Rico Marquez, 53, leaned against the dented passenger side of his 2004 Ford F150, twisting the cap off a lukewarm Shiner Bock and trying not to scowl at the chaos of the east Austin block party unfolding around him. He’d only shown up because his 16-year-old niece, who’d been crashing with him while her mom was deployed overseas, begged him to support her softball team’s lemonade stand fundraiser, and he’d already planned to sneak out the second he’d handed her a crumpled $200 bill and made sure no creeps were loitering near her table. His work jeans were still stiff with old hydraulic fluid, his faded 2001 Tool concert tee had a hole at the elbow, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d talked to a neighbor for longer than 10 seconds. He’d spent 8 years cultivating that distance, ever since his wife left him for a Dallas real estate agent and took most of the furniture and the dog with her; he ran his vintage travel trailer restoration business out of his converted garage, worked alone 6 days a week, and only spoke to clients when they dropped off or picked up their units.
A shadow fell across his beer, and he looked up to see the woman who’d moved into the sky-blue bungalow two doors down three months earlier, holding a paper plate stacked with three smoked brisket sliders. She was wearing cutoff jean shorts and a faded Willie Nelson tee, her dark hair pulled back in a messy braid, and she was close enough that he could smell coconut sunscreen and cedar grill smoke clinging to her flannel overshirt. “Figured you looked like you hadn’t eaten anything all day,” she said, holding out the plate, and her knuckles brushed his when he reached for it, her nails chipped with sage green polish, calloused at the tips like she worked with her hands too. He stammered a thank you, and she laughed, a low, rough sound that cut through the noise of kids screaming on the slip n’ slide across the street. “I’m Elara. I’ve watched you hauling those pretty old trailers up and down the street for weeks. I’ve got a beat-up 1972 Scotty in my backyard I picked up off Craigslist last month, and I’ve messed up the wiring so bad I can’t even get the overhead lights to turn on. Spent three nights binging YouTube tutorials and still can’t figure it out.”
He took a bite of the slider, the brisket salty and peppery, smoked slow enough the fat melted on his tongue, and he almost smiled. Most people who bought vintage trailers around these days were rich yuppies who wanted to post them on Instagram and never took them off their driveway, never bothered to learn how to fix a broken hitch or rewire a 12-volt system themselves. He’d had three clients that month ask him to “make it look pretty” without bothering to fix the structural rot under the floorboards, and he’d turned all of them down. He nodded, wiping a smear of barbecue sauce off his chin with the back of his hand. “Most people would just call a handyman for that.” Elara leaned against the truck next to him, her knee bumping his, and he could feel the heat of her leg through the thin denim of his jeans. She had a tiny, silvery scar above her left eyebrow, and when he glanced at it she grinned, tapping the spot with one finger. “Got that trying to tow the Scotty home by myself. The hitch slipped, I smacked my face into the frame trying to catch it. Figured if I messed up the wiring myself, I should probably ask the guy who actually fixes these things for a living instead of wasting another week watching some guy in a flannel yell at me through my phone screen.”
He hesitated, the old reflex to say no, to go home to his empty house and his half-finished Airstream wiring job and the frozen burrito he had waiting in the freezer, rising up fast. But then she shifted closer, her shoulder pressing against his bicep, and he could smell the faint, sweet scent of peach on her breath, like she’d been sipping iced tea spiked with fruit all afternoon. “I’m heading up to Big Bend for two weeks in October,” she said, looking away for half a second like she was nervous, before locking eyes with him again, her hazel irises flecked with gold in the late afternoon sun. “Alone, if I can get the damn thing running. No Instagram posts, no friends tagging along, just me and the desert and a cooler of beer.”
That did it. He’d driven up to Big Bend alone every fall for the past 7 years, camped out in his own 1965 Avion trailer, hiked the South Rim trail at sunrise, never told anyone about it, never invited anyone along. He drained the last of his beer, tossed the empty can into the recycling bin propped against the truck’s tire, and surprised even himself when he spoke. “I’ve got a free slot next Wednesday, I’ll come over after I finish the Airstream I’m working on. No charge, as long as you’ve got more of these sliders and a cold beer waiting for me when I get there.”
Elara’s grin got wider, and she leaned in a little more, her hair brushing his forearm. “I’ll do you one better,” she said, nodding toward her bungalow, where the front door was propped open, the sweet, warm scent of baked fruit drifting out onto the sidewalk. “I made a peach cobbler this morning, it’s still sitting on my counter, probably still warm. We can go take a look at the Scotty right now, no need to wait for Wednesday. I won’t even make you help me clean up the wiring mess I made until after we have a slice.”
Rico glanced over at his niece’s lemonade stand, caught her waggling her eyebrows at him from behind the table, and he rolled his eyes, already turning to follow Elara down the sidewalk. He’d stayed closed off for so long he’d forgotten what it felt like to look forward to talking to someone, to not want to run back to his quiet garage the second a conversation stretched longer than five minutes. Her flip flops slapped against the concrete as she walked, and he could hear her humming an old Willie Nelson song under her breath, the same one he’d had playing on his shop radio that morning.
