Russell “Rust” Marquez, 52, makes his living restoring antique typewriters out of a cinder block garage turned workshop in southeast Portland, and he’s spent the last eight years perfecting the art of bailing on community events before the first paper plate hits the trash. His sister strong-armed him into the summer block party that Saturday, though, threatening to leave a half-dozen half-broken 1990s IBM Selectrics on his porch if he skipped, so he’d parked himself by the taco truck an hour prior, nursing a lukewarm beer and counting down the minutes until he could slip back to his quiet shop, the air thick with machine oil and old paper instead of grill smoke and screaming kids.
He’s mid-sip, scrolling through a parts auction on his beat-up iPhone, when a woman stepping back to dodge a seven-year-old on a scooter slams into his side, her iced peach tea sloshing over the rim of her cup and soaking a three-inch splotch on the front of his gray work shirt, the one emblazoned with his shop logo: RUST’S TYPEWRITER REPAIR, WE FIX WHAT YOUR LAPTOP CAN’T. He huffs, ready to brush her off and leave, until he looks up and recognizes her: Clara, the new neighbor who moved into the blue bungalow two doors down three months prior, who he’s only ever waved at from across the fence when he’s hauling scrap metal out to his truck. She’s got a streak of silver in her dark brown bangs, calluses on her fingers he notices immediately when she grabs a fistful of napkins from the taco truck counter and dabs at the wet spot on his shirt, her knuckle brushing the soft skin just above his belt line by accident.
“Shit, I’m so sorry,” she says, and she doesn’t yank her hand away right away, just holds eye contact, a half-smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth like she knows he’s been avoiding her, like she thinks it’s funny. He’s instantly annoyed, and then instantly flustered, something hot crawling up the back of his neck that has nothing to do with the 82-degree heat. He’s not used to being this close to anyone who isn’t a retiree dropping off a family typewriter for repair, hasn’t let anyone this close since his wife left him for a guy who sold craft beer out of a food truck, told him he was “too stuck in the past” to be worth staying for.
He mumbles that it’s fine, tries to step back, but she nods at his shirt and says she’s got her grandma’s 1947 Royal sitting in her garage, has been meaning to look up someone to fix it for months, didn’t realize the guy down the street did that work. He hesitates, the excuse he had ready about being booked solid for three months dying on his tongue when she tilts her head, the sun catching the silver hoops in her ears, and he can hear the mariachi band playing two blocks over, smell the cilantro and lime on the tacos she’s waiting for, feel the faint dampness of the tea on his shirt where her hand just was.
He finds himself telling her he can take a look at it, no charge if it just needs a new ribbon and a tune up, and when her order gets called, she grabs two tacos, shoves one into his hand, says he can eat it while they walk back to the neighborhood, she’s already sick of the party noise anyway. He doesn’t protest, even though he’d planned to leave alone 20 minutes prior. They walk slow, stepping over sidewalk cracks, talking about the Royal, then about her job teaching high school woodshop, then about his collection of 1950s typewriters that used to belong to western pulp novelists. She laughs at his bad joke about how typewriters don’t crash mid-draft, and her shoulder brushes his every few steps, warm through the thin fabric of her flannel shirt.
They stop at his shop on the way, and he unlocks the door, flips on the string lights strung above the workbench. She runs her fingers over the keys of the 1952 Underwood he just finished restoring that morning, says it’s the exact same model her grandma used to write letters to her grandpa when he was deployed to Korea. She leans in a little, her elbow brushing his, and he can smell coconut shampoo and the faint smoky tang of grilled carne asada on her, and when she tilts her face up to kiss him, he doesn’t pull away. It’s slow, unrushed, no pressure, her calloused hand cupping the side of his face, and for the first time in eight years, he doesn’t feel the urge to run.
They pull apart after a minute, and she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, says she’ll bring the Royal over tomorrow after school, around 5. He walks her to her front door, and she squeezes his hand once before she steps inside, the screen door slamming shut behind her. He leans against the fence outside her house for three full minutes, listening to the crickets start up, the faint clink of her kitchen light switching on, before turning to head back to his shop, the faint smudge of her cherry lip gloss still on the corner of his mouth.
