Javi Mendez is 59, a vintage slot machine restorer who lives in a creaky bungalow half a mile from Nashville’s honky tonk strip. He’s spent the seven years since his wife Elena died of ovarian cancer deliberately keeping people at arm’s length, convinced any lingering eye contact or casual chat with a woman more than a decade younger than him makes him look like a sad, lonely old creep. Most days he’s fine with that: he spends his hours taking apart 1960s Bally and 1970s Williams machines, polishing brass gears, replacing frayed wiring, dropping off finished units to dive bars and diners for cash, then heading home to microwave a frozen burrito and watch old westerns alone.
The annual neighborhood summer block party is the only event he forces himself to attend, mostly because Mrs. Hale from two doors down brings peach cobbler so good it makes the small talk worth it. He’s leaning against a splintered pine picnic table, half-empty can of Pabst in one hand, coveralls still smudged with brass polish on the left wrist, when he sees her. She’s Lila, the travel nurse who moved into the blue clapboard house three blocks over a month prior, the one the neighborhood gossips have been whispering about, the one they swear only dates men over 50. Javi has gone out of his way to avoid her until now, crossing the street if he sees her watering her front lawn, pretending he can’t hear her wave when he drives past in his beat-up Ford F-150.
She’s carrying a paper plate piled high with cobbler, flip flops slapping against the warm asphalt, when she catches her toe on a loose brick half-buried in the grass. She stumbles forward, one hand flying out to grab his forearm to steady herself, her other hand clamped tight around the plate so the cobbler doesn’t slide off. Her palm is warm, a faint callus rough against the fabric of his coverall, her bare shoulder brushing his bicep hard enough that he can feel the heat of her skin through his shirt. He smells coconut sunscreen and cinnamon and the faint, sweet tang of peach on her clothes when she leans in close for those two seconds, and he fumbles his beer so bad a single drop sloshes over the rim and lands on his scuffed work boot.
“Jesus, I’m so sorry,” she says, laughing, pulling back just far enough to meet his eye. Her hazel eyes are crinkled at the corners, a smattering of freckles across her nose from the July sun, and she doesn’t step away even when she’s fully steady on her feet. She stays pressed right up next to him at the picnic table, their knees six inches apart, her plate of cobbler set down between them. “I’ve been meaning to introduce myself. I’m Lila. I swear I don’t usually tackle strangers on the sidewalk.”
Javi mumbles his name, wipes the palm of his free hand on the leg of his coveralls like he’s got something on it. He can see Mrs. Henderson from down the street staring at them over the rim of her iced tea glass, and his first instinct is to make an excuse, grab his beer, and leave. But Lila is leaning in, her eyes fixed on the brass polish smudge on his wrist, asking what he does for work, and he can’t bring himself to walk away.
He explains the slot machine restoration, tells her about the 1964 Bally he fixed that morning for a dive bar off Broadway, the one that played Johnny Cash every time someone hit the jackpot. Her face lights up, and she tells him her dad collected vintage slots when she was a kid, she used to sneak into his garage after school to pull the lever, save up quarters just to hear the bells ring. No one’s ever asked him about his work beyond how much it costs and how fast he can finish, and for 45 minutes they talk, her inching closer every few minutes, her knee brushing his once, then again, and he doesn’t shift away. He catches himself glancing at the thin, pale scar on her left forearm, the one she says she got when she tripped over a patient’s IV line on her first week as a nurse, and he doesn’t feel like a creep for looking. He feels like someone’s actually paying attention to him for the first time since Elena died.
When the sun starts to dip below the oak trees lining the street, Lila pushes off the picnic table, picks up the half-eaten plate of cobbler. “I have a 1972 Williams slot in my garage that my dad left me when he passed,” she says, her voice a little softer than it was before, her hand resting on the tabletop two inches from his. “It’s been broken for three years. I’ve been too scared to let anyone touch it. Would you be willing to come take a look tomorrow? I’ll pay you, obviously. And I’ll make you more cobbler.”
Javi hesitates for half a second, the voice in the back of his head screaming that people will talk, that he’s too old for this, that he’s betraying Elena by even considering it. Then he looks at her, the way she’s biting her lower lip a little like she’s nervous he’ll say no, and he nods.
She grins, grabs a napkin from the stack next to the cooler, scribbles her address and cell number on it in blue ballpoint, presses it into his palm. Her fingers linger on his for two full seconds, long enough that he can feel the faint smudge of pen ink on the tip of her thumb against his skin, before she pulls her hand back. “I’ll see you tomorrow at 2, okay?” she says, and then she turns and walks away, her flip flops slapping against the asphalt, and he watches her go until she turns the corner and disappears.
He tucks the napkin into the pocket of his coveralls, finishes the last sip of his beer, and turns to head home. The crumpled napkin presses warm against his chest through the fabric, and for the first time in seven years, he doesn’t dread waking up the next morning.
