Rico Marquez, 52, owns a vintage motorcycle restoration shop in east Austin, and he’d rather sand rust off a 1960s Triumph gas tank for 10 hours straight than attend a neighborhood block party. The only reason he’s here, leaning against his freshly restored 1972 Honda CB750 with a sweating cup of Shiner Bock in his hand, is his 19-year-old part-time assistant practically dragged him out of his garage an hour prior, swearing the brisket food truck parked at the end of the block served the best smoked meat in Travis County. His Carhartts are still stiff with old grease, there’s a smudge of black sealant on his left jaw he hasn’t bothered to wipe off, and he’s already mapped his escape route back to his workshop three times. The line for brisket stretches 20 people deep, and he’s half a second from bailing when someone steps up next to him.
He recognizes her instantly. Lena, the woman who moved into the blue bungalow next to his a week prior. He’d only seen her hauling boxes in cutoff shorts and a flannel tied around her waist when he left for work a few mornings, never spoken to her. She’s wearing a faded Stevie Ray Vaughan tee that hangs loose off one shoulder, high-waisted jeans, scuffed white cowboy boots, a thin silver hoop through her left nostril, and a tattoo of a crow curling around her right wrist. She smells like cinnamon and old paper, sharp and warm, and when she reaches past him for the stack of paper napkins on the fence post behind his shoulder, her elbow brushes his bicep hard enough that he feels the pressure through his thick work shirt. She apologizes with a half-smirk, holds eye contact a beat longer than casual politeness requires, and says she’s seen him yelling at rusted bike parts through his open garage door at 7 a.m. most weekdays.
Rico flusters, for the first time in years. He’d thought the frosted glass panels on his garage door blocked most of the view inside. He mumbles something about stubborn carburetors, and she laughs, low and rough, the sound cutting through the chatter of the HOA board members arguing 10 feet away. She tells him she moved from Portland three weeks prior, inherited the bungalow from her grandma, runs a rare poetry bookstore downtown. She says she only came to the party for the peach cobbler the local church ladies are selling out of a cooler by the DJ booth, and she’d already planned to leave as soon as she got a container. Rico finds himself talking before he can stop himself, telling her about his shop, the divorce that left him living alone in his creaky bungalow 8 years prior, how he’d stopped going to any kind of group event because his ex-wife always made him wear starched button-downs and schmooze with her coworkers he didn’t care about for hours on end. She nods like she gets it, no pity in her eyes, just quiet recognition.
When they get to the front of the line, they both order brisket plates and a side of mac and cheese, and end up sitting on the curb next to his bike, their legs stretched out into the empty parking spot in front of them. She leans in suddenly, her shoulder pressing fully against his, her hair brushing his cheek, to point out a tiny hairline crack in the chrome fender of his CB750 he’d missed when he was polishing it the night before. She says she has a 1968 Bonneville sitting in her garage that her dad left her when he died, she’s been considering scrapping it because she has no clue how to fix the seized engine, and asks if he’d be willing to look at it. He says yes immediately, tells her to swing by his shop at 10 a.m. the next day, he’ll clear a spot for it. She grins, takes a bite of brisket, and gets a streak of barbecue sauce on her lower lip. He almost reaches up to wipe it off with his thumb, stops himself at the last second, but she catches him looking, licks the sauce off slow, holding his eye the whole time.
