Rico Marquez is 57, a retired air show stunt pilot who runs a one-man prop plane repair shop out of a disused corner of the central Texas hill country regional airstrip. He’s spent the last eight years intentionally making himself unapproachable, ever since his wife Maria, his only ground crew for 22 years on the circuit, died of late stage ovarian cancer. He sold his custom stunt biplane two weeks after her funeral, moved to the tiny town of 1,200 people sight unseen, and has skipped every community barbecue, parade, and potluck for the last six years, until the airport manager, an old circuit buddy, cornered him in his shop at dusk two days prior and practically dragged him to the end-of-summer cookout.
He’s leaning against the dented stainless steel beer cooler, sipping a lukewarm Shiner Bock he fished out of the melting ice, when it happens. The mesquite smoke from the brisket pits stings the back of his throat, the mariachi band’s trumpets cut sharp through the hum of conversation, and a woman he recognizes as his new neighbor, the one who moved into the old ranch house three miles down the road from his shop three months prior, leans past him to grab a beer. Their hands brush when they both reach for the last cold can in the stack, calloused fingers from turning wrenches on his end, calloused fingers from holding heavy telephoto lenses on hers, and he freezes. He hasn’t had accidental physical contact with anyone who isn’t a parts delivery driver in nearly a decade.
She doesn’t yank her hand away like most people do, like he’s some feral animal that might bite if you get too close. She holds eye contact for three full seconds, dark brown eyes crinkling at the corners, and smirks. The silver hoop in her right nostril glints in the golden hour sun, and he notices the raised, pale scar slicing across her left knuckle, ragged at the edges like it never got stitched up properly. She shifts her weight so her shoulder is six inches from his, close enough that he can smell cedar shampoo, faint vanilla perfume, and beer on her breath over the smell of smoked meat and cut grass. He’s suddenly hyper aware of the half dozen older women at the picnic table ten feet away, glancing over at him like they’ve just spotted a UFO at the church bake sale. He spent eight years building a wall between himself and this town, and she’s standing there like she didn’t even see the “no trespassing” sign.
He’s halfway to making an excuse to leave, to climb in his beat up Ford F-150 and drive back to his quiet shop where no one talks to him unless they need a carburetor replaced, when she nods at the scar on his own right hand, the one he got when he crashed a biplane during a practice run in 2004, and asks how he got it. He answers before he can think better of it, tells her about the crash, the six weeks he spent in a cast, Maria yelling at him for three straight days for being stupid enough to try a new maneuver 20 feet off the tarmac. He laughs halfway through the story, a rough, rusty sound he hasn’t heard come out of his own mouth in years. She tells him the scar on her knuckle is from a black bear encounter in Denali last year, when she tried to grab her camera bag instead of running, and the bear swatted at her through the open window of her rental car.
She leans in then, close enough that her breath tickles the edge of his silver sideburn, and he doesn’t flinch. “I don’t give a damn what the gossips at the diner say,” she says, quiet enough only he can hear, over the trumpets and the kids yelling on the playground behind the picnic area. “I’ve pulled over on the highway three times in the last month, watched you working on that beat up 1962 Piper at dusk, singing Johnny Cash under your breath. You’re not as much of a hermit as you pretend to be.” She taps the faded 1998 air show patch sewn to the breast of his work shirt, the only thing he kept from his circuit days besides the scar on his hand. “My dad flew that same circuit. He talked about a kid named Rico who could loop a biplane so low he could grab a soda can off the tarmac. I knew it was you the second I saw that patch on your shirt when you were carrying parts into your shop last week.”
He stares at her for a long second, stunned. No one in this town knows that story. He never told anyone. The wall he spent eight years building feels like it’s melting at the edges, warm and soft instead of cold concrete. He doesn’t care if the gossips at the diner are already typing up the town newsletter item about him talking to the new photographer lady. He doesn’t care that he told himself he’d never let anyone get close again, that he’d spend the rest of his life alone with his wrenches and his old Johnny Cash records.
“I’ve got an opening first thing Saturday,” he says, before he can overthink it. “7 a.m. Bring that 1978 Cessna you’ve got parked in your barn. And don’t bring that cheap gas station coffee I see you buying at the mini mart on the highway. I drink the good stuff.”
She laughs, loud and bright, and squeezes his bicep before she steps back, her calloused hand warm even through the thin cotton of his work shirt. “I’ll bring cold brew I brewed myself,” she says, grinning. “And my abuela’s prune kolaches. They’re so sweet they’ll make your teeth hurt. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
She turns to walk toward the brisket line, and he leans back against the cooler, sipping his beer, watching the sun catch the silver hoop in her nostril as she goes.
