Manny Ruiz, 59, owns a small-batch hot sauce operation out of his converted garage in East Austin, and he hasn’t set foot at the neighborhood fall block party in three years. He avoided it after his wife Elaina died of breast cancer, sick of neighbors cornering him to ask if he was “holding up okay” when they didn’t actually want to hear the answer. He only showed up this year because his 22-year-old niece, who runs his social media, threatened to post his 1998 college karaoke tape of him belting Selena in a sequined shirt to his 12k Instagram followers if he didn’t bring his award-winning habanero mango sauce for the annual chili cookoff. He’s leaning against a wobbly folding table, scuffing the toe of his oil-stained work boot in the patchy grass, half-listening to the HOA president rant about unregistered leaf blowers, when the collision happens.
The woman trips over a neon green skateboard left in the walkway by a kid in a full T-Rex costume, lurches forward, a tray of peach cobbler held over her head to keep it from spilling, and slams into his side. Her bare forearm smacks the side of his neck, right over the faded red chili pepper tattoo he got in Tijuana on his 21st birthday, and he flinches not from the impact, but from the warmth of her skin, the faint smell of cinnamon and lavender laundry detergent clinging to her oversized flannel shirt. She rights herself quickly, sets the tray down on the edge of his table, and laughs, a low, rough sound that makes the tips of his ears feel warm. “Shit, I am so sorry. These little gremlins leave their crap everywhere, I swear I’m gonna start hiding all their toys in the community pool.” She holds out a hand, calloused at the fingertips, chipped dark green nail polish. “Lena Marlow. Just moved into the yellow bungalow three blocks over, the one with the overgrown sunflower patch the HOA keeps sending me letters about.”
Manny freezes. Marlow. That’s the last name of his former business partner, the guy who stole his smoked jalapeno recipe ten years back, ran off with half their startup money, and told every food vendor in Texas Manny had embezzled from the company to fund a gambling habit he never had. He’d hated Jake Marlow for a decade, walked out of three separate food festivals when he heard the guy was going to be in attendance, and now his ex-wife is standing in front of him, picking up a sample cup of his chili, blowing on it before she takes a sip. He should pack up his sauce, go home, watch the same John Wayne western he watches every Saturday night, pretend this never happened. But he doesn’t. He stays, watches her eyebrows shoot up, hears her make a soft, surprised noise in the back of her throat.
“Holy shit,” she says, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand. “That’s the exact same heat profile Jake used for that smoked jalapeno sauce he swore he invented back in 2013. I always thought he was lying about coming up with that. He never could get the balance of smoke and fruit right on his own, couldn’t even boil pasta without burning it when we first met.” She glances down at the crumpled paper name tag pinned to his work shirt, the one his niece made him wear with “SAUCE KING” scrawled under his name in glitter pen. “Manny Ruiz? Wait, Jake used to rant about you every time he got drunk. Said you screwed him out of the business. I always knew he was full of it. He couldn’t lie his way out of a paper bag.”
They end up sitting on the curb 20 feet away from the noise of the party, sharing a paper plate of her peach cobbler and a cold Modelo he pulled out of his cooler. The sun dips below the oak trees lining the street, painting the sky soft pink and tangerine, and the mariachi band that set up at the end of the block starts playing a wobbly, off-key version of *Cielito Lindo*. Every time a group of kids runs past screaming after a runaway beach ball, their knees brush, and he can feel the heat of her leg through his worn denim jeans. She reaches over at one point to wipe a smudge of chili off his jaw, her thumb lingering on the coarse stubble along his cheek for half a second too long, and he doesn’t flinch away, doesn’t make a self-deprecating joke about being a messy eater, just holds her gaze for a beat longer than he should. She tells him she left Jake two years ago, after she caught him cheating on her with a salsa vendor at a San Antonio food festival, moved to Austin to open a tiny vintage vinyl pop-up, wanted to be somewhere no one knew her as Jake Marlow’s wife. He tells her he hasn’t had a full conversation with someone who didn’t want to talk about hot sauce or his dead wife in almost two years.
She snorts, takes a long sip of beer. “People love asking if you’re okay like they actually want to hear you say no. Half the time they just want to check a box and feel good about being nice.” She nods at the chili cookoff table, where the judges are holding up his entry, cheering so loud the HOA president’s face is turning bright red. “Looks like you won, by the way. That leaf blower guy looks like he’s about to burst a blood vessel.” He looks over, sees the blue first place ribbon pinned to his sauce display, and laughs, a real, deep laugh that makes his sides hurt, the kind he hasn’t had since Elaina was alive. When he looks back at her, she’s smiling at him, the thin silver ring in her left nostril glinting in the light from the tiki torches lining the sidewalk. He doesn’t overthink it, doesn’t spiral into worrying about what Jake would say, or what the neighbors would whisper if they saw him out with someone so soon after Elaina died. He leans in a little closer, so their shoulders are pressed together, and passes her the last bite of cobbler. She takes it, her fingers brushing his for a split second, and says she’s free next Saturday if he wants to show her that test kitchen he ranted about Jake stealing half the equipment from. He nods, pulls his beat-up old iPhone out of his jeans pocket, and hands it to her to type her number in.
