Rusty Hague, 62, spent 38 years bending neon tubing for diners, dive bars, and roadside bait shops across the Midwest before semi-retiring to a two-bedroom cabin half a mile from Lake Huron. His worst flaw, if you asked the few people who knew him, was that he’d built a wall so high around his life after his wife left him for a traveling insurance salesman eight years prior, he could barely remember the last time he’d sat through a full conversation with someone who didn’t want a sign fixed. He showed up to the VFW fish fry every Friday like clockwork, sat in the same scuffed vinyl corner booth, ordered two Busch Lights and a plate of cod with extra coleslaw, and left before the karaoke started.
The hall was packed that particular Friday, the annual town classic car show bringing in out-of-state visitors and doubling the usual crowd. He’d just wiped a smudge of argon dust off his jaw—leftover from fixing the blinking “LIVE BAIT” sign down at the marina that afternoon—when someone slid into the booth across from him, their thigh brushing his under the table for half a beat before they settled. He looked up, ready to tell them the seat was taken, and froze. It was Clara Voss, the mayor’s wife. Everyone in town had seen the cell phone footage leaked two weeks prior, of her husband making out with the country club’s 28-year-old golf pro in the parking lot of the local steakhouse. She’d stood next to him at the press conference two days later, face tight, holding his hand while he blubbered about “making a mistake” and “asking for forgiveness.”
She ordered a Busch Light from the passing bartender, her voice lower than he expected, rough around the edges like she’d been smoking too much lately. He stared down at his cod, the grease seeping through the paper plate, acutely aware of the guys at the bar craning their necks to watch their booth. He hated drama, hated being the subject of small town gossip, wanted to grab his jacket and bolt before anyone started running their mouths. Then she reached for the salt shaker at the same time he did, their hands brushing. His were crisscrossed with tiny scars from hot glass, calloused at the fingertips from years of gripping tubing. Hers were soft, smelled like lavender hand cream, and she didn’t yank her hand away immediately, just held eye contact with him, a tiny smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth like she knew exactly how flustered he was.
“Argon dust, right?” She nodded at the faint blue smudge still on his cheekbone he’d missed. “My uncle did neon sign work out in Traverse City back in the 90s. I’d hang around his shop when I was a kid, get that same dust all over my jeans.” He blinked, not expecting that. He’d gotten used to people calling him “the neon guy” and nothing else. She leaned forward, her elbow almost touching his on the edge of the table, and he could smell the beer on her breath, the faint coconut scent of her shampoo. She twisted a thin silver band around her left ring finger so hard her knuckle went white, then slid her phone across the booth to him, the screen open to a photo of her wedding ring sitting on top of a signed divorce petition on her kitchen counter. “Left it on his nightstand yesterday,” she said, so quiet only he could hear it over the hum of the jukebox playing Merle Haggard. “The one I’m wearing is a cheap costume ring I grabbed from a dollar store. Everyone’s so busy waiting for me to take him back, they don’t even look close enough to notice.”
She told him she’d raced dirt bikes as a teenager, had placed third in a state competition when she was 19, before she met her husband and he convinced her to sell her bike to “focus on the campaign.” She said she’d seen him around town a dozen times, driving his beat up 1987 F-150 with the custom neon “Huron” plate frame he’d made for himself, and had been working up the nerve to talk to him for months. The guys at the bar whooped when she laughed at his terrible joke about the mayor’s terrible comb-over, and he flipped them off over his shoulder without breaking eye contact with her, a warm buzz he hadn’t felt in years spreading through his chest.
He wiped his calloused hands on the thighs of his worn work jeans, the same nervous tick he’d had since he was a teen, then reached across the table and covered her hand with his. “I got a half-finished neon sign in my garage,” he said. “Lights up the same shade of blue as the lake right after sunset. Wanna come see it?” She grinned, a real, wide grin, nothing like the tight, polished smile she’d worn for the press conference, and slid out of the booth. He held the door open for her, the cool lake air hitting their faces when they stepped outside, crickets chirping loud enough to drown out the sound of the guys hooting from the bar porch. The distant rumble of classic cars revving from the car show grounds drifted across town. He unlocked the passenger door of his truck, reached up to help her climb in, and her hand laced through his for three full seconds before she settled into the seat.
