Manny Ruiz, 53, runs a vintage motorcycle restoration shop out of a cinder block garage in east Austin, has done for 16 years. His worst flaw is holding grudges: he still won’t speak to his high school best friend who borrowed his 1968 Triumph Bonneville and crashed it in 1992, still rants about his ex-wife who left him for a real estate broker 8 years prior, and for the last three months, his top enemy has been Lena Marlow, the city code inspector who’d written him four separate citations for the stack of rusted bike frames he keeps stacked behind his shop, each one a $150 fine he’d been putting off paying. He’s at the Hideout, his regular Tuesday night blues dive, nursing a four-dollar bourbon on the rocks at 10:17 PM, when he spots her across the room.
She’s not wearing the neon yellow vest and steel-toed work boots he’s used to. She’s in a black wrap dress that hits just above her knees, strappy sandals, her dark hair pulled loose instead of tucked into a hard hat, holding a gin sour in one hand, laughing so hard at the lead singer’s off-color joke between sets that her shoulders shake. He freezes mid-sip, half tempted to duck out the side door before she sees him, but she glances over, locks eyes with him, and waves before he can move. He hesitates, then walks over, already mentally rehearsing the argument he’s got lined up about the neighbor who’s been snitching on his frame stack, but she pats the bar stool next to her before he can open his mouth. “Off the clock,” she says, grinning, and the sharp, no-nonsense edge he’s come to associate with her is gone, replaced by something warm, a little teasing.
He sits, deliberately leaving a six-inch gap between their stools, but when the server squeezes past to drop off a round of shots for the group behind them, she shifts closer, her knee brushing his denim-clad thigh. He smells jasmine shampoo under the bar’s usual mix of roasted peanuts, stale beer, and old cigarette smoke, and he has to stop himself from leaning in closer. She nudges the bowl of salted peanuts between them toward him, and when he reaches for one, her knuckles brush his forearm, calloused from hauling bike parts around, and he feels a jolt run up his arm that he hasn’t felt since his first date with his ex-wife in 1997. “I know you hate me,” she says, swirling her gin sour, making eye contact so steady he almost looks away. “But the only reason I wrote those tickets was the retired teacher next door to your shop called the city every single day for three weeks complaining about ‘eyesores.’ I actually think the frame stack is cool. My dad restored Harleys back in the 80s. I grew up covered in grease.”
He’s caught off guard, the irritation he’s carried for three months melting faster than the ice in his bourbon. He finds himself telling her about the CB750 he’s been rebuilding for a kid who’s saving up for his first bike, about how his daughter keeps nagging him to stop living in his shop and go on a date, about the Triumph his friend crashed 30 years prior. She listens, leaning in so her shoulder is almost pressed to his, nodding, asking questions that make him realize she actually knows what a carburetor is, not just the official jargon she used when she was inspecting his property. The bar gets more crowded as the night goes on, a group of college kids pushing past to get to the back patio, and one of them slams into her shoulder hard enough that she falls into him, her hand landing flat on his chest, right over the faded motorcycle club logo on his work shirt. She doesn’t move away for a full ten seconds, just looks up at him, her pupils dark in the dim neon light, and he can feel her heart racing through the thin fabric of her dress.
She pulls back first, laughing a little, her cheeks pink, and pulls a crumpled napkin out of her purse, scribbling her phone number on it with a broken ballpoint pen. “I’ve got my dad’s old 1978 Electra Glide sitting in my garage,” she says, pressing the napkin into his palm, her thumb lingering on his knuckle for a beat longer than necessary. “It’s been sitting for five years, won’t turn over. I’ve been meaning to ask you if you’d help me fix it. I’ll pay you. And I’ll tear up all those outstanding citations. Deal?”
He nods before he even thinks about it, even though he never lets random people into his shop, never gives lessons, never does side work for people he’s supposed to be mad at. She finishes her drink, says she has to get up early for a city meeting, and squeezes his arm before she walks out the door. He sits there for another hour, sipping his bourbon, staring at the napkin, the grease under his fingernails smudging the ink a little around the edges. When he walks out to his beat-up Ford F-150, the Texas night is warm, crickets chirping in the oak trees lining the street, and he tucks the napkin into the breast pocket of his work shirt, already running through the list of tools he’ll pull out for her when she shows up Saturday morning.
