Rafe Holloway, 52, runs a vintage camper restoration shop out of a weathered red barn 12 miles outside Asheville, North Carolina. He works 10 hour days, six days a week, sanding dents out of 1960s Scamps and rewiring Airstream electrical systems, his knuckles perpetually crusted with clear coat and sawdust. His only consistent break is every Wednesday at 7 p.m., when he drives into town to the downtown beer garden, orders the same peach IPA, sits at the same wobbly metal table in the far back corner, and leaves exactly 90 minutes later without speaking to anyone but the bartender. He’s avoided casual conversation for 8 years, ever since his wife left him for a timeshare salesman, deciding the risk of losing something he cared about again wasn’t worth the trouble of getting to know anyone new.
The air is thick with humidity and the smell of fried pickles the Wednesday she walks up to his table. He recognizes her immediately: Mara, the new county health inspector who’d written him two $180 fines in the past month, first for a rusted fire extinguisher by his welder, second for a frayed power cord strung between two workbenches. He’d avoided her on her last three scheduled visits, leaving a “out on call” sign taped to the barn door even when he was hidden in the back stripping paint off a 1972 Winnebago. She’s not in her usual starched uniform tonight, though, just cutoff denim shorts and a faded Johnny Cash t-shirt, a sunflower tattoo curling around her left bicep, her bare shoulders dusted with freckles from the summer sun. She’s holding two cold IPA cans, condensation dripping down the sides, and she stops just six inches from the edge of his table, close enough that he catches the scent of coconut sunscreen and lime hard seltzer on her breath.
“Relax,” she says, a faint smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth, and sets one of the cans down on the table, her knuckles brushing his where his hand rests on the metal surface. The contact is light, accidental, but he flinches like he’s been burned. “I’m off the clock. No fines tonight.”
He stares at the can for a full three seconds before he picks it up, the cold aluminum seeping into his palm. He’s annoyed, at first, ready to tell her to leave him alone, to stop harassing him over stupid code violations that don’t hurt anyone. Then she sits down across from him, shifting in her seat so her knee brushes his under the table, and he doesn’t move his leg away. The string lights strung between the oak trees cast gold streaks through her auburn hair, and her voice is softer than it was in his shop, no sharp, official edge to it. She tells him she moved to Asheville six months prior, after her fiance cheated on her with his paralegal, that she’d been taking her frustration out on every local business owner she inspected just because she was mad at the whole world. She’d felt bad about the fines, she says, had noticed he came to the beer garden every Wednesday, figured she owed him a peace offering.
They talk for an hour and a half, longer than he’s talked to anyone who isn’t a parts supplier in years. She teases him about the half-finished 1972 Airstream he has parked by the side of his barn, says she’s driven past it a dozen times on her way to other inspections, has been daydreaming about taking it up to the Blue Ridge Parkway for a long weekend to watch the sun rise over the mountains. He tenses up when she mentions it; he’s never sold or rented any of the campers he’s restored, hoards them in the field behind his barn like they’re safety blankets, convinced if he lets one go, he’ll have nothing left to show for all the hours he puts in. She leans forward across the table then, elbows resting on the metal, eye contact steady, and says she’ll pay him double the going rental rate, plus a whole peach pie from the stand on Highway 74, the one with the flaky crust he buys turnovers from every Saturday morning. He doesn’t remember ever telling her he stops there.
He agrees, but only under the condition he comes along, to make sure she doesn’t scratch the Airstream’s new custom paint job. It’s a flimsy excuse, and they both know it, but she grins, and her knee presses a little harder against his under the table. She reaches across to brush a mosquito off his forearm, her hand lingering for a beat longer than necessary, and he doesn’t pull away. He admits he’s held onto every camper he’s ever fixed because he was scared if he let something he worked hard on leave, it wouldn’t come back, that he’d be left with nothing but empty space again. She nods, like she gets it, says she still sleeps on the couch in her apartment because she can’t bring herself to sleep in the king size bed she bought with her ex.
When she leaves, she squeezes his shoulder lightly, her fingers warm against his sunburned skin, and tells him she’ll pick him up at his shop at 6 p.m. Friday. He watches her walk to her beat up Subaru, the string lights catching the hem of her shorts as she goes, and takes a long sip of the beer she brought him. It’s his favorite peach IPA, the one he orders every single week. He hadn’t mentioned that to her, either.
