink, like she’s just as surprised by the gesture as he is. He’s spent so long telling himself he’s too busy, too set in his ways, too broken from the divorce to bother with anything that isn’t work or taking his own hound dog for walks at sunset, that the surge of desire that hits him is almost dizzying. He wants to kiss her. He wants to take her to that little 24-hour diner on 4th Street that makes green chile pancakes so fluffy they melt in your mouth. He wants to show her the old photo album he has of Max, all the pictures of them on patrol out in the desert.
He doesn’t overthink it. He asks her if she wants to ride along with him tomorrow when he picks up Mr. Torres’s 80-pound golden retriever for a groom, then get breakfast after. She blinks, then grins, so bright it makes the setting sun look dim. She pulls a Sharpie out of her crossbody bag, scrawls her cell number on the back of the leather jacket saguaro print, and tucks it into the breast pocket of his work shirt, her fingers brushing his chest through the thin cotton. She kisses his cheek, soft and quick, before she stands up, lifting Muffin’s carrier with one hand. “I’ll meet you at Eleanor’s at 8 a.m. Don’t be late.”
He stays on the curb for five minutes after she walks away, the crumpled churro wrapper in one hand, the faint tingle of her kiss still burning on his cheek. He can feel the ink of her phone number bleeding through the paper of the print against his chest, warm as the last of the afternoon sun.
