Elio Marquez, 57, has restored 41 vintage camper vans out of his cinder block workshop off Highway 98 in the Florida Panhandle, and he’s turned down every single request for a shop tour in the eight years since his wife moved to Atlanta with a SaaS salesman who wore custom tailored polo shirts and called Elio’s life’s work “a cute hobby for retirees.” His biggest flaw, the one his older sister teases him about every Thanksgiving, is that he’d rather spend three nights straight sanding rust off a 1968 Dodge A100 than make small talk with a stranger. He’d only shown up to the county’s annual oyster roast fundraiser because his best friend, who ran the only bait shop within 20 miles that sold live shrimp, had begged him to donate a custom restored vintage metal cooler as a top raffle prize for the coastal cleanup effort.
He’d planned to drop the cooler off, grab two beers and a dozen raw oysters, and slip out before anyone could corner him to ask for a discount on a van build. That plan fell apart ten minutes after he walked through the gate, when he reached for a can of IPA from the iced trough and a woman’s elbow connected solidly with his forearm, sloshing half the beer down the front of his grease-stained Carhartt jeans.
“Christ, my bad,” she said, and when he looked up, he caught her holding eye contact for two beats longer than most people bothered to, a half-smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. She was wearing a frayed navy flannel over a faded county dive team t-shirt, work boots caked in marsh mud, a thin scar snaking across her left knuckle. She smelled like salt air and coconut sunscreen, the kind you buy in bulk at the dollar store for all day trips out on the water. She introduced herself as Lena, the new county parks and rec director, said she’d been the one who’d reached out to his buddy about the raffle prize, that she’d been scrolling his Instagram account of van builds for six months, trying to work up the nerve to email him about a project of her own.
Elio grunted, wiped the beer off his jeans with a paper napkin, and told her he didn’t do custom builds for people who weren’t willing to wait six months and put in 20 hours of their own labor sanding rust. He expected her to back off, the way everyone else did when he got gruff. Instead, she laughed, leaned against the trough so her shoulder was six inches from his, close enough that he could feel the heat off her flannel through his own work shirt. “I’ve got a chainsaw certification and I spent three weeks last month pulling discarded fishing nets out of the seagrass beds,” she said. “I can handle sanding rust.”
He didn’t have a response for that, so he nodded, and let her follow him over to the fire pit where the oysters were being roasted over oak logs. The air smelled like wood smoke and brine, the ground crunched under discarded oyster shells, a guy with a beat up acoustic guitar was playing old Jimmy Buffett deep cuts off to the side. They stood next to each other for 40 minutes, passing a paper plate of steamed oysters back and forth, their hands brushing every time one of them grabbed for a shell. She told him the scar on her knuckle came from a sea turtle rescue the month prior, when a 200 pound loggerhead had snapped at her while she was cutting a fishing line out of its flipper. He told her about the 1972 VW Westfalia he was wrapping up for a retired teacher from Birmingham, the custom cedar shelves he’d built into the back for her collection of field guides, something he hadn’t told anyone outside of his sister in years.
Half of him was screaming to leave, to go home to his empty trailer and his half-finished van and the quiet routine he’d built that never let anyone hurt him again. The other half was leaning in without even noticing, memorizing the way the firelight gilded the edges of her hair, the way she snort-laughed when he told her about the guy who’d brought in a 1970s Chevy van that had a family of raccoons living in the ceiling. He kept waiting for the familiar, bitter voice in his head to remind him anyone who showed interest in his work was just going to leave eventually, that he was better off alone. It didn’t cut in. All he felt was the low hum of something he hadn’t felt in eight years, light and tight in his chest, like he was 17 again and waiting for his first date to show up to the drive-in.
When the raffle was called and his cooler went to a retired commercial fisherman who whooped so loud the seagulls took off from the nearby marsh, Lena turned to him, the firelight catching the smudge of charcoal on her left cheek. “I’m serious about that van build,” she said. “If you’re open to it, I’d love to come by the shop sometime this week to show you what I’m looking for. No pressure if you’re not. I get it if your space is private.”
Elio almost said no. He had the word on the tip of his tongue, had the excuse about a tight deadline ready to go. Then he looked at her, the way she was holding her hands loose at her sides, not pushing, not pressing, just waiting, and he shook his head. “I’m there Wednesday through Saturday, 8am to 4pm,” he said, grabbed a crumpled napkin out of his pocket, scribbled his cell number and the address of the shop on it in the grease pencil he always kept in his jeans pocket. “Don’t show up before 8. I don’t talk to anyone before I’ve had two cups of black coffee.”
She took the napkin, folded it carefully, and tucked it into the breast pocket of her flannel. “I’ll bring fresh boiled peanuts,” she said. “The spicy kind. I know how you grease monkeys like your snacks.”
He left 15 minutes later, said his goodbyes, climbed into his beat up 1998 Ford F150, turned the key in the ignition. The Tom Petty tape he’d had in the deck for three years kicked on, the opening chords of “Free Fallin’” blaring through the blown speakers. He pulled out of the parking lot, glanced in the rearview mirror, and saw Lena leaning against the gate, waving, one hand stuffed in her flannel pocket where she’d put his number. He lifted one hand off the steering wheel and waved back, a small, unplanned smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. He turned onto the highway, the wind coming in through the open window, carrying the smell of the gulf, and realized he was looking forward to waking up early Wednesday morning for the first time in as long as he could remember.
