Rafe Marquez, 62, has spent the last four years acting like the general public is a contagious rash. It’s a personality quirk he picked up after his wife of 27 years left him for a 34-year-old real estate agent who wore white sneakers to dinner and referred to everyone under 40 as “king” or “queen.” As an antique map restorer who runs his shop out of a converted two-car garage behind his Boise bungalow, he can get away with it, too—most of his clients only interact with him via email, dropping off vellum and parchment in a lockbox on his porch and picking up finished restorations weeks later without so much as a knock. The only reason he’s standing at a rickety plywood booth at the foothills chili cook-off in late September is his 16-year-old niece begged him, batting her eyes and saying she’d handle all the setup if he brought his famous green pork chili, the recipe he’d picked up on a research trip to northern New Mexico in his 30s.
The air smells like wood smoke, cumin, and burnt hot dogs from the kid’s concession stand down the row. His Carhartt jacket is dotted with chili splatters, his hands still smudged with the iron-gall ink he’d been using to touch up an 1890s map of the Salmon River that morning. He’s half considering packing up early when the woman at the booth next to him knocks a full jar of dried oregano off her table, the glass shattering at his scuffed work boots. They both bend down at the same time, their foreheads bumping with a soft thud, and Rafe’s first thought is that she smells like lavender shampoo and roasted garlic, a combination that makes his chest feel tight for the first time in years.
Her name is Lena Hale, 58, the new head librarian at the downtown branch. He’d heard the town gossip about her, the quiet whispers that she’d left her husband of 30 years six months prior for no “good” reason, that everyone felt bad for the poor guy who’d been left high and dry. Rafe knew better than anyone that small town gossip only ever tells half the story, but he’d avoided her anyway, figuring any drama associated with her would only mess up the quiet, predictable routine he’d built for himself. Now she’s kneeling next to him, brushing shards of glass off his boot laces with her bare hand, and he finds himself leaning in without meaning to, close enough to see the flecks of gold in her hazel eyes, the faint scar across her left eyebrow from a childhood skiing accident she mentions offhand when he asks about it.
They keep brushing up against each other for the rest of the afternoon, accidental touches that last half a second too long: their hands knocking when they both reach for the stack of paper napkins shared between their booths, her shoulder pressing into his when she leans over to get a look at the tiny vintage map pin he’s stuck in a foam board to mark his chili’s heat level, her breath warm against his wrist when she laughs at his dry joke about the judge who’s been sampling every chili three times like he’s training for a competitive eating contest. Rafe spends the whole time fighting with himself, half disgusted that he’s even paying attention to a woman he’d written off as too much trouble, half giddy like a teenager with his first crush, the kind of light, fizzy feeling he’d thought had died along with his marriage.
The rain hits without warning, cold and sharp, at 5 p.m., right when the judges are announcing the winners. Everyone starts scrambling to pack up their booths before their crockpots get waterlogged, and Rafe grabs the blue tarp he’d stuffed in the back of his truck without thinking, holding it over both his booth and Lena’s so she can get her crockpot of white chicken chili and her stack of paper bowls packed up without getting soaked. They’re pressed shoulder to hip under the tarp for 10 minutes, the rain drumming so loud against the plastic they have to lean in close to hear each other talk, and Rafe can feel the warmth of her body through his flannel shirt and jeans, can hear the little huff of laughter she makes when a kid runs past, splashing a puddle that gets the bottom of her jeans wet.
He doesn’t win anything, neither does she, and when they’re done packing up, she leans against the side of his beat-up 2008 Ford F-150, twisting a strand of her gray-streaked auburn hair around her finger, and asks him if he wants to come back to her place to eat the leftover chili and cornbread she baked that morning. She mentions she has a tattered 1921 map of the Idaho backcountry her dad left her when he died, that she’s been looking for someone to restore it for months but didn’t know who to ask. Rafe almost says no, the voice in the back of his head screaming that he’s going to get his heart broken again, that he’s better off alone in his quiet house with his maps and his old John Wayne westerns. Then he looks at her, rain drops beading on her eyelashes, her cheeks pink from the cold, and he says yes.
Her house is a tiny craftsman a few blocks from his, lined with built-in bookshelves full of mystery novels and dog-eared travel guides, the air smelling like cinnamon and old paper. She pulls the map out of a cardboard box in her closet, the edges frayed, a coffee stain blurring the section where her dad had marked the campsite he’d proposed to her mom at back in 1972. Rafe runs his finger over the stain, tells her he can fix it for free, no charge, and she smiles, reaching up to brush a crumb of cornbread off his chin, her thumb grazing his skin for a beat longer than necessary. He leans in, slow enough that she can pull away if she wants, and presses his mouth to hers.
