Manny Rodriguez is 62, has made a living restoring vintage travel trailers out of a corrugated metal shop outside Baker City, Oregon, for 11 years. He left Portland the day his wife handed him divorce papers, left half their savings, the house they’d rehabbed together, even the golden retriever they’d raised from a puppy, because he couldn’t stand to be in a space that felt like it was shrinking around him. His flaw, if you asked the few people who knew him, was that he’d walled himself off so tight he couldn’t even accept a free beer from the guy who ran the auto parts store down the road without overthinking it for three days.
He showed up to the VFW fish fry every Friday like clockwork, got the same plate: two pieces of catfish, extra hushpuppies, a side of coleslaw with too much vinegar, sat in the same back corner booth, ate fast, left before anyone could strike up a conversation. That Friday was different, mostly because the woman behind the dessert table wasn’t the usual 78-year-old Mabel who’d run it for 20 years. It was Clara Hale, 58, wife—soon to be ex-wife—of Tom Hale, the guy who’d just been elected county commissioner three weeks prior, who’d already announced he was slashing the budget for the public campground trailer restoration contract Manny had relied on for half his income the past four years. Everyone in the room was pointedly avoiding her, like she had a contagious disease. Manny could see her twisting the thin silver band on her left finger back and forth, like she was still getting used to not wearing a full wedding set.
He’d finished his catfish, and against his better judgment, he walked up to the dessert table for a serving of peach cobbler. He reached for a plastic fork from the stack at the same time she did, their knuckles brushing. Her skin was soft, smelled like lavender hand cream, her nails chipped at the edges, paint the color of wild poppies, like she’d been hauling dog crates for the local animal shelter where he knew she volunteered. She held eye contact for two full beats longer than polite, the corner of her mouth tugging up in a half-smirk that told him she knew exactly what everyone in the room was thinking, and she didn’t give a shit. “I’ve seen you here every Friday for two months,” she said, her voice a little rough, like she smoked a menthol every now and then when she was stressed. “You never talk to anyone. You hiding from someone?”
Manny froze for half a second, his brain cycling through the list of reasons he should mumble a thanks for the cobbler and walk away. Tom Hale had a reputation for blacklisting anyone who even looked like they were on his bad side, and being seen chatting up his freshly separated wife would definitely land him on that list, kill his campground contract, maybe even get the county to raise the permit fees on his shop. He hated Tom, hated the guy’s smug grin, hated that he’d spent his entire campaign talking about “cutting waste” while he drove a $70,000 pickup and spent county money on steak dinners for his buddies. But he also couldn’t remember the last time a woman had looked at him like she actually saw him, not just the quiet guy who fixed trailers.
“Just don’t have much to say,” he said, leaning against the edge of the table, close enough that he could smell the cinnamon on her breath from the cobbler she’d snuck a bite of ten minutes earlier. Her shoulder brushed his when she passed him his plate, warm through the thin fabric of her flannel shirt, the same faded blue as the one he was wearing. She laughed when he told her the cobbler was sweeter than he expected, a loud, unselfconscious sound that made a few of the old guys at the next table glance over. She told him she’d filed for divorce three weeks prior, had been sleeping on her sister’s couch, was looking for a 1972 Airstream to fix up and live in, had seen the one he had parked out front of his shop when she drove past last week dropping off dog food at the shelter down the road.
He hesitated for a full ten seconds, thinking about Tom, about the contract, about how easy it would be to keep hiding in his shop alone, no risk, no disappointment. Then she slipped a crumpled scrap of grocery receipt into his palm, her fingers lingering on his wrist for half a beat, her number scrawled on the back in blue ballpoint, next to a tiny doodle of a floppy-eared dog. “I can bring a six pack of that cold hazy IPA you like,” she said, quiet enough no one else could hear. “I know you keep it in the mini fridge by your workbench. Saw it through the window when I drove past last Tuesday.”
He walked back to his booth, cobbler untouched for the first time ever, the paper crumpled tight in his fist. He left ten minutes later, and she winked at him from the dessert table when he walked out the door, no one else looking. He climbed into his beat up 1998 Ford F150, turned the key, the radio blaring that old George Strait song he and his ex-wife used to dance to in their kitchen on Saturday mornings. For the first time in 11 years, it didn’t make his chest tight. He smoothed out the receipt paper on the steering wheel, read the number twice, tucked it into the breast pocket of his flannel. He reached over to turn the heater up, and his thumb brushed the edge of the paper through the fabric, warm as a match head that had just been struck.
