Roman Voss, 62, spent 38 years clipped to steel beams 40 stories above Chicago’s skyline before a torn rotator cuff and a dead wife sent him back to the western Pennsylvania mill town he grew up in. His only flaw, if you asked the few people who knew him well, was that he’d rather bleed out on a driveway than ask someone to pass him a band-aid. He’d skipped the past three fire department fish fries, sick of the side-eye and the quiet “how you holding up” questions from people who still saw him as half of a couple that didn’t exist anymore, but the rain that Friday had made his bad left knee throb too bad to cook, so he’d caved.
He stood against the cinder block wall at the edge of the hall, paper plate loaded with greasy cod and vinegar-drenched coleslaw, when he caught sight of her. Clara Bennett, 58, ran the Main Street bakery his wife Marge had stopped at every Saturday for sourdough until the day she died. There was a faint smudge of flour on her left forearm, her canvas apron dotted with jelly stains, and even from 15 feet away he could smell the vanilla extract she used in her sugar cookies clinging to her clothes. He’d spoken to her maybe three times in four years, each exchange short, stiff, him fleeing before she could ask how he was.
His knee gave a sharp twinge when he pushed off the wall to grab more tartar sauce, and he stumbled a half step forward, his right hand brushing the curve of her waist before he could catch himself. She grabbed his elbow before he could overcorrect and face-plant into the ketchup bottle, her thumb brushing the thin, silvery scar on his forearm he’d gotten when a beam slipped in 1998. “Whoa there, ironworker,” she said, her voice low, warm, a little teasing. “You gonna take a header into the relish tray on my watch?”
They were six inches apart, and the noise of the hall faded to a hum for a second. He could feel the heat of her hand through his flannel sleeve, see the faint crinkles at the corners of her eyes when she smiled, the smudge of mascara she’d missed when she wiped at her cheek earlier. For half a second he hated himself for noticing, for feeling that tight little jolt in his chest he hadn’t felt since he was 19 and asking Marge to prom. He’d made a quiet promise to himself after Marge died that he wouldn’t do this, wouldn’t bother anyone, wouldn’t act like he got to be happy when she was six feet under. But then she didn’t let go of his elbow, and he didn’t step back.
She nodded at the folding table by the window, out of the way of the crowd. “C’mon. My feet are killing me, and I brought a container of those dill pickles Marge used to beg me for. You can sit, and we don’t have to talk about anything heavy if you don’t want to.” He almost said no, almost made up an excuse about having to get home to his hound dog, but then his knee throbbed again, and he nodded.
They sat for 45 minutes, talking about the rain, about the way the mill down the street was closing next year, about the golden retriever puppy she’d adopted a month prior that kept chewing through her baking sheets. When she pulled out her phone to show him a photo of the puppy passed out in a bowl of flour, his hand brushed hers when he took the device, and neither of them pulled away for three full beats. She didn’t ask him how he was holding up. She didn’t mention Marge until he did, offhand, saying Marge would have fought half the town for the last of the peach crumble she’d brought as a dessert. Clara laughed, loud and genuine, and said “I know. She threatened to hide my rolling pin once when I said I was out of sourdough.”
When the rain let up around 9, he walked her to her beat-up Ford pickup parked out front. His knee barely hurt anymore, like the distraction of talking to her had drowned out the ache. She leaned against the driver’s side door for a second, then leaned in, her lips brushing his cheek, the vanilla scent clinging to her hair wrapping around him. “I need the gutters replaced on the back of the bakery,” she said, like she was mentioning the weather. “Can’t afford the contractor quote I got. You do it for me, I’ll give you peach pie and black coffee every morning for a month. No arguments.”
He grinned, a real grin, the kind that crinkled the corners of his eyes, the kind he hadn’t let show in four years. “Deal,” he said. She climbed into her truck, waved, and pulled out of the lot. He stood there for another minute, the rain starting to mist again, before he walked to his own pickup. He turned the key, and the old Johnny Cash station he’d left the radio on blared through the speakers. He reached for the coffee cup in his cupholder, still half full, and smiled when he noticed she’d slipped a lemon crinkle cookie into the pocket of his flannel when he wasn’t looking.
