Rafe Mendez, 53, makes his living rebuilding antique typewriters, his fingers perpetually smudged with ink and machine oil, his days measured out in the clack of keys and the scratch of sandpaper on rusted metal. He’s a creature of unshakable routine, ever since his wife packed a duffel and left without a note nine years prior, deciding she’d rather hike the Appalachian Trail than spend another decade listening to him ramble about 1930s Underwoods. He shows up to his Boise shop at 7 a.m. sharp, leaves at 5, grabs a Pabst from the dive bar two blocks over, sits on the third stool from the door, is home by 8. He only agreed to come to the West End block party because his landlord, a 72-year-old retired teacher named Marnie, cornered him at his shop door with a plate of chocolate chip cookies and said if he didn’t show up, she’d raise his rent 20 percent.
He’s been leaning against the sun-warmed brick of his storefront for 12 minutes, beer sweating through the paper label in his hand, already mentally mapping the disassembly of a 1952 Royal Quiet De Luxe a client dropped off that morning, when someone’s shoulder slams into his arm. The margarita in her cup sloshes over the rim, cold and tangy with triple sec, dripping down the inside of his Carhartt sleeve. He tenses, ready to brush it off and leave, then looks down. It’s Lila, who opened the sourdough bakery three doors down 18 months prior, the woman he’d stolen glances at through his shop window every morning when she dragged her folding sidewalk sign out, the woman every neighbor on the block tiptoed around, still treating her like glass two years after her husband died on a highway construction job.
She grabs his forearm to steady herself, her palm warm through the thin, damp cotton of his shirt, her thumb brushing the spot where the margarita soaked through by accident. “Sorry, shit, that kid on the scooter almost took my knees out,” she says, laughing, and she smells like coconut sunscreen and sourdough starter and lime, her dark hair pulled back in a loose braid, strands sticking to the sweat on her neck. He’s never been this close to her before, never heard her voice that clear over the hum of his shop’s exhaust fan, and for a second he forgets how to talk, his throat tight. He doesn’t want to be the guy who hits on the grieving widow, the one the whole neighborhood gossips about over coffee, but he can’t look away from her eyes, hazel with little flecks of gold, crinkled at the corners from laughing.
His first instinct is to say no, to tell her he has to get to the bar, that he has work to do early the next morning, that this isn’t part of the plan. But he nods before he can talk himself out of it when she nods toward the path leading down to the Boise River, half a block away, and asks if he wants to get away from the noise for a minute, complains that she’s sick of everyone asking if she’s “holding up okay” like she’ll shatter if someone says her husband’s name.
The grass by the river is still warm from the day’s sun, fireflies blinking low over the water, the sound of the band fading behind them as they walk down the dirt path. She stops to pick a dandelion gone to seed, blowing the fluff into the breeze, some of the seeds sticking to the front of his shirt. She leans in to brush them off, her face inches from his chest, and he can feel her breath through his shirt, her fingers brushing his collarbone by accident. When she looks up at him, she’s so close he can count the freckles across her nose, and she doesn’t move away. He kisses her, soft at first, half convinced she’ll pull away and slap him, but she kisses back, her hand tangling in the short, graying hair at the nape of his neck, tasting like lime and tequila and the peppermint gum she chews.
They sit on a fallen log by the water for 45 minutes, talking about nothing, her shoulder pressed tight to his, her hand resting on his knee every now and then when she laughs. She tells him she’s been ready to date for a year, that the whole neighborhood’s overprotective coddling was driving her crazy, that she’d seen him staring through his shop window at her, had thought he was just shy. He tells her about his ex, about the typewriters, about how he hasn’t done anything spontaneous in almost a decade.
When they walk back up to the block party, the sun is almost all the way down, the streetlights glowing orange. She scribbles her phone number on a napkin from her bakery, the paper dotted with little sourdough loaf logos, and shoves it in the pocket of his Carhartt, her fingers brushing his for a second longer than necessary. “Bring the scone I leave on your back porch tomorrow when you come look at the typewriter,” she says, grinning, before she turns to walk back to her bakery.
He doesn’t go to the bar that night. He walks straight to his shop, unlocks the door, flicks on the lamp over his workbench, pulls the napkin out of his pocket, and traces the smudged numbers with his ink-stained finger.
