Moe Sorrentino, 62, vintage arcade restorer and widower of eight years, kneeled in the clover patch by the town’s summer block party pop-up bar, tightening a loose joystick on the 1982 Pac-Man cabinet he’d hauled over for the kids’ area. Sweat beaded at his hairline, streaked grease down the side of his wrist, and the cheap lager he’d set on the cabinet’s base sweated through its paper coaster onto the chipped yellow paint. He’d come only because his buddy Dave had begged, had spent the first hour dodging questions from local moms who kept trying to set him up with their divorced aunts, had half a mind to pack up the machine and leave before the pie contest even started. He flipped the power switch to test the joystick, and the familiar tinny Pac-Man start-up jingle cut through the noise of kids yelling and burgers sizzling on the food truck grill.
He was just twisting the last bolt when a shadow fell over his work. He looked up, squinting against the golden hour sun, and met the eyes of the town’s new librarian, Lena Voss. He’d seen her around once or twice, restocking the mystery section when he’d dropped off a box of his late wife’s old Agatha Christie paperbacks, had mumbled a quick hello and bolted before she could make small talk. She was 58, recently relocated from Chicago after a messy divorce, wore high-waisted denim cutoffs and a faded Fleetwood Mac tee, had a thick streak of silver running through the dark hair pulled back in a loose braid. She held a can of vanilla seltzer in one hand, a paper plate with a half-eaten corn dog in the other, and grinned so wide the corners of her eyes crinkled.
“Had that exact cabinet at my cousin’s arcade in Rockford when I was 16,” she said, leaning in to tap the side of the cabinet, her shoulder coming within an inch of his. He smelled coconut sunscreen and the faint, sweet tang of cherry pie on her breath, and his first instinct was to lean back, to mumble a polite response, to make an excuse about needing to check the power cord and get away. He could feel the eyes of the older ladies from the church guild on his back, knew they were whispering that it was too soon, that his wife Elara had only been gone eight years, that dating the new librarian who’d taken her old job was some kind of insult to her memory.
He hesitated, frozen halfway between leaning in and pulling back, when she held out a crumpled paper napkin to him. “You’ve got grease on your wrist,” she said, and when he reached for it, the pads of their fingers brushed. Her skin was soft, calloused only at the tips from turning book pages, and the jolt that ran up his arm was so sharp he almost dropped the screwdriver he was holding. He mumbled a thanks, wiped his wrist, and for some reason he couldn’t name, didn’t move away.
They talked for ten minutes, first about the Pac-Man cabinet, how he’d found it rotting in a barn outside of Syracuse, how he’d spent three months replacing the wiring, sanding down the cabinet, repainting the ghosts by hand. Then about books, how she’d loved Elara’s old Christie collection, how she’d left a note thanking him tucked in the front of *Murder on the Orient Express* that he’d never noticed because he’d run out so fast. He kept waiting for the guilt to hit, for the familiar twist in his chest that came whenever he did anything Elara wouldn’t have been there for, but it never came. Instead, he felt light, like the weight he’d been carrying around for eight years had loosened just a little.
The string lights strung between the oak trees flickered once, twice, then went out completely. A cheer went up from the crowd, kids yelling, people laughing, the sound of crickets chirping loud enough to cut through the noise. It was dark enough that he could just barely make out the outline of her face, the orange glow of a cigarette someone was smoking three rows over catching the edge of her smile. She shifted her weight, and her shoulder pressed fully against his, warm through the thin fabric of his faded work flannel.
“I know people around here think it’s weird, me talking to you,” she said, her voice low enough that only he could hear it. “I heard about Elara. I’m not trying to take her place. I just think you’re the only person in this town who knows more about 80s arcade games and Agatha Christie than I do, and that’s a very small club.”
He didn’t say anything for a second, then he laughed, a rough, rusty sound he hadn’t heard come out of his own mouth in years. The guilt he’d been waiting for never showed up. For the first time since Elara died, he didn’t feel like he was doing something wrong by enjoying a conversation with someone who wasn’t her.
The lights flipped back on a second later, blinding him for a split second. He looked at her, at the silver streak in her hair, at the corn dog crumbs on the edge of her plate, and asked her if she wanted to come by his workshop the next afternoon. He had a half-restored Donkey Kong cabinet he’d been working on for six months, he said, and he made iced coffee strong enough to strip paint.
She grinned, held out her hand for his phone, and when he passed it to her, she brushed her thumb across his knuckle before she started typing her number. “Don’t make the coffee too strong,” she said, handing it back. “I’m an old lady now, I’ll be up until 2 a.m. reading true crime if you do.”
He nodded, watched her turn and walk back to the group of library volunteers she’d been sitting with earlier. The neon glow of the now fully functional Pac-Man screen painted bright pink and blue streaks across the back of the linen button-up she’d tied around her waist, and he didn’t even glance at the gossiping church ladies clustered by the pie tent.
