Ray Garza, 62, retired lineman with 38 years of climbing Texas power poles under his belt, only showed up to the Westwood neighborhood block party because his granddaughter threatened to post a TikTok of him hiding in his garage eating frozen burritos alone if he bailed. He’d spent the last eight years as a self-appointed hermit after his wife, Elaina, died of ovarian cancer, convinced any small talk with neighbors was a waste of breath better spent fixing old truck engines or fishing the stock tank out past the county line. The smell of grilled brats and citronella candles hung thick in the late August heat as he leaned against the dented beer cooler in scuffed work boots and a sun-bleached gray flannel, the fabric sticking to his upper back, and stared at the crack in his flip phone screen to avoid making eye contact with anyone who might ask him to bring a casserole to the next HOA meeting.
The first brush of her shoulder against his bicep made him jump half an inch. He’d been half a second from grabbing his third cheap lager when she reached past him for a black cherry seltzer, her flowy linen dress brushing his wrist, a faint smudge of cobalt blue paint caked on the bone of her left wrist. She smelled like vanilla and cedar, the same kind of candle Elaina used to burn in the winter, and she laughed when he grunted a half-apology for being in the way, biting the corner of her lower lip to stifle the sound. “Don’t be sorry, this cooler’s the only spot in the whole yard not swarming with sugar-crazed third graders,” she said, nodding at the pack of kids chasing each other with water guns across the front lawns. Her name was Maren, 48, she’d moved into the house next door three weeks prior, newly divorced after 20 years of marriage, an elementary school art teacher relocated from Austin.
He didn’t mean to talk to her for more than two minutes, but her eyes landed on the thick, silvery scar snaking across his left forearm, the one he got in 2017 when a live line sparked mid-climb during Hurricane Harvey, and she asked about it without that pitying lilt most people used when they noticed his old work injuries. He told her the story, how he’d been 30 feet up a pine pole at 2 a.m., rain lashing so hard he could barely see his own gloves, how the line sparked and seared through his flannel before he could cut the power, how he’d finished the job anyway because the nursing home at the end of the block had 12 residents on oxygen. She didn’t gasp or call him a hero. She just nodded, sipped her fizzing seltzer, and said her dad had been a lineman too, had the exact same scar on his right arm from a 1998 ice storm.
The old country cover band playing on the neighbor’s porch cranked up a Johnny Cash song, and she leaned in closer to hear him, the side of her arm pressing firmly against his now, no more accidental brushes. He fought the stupid, guilty jolt in his chest, the part of him that screamed he was betraying Elaina by even noticing how warm her skin was, how her hazel eyes flecked with green crinkled at the corners when he made a dry joke about how linemen considered cheap beer a mandatory post-storm recovery tool. He wanted to leave, to go home, lock the door, and watch old John Wayne westerns alone like he did every Saturday night, but he couldn’t make his feet move.
She told him about the mural she was painting on the side of the local elementary, how she needed to set up three new raised planters along the front walk of her house, but she had no clue how to mix the concrete for the bases. “You know anything about that?” she asked, tilting her head, and before he could think better of it, he was reeling off the exact ratio of sand to cement to water he’d used to pour the foundation of his own ranch house 35 years prior. She grinned, and when she reached out to touch his forearm, right over the scar, her fingers calloused a little from holding paint brushes for hours at a time, his throat went tight. “Come over tomorrow at 10,” she said, her voice lower now, no one close enough to hear them over the twang of the band’s guitar. “I’ll make brisket tacos, I’ve got a bottle of reposado tequila my brother sent me from Oaxaca. No neighbors, no small talk, just us.”
He nodded before he could talk himself out of it. He stayed another 45 minutes, told her about the time he’d climbed a pole in the middle of a thunderstorm to rescue a cat a kid had tied to the crossarm, and she laughed so hard she snort-laughed, a loud, unselfconscious sound he hadn’t heard from anyone in years. When he said he was heading home, she waved from the edge of her porch, tucking a strand of blonde hair that had fallen loose from her braid behind her ear. He walked the 20 feet to his front door, his boots crunching on the oak leaves scattered across the lawn, and realized he hadn’t checked his flip phone to avoid conversation once the whole time he’d been talking to her. He pulled the crumpled paper napkin she’d scribbled her cell number on out of his flannel pocket, fumbled with his front door key, and once inside, tacked the napkin to his fridge right next to the faded photo of Elaina and his granddaughter at his retirement party. The tacos were even better the next day.
