Elroy Voss, 62, has made a living repairing vintage typewriters for the last 12 years, after retiring from 28 years as a small-town Ohio high school woodshop teacher. A permanent, deep indigo ink stain blots the pad of his left thumb, collected from decades of prying apart rusted ribbon spools, and he’s spent the last 8 years avoiding any romantic attention, convinced he’s too set in his routines, too stuck on the memory of his late wife, to be worth anyone’s time. He mans a free repair booth at the town’s annual August street fair every year, fixing broken toys, wobbly folding chairs, and the occasional beat-up office supply for anyone who drops it off, no charge.
It’s 7 PM on the final day of the fair, the fried dough and cotton candy scents have faded to a soft sweet hum in the warm air, most of the crowd has drifted home, and the ferris wheel creaks slow as it unloads its last riders. Elroy is wiping down a dented 1952 Royal typewriter a 12-year-old dropped off that morning, when a shadow falls across his table. He looks up to see Maren Hale, 48, holding a chipped terracotta planter with a fuzzy echeveria peeking out of the top. He’s known her in passing for 20 years, as the ex-wife of Jake Hale, the former student who once glued his favorite spokeshave to his workbench senior year, and for most of those two decades, he’d written her off as off-limits, the wife of a guy he’d spent more than one afternoon sending to the principal’s office.
She leans her hip against the edge of his folding table, and her elbow brushes his bicep when she sets the planter down on the corner, right next to the framed photo of his wife he keeps propped up next to his screwdriver set. “This is for you,” she says, her voice low and rough from years of working outside at the plant nursery she runs upstate. “For fixing my mom’s rocking chair last month. She says it’s the first time she’s been able to sit on the porch for more than 20 minutes without her back hurting since dad died.”
Elroy nods, his throat suddenly tight. He’s not used to people thanking him with anything more than a quick wave or a six-pack of cheap beer. He glances at the ink stain on his thumb, tucks his hand into his work jeans pocket like he can hide it. He’s half convinced she’s only talking to him because he did her mom a favor, that any second she’ll mention Jake, ask if he’s heard from him lately. Instead she taps a finger on the Royal typewriter, her nail painted a soft pale green, the same color as the succulent leaves. “I had one of these in college. Wrote all my term papers on it. Got so mad at it once I threw it across my dorm room.”
He snorts, a real laugh, the kind he doesn’t let out much these days. “Tough as nails, those Royals. Probably still works if you fished it out of the trash.” She laughs too, leaning in a little closer, and he can smell her perfume, lavender and cut grass, the kind his wife used to wear when they’d go camping in the Hocking Hills. They talk for 40 minutes, about the nursery she’s planning to open on the edge of town now that her divorce is final, about the 1930s Underwood typewriter he’s been restoring for the library, about the way the fair’s cotton candy is always too sweet but you eat it anyway. Every so often her hand brushes his when they both reach for a part on the table, and every time, he feels a jolt up his arm, the kind he hasn’t felt since he was 16 and kissed his first girlfriend behind the town’s old diner. He spends the whole time fighting the voice in his head that says this is wrong, that he’s too old, that she’s Jake’s ex, that he’s just setting himself up to be disappointed.
The last of the vendors pack up their booths, and the fair’s organizer yells that they’re locking the gates in 10 minutes. Elroy reaches down to pick up a box of typewriter parts, and his grip slips, the box clattering to the ground, tiny screws and shift keys rolling across the asphalt. They both kneel down to pick them up at the same time, their foreheads bumping softly. He apologizes, rubbing the spot on his skull, and she laughs so hard she snorts, reaching out to put her hand on his forearm to steady herself. Her palm is warm through the thin cotton of his work shirt. “I’ve been trying to work up the nerve to talk to you for three weeks,” she says, no trace of teasing in her voice now. “Jake was an idiot. I always thought you were the kind of guy who actually showed up for people.”
He freezes for a second, the shift key he’s holding slipping out of his fingers. He’d never thought anyone would see him that way, not for a long time. He admits he’s been avoiding talking to her too, convinced she’d see him as just the boring old woodshop teacher, still hung up on his dead wife, too set in his ways to be any fun. She shakes her head, picks up the shift key and presses it into his palm, her fingers brushing the ink stain on his thumb like it’s not even there. “I saw the photo of your wife on your workbench when I dropped off the chair. It’s not a flaw that you loved her that much. It’s the reason I wanted to talk to you in the first place.”
They walk to the only food truck still open, order two cherry limeades, the kind with extra crushed ice, and sit on the curb by the fair’s entrance, watching the crew take down the ferris wheel. The sun is almost gone, painting the sky pink and orange, and the air is cool enough that he can see his breath when he laughs at her story about the time a customer tried to return a cactus because it “wasn’t friendly enough.” Her bare knee presses against his denim-clad one, warm through the thin fabric, and he doesn’t move away. She asks him if he wants to come over to her new cottage tomorrow, help her hang floating shelves for her plant collection, says she’s got a peach pie in her fridge that she baked last night, still fresh. He says yes before he can overthink it.
When she tucks a stray strand of sun-bleached blonde hair behind her ear and grins at him, he realizes he hasn’t looked forward to a single day this much in almost a decade.
