Roland Voss, 62, is a vintage slot machine restorer who’s lived in the tiny western Ohio town for seven years, and until that Saturday’s fire department chili cookoff, he’d spoken to fewer than 12 of his neighbors total. It was a deliberate choice. After his wife Elara died of breast cancer in 2015, he’d packed up his Vegas repair shop of 32 years and moved east to outrun the pitying stares, the unsolicited dinner invitations from well-meaning friends, the constant reminders of the life they’d built that no longer fit right. His only consistent social interaction was the weekly parts order call he placed to a supplier in Detroit, and he liked it that way. He’d only shown up to the cookoff because his 82-year-old next door neighbor had begged him to bring his famous peach cobbler, threatening to leave her dachshund on his porch every morning for a week if he bailed.
He was leaned up against a splintered pine picnic table, half-drunk on a cheap light beer he hated, counting down the minutes until he could slip out and get back to the 1964 Bally’s Hi-Lo he was restoring for a collector in Tokyo, when Marnie stumbled into him. She was 58, the new elementary school art teacher who’d moved to town six months prior after a messy divorce from a lawyer in Portland, and he’d heard the gossip about her down at the hardware store: two little old ladies whispering that she was a man-eater, that she’d flirted with the pastor, the feed store owner, and the high school football coach in her first month alone, that she didn’t know how to act in a small, quiet town. He’d rolled his eyes then, but he’d still avoided running into her, not wanting to give the gossips more fuel.
She was carrying two paper plates piled high with chili, boots slipping on the dewy grass, when she caught her toe on the edge of a rolling cooler a kid had left by his table. She stumbled, threw one hand out to catch herself, and her palm landed firm on his forearm, warm even through the thick fabric of his faded Carhartt jacket. The chili sloshed a little but didn’t spill, and she laughed loud, bright, no hint of embarrassment, as she pulled her hand back slow enough that he noticed the smudge of cobalt blue paint on her wrist, the tiny silver scar across her knuckle from a skiing accident she’d mention later. “Shit, sorry about that,” she said, holding eye contact for three full seconds, hazel eyes flecked with green, no trace of the pity he was so used to seeing on people’s faces when they talked to him. “These work boots have zero traction on wet grass.”
She hauled a cinder block over from the stack by the fire station garage and sat down right next to him, so close their knees brushed every time one of them shifted. The air smelled like cumin, burnt hot dogs, and the faint smoke from the bonfire at the edge of the field, and he could smell lavender hand lotion and a whiff of clove cigarette on her shirt when she leaned in to talk over the group of firemen yelling about who’d won first place in the chili contest. She asked about the tiny red cherry tattoo peeking out from under his jacket sleeve, and he told her he’d gotten it in 1992, when he fixed a rare 1950s Bally’s slot machine for a low-level Vegas mob guy who’d paid him twice his rate, bought him three shots of bourbon, and dragged him to a 24-hour tattoo parlor at 2 a.m. on a Tuesday. She laughed so hard she snort-laughed, bumping her shoulder against his, and said it was the coolest story she’d heard since she moved to town.
For the first time in years, he forgot about the time, forgot about the gossiping old ladies staring at them from the next table, forgot about the slot machine waiting for him in his garage. He found himself telling her about Elara, how she’d hated gambling but loved going to Vegas casinos to collect the free keychains and cocktail napkins, how they’d drive out to Red Rock Canyon every Sunday to hike and watch the sunset. She didn’t give him that sad, tight-lipped pitying look everyone else did when he mentioned his wife. She just nodded, said her older sister had died of ovarian cancer six years prior, that she knew exactly what it felt like to carry a hole that never fully closed, no matter how much time passed.
She wiped a drop of chili off her chin with the back of her hand, leaning in so close her breath brushed his ear when she spoke. “I picked up a beat-up 1976 Gottlieb pinball machine at a farm auction last month,” she said, voice low enough that no one else could hear. “Can’t get the flippers to work for the life of me. Heard you’re the guy who fixes old game stuff. Wanna come take a look? I’ve got a bottle of 10-year bourbon stashed above the fridge, no pressure if you don’t wanna.” He glanced over at the two old ladies from the hardware store, both staring openly now, whispering behind their hands. For half a second he considered saying no, going home to his quiet, empty house, no risk, no chance of getting hurt again, no new gossip for the town to pick apart. Then she reached up to brush a strand of wind-blown gray hair off his forehead, her fingers grazing his temple soft and intentional, no pretense of an accident, and he felt a jolt all the way down to his toes, like he’d just touched a live wire. He nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “That sounds good.”
They walked the three blocks to her small bungalow as the sun dipped below the cornfields, painting the sky streaky pink and tangerine, crickets chirping loud in the grass along the sidewalk. She rambled about the mural she was painting with the second graders, made entirely out of recycled bottle caps, a giant portrait of the local lake that already used 3,000 caps collected from every business in town. He told her about the rare replacement reel he’d tracked down from a parts collector in Michigan for the Bally’s he was working on, how the guy had traded it for a 1950s slot machine handle Roland had had sitting in his garage for 15 years.
She fumbled in her overalls pocket for her keys when they reached her front porch, unlocking the screen door and stepping inside, turning to him with a sharp, warm grin as she held the door open. He stepped over the threshold behind her, the faint smell of her lavender lotion wrapping around him before the door clicked shut behind them.
