Elias Voss, 59, antique typewriter restorer, had dragged himself to the West Asheville taproom that Tuesday even though his lower back ached from prying a stuck carriage off a 1927 Remington the entire afternoon. He’d avoided the place for three weeks straight, ever since he’d overheard a group of loud regulars mocking his “weird old man hobby” when he’d brought a half-restored Smith Corona in to show a friend who collected vintage office supplies. But the trivia pot was $270 that night, and his shop’s AC had died two days prior, leaving the back room so humid the rubber rollers on his repair stock were starting to warp, so he’d caved. He slides onto his usual scuffed stool at the far end of the bar, keeps his head down, pulls out a tattered spiral notebook full of hand-scrawled typewriter serial numbers to fidget with so he doesn’t have to make small talk.
The beer hits the bar in front of him before he flags anyone down. It’s his usual: hazy IPA, no fruit add-ins, extra cold. He looks up, and the woman standing across from him isn’t the regular bartender he’s known for six years. She’s mid-50s, with streaks of silver in her dark curly hair pulled back in a messy bun, a smudge of black ink on her left cheek, and a faded 1977 Fleetwood Mac tour tee stretched across her shoulders. She nods at his notebook, then taps the side of the tap with a rag. “Jesse left a note for the regulars when he quit last week. Said you hate anything that tastes like seltzer mixed with candy.” Her voice is rough, like she’s spent years yelling over concert speakers, and she holds eye contact long enough that Elias feels the back of his neck heat up. He’s not used to people paying attention to his preferences, not since his ex-wife moved to Portland 12 years prior and left him with the shop and a cat that died three years later.
He’s about to mumble a thank you when she reaches across the bar to wipe up a spill a kid left on the wood next to his elbow, and her forearm brushes his. He flinches before he can stop himself, not from discomfort, from surprise—he can’t remember the last time someone who wasn’t his older sister patting his back at Christmas touched him. That’s when he spots the tattoo on her wrist: a tiny raised typewriter “e” key, inked in dark blue, chipped a little at the edges like it’s years old. He nods at it before he can overthink speaking. “That’s a 1950s Royal key. My best seller for replacement parts.”
Her face lights up, and she leans further across the bar, close enough that he can smell vanilla lip balm and the faint malt of the beer she’d been pouring earlier. She tells him her name is Maren, she moved to town two weeks prior after her youngest kid graduated high school and joined the Air Force, and the tattoo is for her dad, who was a small-town newspaper reporter in Ohio and taught her to type on a beat-up Royal when she was 8. She’s had his old Royal in the back of her moving truck for three months, she says, can’t get the carriage to move no matter how much WD-40 she sprays on it, and every repair shop she called told her they don’t fix “old junk.”
Elias’s first instinct is to make an excuse, to say he’s booked solid for months, to not get involved. He’s spent the last decade building a routine that doesn’t leave room for surprises: wake up at 6, coffee, work in the shop until 5, frozen dinner, watch old westerns, bed. He doesn’t let people in, doesn’t want to risk being mocked again for the thing he loves most. But Maren is still leaning across the bar, eyes bright, not checking her phone, not laughing at the idea of caring about a 70-year-old typewriter, and he finds himself offering to look at it before he can stop himself.
Trivia wraps up an hour later, and he wins by two points, acing the category on 20th century office equipment that stumped every other team. He shoves the $270 in his flannel pocket, and realizes it’s pouring rain outside, hard enough that the streetlights are blurred behind sheets of water, and he forgot his umbrella on the workbench at the shop. Maren yells from behind the bar that she’s closing up in 10, she’s got a foldable umbrella under the counter, and his shop is only two blocks from the bar, she can walk him there so he doesn’t get soaked.
They huddle under the small umbrella, shoulders pressed tight together the whole walk, the rain drumming so loud on the fabric they have to lean in close to hear each other talk about the worst trivia questions they’ve ever gotten. When they get to the front door of his shop, he fumbles with his ring of rusted keys, drops them on the wet sidewalk, and they both bend down to grab them at the same time, their foreheads knocking softly. They both laugh, and for a second they’re kneeling on the sidewalk, inches apart, rain dripping off the ends of their hair, and Elias doesn’t feel the ache in his back at all.
He unlocks the door, flicks on the warm amber lamp above his workbench, and the light hits the rows of restored typewriters lined up on the shelves, their metal cases glowing gold. Maren pulls out her phone, leans over the workbench next to him to scroll through photos of her dad’s Royal, and her curly hair falls over her shoulder, brushing his cheek. He points out that the issue is just a stuck return spring, a 10 minute fix if you have the right tool, and offers to come over to her place next Saturday to fix it, no charge. She grins, says she’ll make him her mom’s famous pot roast and mashed potatoes as payment, no exceptions.
She leaves 10 minutes later, waving as she walks down the sidewalk under the umbrella, and Elias stands in the open doorway until she turns the corner out of sight. He locks the door, walks back to his workbench, and picks up the half-restored Remington he’d been fighting with all day, twisting the carriage loose on the first try.
