Elias Voss is 57, makes his living restoring vintage typewriters out of his converted garage workshop in the hills outside Asheville. His worst flaw is that he’s spent the last eight years treating small talk like a contagious disease, ever since his wife’s cancer took her faster than anyone expected. He only agreed to run the historical society’s typewriter tune-up booth at the annual fall harvest festival because the society’s president is his 82-year-old next door neighbor, and he owed her for feeding his hound dog when he had to go out of town for a parts run back in June.
The air smells like wood smoke and fried apple pies, the temperature’s dipping just enough to make the tip of his nose pink, and he’s halfway through his third thermos of black coffee when she walks up. She’s wearing a frayed plaid flannel over a faded navy sweater, jeans cuffed at the ankle, work boots caked in mud from the festival grounds, and there’s a smudge of bright blueberry filling on the side of her left wrist. She’s holding a paper plate with a slice of pie on it, and she holds it out like she already knows he skipped lunch.
“Marge said you haven’t left that booth all day,” she says, leaning in to set the plate on the edge of his table, her shoulder brushing his bicep for half a second. He catches a whiff of lavender laundry soap and cinnamon, nothing cloying, nothing like the overpriced perfume his wife used to wear to holiday parties. Her name is Maeve, he remembers, she runs the pie contest every year, moved to town two years ago after her divorce went final. He’s seen her at the grocery store a handful of times, always with a stack of baking supplies in her cart, always looking like she’s on the verge of laughing at something. She holds his gaze steady when she talks, no shy darting away, and the tips of his ears go warm.
She says she brought a typewriter she inherited from her dad, a 1952 Royal Quiet De Luxe, kept it in her attic for 15 years before she worked up the nerve to bring it to someone. She hefts a scuffed canvas tote up onto the table, and when he reaches for the strap, their fingers brush. Her hands are cold from carrying the tote through the 40-degree wind, his are warm from holding the thermos, and the contrast makes him flinch a little, like he’s touched a live wire. He’s embarrassed by the jolt, tells himself he’s being an idiot, that he’s too old for stupid little thrills like that, that he has no business looking at a woman like her when he still has his wife’s photo taped to the inside of his toolbox.
He pulls the typewriter out, runs a calloused finger over the chipped navy enamel, checks the carriage, the ribbon spools, the keys. The left shift key is stuck, that’s the only issue. He pulls a tiny flathead screwdriver out of his pocket, flicks the stuck spring loose in 10 seconds. He asks her to test the space bar a few times, make sure the carriage moves smooth, and she leans in over the table next to him, her knee pressing firm against his under the edge. She hits the key three times, fast, grins when the carriage slides perfectly across without catching.
She says she’s been meaning to talk to him for months, saw him at the hardware store back in August carrying a new table saw, wanted to ask him if he could help her build a new set of shelves for her kitchen, but he always looked like he was in a hurry to get away from everyone. He laughs, admits he’s been in a hurry to get away from everyone for years, that he thought if he kept to himself he wouldn’t have to lose anyone else. The words come out before he can stop them, and he tenses up, waiting for her to get awkward, to make an excuse to leave.
Instead, she nods, like she gets it. Tells him she did the same thing for the first year after her divorce, wouldn’t even answer her sister’s phone calls half the time, thought if she let anyone get close they’d just leave too. She taps the typewriter key one more time, the soft, sharp click cutting through the noise of the festival crowd a few feet away.
He takes a sheet of plain copy paper out of his stack, rolls it into the typewriter, types one line slow: “Pecan pie tastes better when you don’t eat it alone.” He slides the paper across the table to her, and she tucks it into the inside pocket of her flannel, grinning so wide the corners of her eyes crinkle. She says she’s got a whole pecan pie cooling on her kitchen counter right now, and a stack of her dad’s old letters from the Korean War she wants to type up, if he’s got time after the festival wraps up. He nods, so fast his glasses slip down his nose a little.
She leaves to go judge the last of the pie entries, and he sits back in his folding chair, takes a bite of the blueberry pie. It’s sweet, tart, still warm enough to melt the butter on top. He picks up the tiny screwdriver he used to fix her typewriter, twists it between his fingers, and doesn’t bother shoving down the stupid, giddy flutter in his chest.
