Roland Voss is 67, a retired linotype operator who’s run a tiny hand-printed zine out of his western Michigan garage for seven years, ever since his wife, Eleanor, died of ovarian cancer. His flaw, one his adult kids nag him about constantly, is that he’s refused so much as a coffee date with any woman who’s shown interest, convinced any new romance would be a betrayal of the 42 years he had with Ellie. Every Saturday from May to October, he sets up a folding table at the Holland farmers market, stacks of his zine, Old Lead, next to trays of polished wood type he sells to hobbyists, a thermos of black coffee at his elbow. He’s noticed the woman running the pickled vegetable stand three spots down for three weeks now, but he’s only ever given her a tight, polite nod. She’s got streaks of silver in her chestnut hair, laughs loud enough to carry to his table when a kid tries a pickled habanero and makes a face, and every time he glances over, she’s already looking at him.
Mid-September, the sky opens up halfway through the market with no warning, cold, stinging rain blowing sideways. Vendors scramble to throw tarps over their stock, and a gust of wind yanks a stack of unbound Old Lead pages off Roland’s table, sending them skittering across the wet asphalt. He lunges, and so does she, their hands slamming into the same stack of pages at the same time. Her hands are ice-cold, dotted with faint brine stains, calloused at the fingertips from chopping and canning, and they smell like dill and apple cider vinegar, sharp and bright against the permanent ink stain smudged into his own knuckle. They fumble to gather the pages, huddling under the edge of her stand’s tarp when the rain picks up again, their shoulders pressed so tight together he can feel the heat of her through his flannel shirt, their knees knocking when they both kneel to grab a page stuck to a puddle. She laughs, a low, warm sound, and says she’s bought a copy of his zine every week, loves the stories he prints about the old Herman Miller factory line workers from the 70s, that her dad worked there too.
He’s flustered, trips over his own words when he responds, his face hot enough to cut through the chill of the rain. He’s not used to talking to anyone this long who isn’t a regular customer asking about wood type, let alone a woman who’s leaning in like every word he says is interesting, her elbow brushing his when she tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear. He admits he’s bought a jar of her pickled okra every week, even though he hated okra his whole life before she set up her stand, and she snorts, her gaze darting to his mouth for half a second before she looks back at his eyes. The tarp is too small, so their heads are almost touching, and he can smell lavender shampoo mixed with the briny tang of her pickles, can feel her breath on his jaw when she leans in to point out a story she loved. He’s fighting a war in his head, half of him screaming he’s being disrespectful to Ellie, the other half light as a feather, like he’s 19 again hanging around the print shop after shift hoping the receptionist would talk to him.
The rain slows to a fine drizzle ten minutes later, and a kid in a neon raincoat runs past, splashing a puddle right toward Roland’s boots. She grabs his forearm to yank him out of the way, her hand staying wrapped around his arm for three long beats after the kid is gone, her thumb brushing the ink stain on his wrist lightly. She says her name is Clara, moved to town last month after her ex moved to Florida, and she’s got a cooler full of venison chili if he wants to share after they pack up. No pressure, she adds quick, like she’s scared he’ll say no, just… she wants to hear more about the linotype machine he restored, the one he wrote a whole zine issue about. He hesitates for exactly two seconds, the ghost of Ellie’s voice in his head saying stop being an idiot, live a little, and he says yes. The guilt he’d braced for never shows up, just a warm, soft buzz in his chest, like the first sip of hot coffee after shoveling snow for an hour.
They pack up their stands fast, Roland carrying her heavy cooler of unsold pickles to her beat-up Ford F-150 while she folds the tarp. When he sets the cooler down in the truck bed, she leans in, their foreheads almost touching, and brushes a fleck of black printing ink off his cheek with the pad of her thumb. He asks if she wants to come back to his garage after the chili, show her how the linotype works, maybe print her custom pickle jar labels if she wants. She grins, the corners of her eyes crinkling, and says she’d like that a lot. He opens the driver’s door for her, and she taps his wrist twice with her index finger before she climbs in, says she’ll meet him at the cider barn picnic table in ten minutes, don’t be late. He tucks a loose zine page with a short autumn poem he’d printed into his jacket pocket, already mentally drafting next week’s issue, the lead story a love letter to pickled okra and unexpected rainstorms.
