Manny Ruiz, 62, spent 38 years troubleshooting Chicago L track signals before he retired to a creaky cinder block cottage on Florida’s panhandle, three years after his wife Maria’s breast cancer took her. His only consistent social interaction for the last six years had been yelling at college kids who cut him off on the coastal highway, and he’d spent the last six months actively dodging his new next door neighbor, too stubborn to admit he was scared to let anyone new crack the quiet routine he’d built. He sold restored vintage transistors at the weekly farmers market every Saturday, proceeds going to the local food bank, and never stuck around longer than he had to once the last vendor packed up.
The air that late October Saturday smelled like boiled peanuts, salt, and coconut sunscreen, residual humidity from the previous month’s minor hurricane still clinging to every surface. Manny was hunched over a dented 1962 Zenith, tweaking its tuning knob until it crackled to life with a scratchy Muddy Waters track, when he felt a warm shoulder press to his bare bicep. He flinched first, ready to tell a tourist to back off, then looked up and froze. It was Lena Hale, his next door neighbor, the woman he’d only waved at twice from his driveway, blonde hair pulled back in a messy braid, stray strands stuck to her sunburned forehead. She ran the county’s stray animal rescue, he’d seen her carrying crates of kittens into her house at 7 a.m. more than once. She held a glass jar full of dill pickles in one hand, the other hovering an inch from the Zenith’s speaker.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you,” she said, her voice low and rough, like she spent half her day yelling over barking dogs. “I dropped off that busted PA system for the shelter last week? The food bank guy said you fixed it for free. These are for you, I canned them myself.” She held out the jar, and when he reached to take it, their fingers brushed. Her hands were calloused, a little cold from holding the refrigerated jar, and he felt a jolt run up his arm he hadn’t felt since Maria was alive. He immediately felt sick with himself, jaw tightening. He’d spent eight years convincing himself any flicker of interest in anyone else was a betrayal, that he owed Maria his loneliness for the rest of his life.
He mumbled a thank you, set the jar on the table behind him, and tried to go back to adjusting the Zenith, but he could feel her standing there, not leaving, her proximity making the back of his neck prickle. “I saw you out on your kayak last Tuesday,” she said, and he snapped his head up. He’d been half a mile out on the gulf, singing old salsa songs off-key, positive no one could hear him. “I was walking the rescue hounds on the beach. You have a terrible singing voice, for the record.” She grinned, crinkles at the corners of her hazel eyes making his chest feel tight, not in a bad way. He laughed before he could stop himself, a loud, rusty sound he hadn’t heard come out of his own mouth in years.
They talked for 45 minutes while the market crowd thinned out. She told him about the 10-year-old golden retriever she’d just rescued from a hoarder house, he told her about fixing L signals in the middle of January blizzards, how he’d once climbed a 30 foot pole in -10 degree weather to fix a frozen switch. When she reached to brush a crumb of boiled peanut off his faded flannel shirt, her fingers grazed his chest through the thin fabric, and he didn’t pull away. The disgust he’d felt earlier had melted into something softer, something he’d thought he’d buried for good. It didn’t feel like betraying Maria anymore. It felt like she’d be laughing at him for being so stupid for so long.
He offered to walk her back to her car after he packed up his booth, and they stopped for a draft pale ale at the tiki bar at the end of the parking lot first, sitting at a picnic table overlooking the gulf while the sun dipped below the horizon, painting the sky pink and orange. She told him her husband had died in a construction accident seven years prior, that she still kept his scuffed work boots by her front door, that it had taken her five years to even agree to go out for coffee with a friend. He told her about Maria, about how they’d planned to move to Florida for 20 years before she got too sick to travel.
When they got to her car, he pulled the small, restored 1970s transistor he’d fixed up the week before out of his bag, the one he’d been planning to keep for himself. “For the shelter,” he said, turning it on to a soft old country station. “I read quiet music helps scared puppies calm down.” She took it from him, leaned in, and kissed his cheek, her lips warm and a little chapped from the wind. He didn’t flinch, didn’t pull away, even when his ears went bright red. She waved as she pulled out of the parking lot, and he stood there for a minute, holding the cold jar of pickles in one hand, the faint sound of the country station from her open car window drifting over the lot. He pulled his phone out of his pocket, opened the text thread with his old work buddy back in Chicago, and typed that he’d book a plane ticket for their annual Christmas beer meetup next month.
