Rafe Mendez, 62, retired Port of Houston fireboat captain, leans against a galvanized beer cooler at the neighborhood crawfish boil, bay mud caked in the treads of his work boots. The post-storm humidity hangs so thick it sticks to the back of his neck like a damp handkerchief, the air thick with cayenne, melted butter, and the tinny twang of an old George Strait track playing from a portable speaker. He’s avoiding his sister, who’s spent the last six months badgering him to go on a date with her bridge partner, and he’d half-debated skipping the boil entirely before reminding himself the free beer was cheaper than what he kept in his garage fridge.
He reaches for a frosty Shiner Bock, his knuckles brushing someone else’s mid-reach, and he yanks his hand back like he touched the hot exhaust manifold of his 1987 work truck. He looks down to find a woman he doesn’t recognize, auburn hair streaked with gray pulled back in a messy braid, cut-off denim shorts, a faded 1999 Tom Waits tour shirt stuck to her shoulders with sweat. She laughs, low and warm, no sharp edge of teasing, smells like jasmine and citrus, the kind of perfume Linda used to wear on date nights, and says she’s Clara, moved into the pale blue bungalow three doors down three weeks prior. She’d been trying to flag him down the previous Saturday, she says, when she saw him hauling a 70-pound cast iron anchor up his driveway, a retirement gift from his old crew.
Rafe nods, gruff, already formulating an excuse to bolt. He hasn’t let anyone new get close since his wife Linda died of ovarian cancer eight years prior, told himself the only company he needs is his hound dog, Red, and the 1972 Boston Whaler he keeps moored out back of his lot. She sits down on the cinder block next to him, so close their knees are almost touching, and he can feel the heat off her sun-warmed skin through his heavy canvas work pants. She holds out a whole unpeeled crawfish, says she’s terrible at getting the meat out without mashing it to paste, can he show her?
He hesitates, then takes it, his calloused fingers brushing hers as he lifts it from her palm. He notices her nails are chipped with deep indigo ink, and she explains it’s from stamping the spines of used books at the vintage shop she runs in Montrose. The neighborhood gossip mill had run wild when she moved in, whispers that she’d left her husband of 30 years for a female university professor, then split six months later to move out to the suburbs alone, and every other person at the boil had been side-eyeing her like she was contagious. Rafe feels a sharp, stupid thrill at talking to her when everyone else is pretending she doesn’t exist, even as a twinge of guilt nags at him, like he’s betraying Linda by even enjoying the conversation. He peels the crawfish clean, hands it back, and she grins when she eats it, says it’s the first one she’s had all afternoon that didn’t have shell shards in the meat.
He tries to say he has a leaky gutter to fix, that he should head out, but she cuts him off, says she has a 12-foot aluminum ladder she borrowed from the previous owner of her house, she’s been meaning to return it, she can bring it by in an hour if he wants an extra pair of hands. He agrees before he can think better of it, immediately kicking himself for giving in. She scribbles her phone number on a paper napkin, doodles a lopsided fireboat next to it, then walks off to corral a group of kids chasing a stray tabby across the lawn.
She shows up at his door 45 minutes later, ladder slung over her shoulder, holding a six pack of Shiner and a mason jar crammed full of peach cobbler she baked that morning, had extra, she says. They fix the gutter first, Rafe balanced on the roof edge, Clara handing him galvanized nails and caulk, their hands brushing every time he takes a supply from her. She teases him about how slow he’s going, says her ex-husband would’ve had the whole thing fixed in 10 minutes then spent the rest of the afternoon bragging about it, and Rafe laughs, actual full-bellied laughter, so loud Red lifts his head from the porch and stares.
When they’re done, they sit on the back porch steps, eat cobbler straight from the jar with plastic spoons, and Rafe finds himself telling her about Linda, about the 18-hour tanker fire he responded to three months before he retired, about how he’d stopped going to port crew reunions because everyone kept asking when he was going to “get back out there”. She leans in, her shoulder pressing solid against his, and he doesn’t pull away. She says no one’s ever asked her about the ink on her nails either, everyone just assumes she’s messy, not that she spends 12 hours a day handling century-old books and stamping each one with her shop’s custom logo. He reaches over, touches the tip of her index finger where the ink is darkest, her skin soft, calloused at the edges from turning thousands of pages.
They sit there until fireflies start blinking in the live oak trees, the humidity cooling off just enough to be comfortable, Red curled up asleep at their feet. Rafe walks her home, and when they get to her porch, she leans up and kisses him on the cheek, her lips warm and faintly sweet from cobbler, says she has a first edition of *The Old Man and the Sea* she’s been hoarding for years, he can come over tomorrow after she closes the shop to look at it if he wants. He nods, walks back to his house, stops halfway down the block, and glances up at his roof, the new gutter glinting silver in the glow of his porch light. He lifts his hand to his cheek, where her kiss still tingles, and slips the crumpled napkin with her number into the pocket of his work pants.
