Elroy Mendez, 52, runs a vintage motorcycle restoration shop on 10 acres outside Yamhill, Oregon, and has set up a booth at the county harvest fair every September for three straight years. He never strays more than 10 feet from his stack of hand-tooled leather seat covers and custom handlebar grips, sales of which cover the slow winter months when his rheumatoid arthritis flairs too bad to wrench on bikes full time. That Saturday, the crisp fall air has turned his knuckles puffy and tender, so he’s rubbing them slow with a grease-stained shop rag when she walks up, a paper plate in one hand, the other brushing a strand of chestnut hair out of her face. He recognizes her immediately: Clara, wife of the fair board president, the loud, gruff guy who yells into the PA every hour about tractor pull sign-ups and giant pumpkin weigh-ins, the guy who’s brushed off her attempts to talk to him at every fair Elroy’s attended.
She leans her hip against the edge of his booth, the faded denim of her jeans brushing the side of his scuffed work boot when she shifts her weight. “Figured you hadn’t eaten anything all day,” she says, holding out the plate with a slice of peach pie, still warm, a dollop of whipped cream melting into the crumbly crust. Her forearm brushes his when he reaches for it, skin soft and sun-warmed, and he catches a whiff of cinnamon and pear shampoo over the pervasive smell of fried Oreos and cut hay drifting from the midway. He’s about to deflect, say he doesn’t take handouts, when she nods at his swollen knuckles. “My grandma had that same arthritis. Used to swear peach pie and a shot of bourbon fixed it better than any prescription.” She smirks, glancing over her shoulder quick like she’s checking if anyone’s watching, and her hazel eyes crinkle at the corners when she turns back.
Elroy’s first instinct is to shut down. He’s avoided even casual flirtation since his wife left him seven years prior, tired of the way people’s faces fall when they find out his hands lock up so bad some days he can’t hold a coffee mug, tired of waiting for them to bail like she did. This is even worse, he tells himself, because everyone in this 3,000-person town thinks she and the blowhard board president are the perfect 22-year marriage success story. But she stays, leaning against his booth, asking him about the oak leaf pattern tooled into the seat cover he finished the night before, and when he reaches for a napkin to wipe crumbs off his chin, his fingers brush hers. She doesn’t pull away. She just holds his gaze for three slow beats, the distant twang of a cover band playing Johnny Cash drifting across the fairgrounds, and Elroy feels heat creep up his neck he hasn’t felt in years.
She teases him about the beat-up 1978 Harley Electra Glide he’s got parked behind the booth, says her husband bought a brand new Street Glide last year, put a cheap plastic seat on it that leaves a bruise on her tailbone every time they ride more than 20 minutes. “Says comfort’s for pussies,” she snorts, and Elroy laughs out loud, the sound rough, because he’s heard that exact line from her husband half a dozen times at the local parts shop. She tells him she’s been taking motorcycle safety classes on the side, saved up enough cash to buy her own old Honda Shadow, hasn’t told her husband yet because he’d throw a fit about her “wasting money on stupid toys.” Elroy finds himself telling her about his arthritis, about how he makes the leather covers on days his hands work well, about how his ex-wife told him he’d never be able to run his shop alone once the flairs got bad. She nods, listens, doesn’t look pitying, just says “That’s bullshit. You’re obviously good at it.”
The loud crackle of the fair’s PA cuts them off, her husband’s voice blaring that the tractor pull finals are starting in 10 minutes. She curses under her breath, grabs a napkin off the stack on his booth, scribbles something on it with a pen she pulls from her floral sundress pocket, shoves it into the front pocket of his faded red flannel. Her hand brushes the fabric over his chest, lingers for half a second. “I’m at the Roadside Tavern at 9 tonight,” she says, quiet enough only he can hear. “My husband’s gonna be drunk off his ass celebrating the pull until 2 a.m. If you wanna show me how to tool that oak leaf pattern. Or whatever.” She winks, turns, and walks away before he can answer, her boots kicking up a little dust on the fairground gravel.
Elroy sits there for 10 minutes after she leaves, staring at the empty pie plate, before he pulls the napkin out of his pocket. It’s her phone number, scrawled in messy cursive, with a tiny doodle of a motorcycle next to it. He spends the drive back to his shop arguing with himself, telling himself it’s a bad idea, that he doesn’t need the drama of a married woman, that she’s probably just bored, that she’ll leave when she sees how bad his flairs can get. But he showers anyway, puts on a clean flannel, grabs the extra tooled Honda Shadow seat cover he’d made on a good hand day the week prior, shoves it in his saddlebag, and drives to the tavern.
He’s sitting at the bar, nursing a bourbon, when the bell above the door jingles at 9:02. He looks up, and she’s there, wearing a worn black leather jacket instead of the sundress, a motorcycle helmet slung over one arm, no wedding ring on her left hand. She spots him immediately, grins, and slides onto the stool next to him, her knee brushing his under the bar as she flags down the bartender for a bourbon of her own. He slides the tooled Honda seat cover across the bar to her, and her fingers wrap around his when she takes it.
