Manny Ruiz, 53, makes his living stripping rust out of 1970s camper vans and rewiring their fridges so retirees can drift down the Baja coast without worrying about warm beer. He’s avoided every community event in his Tucson neighborhood for eight years, ever since his wife packed her suitcase and drove off to Portland with a travel blogger she met on a road trip. His only real social interactions are haggling over parts at the local auto shop and trading hiking tips with the park rangers at Saguaro National Park, so when his best friend strong-armed him into entering the annual community center chili cook-off, he’d planned to drop off his crockpot of hatch green chili and slip out before anyone could try to set him up with their cousin or their sister or their recently widowed bridge partner.
The linoleum under his scuffed work boots sticks with spilled soda, and the air reeks of cumin, burnt tomato, and the cheap vanilla air freshener hanging by the front door. Tinny 90s country bleeds from the crackling speakers above the snack table, and every three minutes someone he recognizes from the neighborhood wanders over to clap him on the back and ask if he’s finally “getting back out there.” He’s halfway to the exit, hand on the door handle, when he spots her.
He recognizes the mole above her left eyebrow first, the same one he’d noticed 19 years prior at his wedding, when she’d snuck a bottle of tequila into the reception and convinced the groomsmen to do shots under the picnic table. Lena, his ex-wife’s cousin. She’s 48 now, strands of silver threading through her dark wavy hair, wearing a faded denim jacket covered in wildlife rescue patches and scuffed work boots caked with red desert dirt. She’s holding a crumpled paper plate in one hand, and when she sees him, she grins, the same lopsided grin he remembered from the wedding, and walks over.
She leans in to sniff the crockpot of chili sitting on the table behind him, her shoulder brushing his bicep, and he catches the faint scent of lavender hand soap and pine essential oil under the dust on her jacket. “You’re still making that green chili?” she says, nodding at the crockpot. “I still talk about the batch you made for the afterparty when the caterers ran out of food. My ex-husband spent three years trying to copy it and never got the spice level right.”
Manny freezes for half a second. He hasn’t spoken to anyone from his ex’s family in almost a decade, and a stupid, old-fashioned part of his brain screams that talking to her is crossing a line, that his ex would throw a fit if she found out, that he’s better off walking out the door right now and spending the rest of the weekend alone under the hood of a 1972 Westfalia in his garage. But she’s already reaching past him to grab a plastic spoon off the stack next to the crockpot, her forearm brushing the back of his hand, and the jolt that runs up his arm is the first thing that’s made him feel alive in longer than he can remember.
He hands her a cup of chili, their fingers brushing when he passes it over, and she takes a bite, humming in approval. She tells him she moved back to Tucson three months prior, after her husband died in a construction accident, that she’s working as a wildlife rehabilitator out of a small clinic on the edge of the park, that she bought a beat up 1972 Westfalia off a neighbor last week and has been asking around for someone who knows how to fix the rusted out floor panels. She teases him about the leather work belt he’s wearing, the same one he had at the wedding, with the faded VW logo stamped into the buckle, and he laughs, a real laugh, not the tight half-smile he gives people when he’s trying to get out of a conversation.
They stand there for 40 minutes, talking over the noise of the cook-off, so close their elbows brush every time one of them moves. She tells him about the baby bobcat she’s been rehabbing that keeps escaping its enclosure and sleeping on her couch, he tells her about the retired couple that brought in a 1968 Airstream last month that had a family of raccoons living in the ceiling. She wipes a smudge of chili powder off her chin with the back of her hand, and when she catches him staring, she smirks, raising one eyebrow, and he doesn’t look away.
“Look, I know this is weird, given… everything,” she says, nodding at the floor like she’s talking about the 10 years of silence between him and her family, not the sticky linoleum. “But I need someone to fix that Westfalia, and I know you’re the best. And there’s a trail behind my house that leads up to an overlook of the park. I was gonna hike it next Saturday, bring some beer, make cornbread. You could bring more of this chili. If you want.”
Manny hesitates for three full beats, the old familiar urge to make an excuse, to say he’s busy, to go back to his quiet, predictable, lonely life warring with the part of him that wants to say yes, that’s tired of eating dinner alone in his garage, that’s tired of pretending he doesn’t miss having someone to laugh with. He looks at her, the sun coming through the window gilding the silver strands in her hair, her thumb smudged with chili powder, waiting for his answer, and he says yes.
She types her number into his phone, saves it as “Lena (Westfalia Bobcat)”, then gives his arm a quick, warm squeeze before she turns to walk off to say hi to a friend across the room. He stands there holding his phone, the screen still glowing with her contact info, and he can still feel the pressure of her hand on his arm, the faint smell of lavender lingering in the space where she was standing. He takes a bite of his own chili, it’s spicier than he remembers making it, and for the first time in eight years, he doesn’t dread the start of the next week.
