Elroy Mendez, 62, retired oil rig logistics coordinator, has eaten the Friday night perch fry at the Steubenville VFW post every week for 22 years. He sits at the same Formica table by the jukebox, orders the same side of vinegar-drenched coleslaw and a frosty root beer, and never stays past 7 p.m. The only thing that breaks his routine this October is the new line cook, Rita, who moved to town three weeks prior to be near her first grandbaby after her husband died of a heart attack down in Fort Myers.
He first notices her when she slips on a puddle of spilled tartar sauce and drops a tray of plastic cups, sending them skittering across the linoleum. He stands without thinking, kneels to grab the ones nearest his work boots, and their hands brush when they both reach for the same neon yellow cup half-crushed under a folding chair leg. Her palm is warm, calloused at the fingertips, and there’s a tiny faded dolphin tattoo peeking out from the cuff of her grease-stained navy work shirt. She smells like coconut sunscreen, leftover from her Florida days, even with the fryer grease clinging to the ends of her auburn hair. She laughs, a low, throaty sound that cuts through the hum of the deep fryer and the chatter of old guys arguing about high school football, and says she still hasn’t gotten used to how damn slippery this damn floor gets when the weather turns damp. He doesn’t say anything, just hands her the stack of cups he grabbed, and walks back to his table, his ears hot. He’s avoided even casual conversation with women since his ex-wife left him for a rig foreman while he was on a three-month hitch in the Gulf of Mexico, convinced any softness would just get him gutted again.
She finds him 10 minutes later, drops an extra piece of perch on his plate unasked, says it was too big to serve to the kids’ meal crowd and she hates wasting good food. She pulls out the chair across from him, sits for two minutes while the serving line dies down, and nods at the decal on his frayed baseball cap, the one for his 1978 F-150 he’s been rebuilding in his garage for four years. He finds himself talking before he can stop himself, tells her about the new carburetor he picked up at a swap meet last weekend, the rust spots he’s been patching, how he’s been putting off redoing the interior because he can’t decide between bench seat vinyl or leather. She nods along, leans in a little like she actually cares, her knee brushing his under the table for three full seconds before she shifts back, not apologetic, just smiling. She says her late husband had the exact same truck, that she’d spent more weekends than she can count laid out on a tarp under it helping him fix blown gaskets.
The post empties out fast once the karaoke set ends, the rain picking up outside, lashing against the front windows so hard the old glass rattles. Elroy stays to help stack the folding chairs, a habit he picked up when he first joined the post after the divorce, when he needed something to fill the quiet hours before he went home to an empty house. A gust of wind blows the back door open, sending a spray of cold rain across the room, and Rita shivers so hard her teeth chatter. He yanks the wool flannel off the back of his chair, hands it to her without thinking, and she pulls it on, the sleeves hanging past her wrists, the scent of his motor oil and pine soap cologne wrapping around her. She admits she locked herself out of her apartment that morning, left her keys on the kitchen counter, and her daughter and grandbaby are two hours away at a travel soccer game, no one to call to let her in.
He hesitates for a full 10 seconds, every instinct screaming to tell her to call a locksmith, to keep his space, to not let anyone get close enough to leave again. But then she tucks a strand of gray-streaked hair behind her ear, and her thumb brushes the scar on his forearm he got when a pipe burst on the rig back in ‘07, and he finds himself offering to drive her to his place, make her hot cocoa, wait until her daughter gets back into town. She nods, grinning, and follows him out to his old pickup, grabbing his shoulder to steady herself when she climbs up into the passenger seat, her face so close he can smell the peppermint lip balm she’s wearing under the fryer grease.
They stop at the gas station on the way, he grabs a pack of her favorite peppermint patties when she mentions she’s had a craving all week. When they get to his house, she heads straight for the garage first, leans in to look at the half-assembled F-150 parked in the middle, runs a finger along the freshly patched quarter panel. She picks up a carburetor jet off the workbench, holds it up, and says she knows exactly where that goes, if he wants an extra set of hands tomorrow. He leans against the workbench next to her, the mugs of hot cocoa he made sitting forgotten at the edge, and when she turns to look up at him, he kisses her slow, the rain tapping against the garage roof, the sound of a distant siren wailing down the main road. He wraps an arm around her waist, pulls her closer, and doesn’t let go.
