Manny Ruiz, 52, makes his living restoring vintage campers out of a cinder block shop on the edge of Silverton, Oregon, and hasn’t set foot at the town’s annual summer street fair in eight years. Not since his wife left him for a solar panel salesman she met at the exact same event, left him with a half-restored 1968 Winnebago and a habit of avoiding crowded spaces where people might offer him pitying smiles or unsolicited dating advice. His only flaw, if you ask the few people who know him well, is that he’d rather disappear than rock the boat, even when he’s getting screwed over. He only showed up this year because his 72-year-old neighbor threatened to stop bringing him homemade empanadas if he didn’t get out of the shop for a few hours.
He’s lingering by the craft beer tent, cold IPA sweating through the paper coaster in his hand, grease under his fingernails he still hasn’t scrubbed clean after working on a 1971 Airstream that morning, when she bumps into him. The cold glass of her rosé presses hard into his left ribcage first, then her bare arm brushes his bicep, warm and smooth, and a splash of pale pink wine spills down the front of his faded Carhartt shirt. She’s Lila Hale, 38, married to Jake Hale, the new county commissioner who’s spent the last three months pushing an ordinance that would charge anyone with an unregistered recreational vehicle on private property $500 a year per unit. Manny has 12 campers in various states of disrepair on his lot. The ordinance would put him out of business.
He’s half ready to mutter a sharp “watch it” before he looks down, and she’s already leaning in, crumpling a paper napkin in one hand, her brow furrowed in apology. Her coconut sunscreen and a hint of lavender perfume hit him first, then the faint, sweet tang of the rosé soaking into his shirt. “I am so sorry,” she says, and her voice is softer than he’s ever heard it, the few times they’ve crossed paths at the hardware store or the town hall meetings about the ordinance, when Jake was hovering over her shoulder, barking about “blight” and “property values.” She dabs at the stain on his shirt, her fingers brushing his chest through the thin, worn fabric, and he freezes. The distant steel drum band playing a cover of a Jimmy Buffett song fades to background noise for a second.
She pulls back after a beat, tucking a strand of honey blonde hair stuck to her sweat-glistened neck behind her ear, and smiles. She has a tiny scar on the left side of her upper lip, from a horseback riding accident when she was a kid, he remembers her mentioning once at a town meeting. “You’re Manny, right? The camper guy?” She nods at the Airstream logo stitched on the breast of his shirt, and her thumb brushes the edge of the logo when she points, so close he can feel the faint callus on the pad of her thumb, the kind you get from gardening or working with your hands, not from sitting in a county office signing paperwork. “I love the Airstream you did for Maria at the bakery. I used to camp in one just like it with my grandma, growing up outside Portland.”
He doesn’t want to be nice to her. He’s written three angry letters to the editor about her husband’s stupid ordinance, crumpled all of them up and thrown them away before he could send them. He’s spent three nights lying awake calculating how much money he’d lose if the ordinance passes, if he’d have to sell the shop his dad helped him buy 15 years ago. But she’s leaning in, her shoulder almost touching his, the line of her body angled toward him like they’re sharing a secret, and no one else is paying attention to them, the crowd milling around the beer tent, yelling over each other, the smell of fried funnel cake and cut grass hanging thick in the golden hour light. “Jake’s an idiot, by the way,” she says, quiet enough only he can hear, and she laughs a little, throaty, like she smokes the occasional cigarette when her husband isn’t around. “I’ve been yelling at him for weeks about that RV fee. It’s punitive. It only hurts people who actually work for a living.”
He blinks. He’d expected her to defend her husband, to make some excuse about policy or progress. Instead she’s rolling her eyes, glancing over her shoulder to make sure no one they know is within earshot, then leaning even closer, so her hair brushes his shoulder when she speaks. “I have a 1996 pop-up camper sitting in the side yard of our house. Jake says it’s a waste of space, refuses to even look at it. I’ve been trying to find someone to fix it up so I can take it camping by myself, when he’s off at his conferences.” She pauses, holds eye contact longer than she should, the kind of eye contact that makes your chest feel tight, like you’re doing something you’re not supposed to. “Jake’s in D.C. for a conference all next week. Would you be willing to come take a look at it? I’ll pay you double your usual rate. Cash.”
He knows he should say no. If anyone sees him pulling up to the commissioner’s house, the whole town will be talking by the end of the day. Jake will find out, and he’ll push that ordinance through even faster, just to screw him over. He’s spent eight years avoiding any kind of trouble, any kind of situation that might make people talk about him. But she’s holding out her phone to him, the lock screen a photo of her and Jake on their wedding day, grinning into the camera, and her fingers brush his when he takes the phone. Her skin is warm, a little sticky from the summer heat, and he can smell the rosé on her breath, sweet and sharp. He types his number into her contacts, doesn’t hesitate, even when he notices she saved his name as “Camper Guy” so Jake won’t ask questions if he sees it.
She tucks her phone back into the pocket of her high-waisted denim shorts, squeezes his wrist once, soft, before she steps back. “I’ll text you first thing Monday morning,” she says, and she smiles, that little scar on her lip crinkling, and then she’s turning to walk back toward the food stalls where her group of friends are waving at her, holding up plates of fried Oreos. Manny stands there for another ten minutes, sipping his IPA, now warm and bitter, the faint pink stain of rosé on his shirt still damp, the spot on his wrist where she squeezed still tingling. He doesn’t even bother wiping the stain off before he heads back to his truck, his boots sticking to the sticky asphalt as he walks.
