Rico Marquez is 52, makes his living restoring vintage neon signs out of a cinder block garage on the edge of Fredericksburg, Texas, and has not voluntarily sat across from a stranger at the VFW monthly fish fry in eight years. Not since his wife Elara crashed her motorcycle on the way back from a honky tonk show, not since the whole town spent six months bringing him casseroles and asking if he was okay, like okay was a thing you could just be after that. He shows up now only because the old commander served with his dad in Vietnam, and he owes the guy a favor. The July heat sticks to his skin like a damp flannel when he walks in, the air thick with fried catfish, vinegar coleslaw, and the yeasty tang of cold Shiner Bock in frosty mugs. Ceiling fans whir overhead, stirring crumbs of hushpuppies across the Formica tables, and he grabs his plate, scans the room for an empty seat, only to find the only one left is across from a woman he’s never seen before.
She’s wearing a yellow sundress that’s just a little too crisp for the grease-stained folding tables, a smudge of indigo ink on the inside of her left wrist, and a silver ring shaped like a typewriter key on her index finger. She’s reading a tattered copy of *The Big Sleep*, scuffed white cowboy boots propped on the empty chair next to her, and when he clears his throat to ask if the seat’s taken, she looks up, hazel eyes crinkling at the corners like she’s already laughing at some private joke. He sits, keeps his elbows tight to his sides, plans to eat as fast as he can and bolt before anyone can corner him for small talk. Then she nods at the faded neon sign tattoo peeking out from the cuff of his frayed work shirt, says she’s Clara, the new county librarian, moved up from Austin three weeks prior, and she’s been trying to track him down for days. The old neon “GILLESPIE COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY” sign from 1972 has been rotting in a storage closet, she says, and the county won’t approve restoration funds unless she can get a quote under a thousand bucks.
He’s halfway through a bite of catfish when she passes him the bottle of habanero hot sauce, their knuckles brushing for half a second. Her skin is cool, smells like lavender and citrus, not the cheap vanilla body spray every woman over 40 in town wears, and he fumbles the hot sauce bottle a little before he catches it, his ears going warm. He tells her he can do the job for $800, if she brings him a slice of peach pie every Saturday while he works on it, half joking, half testing to see if she’ll brush him off like most people do when he’s being gruff. She laughs, loud enough that the group of retired ranchers at the next table glance over, and says she bakes peach pie every Sunday, has a whole Tupperware of it in her truck right now. Her knee brushes his under the table, then stays there, not pressing, just present, and he feels his chest go tight, the same flutter he used to get when Elara would sneak up behind him in the shop and kiss the back of his neck mid-solder. He’s spent eight years convincing himself he didn’t need that kind of thing anymore, that loneliness was easier than the risk of losing someone all over again, that the gossiping old biddies at the front table would have a field day if they saw him flirting with the new librarian. But when she leans forward, her sundress slipping a little off one sun-kissed shoulder, and says she’s got the sign in the bed of her pickup, asks if he can look at it right now instead of waiting for a formal appointment, he doesn’t even hesitate to say yes.
The parking lot is sweltering, crickets chirping loud enough to drown out the distant sound of a country band playing at the dive bar down the street, when they walk out together. Her shoulder brushes his as they stop next to her beat-up Ford Ranger, and she tucks a strand of chestnut hair behind her ear, her fingers brushing her cheek like she’s nervous too. She pulls back the blue tarp covering the truck bed, and the sign is there, chipped sky blue paint, the curved glass tubes intact but the wiring fried, just like she said. He leans in, runs his calloused finger along the edge of the L, can already picture it glowing warm red above the library entrance in a few weeks, casting light over the kids hanging out on the steps after school. When he turns back to tell her the timeline, she’s holding a Tupperware of pie in one hand, the other resting on the edge of the truck bed, her head tilted like she’s waiting for him to say something stupid. He tells her he can have it done in three weeks, no extra charge if she brings that pie to his shop tomorrow so they can go over the design details. She hands him the Tupperware, their fingers lacing together for a full two seconds before she pulls away, grinning, and says she’ll be there at 10 a.m. sharp, no exceptions.
He tucks the Tupperware under his arm, nods toward his shop a half mile down the road, tells her to follow him if she wants to see the space where he’ll be working on the sign. She climbs into her truck, waves out the window when he turns to walk to his own beat-up pickup, and he can feel the heat rising in his cheeks, like he’s 16 again asking a girl to the prom. The neon “OPEN” sign in his shop window would still be glowing when she pulled into his driveway ten minutes later.
