Elias Voss, 53, makes his living fixing vintage typewriters out of his garage workshop in northeast Portland, and he’s spent the better part of the last eight years perfecting the art of disappearing in plain sight. His wife left him for a travel blogger who posted sunset reels for a living, and Elias decided somewhere around month three of sleeping on the couch that people were far more trouble than broken Underwoods and smudged ink ribbons. He doesn’t do neighborhood potlucks, doesn’t answer the door when the local kids come selling cookie dough, and never waves back when the woman two doors down is out tending her rose bushes, even when she calls his name loud enough to rattle his workshop windows.
He’s at the annual library used book sale on a rainy Saturday in late October, canvas tote slung over one shoulder, ink stains crusted into the cuffs of his gray flannel, when he spots it: a dog-eared 1972 copy of *Professional Typewriter Maintenance and Repair*, tucked between a guide to beekeeping and a memoir of a 1980s lumberjack. He kneels, work boots scuffing the linoleum, and reaches for it at the exact same time another hand does.
Their knuckles brush first. Her skin is cool, dotted with faint freckles, a thin silver quill ring wrapped around her index finger, nails short and stained deep purple from the blackberry jam she’d been selling at the sale’s snack table ten minutes prior. Elias yanks his hand back like he’s touched a hot soldering iron, mumbles an apology that comes out half garbled, and goes to stand, already planning to bolt for the door. Then she laughs, warm and low, not the polite, tight laugh strangers give when they bump into you at the grocery store.
“Easy there,” she says, and he recognizes her then. It’s Marnie, the rose lady two doors down, the one he’s been ignoring for three straight years. She’s wearing a worn flannel that’s the exact same shade of blue as his, rain spots dotting the hem, her dark hair streaked with silver pulled back in a loose braid. She holds up the manual, tilts her head, and her eyes stay on his a beat longer than polite conversation requires, like she’s amused by how flustered he is. “My dad fixed typewriters for 40 years. I’m cleaning out his garage now that he’s in assisted living, and I’ve been hunting for this exact book for two months. Figured I’d know if I was messing up his old collection.”
Elias’s throat goes dry. He’s spent so long avoiding her he’d never really looked at her before, not really. The space between them is barely six inches, he can smell lavender hand cream under the damp wool of her jacket and the old paper scent clinging to the shelves, can hear the soft rasp of her breathing over the murmur of other shoppers and the rain tapping against the floor-to-ceiling windows. His first instinct is to lie, say he doesn’t know anything about typewriters, grab some random novel and leave. Instead he nods at the ink stains on his sleeves. “I restore them for a living. Out of my garage.”
She blinks, then grins, leaning in a little so her shoulder brushes his when she points to a faded note scrawled on the manual’s first page. “Wait, you’re the guy I hear clacking away at all hours? I always thought you ran an illegal print shop back there or something.”
The tease lands soft, not mean, and Elias finds himself smiling back before he can stop himself. He hates this, hates that he’s enjoying talking to her, hates that part of him that’s been starved for easy conversation for so long it’s practically begging to lean in closer. He spends the next 40 minutes standing there with her by the nonfiction shelves, talking about his favorite typewriter models, about her dad’s old collection of Royal portables he carried to logging camps up in the Cascades, about the way old paper holds ink different than the cheap stuff they sell at office supply stores now. She laughs at his bad joke about typewriters being far more reliable than ex-wives, and when she gestures to the snack table, her forearm brushes his wrist, the quill ring catching the overhead light, and he doesn’t flinch away.
“You want to split a cup of hot cider?” she asks, and for half a second Elias’s brain screams no, go home, lock the garage door, go back to fixing the 1950s Remington you’ve been working on all week, don’t let this get messy. But then she’s looking at him, head tilted, and he can see the crinkles at the corners of her eyes when she smiles, and he nods.
They sit at a wobbly folding table by the window, split a paper cup of spiced cider that’s too sweet and a little too hot, and he lets her take the manual home first, promising he’ll come over next week to help her go through her dad’s old equipment if she brings him a jar of that blackberry jam he saw her selling earlier. When they walk out to the parking lot, he holds his umbrella over her, their hips bumping softly when they step over a puddle that’s pooled at the library’s front step. He walks her to her beat-up Subaru, holds the door open for her, and she hands him a slip of paper with her phone number scrawled on it in dark purple ink.
When she waves from her driver’s seat, he doesn’t reach for an imaginary newspaper to hide behind, he lifts his hand and holds the wave until her taillights turn the corner at the end of the block.
