Elias Voss, 62, has made a living restoring antique typewriters for 31 years, working out of a cinder block shop off the main drag in Black Mountain, North Carolina. His only steady companion for the last 8 years has been a half-deaf beagle named Moe, and he’s turned down every blind date his sister has tried to set him up on since his wife, Carol, passed from breast cancer. His biggest flaw, one he’ll admit to only after three shots of bourbon, is that he still carries the chip on his shoulder he earned in high school, when the football team called him “Key Punch” and taped broken typewriter keys to his locker. He’d driven to the county fire department’s annual chili cookoff only to drop off a restored 1957 Royal Quiet De Luxe he’d fixed for the chief’s retirement gift, no plans to stay longer than five minutes.
The air smells like cumin and burnt hot dogs, the crunch of fallen oak leaves under his work boots, the distant yelp of kids chasing each other around the bounce house. He’s handing the typewriter case to the chief when a woman reaches past him for a stack of cornbread on the folding table beside them, her forearm brushing the bare skin of his wrist, leaving a faint trail of cedar and lavender hand cream in its wake. He looks down, recognizes her immediately: Marnie Hale, 58, who runs the community garden on the east side of town, ex-wife of Jake Hale, the same quarterback who’d led the locker pranks back in 1978. She’s wearing faded denim overalls over a burnt orange flannel, work boots caked in mud, a streak of dirt across her left cheek, and when she meets his eye, she holds the contact a beat longer than polite, grinning like she knows exactly what he’s thinking.
“Elias, right? You fixed my neighbor’s Underwood last year, she still won’t shut up about how good a job you did,” she says, grabbing a cornbread muffin and passing it to him before he can say no. He takes it, his fingers brushing hers, and his throat goes tight for a second. He’d had a crush on her all through senior year, had even bought a ticket to the homecoming dance just to watch her dance with Jake, before he’d gotten too nervous and left halfway through. He’d always written her off as off-limits, first because she was dating Jake, then because he was married, then because after Carol died, he’d written everyone off, period. The guilt hits him sharp, fast, like he’s cheating on Carol just by standing this close to another woman, just by noticing the way the sun catches the silver streaks in her auburn hair, the way her laugh cuts through the noise of the cookoff like a knife.
He tries to make an excuse to leave, but she tugs on the sleeve of his work jacket, pulls him over to a picnic table away from the crowd, and starts talking about the community garden, about how raccoons got into the tomato beds last week, about how she’s been trying to track down someone to fix her mom’s old Royal, the one she learned to type on in high school. He finds himself sitting down, listening, telling her about the 1968 camper he’s been restoring in his garage for two years, the one Carol bought him for their 25th anniversary right before she got sick, the one he’d never had the nerve to take out on the road. She leans in when he talks, her elbow propped on the table, her knee brushing his under the table, and he doesn’t move away.
The sun dips below the mountains by 7, painting the sky pink and tangerine, the temperature dropping fast enough that he can see his breath when he laughs. She shivers a little, and he hands her the extra flannel he’d stuffed in the back of his truck that morning, the one with the oil stain on the cuff from fixing a typewriter carriage the day before. She puts it on, it’s too big, sleeves falling past her wrists, and she rolls them up as she mentions she’s always wanted to drive the Blue Ridge Parkway in the fall, stop at all the apple orchards, but she’s never had anyone to go with.
He says yes before he can talk himself out of it. She laughs, leans in, and kisses him on the cheek, her lips warm against his cold skin. He drives her to her small cottage on the edge of town later, Moe asleep in the back seat, and she invites him in to look at her mom’s Royal. He follows her up the weathered wooden porch steps, the screen door creaking shut behind them, his hand brushing the small of her back for half a second before he lets it fall to his side.
