Rudy Voss is 62, retired high school woodshop teacher, 18 years out from his wife leaving him for his hunting partner the week their daughter left for NYU. He’s got a scar across his left palm from a table saw accident in 2019, a pickup truck with 287,000 miles on it, and a rule he hasn’t broken since the divorce: no unnecessary conversations with anyone who might want more than a quick chat about weather or Griz football. He drives 22 miles into Missoula every Friday for the VFW fish fry, sits at the same wobbly corner table, eats two pieces of cod, three hushpuppies, four packets of tartar sauce, drinks one draft Pabst, and is back on the road before 7pm.
The Friday before Halloween, the usual lady running the fry line is out with knee surgery. Marisol is in her place, 58, widow of an Army sergeant who passed from pancreatic cancer three years prior, moved to Missoula six months earlier to be near her granddaughter who plays club soccer for the local U-12 team. She’s got silver streaks through her dark wavy hair, calloused knuckles from her side gig running a small native plant nursery, and a smudge of fryer grease on her left cheek when Rudy steps up to the line.
He fumbles his paper ticket when he pulls it from his flannel pocket, it flutters to the scuffed linoleum at their feet. They both bend at the same time. His shoulder bumps hers first, then their hands brush when they reach for the ticket, her skin is warmer than he expects, a faint whiff of lavender hand cream cutting through the thick, salty smell of fried cod and old beer in the hall. Their knees knock when they stand, the rough denim of her work jeans scraping against his, and she huffs a quiet laugh when he mumbles an apology, holding the ticket out to her.
“Rudy, right?” She scribbles his order on the side of the paper plate before he can answer, heaps two pieces of cod on it, adds four hushpuppies, slides three extra tartar sauce packets across the counter before he asks. “Jerry at the end of the line said you always ask for extra. Said you’d grumble for half an hour if you don’t get enough to drown the fish in.”
He blinks, off balance. No one’s paid that much attention to his little habits in years. He mumbles a thanks, carries his plate to his usual table, tries not to glance over at the line every 30 seconds, fails miserably. She catches him staring three times, each time holding his eye contact a beat longer than casual, the corner of her mouth ticking up like she knows exactly how flustered he is.
Halfway through his beer, she walks over, wipes a crumb off the edge of his table with a rag, leans her hip against the table leg so her elbow is six inches from his forearm. “Heard you used to teach woodshop. I’m trying to build raised beds for my tomato plants next spring, keep the gophers out. Got all the lumber, but I’m terrible at cutting angles straight.”
His throat goes dry. He’s got a whole speech rehearsed for when people ask him to do favors that involve more than 10 minutes of his time, some polite line about being busy with projects up at his cabin, but it dies on his tongue when she tilts her head at him, her dark eyes crinkling at the corners like she already knows he’s going to say yes. He makes a dumb joke about how her lopsided cuts are probably better than most of the birdhouses his 10th grade students used to turn in, and she laughs so hard she snorts, claps a hand over her mouth like she’s embarrassed, and he laughs too, a real deep laugh he hasn’t felt in his chest in years.
By 7:30, the hall is almost empty, most of the regulars have headed home to watch the late football game. He stays behind, helps her stack coolers of leftover fish, carry them back to the storage room off the kitchen. The only light in the storage room is a single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling, casting warm golden shadows across the shelves of canned goods and folding chairs. She turns to face him when they set the last cooler down, her shoulder brushing his, and for a second he’s ready to bolt, to run out to his truck and drive back to his empty cabin like he always does, mad at himself for even letting this get as far as it has, for breaking the rule he swore he’d never break.
Then she touches his wrist, just for a second, her calloused fingers pressing lightly through the flannel of his sleeve, and all the resistance drains out of him. He admits he’s been scared to talk to anyone new for 18 years, scared he’ll let someone get close just to have them leave again. She nods, says she gets it, that she didn’t even go to the grocery store without her sister for two years after her husband died, that it still feels like cheating sometimes to even laugh at a stupid joke from a stranger.
He walks her to her beat-up Subaru when they lock up the VFW, the October air sharp enough to make his nose run, fallen maple leaves crunching under their work boots. She leans against the driver’s side door, asks him if he wants to come over to her place tomorrow around noon, she’ll make chili, they can cut the lumber for the raised beds, her granddaughter’s coming over after soccer practice, she’s been bugging her to learn how to carve little wooden animals.
He says yes before he can overthink it. She grins, leans in, presses a quick, warm kiss to his cheek, her cherry lipstick leaving a faint pink mark on his stubble. “You can wipe that off if you want,” she says, climbing into her car, “but I’d leave it if I were you. The guys at the fry next week will lose their minds when they see it.”
He gets in his truck, turns the key, waits for the old engine to sputter to life. He glances in the rearview mirror, runs a finger over the lipstick mark on his cheek, doesn’t wipe it off.
