Rafe O’Malley, 57, makes his living prying mold off 78 RPM records and tuning the rusted motors of antique phonographs in a converted garage behind his bungalow in West Asheville. He’s got a scar slicing across his left knuckle from a 1998 incident with a frayed record player cord and a half-empty can of Pabst, and a rule he’s stuck to for eight years, ever since his wife packed their silverware and her collection of 90s country CDs and drove to Portland without a note: no fraternizing with other local vendors. He’d watched three separate market couples split in his first two years selling at the weekly River Arts District farmers market, each breakup turning the Saturday morning setup into a passive aggressive standoff over parking spots and table space, and he’d sworn he’d never be that guy.
It’s 92 degrees on the third Saturday in August, the air thick enough to chew with the smell of cut grass and fried food, when Marisol sets up her hot honey peach fry stand three feet to his left. The usual salsa vendor had bailed after a bad case of food poisoning, so the market coordinator had slotted her in last minute, and Rafe’s first thought when he sees her hauling a dented stainless steel fryer out of her pickup is that she’s going to make his entire inventory of old records smell like grease. He’s already mentally drafting a complaint to the coordinator when she turns around, wipes a streak of peach juice off her cheek with the back of her hand, and grins at him like she already knows he’s annoyed.
She brings him a paper cup of peach sweet tea an hour later, no ice, because she’d overheard him complaining to a customer that melted ice watered down good tea. He tries to hand her three dollars, she waves him off, leans against the edge of his table so her bare forearm is three inches from his hand where he’s wiping dust off a 1952 Hank Williams record. The coconut sunscreen she’s wearing mixes with the warm, sugary smell of fried peaches drifting from her stand, and he finds himself staring at the tiny silver bee ring on her index finger when she points to a stack of blues records next to his cash box. She says she grew up listening to that stuff with her abuela in Miami, moved to Asheville three months prior after her youngest son left for college in Gainesville, got tired of paying exorbitant rent for a tiny apartment next to a nightclub that played reggaeton until 3 a.m.
He keeps his answers short at first, reminds himself of his rule, doesn’t ask her any follow up questions. But every time a customer leaves his table, he finds his eyes drifting back to her, watching as she flips peaches in the fryer with a pair of tongs, laughs loud when a little kid spills a cup of honey on his sneakers, tucks a stray strand of curly dark hair behind her ear when the wind picks up. A gust hits hard mid-afternoon, blows his stack of handwritten price signs right into her fryer’s side table, and he has to lean in between her cooler and the hot metal of the fryer to grab them, his shoulder pressing firm against her upper arm. She doesn’t step back, just holds the stack of signs steady for him, her fingers brushing his when she hands them over, and he holds eye contact with her for two full beats before he looks away, his face hotter than it’s been all day from more than just the sun.
She brings him a fried peach dipped in hot honey an hour before closing, tells him it’s on the house if he’ll play her that Muddy Waters record he had stacked by the player. He puts it on, the scratchy old recording drifting over the hum of the market, and she leans against his table the whole time, tapping her sandal-clad foot to the beat, asking him questions about how he restores the old players, what the weirdest record he’s ever found is. The sky turns dark gray out of nowhere ten minutes before closing, thunder rumbling so loud it shakes the table legs, and the first fat raindrops hit before anyone can yell a warning. They both scramble to cover their inventory, Rafe throwing tarps over his stacks of records, Marisol yanking a cover over her fryer, and when he goes to help her drag her 200 pound cooler under the overhang of the nearby community center, they both slip on a patch of wet grass, stumbling into each other so their chests are pressed together, rain dripping off the brim of his baseball cap onto her cheek.
She doesn’t move away. She just looks up at him, her eyelashes clumped with rain, the hem of her cutoff shorts soaked through, and leans in before he can think of an excuse to step back. Her lips are soft, taste like peaches and honey and spearmint gum, and for half a second he tenses up, ready to pull away, remind himself of his stupid rule, of how he doesn’t do this anymore. But then her hand comes up to rest on the side of his neck, her thumb brushing the scar on his jaw he got from a high school football tackle, and he kisses her back, his hands resting light on her hips, the sound of the rain hammering the roof of the overhang drowning out every other noise.
The rain lets up after 20 minutes, the sun coming back out so there’s a faint rainbow arching over the French Broad River a few blocks away. They sit on the curb next to their packed up vehicles, sharing the last leftover fried peach, and she laughs when he tells her about his no-vendor-dating rule, teases him for being a grumpy old man who’s scared of a little drama. He finds out halfway through the conversation that her ex-husband is Jimmie Carter, the guy who broke his jaw during that 1984 football game, and he laughs so hard he snorts, drawing a weird look from a kid walking by with a face painted like a unicorn.
He tells her he’s got a fully restored 1956 Philco tabletop phonograph in his shop that would fit perfect on her kitchen counter, offers to bring it over the next night if she’s got space for it. She says she’ll have a batch of peach cobbler waiting, extra honey, no ice in the tea. He runs his thumb over the silver bee ring on her finger as she passes him another bite of peach, and for the first time in eight years, he doesn’t feel the urge to make an excuse to leave early.
