Manny Ruiz, 53, makes his living pulling rusted motorcycle frames out of Arizona junkyards and rebuilding them into machines that sell for twice the median rent in Tucson. He’s held a grudge against Lila Marquez for 32 years, ever since she ratted him out for sneaking her older sister out to a Faith No More show, getting him grounded for three months and dumped two days later. It’s the kind of petty, decades-old anger he’s never bothered to unpack, right up there with his resentment for the guy his ex-wife left him for eight years prior, the one who sold overpriced irrigation equipment to alfalfa farmers and wore cowboy boots even to the grocery store.
The Friday the grudge breaks is 102 degrees at 7 p.m., the misters at the neighborhood craft beer pop-up spitting cold water that evaporates before it hits the cracked asphalt. Manny’s still got grease crusted under his fingernails from finishing a 1972 CB750 restore for a plastic surgeon from Scottsdale, the check for $14,000 folded tight in the front pocket of his worn Carhartts. He’s halfway through his second hazy IPA, listening to the mariachi band playing two stalls down by the elote food truck, when someone slides onto the plastic picnic bench next to him, their denim-clad knee brushing his bare calf through the rip in his work jeans.
He tenses, ready to shift away and find another seat, until he smells jasmine shampoo and coconut sunscreen, and looks over to see a thin, pale scar slashing above her left eyebrow, the same one he gave her when he hit her with a stray baseball at a 1991 backyard cookout. It’s Lila. She’s 49 now, no pigtails, no ratty band merch she stole from her sister, her arms toned from hauling rescue horses at the equine sanctuary she runs outside of Marana, a tiny silver nose ring glinting when she smiles. “You still have that stupid wrench tattoo,” she says, nodding at the ink wrapped around his left forearm, the one he got the week he graduated high school.
He blinks, halfway through a snarky retort about her still being a stuck-up snitch, when she laughs, loud and unapologetic, and admits she ratted him out on purpose back then. She’d had a crush on him since she was 13, she says, was furious he was wasting his time taking her boring, boy-crazy sister to a show instead of noticing she’d been hanging around his garage every weekend asking to learn how to change oil. He stares at her, the anger he’s carried for half his life fizzling like a wet match, when she shifts closer to grab a napkin off the table, her shoulder pressing firm into his, and he feels a jolt he hasn’t felt since he was 21, messing around with girls in the back of his beat-up old Camaro.
They talk for three hours, the crowd thinning out, the misters shutting off when the owner locks up the taps for the night. She knows more about vintage Harleys than 90% of the guys who drag their broken bikes into his shop, teases him for still wearing a faded Soundgarden t-shirt that has a frayed hole right above the hem, and when she passes him a jar of pickled jalapeños she grabbed from the food truck, her calloused, horse-handling finger brushes his, and he has to look away for a second to catch his breath. The local news had been hyping the Perseid meteor shower all week, and when she tilts her head toward the parking lot and asks if he wants to ride out to the desert overlook to watch it, he doesn’t hesitate, even though he’d planned to go home, rewatch Tombstone for the 17th time, and pass out on his couch before 10.
They ride separate, her matte black Sportster right behind his CB750, the wind whipping through his graying hair, the desert air cooling down fast once they get outside the city limits. He pulls into the rutted dirt pull-off 20 minutes later, the whole valley lit up below them with the faint, hazy glow of Tucson’s streetlights, no other cars around for miles. They sit on the tailgate of his beat-up 2006 Ford F150, passing a cold can of Modelo back and forth, and when the first bright, blazing meteor streaks across the dark, star-dusted sky, she leans her head on his shoulder, the soft of her hair brushing his neck. He reaches over, laces his fingers through hers, and doesn’t say a word, the last of his old grudge burning up faster than the shooting star fading above them.
