Manny Ruiz, 57, has spent the last eight years living out of a dented 2016 Ford F-150 half the week, crisscrossing central Florida’s backroads to scout left-handed JUCO pitchers for a low-A minor league team out of Fort Myers. He’s stubborn to a fault, still sleeps on the same side of the king bed he shared with his wife until she passed from ovarian cancer in 2015, still refuses to let anyone else cook his chili, still writes down every prospect’s fastball speed in a beat-up leather notebook instead of using the team-issued tablet. He only agreed to show up to the town fire department’s annual chili cookoff because his neighbor, a retired paramedic who walks Manny’s beagle-bluetick mix when he’s on the road, practically begged him, said he was turning into a hermit who only talked to teenage ballplayers and his dog.
He’s leaning against a sticky plastic folding table by the beer tent, half-sipping a lukewarm Yuengling and picking at a bowl of chili that’s way too spicy for his tastes, when someone slams into his side hard enough that a dollop of chili sloshes over the edge of the paper bowl onto his faded 1998 Devil Rays flannel. He’s ready to snap before he looks down. She’s holding a crumpled plate of cornbread, cheeks flushed, dark hair pulled back in a messy braid streaked with three thin strands of silver, wearing a worn denim jacket with a library card embroidered on the breast pocket. “Sorry, sorry,” she says, leaning in to brush the chili smudge off his shirt with a napkin before he can stop her, her knuckles brushing his chest through the thin flannel, warm even through the fabric. She smells like lavender hand lotion and lemon polish, like the old library he used to take his daughter to when she was small.
He stammers out that it’s fine, it’s an old shirt anyway, and she snorts, nodding at his hat, the brim frayed so bad the old Devil Rays logo is half peeled off. “That hat’s older than half the kids you scout, right?” she says, and he blinks, surprised. He doesn’t remember telling her what he does for work. She laughs, pointing at the leather notebook sticking out of his back pocket, the edge scuffed from being jammed there three hundred days a year. “My dad played first base for the Clearwater Phillies back in the 70s. I’d know a scout’s notebook anywhere. You’re Manny, right? I’m Clara. I took over the part-time librarian gig when Ms. Henderson retired last fall.”
The noise of the cookoff fades a little for him, suddenly. The country cover band off to the side is playing a bad version of a George Strait song, kids are running around screaming with snow cones dripping down their wrists, half the town’s council is arguing by the chili judging table, but all he can focus on is the way she’s leaning in just a little closer than most people do, her eyes bright when he tells her about the 19-year-old kid he saw last week who throws a 96 mph fastball but still lives with his grandma and makes her pancakes every Saturday. He’s used to keeping conversations short, used to brushing off people who ask personal questions, but for some reason he tells her about his wife, about how he stopped coming to community events after she died because every single person in town would give him that sad, pitying look that made him want to drive three hours out to the middle of nowhere and not come back for a week.
She doesn’t give him that look. She just nods, sipping her own beer, and says she gets it. She left her husband of 25 years a year and a half ago, after their kid left for NYU, and moved to this tiny town because no one knew her, no one would look at her like she was broken for leaving a marriage that had been dead for a decade. They’re standing so close their elbows brush every time one of them shifts, and every time it happens he feels a jolt he hasn’t felt since he was a teenager, half embarrassed half giddy, like they’re sharing a secret no one else at the cookoff is allowed to know. He knows people are starting to glance over, knows half the town will be gossiping about this by tomorrow, and for the first time in years he doesn’t care.
“Want to get out of here?” she says, tilting her head toward the lake at the edge of the park, the water glinting pink and orange as the sun starts to set. He hesitates for half a second, the voice in the back of his head screaming that he’s being disrespectful, that he shouldn’t be doing this, that he’s too old for this kind of stupid, giddy thrill. Then he nods, shoving his half-empty beer bottle in the trash can next to the table.
The gravel path down to the lake crunches under their work boots, her shoulder brushing his every other step, the cool evening air carrying the smell of pine from the woods at the edge of the water. They sit down on the weathered wooden dock, their legs dangling over the edge, and she pulls a peppermint out of her jacket pocket, handing it to him, their fingers brushing when he takes it, neither of them pulling away for a beat longer than they need to. They sit quiet for ten minutes, watching a pair of herons fish in the shallows, and when she leans her head on his shoulder for half a second, light as a feather, he doesn’t flinch.
She says she has to head home soon, her cat is probably knocking over her houseplants out of spite, and she pulls a crumpled library checkout receipt out of her pocket, scribbling her cell number on the back in blue ballpoint, pressing it into his palm, her thumb brushing the callus on his knuckle from decades of gripping a radar gun. He tucks the receipt into the inner pocket of his flannel, right next to the faded polaroid of his wife he’s kept there since she died, and watches her walk back up the path to her car, braid swinging behind her, before he pulls out his phone to text his neighbor he won’t be home for dinner after all.
