Manny Rocha is 53, makes his living restoring antique typewriters out of the converted garage behind his bungalow in southern Oregon, and hasn’t willingly attended the town’s annual summer street fair in seven years. His only flaw, if you ask his 19-year-old niece who’s crashing with him for the summer, is that he’d rather spend three hours prying a bent shift key off a 1947 Underwood than make small talk with anyone who lives within a five mile radius. He’d argued for 20 minutes when she dragged him out of the house that afternoon, said the fair was just an excuse for bored retirees to overpay for fried dough and gossip about their neighbors, but she’d threatened to hide all his specialized screwdrivers if he didn’t come, so he caved.
He’s leaning against a splintered wooden lemonade stand 45 minutes later, holding a cup of lukewarm, overly sweet drink, watching teenagers run past with face paint and cotton candy stuck to their cheeks, when he spots her. Lena Marlow, 48, ex-wife of the guy who outbid him on the downtown storefront he’d been saving for to expand his typewriter repair business three years prior. He’d avoided her at every turn since then, had convinced himself she was just as smug and entitled as her ex-husband, had even crossed the street once when he saw her loading groceries into her SUV at the market.
The booth smells like cooked berries and sugar and something warm, spiced with cinnamon. She’s leaning against the wooden counter, wiping sweat off the back of her neck with the hem of her gingham shirt, her auburn hair pulled back in a messy braid that’s got a few stray strands stuck to her sunburned cheeks. She slides a sample of blackberry jam across the counter on a small plastic spoon, and when he reaches for it their hands brush. His are calloused, rough from years of working with tiny metal springs and precision screwdrivers, hers are soft, sticky with jam residue, and the contact sends a jolt up his arm he didn’t expect. He flinches like he’s been burned, and she laughs, low and throaty, not mean. “Relax, Rocha. I don’t bite. Unless you ask nicely.”
He snorts, tastes the jam. It’s good, sweet with a little tart bite, and he tells her so. She leans across the counter then, close enough that he can smell the coconut sunscreen she’s wearing and the faint hint of bourbon on her breath, and says she spiked that batch with a splash of cheap bourbon she had lying around the house. She tells him she and her ex split six months prior, he left her for a 22-year-old yoga instructor he met at the gym, that she’s running the jam booth to make extra cash to cover the mortgage on the house she got in the divorce. She says she’d argued with him back when he bought that storefront, told him he was being an ass for outbidding a guy who’d spent 10 years building a local business, that she’d always thought Manny’s typewriter restoration work was the coolest small business in town.
He’s quiet for a minute, processing. All that resentment he’d carried for three years, half of it aimed at her by association, feels stupid now. He meets her eye, holds the contact longer than he’s held anyone’s eye contact since his wife left him eight years prior, and he can see the faint smattering of freckles across her nose he never noticed before, the tiny laugh lines at the corners of her eyes when she smiles. She’s leaning so close their faces are only six inches apart, and if he leaned forward just a little he could kiss her, he realizes. He feels his face get warm, and he looks away for a second, at the stack of jam jars lined up behind her, labeled with messy handwritten stickers.
She asks him if he wants to come back to her place after the fair closes, says she’s got a special batch of peach bourbon jam she didn’t bring to the booth, too strong to sell to kids, that she’ll let him taste it if he promises to stop crossing the street when he sees her around town. He hesitates, first instinct is to say no, that it’s too fast, that he doesn’t do this sort of thing, that he’s got a typewriter waiting for him back at the garage that needs a new ribbon spool. But he looks back at her, sees her biting her lower lip like she’s nervous he’ll say no, and he nods.
His niece texts him 10 minutes later saying she’s got a ride home with a friend she ran into from college, don’t wait up. Lena locks up the booth once the last customer leaves, slings a canvas tote bag full of leftover jam jars over her shoulder, and tucks her free hand into the crook of his arm, her sticky, jam-sweet fingers brushing the coarse hair on his forearm. He doesn’t pull away.
