Elroy Voss, 62, has restored antique typewriters for 18 years out of the cinder block garage behind his Asheville bungalow. He takes on exactly three clients a month, no exceptions, turns down every rush request or ask to modify a machine’s original parts, hasn’t let anyone stay past 5 PM at his shop since his wife left him 12 years ago for a traveling glass blower. His worst flaw, per his few remaining friends, is that he’d rather scrub rust off a 1940s Underwood for three hours than make small talk with a stranger, treats any unplanned interruption like a personal insult.
He’s perched on the end of a splintered pine bench at the neighborhood beer garden the night the city council race gets called, the progressive candidate he half-heartedly voted for beating the incumbent who wanted to pave over the local community garden for a parking lot. The place is so packed people are standing on picnic tables, yelling, popping seltzer cans, and he’s halfway to packing up his half-drunk lager to leave when someone squeezes onto the bench beside him, their denim-clad hip pressing warm and firm through the faded red flannel he wears even in 70-degree heat.
He huffs, pulls his arm away like he’s been burned, ready to tell them to find another spot, when he looks over and realizes it’s Marnie. The woman who runs the community garden, the one who drops off heirloom tomatoes at his shop door every August without knocking, the one who left a dented 1952 Royal typewriter on his porch two weeks prior with a sticky note that said it belonged to her poet mom, who used it to write all her published collections. She’s in paint-splattered canvas overalls over a white tank top, curls pulled back in a slipping scrunchie, a cold IPA in her hand that sweats condensation onto the chipped table between them. She smells like tomato vine and citrus lip balm, and when she laughs at something her friend yells across the table, the sound is rough and warm, like she spends half her days yelling over wind and dirt.
She turns to him then, grinning, the corner of her mouth tucking up like she knows he was just about to snap at her. “Figured you’d be here,” she says, leaning in so he can hear her over the bluegrass band tuning up on the small stage. Her knee brushes his under the table, calloused from kneeling in dirt all day, and he freezes, hasn’t been that close to anyone who isn’t a client dropping off a machine in years. “That Royal you’re fixing? The carriage shift was stuck worse than I thought, right? I could tell when I dropped it off, but I didn’t want to admit I’d been using it to prop open my garden shed door all winter.”
He blinks, surprised she even remembers the typewriter, let alone the specific issue he’d noted when he pried it open three days prior. He nods, finds himself talking before he can stop himself, telling her about the scratch on the space bar from her mom’s amber ring, the three pressed dogwood flowers he found tucked between the ribbon spool and the carriage. She leans in closer, her arm pressing against his now, and he doesn’t pull away. Her eyes are hazel, flecked with green, and she holds eye contact two beats longer than polite, like she’s studying the faint scar across his left eyebrow he got when he dropped a Royal on his face at 22.
He’s torn, half of him screaming this is a mess, unplanned, going to throw off his whole schedule for the week, the other half unable to look away from the freckles across her nose, the way her fingers tap her IPA in time with the band’s first song. She teases him about always sitting alone, says she’s watched him hum along to old bluegrass standards every Saturday for six months, even when he thinks no one’s looking. He flushes, hasn’t been teased that gently in years, and finds himself laughing when she mimics the way he taps his boot to the beat.
The band switches to a slow waltz, half the crowd pulling each other close to sway: couples married 40 years pressed up against kids who moved to town last month, everyone still giddy from the election win. She tilts her head at him, her thumb brushing the edge of the faded typewriter key tattoo on his wrist he got the week his wife left. “You dance?” she asks, and he opens his mouth to say no, that he hasn’t danced since his 10 year wedding anniversary, that he’s terrible at it, that he’d rather go home and clean typewriter parts. Instead he lets her grab his calloused hand, pads of his fingers rough from decades of prying apart rusted metal, and lets her pull him to the small dance floor.
Her hand rests light on his shoulder, his settles on her waist, the rough canvas of her overalls scratchy under his palm. They sway off-beat at first, him stepping on her toe twice, her laughing so hard she snorts into his shoulder. The scent of her citrus lip balm is stronger this close, and when she leans in to tell him she’s been wanting to ask him out for three months, he can feel her breath warm against his ear. He doesn’t say anything for a second, still half convinced this is some kind of prank, then he squeezes her waist a little tighter, tells her he’s been making up excuses to drive past the community garden on his way to the hardware store for just as long.
The song ends, they walk back to the bench together, her hand still laced in his. When she sits down, she presses her hip against his again, intentional this time, and he doesn’t pull away. He offers to buy her next beer, and she grins, takes a long sip of his half-finished lager first, leaving a faint pink lip balm stain on the rim. He wipes the condensation off the side of the can with his thumb, tucks a loose curl behind her ear before he flags down the server.
