Manny Ruiz, 53, has been restoring vintage neon signs out of his east Austin garage for 17 years. He’s got permanent neon pink stain under the cuticle of his left thumb, a scar across his right forearm from a broken tube that popped when he was fixing a 1960s Whataburger sign, and a rule he’s stuck to for 8 years: no getting involved with anyone who lives within a three block radius. The rule came right after his ex-wife left him for a guy who sold luxury condos and wore shoes that didn’t have a permanent coat of electrical grease on the soles, and Manny’s been fine with it, mostly. He spends his nights drinking Modelo at the dive bar down the street, listens to old Tejano tapes while he solders, and only talks to his neighbors when they complain about the faint hum of his sign testing rig running after 9 PM.
The August block party is the last place he wants to be, but the taco truck parked at the end of the block is run by his cousin, and he owed him a favor for helping haul a 12-foot tall motel sign out of a junkyard last month. He’s leaning against an oak tree, paper plate of al pastor tacos in one hand, cold beer in the other, when he spots her. Clara, his new next door neighbor, moved in two weeks prior, elementary school art teacher, the kind of woman who plants sunflowers along the fence line and leaves handwritten thank you notes on the mailboxes of everyone who helped her unload her moving truck. He’s avoided her like the plague so far, partially because the group of retired ladies down the street already cornered him three times to tease him about “finally having a pretty single lady next door”, and partially because one look at her sun-bleached linen dresses and paint-stained overalls made his chest feel tight, like he was 16 again and too nervous to ask the homecoming queen to dance.
She’s laughing at something the PTA president says, holding a frozen margarita in a plastic cup, and Manny’s about to slip back to his garage when she spots him. She waves, bright and unselfconscious, and starts walking over before he can pretend he didn’t see her. He panics, tilts his beer a little too far, and spills a good three ounces of it down the front of his worn denim jeans. “Shit,” he mutters, wiping at the stain with the back of his hand, right as she stops in front of him, close enough that he can smell coconut sunscreen and the lime rind in her drink.
“Looks like you needed that more than your pants,” she says, grinning, and pulls a crumpled paper napkin out of her shorts pocket, holding it out to him. When he reaches for it, their fingers brush, and Manny feels a jolt go up his arm, sharp and warm, like the little shock he gets when he touches a live wire he forgot to turn off. Her fingers are calloused too, he notices, rough at the tips from holding paint brushes and carving clay with her students. He mumbles a thanks, dabs at the beer stain, and prays his face isn’t as red as it feels.
She leans against the tree next to him, shoulder almost brushing his, and nods toward his garage, half visible behind the oak’s branches. “I saw the neon Pink Panther sign you had propped up by your door yesterday,” she says, raising her voice a little over the mariachi band that just started playing at the other end of the block. “I found a beat up 1970s Dr Pepper sign at a thrift store last month, half the tubes are broken, I was wondering if you’d be willing to take a look at it for my classroom. The kids go crazy for retro stuff.”
Manny blinks. He’s spent two weeks convincing himself she wouldn’t be caught dead talking to a guy who still has grease under his nails at 7 PM, and here she is, asking him for help with a neon sign. He opens his mouth to say yes, when one of the retired ladies from down the street walks past, waggling her eyebrows at them, and Manny’s first instinct is to pull away, to make some excuse about being too busy, to run back to his garage where no one can tease him about being too old and too rough for someone like her. He must make a face, because Clara laughs, soft and quiet, and bumps her shoulder against his. “Ignore them,” she says. “They’ve been betting on whether you’d talk to me before the end of the month. I had ten dollars on you holding out until Labor Day.”
Before he can respond, a kid on a scooter swerves around a group of people, slams into the back of Clara’s legs, and she stumbles forward, right into Manny’s chest. He drops his empty beer can, catches her by the waist, his hands splayed across the soft cotton of her shirt, and for a second, they just stand there, her cheek pressed to his t-shirt, the thrum of the mariachi trumpets vibrating through both of them. She pulls back slowly, looking up at him, her eyes bright, and she doesn’t step away, doesn’t brush off her shirt like she’s grossed out by the grease smudge he just left on her side. “You know,” she says, quiet enough only he can hear, “I left those empanadas on your porch last Saturday. The ones with the pork filling. I was hoping you’d knock and say thank you.”
Manny’s brain short circuits. He’d thought those empanadas were from his cousin, had eaten all three of them while he worked on a sign for a new BBQ joint, had even left a thank you note on his cousin’s truck the next day. “I thought those were from Hector,” he says, stupidly, and she laughs so hard she snorts a little, wiping at the corner of her eye.
“Nope,” she says. “I even drew a little sun on the container. Figured you’d get the hint.” She pauses, then squeezes his wrist, her calloused fingers warm against his skin. “I can drop the sign off at your shop tomorrow, if you want. Or you can come over to my place Sunday. I make better margaritas than the ones they’re serving here. No plastic cups.”
Manny nods, words still stuck in his throat. She grins, gives his wrist one more quick squeeze, then turns to walk back to her group of friends, yelling over her shoulder that she’ll leave a note on his door with her address if he doesn’t already know where she lives. He watches her go, then looks down at his hands, at the neon stain under his thumb, the grease crusted in the lines of his palms, the faint ghost of her waist under his fingers. For the first time in 8 years, he doesn’t feel the urge to scrub the grease off until his skin is raw. He bends down to pick up his empty beer can, grinning to himself, and makes a mental note to buy a new set of neon tubes before Sunday.
