Maceo Rios, 53, makes his living restoring antique typewriters out of a cinder block shop in Portland’s east industrial district, a space that smells like machine oil, lemon Pledge, and the burnt coffee he brews at 6 a.m. every day. He’s been widowed eight years, and his biggest flaw is that he’s turned avoiding social contact into a fine art—he skips every block party, every neighborhood association meeting, every holiday potluck, just to skip the questions about when he’ll “get back out there.” The only reason he showed up to this late August cookout is his assistant practically shoved him out the door, saying if he spent one more night sanding a 1950s Remington alone he’d turn into a typewriter himself.
He’s holding a lukewarm IPA that’s already sticky around the rim, half watching a group of kids scream as they bounce off the walls of a rented bounce house, when he spots her. Clara, the woman who lives three houses down, the one who walks her golden retriever past his shop at 7 a.m. sharp every morning, the one who left a loaf of sourdough and a cold bottle of horchata on his porch when his AC died during last month’s heat wave. She’s manning a table stacked with mason jars of peach jam, raising money for the local animal shelter, and the whole neighborhood has been whispering about her for three weeks, ever since she moved out of the house she shared with her husband and into that little bungalow alone. He’d heard the rumors: she left him for a woman, she was running from debt, she’d gotten a job across the country and was leaving any day. He’d told himself to stay away, that getting mixed up in whatever drama she was tangled in was the last thing he needed, but his feet carry him toward the table anyway.
His work boot catches on a loose cinder block half buried in the grass, and he stumbles, grabbing the edge of the table to steady himself, his calloused palm brushing her bare forearm as he rights himself. She laughs, a low, warm sound that cuts through the noise of the grill and the kids yelling, and he notices a smudge of peach jam on her left cheek, just above her dimple. She smells like coconut sunscreen and ripe peaches, and he freezes for half a second, his throat going dry. He mumbles an apology, wiping his hand on the grease-stained canvas rag he keeps stuffed in the back of his jeans, and she waves him off, leaning forward across the table so her face is a foot from his, the hem of her sundress brushing his knee.
“Relax, I don’t bite,” she says, and he spots the tiny tattoo of a semicolon typewriter key on her left wrist, peeking out from under a silver bracelet. “You’re the typewriter guy, right? I dropped off a beat up Royal last week, the one my grandma used to write cowboy romance novels in the 70s. Left a note taped to the case.”
He blinks, surprised. He’d been working on that Royal for three nights straight, charmed by the little doodles of horses in the margins of the note the owner had left, never connecting it to the woman who walked the golden retriever. He tells her he’s almost done with it, that the shift key was stuck but he found a replacement part from a guy he knows in Seattle, and she lights up, leaning in further, her shoulder brushing his now. They talk for 45 minutes, him leaning against the table, her perched on the folding chair behind it, their knees brushing every time one of them shifts, every time someone walks past and jostles the table. He teases her about the jam smudge on her cheek, and before he can think better of it, he reaches out, wipes it off with the clean corner of his rag, his thumb brushing the soft skin of her cheek for half a second. She doesn’t pull away. She holds his eye contact, three, four beats longer than polite, and he feels his face get hot, something tight in his chest loosening for the first time in years.
The sun dips below the warehouse roofs across the street, the bounce house gets deflated, most of the neighbors pack up their coolers and head home. She stands, brushing grass off her sundress, and asks him if he wants to walk down to the river with her, watch the sunset. He hesitates, glancing at the group of older neighbors on the other side of the park, the ones who love to gossip, the ones who’d definitely have something to say about him walking off alone with the woman everyone was talking about. He thinks about the photo of his late wife on his fridge, the one of her laughing on their wedding day, and for half a second he feels guilty, like he’s doing something wrong. Then he looks back at Clara, grinning at him, holding a jar of jam out for him to take, and he says yes.
They walk the two blocks to the Willamette, the air still warm, crickets chirping in the grass along the sidewalk, and she laces her fingers through his, her palm soft against his calloused one. He doesn’t let go. They sit on a weathered wooden bench by the water, watching the sky turn pink and orange over the west hills, and she leans into his side, her head on his shoulder. When she tilts her face up to kiss him, she tastes like peach jam and the hard seltzer she’d been drinking, and he kisses her back, no guilt, no hesitation, just the quiet thrill of something he thought he’d never feel again.
They walk back to his shop 20 minutes later, her hand in his, and he fumbles with his keys to unlock the front door, the little brass bell above the frame jingling as they step inside.
