Elio Mendez, 53, makes his living restoring vintage travel trailers from a cinder block workshop on two acres of scrubland outside Grand Junction, Colorado. He hasn’t voluntarily attended a town event in three years, but his fishing buddy Rick threatened to hide all his specialized rivet tools if he didn’t bring his award-winning green chili to the annual fall cookoff, so he’s perched on the edge of a splintered picnic table, plastic bowl in one hand, cold Coors in the other, grease under his fingernails he didn’t bother scrubbing out, half tuned out to the bluegrass band sawing away twenty feet away. He’d rather be home sanding the interior of the 1962 Airstream he picked up at an auction last month, but he’d already simmered the pork for four hours, so he’s making the most of it.
He’s halfway through a story about a customer who tried to pay him in homemade mead when he spots her. She’s the new neighbor who moved into the small cottage three properties over three weeks prior, the one he’d only waved at once from his driveway while she hauled boxes of books out of a beat-up sprinter van. She’s wearing a faded flannel unbuttoned over a worn PJ Harvey tee, jeans cuffed at the ankle, scuffed work boots, a smudge of navy ink on her left cheek. She’s carrying a bowl of white chicken chili, weaving through the crowd, and when her eyes land on him she smiles and changes direction, and Elio’s throat goes dry for no reason he wants to admit.
She introduces herself as Mara, says she runs a mobile used bookshop, and she’s been meaning to knock on his door to ask about the Airstream parked by his workshop—she’s been hunting for a small one to turn into a pop-up poetry spot for small town stops across the Western Slope. She leans in when he explains the rust repair he’s halfway done on the undercarriage, and her shoulder brushes his, the cotton of her flannel soft against his thick Carhartt sleeve. She smells like cedar and orange peel, and over the hum of the crowd and the twang of the banjo, he can hear the faint click of her silver hoop earrings when she nods along to what he’s saying. He’s spent seven years shutting down any flicker of interest in anyone new, ever since his ex-wife left him for a 26-year-old bike courier, and for a second he almost makes an excuse to leave, embarrassed by the sharp, warm jolt he feels when their fingers brush when she hands him a sample of her chili. Her skin is warmer than he expects, her nails short, painted deep burgundy, chipped at the edges from hauling book boxes.
He stays anyway. She laughs so hard at his dumb joke about the Airstream’s previous owner gluing shag carpet to the ceiling that she snorts, and she tucks a strand of brown hair streaked with silver behind her ear, her knee knocking his under the table. She doesn’t move it. The sun dips low, painting the sky pink and tangerine, and the air smells like roasted green chiles and smoldering oak from the fire pit off to the side, and when he admits he’s avoided talking to anyone new for years because he thought he was too old and too burnt out to start over, she doesn’t pity him. She says her husband died four years prior from a sudden heart attack, that she sold their house in Denver and moved out here because she was sick of waking up every day feeling like she was just going through the motions of a life that no longer fit. For the first time in years, Elio doesn’t feel the familiar twist of self-disgust at the thought of wanting something, something that isn’t a perfectly restored trailer or a quiet day fishing on the Colorado River. He feels light, like he’s been holding his breath for years and finally let it out.
He invites her over the next morning to walk through the Airstream, says he’ll help her with the structural repairs for half price if she brings him a copy of her favorite poetry collection. She grins, pulls a purple gel pen out of her flannel pocket, scribbles her cell number on a crumpled napkin printed with the cookoff logo, and presses it into his palm, her thumb brushing his knuckle for a beat longer than necessary. He tucks the napkin into the inner pocket of his Carhartt, patting it once to make sure it’s secure. She says she’s got to go help Rick carry the leftover chili to the food bank truck, so she stands, squeezes his shoulder lightly, and walks away, the setting sun gilding the edges of her hair. A kid running past with a full cup of lemonade slams into his leg, spilling half the drink on his work boot, and Elio doesn’t even complain.
