Manny Ruiz is 53, runs a vintage motorcycle restoration shop out of a cinder block garage on the east side of Austin, and hasn’t willingly attended a town community event in seven years and eleven months, ever since his wife’s funeral procession wound past the Elks Lodge during their annual fall cookoff. His niece, home from college for a long weekend, badgered him into showing up this year, promising her award-nominated vegan chili would change his mind about “plant-based garbage,” as he calls it. He’s perched on the edge of a splintered picnic table, half a warm Shiner Bock in one hand, a paper plate of undercooked cornbread in the other, actively avoiding the sympathetic side-eye from the lodge regulars who still pat his shoulder and tell him they’re sorry for his loss like it happened last week.
He shifts his weight to stand and leave, beer sloshing over the lip of the can, and spills half an ounce straight onto the front of a red plaid flannel shirt worn by a woman he’s never seen before. She laughs, loud and unapologetic, wiping the beer off with the back of her hand, and he notices a smudge of chili powder high on her left cheek, a silver hoop earring with a tiny motorcycle charm dangling from her left ear. She’s the new 10th grade biology teacher, she says, moved to town three weeks prior, has a 1978 Honda CB750 gathering dust in her garage she’s been meaning to bring by his shop, if the rumors about his work are half as good as people say. He snorts, tells her the rumors are overblown, but he’ll take a look for free if she brings him a bowl of whatever chili she entered in the contest, no vegan garbage allowed. She taps his forearm, light and playful, her calloused fingers brushing the scar he got from a 1998 crash outside San Antonio, and says her chili is brisket-based, so hot it’ll make his eyes water, deal.
The country cover band on the small stage switches to a slow George Strait track, and the crowd thins out as people drift to the dance floor. She sits down next to him on the picnic table bench, their knees brushing through their jeans, and passes him a paper bowl of chili, steam curling up to fog his reading glasses. He takes a bite, burns the tip of his tongue, and she grins, popping a piece of cinnamon gum into her mouth, her knee pressing a little firmer against his when he admits it’s the best chili he’s had at the cookoff since his wife stopped entering 10 years ago. She doesn’t flinch or give him that sad, soft look everyone else does when he mentions her. She just nods, says she bet his wife’s was better, and asks him what the hardest bike he ever restored was.
He talks for 20 minutes straight, realizes halfway through he hasn’t rambled to a stranger like that since before his wife got sick. He notices she smells like cedar and spearmint mixed with the cinnamon of her gum, that she holds eye contact the whole time he’s talking, no glancing at her phone, no scanning the crowd for someone more interesting. Her arm brushes his when they reach for the same piece of cornbread at the same time, and he feels a jolt run up his spine, the kind he hasn’t felt since he was 16 and asked his first girlfriend to prom. He’s angry at himself for a second, angry that he’s even noticing how the setting sun catches the gold flecks in her hazel eyes, angry that he’s not itching to leave anymore, that he’s actually enjoying himself, like he’s breaking some unspoken rule he set for himself the day his wife died.
She leans in a little closer, the noise of the cookoff fading into background hum, and says she found a quiet overlook off Highway 290 last weekend, no tourists, no trash, just a perfect view of the hill country sunset. She rode her bike there alone, she says, but it felt like the kind of spot you bring someone who gets how good it feels to go fast on two wheels. She asks if he wants to head out there in an hour, if he’s not busy, if he doesn’t mind riding with someone who’s still a little rusty on country backroads.
He hesitates for three full seconds, half of him screaming to go home to his empty house and his half-finished restoration project, the other half screaming to say yes. He nods, says he’ll meet her at his shop at 7, tells her to bring her helmet.
An hour later, he’s leaning against the frame of his 1969 Triumph Bonneville when she pulls up, leather pants scuffed at the knees, no helmet hair, a bowl of leftover brisket chili tucked into her saddlebag. She tosses him a pack of cinnamon gum, same as the kind she was chewing earlier, and fires up her CB750, the engine purring loud and steady. He slips the gum into his pocket, pulls his helmet on, and fires up his own bike. She pulls out onto the road first, and he follows, the wind whipping through the gap in his helmet, the smell of her cedar perfume cutting through the exhaust fumes even 10 feet behind her. He doesn’t think about the years he spent alone, doesn’t think about the sympathetic looks from the lodge regulars, doesn’t think about anything except the stretch of blacktop ahead and the low, steady hum of her engine leading the way.
