Manny Ruiz, 59, has run a mobile bookmobile serving the scattered mountain towns of southern Colorado for seven years, ever since he retired from Denver public school admin and his wife passed from ovarian cancer six months later. His worst flaw is that he still runs from any interaction that doesn’t revolve around dog-eared westerns or well-loved mystery paperbacks, convinced small-town gossip will turn even a friendly chat into a salacious rumor that chases him from one stop to the next.
He’d parked his beat-up sky-blue bookmobile at the Westcliffe end-of-summer street fair at 8 a.m., and by 6 p.m. he’d restocked every bin, logged all returns, and tucked a handful of new sticky-note comments into the margins of his favorite noir titles for regulars. The air smelled like roasted green chiles, pine, and spilled cheap beer, and his flannel shirt was stuck to his back with sweat under his faded Stetson. He locked the bookmobile door, headed for the beer tent to grab one cold IPA before the 45-minute drive back to his off-grid cabin, when he collided with someone turning fast out of the food booth line.
A paper plate of loaded green chile fries tilted, two crumbs and a smudge of cheese landing on the front of his shirt. He started to apologize, then froze when he recognized her: Elara Voss, 56, wife of the county commissioner running for state house, whose face was plastered on campaign signs every 10 feet along the main road. She laughed, low and warm, and stepped close enough that he could smell lavender lotion mixed with the faint tang of rosé on her breath as she brushed the crumbs off his shirt with her free hand, her knuckles brushing the faded tattoo of his wife’s initials on his left wrist.
He’d seen her a dozen times before, usually hovering 10 feet behind her husband as he shook hands and gave speeches about lower property taxes, but he’d never been this close. Her hazel eyes were crinkled at the corners from laughing, there was a tiny smudge of green chile on her lower lip, and her cut-off denim jacket showed sun-freckled forearms crisscrossed with thin silver bracelets. He stammered an apology, ready to bolt, when she leaned in a little more, her shoulder brushing his, so her voice only carried to him over the roar of the fair crowd.
“I’ve been stopping by your bookmobile every Wednesday when you park at the general store for three months,” she said, nodding at the bookmobile behind him. “You never noticed. I check out all the noir paperbacks you leave in the front bin. I love the stupid little jokes you write in the margins.”
Manny’s brain short-circuited. He’d always thought no one paid attention to those sticky notes, that he was just the quiet book guy everyone ignored. He glanced past her, saw two of her husband’s campaign volunteers leaning against a pickup 15 feet away, chatting like they weren’t paying attention, and a spike of alarm shot through him. This was the exact kind of mess he’d spent seven years avoiding. If anyone saw them talking too close, the gossip would spread faster than a forest fire in July, and her husband would make sure he was run out of every town in the county before the end of the week.
But she tilted her head, like she could read the panic on his face, and nodded toward the trailhead behind the fairgrounds, half-hidden by oak brush. “My husband’s giving a speech for another hour. No one goes up that trail this late, it leads to an overlook of the valley. I won’t bite if you don’t tell anyone I skip his speeches every chance I get.”
He hesitated for three full seconds, then nodded. They walked 10 feet apart until they were out of sight of the fair, then she slowed down to walk next to him, their shoulders brushing every few steps as they climbed the gravel trail. She stubbed her toe on a loose rock halfway up, and he grabbed her elbow to steady her, their hands lingering for a beat before they pulled away, the heat of her skin still burning on his palm long after.
The overlook was empty, the fair a faint hum of noise 100 feet below, the sun dipping pink and orange over the Sangre de Cristo mountains. She sat down on a flat boulder, patting the spot next to her, and when he sat she leaned in and kissed him first, the taste of green chile and rosé on her lips, her hand sliding up to rest on the side of his neck. He pulled her closer, one hand on her waist, and for the first time in seven years he didn’t overthink it, didn’t worry about the gossip or the rules or what his wife would’ve thought, just let himself feel the warmth of her against him, the wind through the oak brush, the quiet of the mountains around them.
They stayed up there for 42 minutes, kissing and talking about their favorite Dashiell Hammett novels, her telling him her husband hadn’t asked her what she liked to read in 25 years, him telling her he’d thought he’d never want to kiss anyone again after his wife died. They walked back down separately, 10 minutes apart, so no one would connect them. She stopped him right before he unlocked the bookmobile door, slipping a folded scrap of paper into the pocket of his flannel, her fingers brushing his chest for half a second.
“Text me next Wednesday when you get to the general store,” she said, grinning, wiping the last of the chile smudge off her lip with her thumb. “I’ll bring you homemade pork empanadas. No campaign volunteers, no speeches, just us.”
He waited until she was out of sight, leaned against the bookmobile door, and pulled the scrap of paper out, unfolding it to see her cell number scrawled in purple ink, a tiny doodle of a book in the corner. He grinned, stuffed the note in his wallet, turned the key in the ignition, and the old diesel rumbled to life. He pulled out of the fair parking lot, already counting down the days to Wednesday.
