Elias Voss, 53, makes his living restoring antique typewriters out of a cinder block garage tucked behind his Portland bungalow, and he hasn’t voluntarily attended a neighborhood social event in three years. That streak ends on a muggy July Saturday, when 82-year-old Marnie from two doors down shows up on his porch with a plate of peach pie and a guilt trip thick enough to spread on toast, saying he’s the only person on the block who can smoke a brisket that doesn’t taste like shoe leather. He caves, slings the brisket pan over his shoulder, and shows up to the block party in a faded Carhartt shirt dotted with typewriter ink and sawdust, work boots caked with the same red clay that coats most of his shop floor.
He parks himself at the farthest picnic table, out of the way of the slip and slide full of screaming kids and the group of 20-something renters arguing over cornhole rules, and nurses a lukewarm PBR. He’s halfway through planning his escape 20 minutes in when a woman walks up, paint smudges crisscrossing her forearms, cutoff frayed at the hem, a faded 1998 Pearl Jam tour tee clinging to her shoulders, and asks if he’s got an extra paper plate. She’s Lena, the new next-door neighbor who moved in three weeks prior, the one he’d only seen through his kitchen window hauling boxes of art supplies up her porch steps at 8 a.m. on a Sunday. He passes her a plate, their fingers brushing for half a second, and he catches the scent of coconut sunscreen and fresh lemon on her skin.
She sits down on the bench next to him, no invitation, no awkward small talk preamble, and says she’s been meaning to knock on his door. She found a beat-to-hell 1952 Royal Quiet De Luxe in the attic of the house she bought, and the old lady across the street told her the guy next door fixes “those old key clackers” better than anyone within 100 miles. He snorts, tells her that’s Marnie, she’d say he could fix a jet engine if it got him out of the house more. Their knees brush when she shifts to grab a pickle off the shared relish tray, and he tenses up like he’s been shocked. It’s been so long since anyone who wasn’t a paying client or a little old lady dropping off pie has sat close enough to touch him, he doesn’t know how to react. Part of him wants to grab his brisket pan and bolt back to his quiet house, back to the steady clack of typewriter keys and a bottle of cheap rye on the counter, no pressure to perform, no risk of being found too boring, too old, too stuck in his ways. The other part of him can’t stop staring at the tiny silver tattoo of a typewriter ‘e’ key on her left wrist, or the way she laughs so hard at his dumb joke about Marnie’s habit of stealing his garden tomatoes that she snorts a little, no embarrassment, no covering her mouth.
The sky darkens fast, fat raindrops starting to splatter on the picnic table tops, and the whole block scrambles to grab coolers and food before it pours. He reaches for the stack of foil-wrapped brisket slices he’d set at the end of the bench at the same time she does, their hands landing on the top container at the exact same second. Her palm is warm, calloused at the fingertips from holding paintbrushes all day, and she doesn’t yank her hand away like he expects. She holds it there, half a beat, and grins, rain dripping off the end of her hair onto the back of his hand. She says she was going to ask if he’d bring a slice of that brisket back to her place later, take a look at the Royal, and split the bottle of 10-year bourbon she hauled all the way from Chicago when she moved. Her eyes are steady, no games, no subtle hints, just that same easy half-smile, and he can feel his chest go loose, the tension he’s been carrying for three years melting just a little. He says yes before he can overthink it, before he can talk himself out of it, before he can remind himself that the last time he let someone get close, they left him for a 27-year-old tech bro who thought a typewriter was a “vintage Instagram prop.”
They walk the 20 feet between the party and her front porch in the light drizzle, their shoulders bumping every few steps, no awkward silence, no need to fill the space with small talk. She unlocks the door, holds it open for him, and he can hear Billie Holiday playing soft on a record player in the living room, the smell of lavender candles and old wood hitting him before he crosses the threshold. He sets the brisket on her kitchen counter, and she leans in just close enough that he can smell the cherry lip balm she’s wearing, says she’s been working up the nerve to talk to him since the day she moved in, when she saw him on his porch fixing a typewriter and singing along to Johnny Cash off-key. He sets his tool bag down by the door, and for the first time in three years, he doesn’t feel the urge to rush home to an empty house and a silent typewriter.
