Manny Ruiz, 53, makes his living bringing dead 1980s arcade cabinets back to life out of a converted two-car garage in coastal Oregon. He’s avoided most small-town social obligations since his divorce 8 years prior, his only regular public appearance the annual summer street fair, where the local Irish pub pays him $200 and a tab of unlimited IPAs to fix their finicky 1982 Pac-Man machine before the crowds roll in. He’s got a scar across his left knuckle from a loose pinball spring, a habit of chewing peppermint gum when he’s soldering, and a stubborn streak that makes him dismiss every piece of local gossip he hears before he’s seen proof himself.
He’s hunched over the back of the Pac-Man cabinet, soldering iron in hand, when he smells coconut sunscreen and sharp, bright lime seltzer first, then feels a warm forearm brush his bicep as someone leans in over his shoulder. “Took you long enough. The teens have been camped by this machine for 45 minutes asking when it’ll turn on.” The voice is low, a little rough, like she’s been yelling over crowd noise all morning. He looks up, recognizes her immediately: Lena Voss, 44, the mayor’s wife. He’s heard the chatter around town for the 11 months she’s lived there, all the jokes about how she married the 72-year-old mayor for his waterfront property and his old Corvette, how she’d leave him the second his health took a turn. He’d nodded along when the guys at the hardware store made the jokes, figured they were probably right.
She’s wearing a yellow sundress splattered with daisies, a well-worn gray flannel tied around her waist, scuffed white sneakers caked with mud from setting up the fair’s picnic tables that morning. She holds out a cold IPA to him, condensation beading down the glass, and when he takes it their fingers brush for two beats longer than necessary. He doesn’t miss the way her eyes flick down to the scar on his knuckle, then back up to his face, a tiny, teasing smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “Heard you restore those old machines in that garage off Oak Street. I’ve been meaning to stop by, but the mayor’s schedule keeps me running ragged.” She nods toward the stage where the mayor is giving a rambling opening speech about “family friendly community values,” and Manny catches the tiny, unmissable eye roll she does when the mayor pauses for applause.
He grunts, goes back to tightening the loose joystick, but he’s hyperaware of her standing right next to him, close enough that he can feel the heat off her shoulder even through the thin 72-degree summer air. He’s half convinced he’s imagining the crackle of tension between them until a group of preteens on BMX bikes comes tearing through the beer garden fence, and she stumbles sideways into him, his hand landing automatically on her hip to steady her. He can feel the soft curve of her waist under the thin cotton of her dress, and neither of them moves for three full seconds, until one of the kids yells an apology and keeps careening toward the food trucks. She pulls back first, cheeks pink, and mumbles something about checking on the silent auction tables before walking away, her sandals kicking up little puffs of dust as she goes.
He shows up, of course. He loads the beat-up Donkey Kong cabinet into the back of his rusted Ford F-150 an hour before sunset, hauls it down to the little empty stretch of beach, runs an extension cord from the outlet at the nearby picnic shelter. She shows up 10 minutes after he sets it up, carrying a six-pack of the same IPA he’d been drinking at the fair and a bag of saltwater taffy, no wedding ring on her left hand. She tells him she’s been planning to leave the mayor for six months, already signed a lease on a little cottage two blocks from his shop, that the only reason she married him was to get out of an abusive living situation back in Portland, that she’d seen him working on his arcade machines out front of his garage three weeks after she moved to town and had been trying to work up the nerve to talk to him ever since.
They play Donkey Kong for an hour, the orange glow of the sunset reflecting off the screen, the low crash of the waves humming right behind them. She beats him by 327 points, cackling so hard she snorts when the game flashes her high score across the screen in bright red pixels. He leans in and kisses her then, tastes lime seltzer and sea salt on her lips, and she wraps her arms around his neck, pulling him closer. When they pull back, she nods at the Donkey Kong screen, already loading a new game, and says she’s gonna kick his ass at the next round too.
