Manny Rocha, 51, spends 60 hours a week hunched over vintage arcade cabinets, soldering frayed circuit boards and sanding chipped laminate in his cinder block Tucson shop. He’s avoided casual dates since his divorce eight years prior, convinced any disruption to his quiet, low-stakes routine would send him spiraling back to the corporate software sales burnout that made him quit his six-figure job. The only non-work event he makes time for every year is the spring small business street fair, where he sets up a working Pac-Man cabinet to draw foot traffic to his stall of refurbished handheld games.
The April air is thick with red dust and the smell of grilled elote and cheap lager from the food truck two stalls down when she walks up. He recognizes her immediately: Lila, his landlord’s wife, who dropped off a final rent reminder at his shop two weeks prior, lingering in the doorway to ask about the 1982 Donkey Kong machine he had propped by the counter. She’s wearing cutoff denim shorts and a faded 1998 Pearl Jam tour tee, sun streaks in her brown hair, chipped cherry red polish on her nails. Her husband, a gruff retired cop threatening eviction over Manny’s three weeks late rent, had glared at him from across the fairgrounds an hour earlier.
She challenges him to a round of Pac-Man, loser buys the winner a frozen margarita from the food truck. Manny hesitates for half a second, already imagining the eviction notice taped to his shop door if her husband catches them talking, but he nods. They stand shoulder to shoulder in front of the cabinet, the rough plastic of the joystick digging into his palm as he plays. She’s better than he expects, leaning in so close her upper arm presses against his bicep every time she twists to chase a stray ghost. When she beats him by 1200 points, she claps a hand to his forearm, her palm warm and a little calloused, the coconut scent of her sunscreen mixing with the faint tang of tequila she already drank earlier that afternoon.
He trundles to the food truck and comes back with two margaritas, rimmed with salt and slushy enough to drip down the plastic cup sides. They squeeze onto the single folding chair behind his stall, their knees pressed tight together because there’s no room for a second. She complains that her husband has been unbearable for six months, spending every weekend on the golf course with his buddies, yelling at her for “coddling” tenants who fall behind on rent. She leans in when she speaks, her hazel eyes flecked with gold, glancing at his mouth every time he laughs at a joke about her husband’s terrible taste in pickup trucks. Manny’s chest feels tight, half panic at the risk of getting caught, half a giddy spark he hasn’t felt since before his divorce.
By 8 p.m., the sun has dipped below the desert mountains, most of the fair stalls are packed up, and the remaining crowds have drifted to the bar at the end of the street. She checks her phone, snorts, and shows him a text from her husband saying he’s heading to a buddy’s house to watch the hockey game, won’t be home until after midnight. She asks if he wants to show her his shop, says she’s been curious about the half-restored pinball machines he has stacked against the back wall since she first stopped by. Manny agrees before he can overthink it.
He drives back to the shop in his beat-up 2004 Tacoma, her in her Honda Civic right behind him, and unlocks the front door. The neon glow from the rows of working arcade cabinets casts pink and blue light across the concrete floor, the vintage jukebox in the corner playing a low Tom Petty track he left on when he locked up that morning. She steps past him into the shop, her shoulder brushing his chest as she passes, then turns around and kisses him slow, her lips tasting like lime and tequila and salt. He doesn’t pull away, wrapping his arms around her waist, the faint scratch of her cutoffs against his wrists.
An hour later, they’re sitting on the floor leaning against the Galaga cabinet, sharing a can of root beer he had stashed in his mini fridge. She’s tracing the thin scar on his left wrist, the one he got when he dropped a CRT monitor two years prior, and says she’s been thinking about that scar since she saw him hand her the rent check last month. Manny laughs, admits he’s been replaying their two minute conversation in his head for weeks, even though he knew messing with his landlord’s wife was stupid. She grins, pulls up her text chain, and shows him a message she sent her husband ten minutes earlier, saying she’s leaving him, already has a guest house lined up, had been planning the split for three months. Then she pulls up a rental listing for a commercial space three blocks over, twice the size of his current shop for 20 percent less rent, owned by her cousin. She says she already put in a good word for him, if he’s interested.
Manny takes a long sip of root beer, looks at the neon blue light reflecting off her hair, and laces his fingers through hers. The high-pitched chime of a Pac-Man winning play echoes off the cinder block walls, and for the first time in eight years, he doesn’t feel the urge to pull away.
