Manny Ruiz, 53, makes his living restoring retro arcade cabinets out of a drafty converted garage behind his western Pennsylvania bungalow, and he’s spent the last eight years perfecting the art of being left alone. His ex-wife left him for a regional sales rep she met at a conference in 2015, and after the divorce he packed up his tools, left his apartment in Pittsburgh, and moved to Mercer, a town so small the local grocery store posts everyone’s birthday on a whiteboard by the checkout. He only leaves his property twice a week: once for parts runs to the electronics shop an hour east, and once for the VFW’s Friday night fish fry, where he sits at the far end of the bar, orders a breaded cod platter with extra tartar sauce and a Bud Light, and leaves before the first karaoke singer slurs their way through a Johnny Cash cover.
He’s halfway through his second beer on an unseasonably warm October Friday when he notices her. He knows who she is, everyone in town does: Lila Hale, 49, ex-wife of the county commissioner who got busted six months prior for embezzling $120k from the local youth rec center fund. The entire county has been gossiping about her nonstop, half the people saying she must have known, the other half making crude jokes about her now that her husband’s locked up and she’s working odd jobs to pay the mortgage. She’s wearing a faded VFW volunteer hoodie, scuffed white New Balances, and her cherry red nail polish is chipped halfway down most of her fingers, nothing like the polished, heeled woman people in town still whisper about.
She’s filling drink orders when she walks over to his end of the bar, and when she sets his refilled beer down on the napkin in front of him, her wrist brushes his knuckle. He can smell lavender lotion and the faint, greasy tang of fried fish on her shirt, and she holds eye contact a beat longer than a stranger would, her dark brown eyes crinkling at the corners. “I recognize your truck,” she says, nodding toward the parking lot where his beat-up 2008 Ford F-150 sits with the Pac-Man decal on the back window. “My kid’s been bugging me to find someone who can fix our old Nintendo 64. You do that kind of work too, or just the big cabinets?”
He freezes for half a second, used to people ignoring him or only asking him for favors if their kid’s birthday party is coming up. Before he can answer, three guys at the next table snicker loud enough for both of them to hear, one of them making a lewd comment about her “lowering her standards” to hit on the arcade guy. He watches her jaw tighten, and she turns away like she’s going to leave, but he nods, his voice rougher than he expects. “I do smaller stuff too. Drop it off anytime this week, I’ll fix it for half my usual rate.”
She pauses, her hand resting on the edge of the bar an inch from his, and she leans in a little so only he can hear her, the soft fabric of her hoodie brushing his bicep. “You don’t have to do that. And you don’t have to talk to me, if you don’t want the whole town talking about you next week.” He can hear the tightness in her voice, like she’s had this conversation ten times already that week. He looks over at the three guys at the next table, who are still staring, and then back at her, and for the first time in eight years, he doesn’t care what anyone says. “My shift ends in 10 minutes,” she says, before he can respond. “Can I sit here for a minute after? Those guys have been making comments all night, and I don’t want to walk to my car alone.” He nods, and she smiles, small and genuine, before she walks off to grab another order.
Ten minutes later, she slides onto the stool next to him, so close their knees brush under the bar. She orders a seltzer with lime, and they talk for 45 minutes, about the Pac-Man cabinet he just finished restoring for a bar in Youngstown, about how she used to sneak to the 7-Eleven after school to play arcade games when her mom thought she was at study group, about how her 16-year-old son is the only reason she hasn’t moved out of town entirely. One of the guys from the next table yells across the bar, loud enough for everyone to hear, asking if she’s gonna give the arcade guy a “discount” for taking her off everyone’s hands.
Manny stands up before he even thinks about it, his beer sloshing a little over the edge of the glass onto the bar top. He stares the guy down, 20 years younger and 30 pounds lighter, and he says, voice even, “Shut your mouth, or I’ll make you regret ever walking in here.” The guy opens his mouth to say something, then looks at Manny’s calloused hands, the scar across his left cheek from a cabinet that fell on him a few years back, and closes it again. Him and his friends grab their jackets and leave, and the rest of the bar goes quiet for a beat before going back to their conversations.
He sits back down, and Lila is looking at him like he’s something she didn’t expect to find. “You didn’t have to do that,” she says, her hand resting on his arm, her thumb brushing the scar on his cheek soft enough he almost doesn’t feel it. “I know,” he says. “I wanted to.” He pauses, then adds, “I have that Pac-Man cabinet at my house, fully restored. Works like new. Wanna come play a round? I won’t even charge you for the quarters.”
She laughs, warm and loud, and she nods. They walk out to his truck together, the cool October air smelling like cut grass and wood smoke from the fire pit behind the VFW, crickets chirping in the field across the parking lot. He opens the passenger door for her, and when she climbs in, she grabs his hand for a second, her fingers lacing through his for just long enough to make his chest feel tight, like he’s 16 again, sneaking a girl into his parents’ basement after curfew. He shuts the door behind her, walks around to the driver’s side, and climbs in, turning the key so the radio cuts on mid-Springsteen track, and pulls out of the parking lot without looking back.
